Disc analyser news update

Tony Duell wrote: At one point, I had a copy of the NASA standards for PCB modifications, which covered green-wire fixes. I think it's online somewhere... Anyway, for SMD parts (SOICs etc.) you're supposed to run a piece of wire along the pin, then solder it to the pin. The icing on the cake is that you're supposed to solder along the entire length of the pin, not just the land pad. I would LOVE to see someone do that with a 0.5mm-pitch QFP. Soldering to the track is not only easier, but more likely to succeed... I found one roll of the stuff (30AWG w/w wire) on my "big shelf o' miscellaneous wire" last night. It's green, made by "OK", on a 500ft reel. Ideal for greenwire fixes in the literal sense :) Also found a roll of RG58/U, and another roll of RG174. More stuff I didn't know I had. Enamelled copper wire is a pig to find in general. You are right though, Maplin are usually one of the only places that stock it. What annoys me is the scrapping of the in-store-order scheme. Basically, if the store was out of stock of something, you could place a back-order, and when it arrived (they sent it direct to the store in the weekly stock replenishment) you could go and pick it up. Worked pretty well for me. At the time the kits were discontinued, Maplin were basically in a bit of a "hobby electronics is dead" blast. They sold the rights to their electronics magazine to Kanda (IIRC), the kits went the way of the dodo, and the component selection got severely trimmed to make way for more "Innovations-catalogue tat" (as one of my friends so eloquently put it). It's a shame about the magazine, though -- they published some pretty neat projects, all of which could be built from parts available from Maplins (with the occasional special-order), and the articles usually did a pretty good job of explaining not just how the thing worked, but also why it was designed in that specific way. EPE have gone down the road of buying in articles from Silicon Chip, and ETI went bust (or were absorbed into EPE depending on how you look at it), which really just leaves Elektor and Circuit Cellar. Both of which seem to be pitching themselves more at the "experienced engineer" market than home hobbyists. Actually, speaking of Circuit Cellar, I seem to recall Elektor buying them out... $DEITY knows what's going to happen to my CC sub, but I did notice that the renewal cost for an online subscription has gone up a fair bit since they took over. Hmm. It should be noted that it's still a quarter of the cost of an Elektor Online sub (and an eighth the cost of a year of Elektor in dead-tree format). I'm actually in the process of replacing a lot of my paper magazines with PDFs -- it's just easier (not to mention quicker) to find things when I need them... Dave Tweed's Circuit Cellar index is immense (and it's a CSV file so easy to pull into MySQL) You can still do more or less the same thing in Leeds, though not with Maplin. The Farnell Trade Counter is based in Armley, and fairly easy to get to by public transport (there's a bus stop on the opposite side of the road). Ring ahead, give them an hour or two to pack everything up, then call in and collect. Though that said, even standard "over the phone" sales orders tend to arrive next-day if you order before about 4PM. I don't think it's actually guaranteed, but there's no delivery fee and IIRC the only restriction is that you have to order ?30 worth of stuff if you're paying by card, or ?5 if you're paying by cash at the trade counter. -- Phil. classiccmp at philpem.me.uk http://www.philpem.me.uk/