Electronics Now articles from November 1995

Electronics Now archives from November 1995

Global positioning system upgrade.
November 1, 1995... The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) awarded a contract last August for an improvement in the Global Positioning System (GPS) called the Wide-Area Augmentation System. This system will make location fixes obtained from GPS satellites far...

Digital camcorders arrive. (digital video cassette camcorders)
November 1, 1995... As we go to press, the first consumer digital camcorders are scheduled to arrive in American stores. Both Sony and Panasonic are now selling the Digital Video Cassette (DVC) camcorders in Japan, and both have promised to have them in the U.S....

Equipment reports: PocketPOST diagnostic card. (power-on self-test)
November 1, 1995... Troubleshooting electronic circuits is a skill that's acquired over time. Basically you follow a series of clues to eventually reach the troubled part of a circuit. But usually there are enough clues to point one in the right direction. For...

Music vision. (generating kaleidoscopic patterns on television screens)(Cover Story)
November 1, 1995... REMEMBER THE COLOR ORGANS OF the 1960s and 1970s? How about other devices that respond to music with flashing lights, scanning laser beams, or spinning arrays of LEDs? All those approaches can add new excitement to music, but they are limited by...

X-rays and their discoverer. (Wilhelm Konrad Rontgen)(includes related article)
November 1, 1995... "HUNCH YOUR SHOULDERS FORWARD, take a deep breath--and don't breathe or move! Ready?" This is what you hear from your physician or a technician before the buzz and click that tells you invisible rays have passed through your body and impinged on...

High-power hi-fi audio amplifier. (part 2)
November 1, 1995... THIS IS THE SECOND PART OF THE article on the construction of a high-performance, lightweight, stereo amplifier for the demanding audiophile that can be built for less than $500 in parts. It outperforms factory-built units costing up to ten times...

Benchtop function generator.
November 1, 1995... Build this digital function generator that produces square, sine, and triangular waves from 0.1 Hz to 1 MHz, for a fraction of the price of a commercial unit. AVOID THE HIGH PRICES OF MOST off-the-shelf commercial test equipment by building...

Low cost EEPROM programmer: get a handle on your firmware with this low-cost EEPROM programmer. (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory)(includes related article)
November 1, 1995... Firmware--harder than software, softer than hardware--is the lifeblood of both custom microcontrollers and embedded systems. Creating firmware--not writing the software, but programming in into the hardware--has traditionally been a headache. But...

Five easy EEPROM projects. (electrically erasable programmable read-only memory)
November 1, 1995... Last time plans were presented on how to build a $40 EEPROM programmer that, in conjunction with any standard PC, allows you to read and write popular 2K, 8K, and 32K EEPROMs. Now you'll see the value of having an EEPROM programmer by building...

Bridges: matching resistors and capacitors. (part 3)
November 1, 1995... This third article in a series on measurement bridges is about special bridges that might not be known to all readers. However, the article includes schematics building some of these resistance-matching and ratio-matching bridges. They will give...

dB meter: build this decibel meter and measure field strength, read filter outputs, and check oscillator injection values.
November 1, 1995... Build this decibel meter and measure field strength, read filter outputs, and check oscillator injection values. A signal-level meter with a logarithmic or decibel scale can be a very useful test instrument for the electronics experimenter or...

Another patent horror story.
November 1, 1995... Plus more magic sinewaves, stepper motor drive chips, a mid-range Mensch computer, and PCMCIA plug-in card resources. I JUST GOT YET ANOTHER LETTER FROM SOMEBODY TRYING TO PROTECT THE IDEA HE "INVENTED" BY GETTING A PATENT. AS IS TRUE NEARLY...

Shutdown circuits: troubleshooting shutdown circuits in television receivers.
November 1, 1995... Shutdown circuits cut off power to electronic circuits when a fault that could damage or destroy the circuit is detected. The simplest and best known shutdown devices are fuses and circuit breakers. They interrupt the power line when current...

Abandon all hope: entrepreneurial success is impossible in the computer industry.
November 1, 1995... What are the odds of winning a state lottery--several million to one? As bad as that sounds, the odds of attaining a smashing business success in the computer industry are much worse--and the risks are much greater. Do you dream of writing the...