Will wrote:
"On the other hand, ECL does not suffer from the spikes, burps and
farts TTL tends to make.
Late model Cybers tend to have very little in the way of filtering,
simply because the ECL load is "nice"."
ECL, if done properly, uses a terminator on every signal line. On MECL it is usually
it's 560 ohms to -5.2v or 220 ohms to -2.2 volts. Because most circuits have two
ouputs, signal and not signal, termination gives you almost a steady load. This
termination and balanced lines gave the Cybers very fast signal propagation with little
noise like Will mentions. And it requres a lot less regulation and filtering requiremets
for the power supplies.
It was a joy to design with ECL, if you ignored the horrendous power required. We could
weld with the Cyber power supplies! And if the freon cooling failed, you got some
interesting smoke within seconds.
Billy