15 Apr
2012
15 Apr
'12
11:14 a.m.
What I
was getting at is that for problems that can be solved in
both domains, doing so in the digital domain (generally via
software) allows the designer to focus on the problem and far less
so on the physical implementation.
I think this depends -- a lot -- on how the
designer thinks.
Certain;y I find hat for myself going over to the digirtal domain for
what are essentially analopgue problems makes them harder to
understnad. today I visited someone who has a Hammond organ with a
Leslie.
Oh, those are wonderful. I am unable to play one, but I have repaired a
couple over the years. Great pieces of machinery.,
Apparently we are only now learning how to digitially
produce the kind
of effects the Leslie generates with little more than a motor and a
speaker.
And look at the way the early DTMF telephone designers got two tones
out of a single transistor. Not that doing that today would be all
I regard that as one of the all-time great designs. I would love to get
one. Unforutantely, they are very rarew in the UK, we didn't have
DTMF-capable exhanges until the 1980s AFAIK by which time the DTMF
generator in a telephhoe used one of the standard ICs. I have managed to
obtain a couple of ratary-dial US telephones (One of which is a Bell 500
set), and a Bell 2500 set DTMF telehoone, but of course with an IC on the
PCB under the keypad.
Als the companies that sell old telephones on the web say more aobut the
colour and styling (which don't really bother me) than the insides. I
can't find any compnay that can guarantee to supply a
single-transistor+pot_cores DTMF generator.
I was recently looking in some 1970s UK electornics magazines. The
projects back then, using mostly discrete transistors with a few op-amps
or TTL parts sometimes seem to do everything you really need. Adding
complex ICs might add a few bells-and-whistles, but I am not sure that's
an improvement.
-tony