Tony Duell wrote: I expect that is an overly strict interpretation of the law. Cretainly you cannot go around causing interference, but protos just get built at work (or at least parts of them do) and we have no on-site screened facilities either. I seriously doubt that we are unique. I think you have misinterpreted the law. The number of electronic-project-building magazines on the newsagents' shelves has dropped somewhat, but they are still there and if they were blatantly encouraging illegal activity I would expect them to have had a much harder time of it. Some of them are still doing mains-powered projects. (I was going to add "SHOCK, horror" here, but I thought better of it). I have a reasonable stock of resistors, capacitors, diodes and common transistors. But on those occasions when I have gone looking, I don't recall experiencing much difficulty. I supposed I ought to try picking up a late 80s edition of PE or ETI and seeing how many semiconductors are still available via net these days. Now if you want replacement VAX chips or maybe HD6120s, then I would expect some initial difficulties ... Antonio -- --------------- Antonio Carlini arcarlini at iee.org

Hi, Antonio Carlini said: Yes, building things for you own personal use is still ok, selling them them as a business needs them to be CE certified.. To get an amateur radio licence now the Government *requires* you to demonstrate your ability to build things and make them work! -- Cheers, Stan Barr stanb at dial.pipex.com The future was never like this!

That's why I said 'technically illegal' AFAIK nobody has been prosecuted for building a prototype that didin't deliberately cause interference. Still, the possibility is there. I have this interpretation in writing, both in documents from the DTI and in books on the EMC directive. Well, it's not illegal to build stuff. It's just illegal to 'bring it into use' unless you are sure it meets the requirements of the EMC directives. Either by doing tests, or by being able to show it can't possibly produce interfernce. Kits do haev to be proved to comply (normally by doing the tests) -- a kit assembled in accordance with the instrtuctions must comply with the directives. This is one reason why the number of Maplin's own kits (as opposed to Velleman kits) has dropped significantly. It is AFAIK quite legal to publish any circuit you like. Heck, I can publish a design for a Band 2 (FM boradcast band) radio transmitter and it's not illegal. It would be illegal to build it and turn it on, of course. It is dubious (according to the DTI) whether you can sell PCBs and other specific components for designs that are not known to comply. [YEs, I ahve played telephone tag round the DTI offices...] There is nothing illegal about mains powered projects. The Part P building regulations do not apply to 'portable equipment' (which covers just about anything plugged into a 13A BS1363 socket) Well, you'd have difficulty getting 29xx bit-slice stuff, Intel 3000-series bit-slice, most of the more obscure TTL numbers (and S TTL, H TTL, etc), even things like the 6809. I had quite a problem finding a UK supplier for a 6522 VIA recently. Bipolar PROMs are another thing that's hard to find (and 'pulls' have nearly always been programmed and are thus useless). You can probably find most of these devices on the net if you look. Thing is, I think it's a bad idea to do a new design based on components that aren't still being made. I am sure to blow some of the chips during debugging, and there would be nothing worse than spending time wire-wrapping or etching a PCN only to find I'd blown the last example of a particular chip I had and that I couldn't get a replacement anywhere (at a sane price?) -tony