MightyOhm

Hack a Day posted yesterday that a guy named Ross turned his 50MHz Rigol DS1052E into a 100MHz capable instrument by removing part of a lowpass filter on the analog inputs.

I think it remains to be seen whether there are any other mods required to make this work like a real DS1102E (ie. does the 1052E firmware limit the minimum horizontal timescale?) but this is hardware hacking at its finest!

Read more about it on the EEVblog forums.

I recently picked up a copy of Tim Williams’ Circuit Designer’s Companion after I noticed it on my Amazon recommendations list (which seems to know my tastes a little too well these days.)

This is a fun and useful book.  The emphasis is on practical information that is useful to working engineers, not PhD students.   This means that there are a lot fewer equations in this book than The Art of Electronics and it’s a lot less intimidating for someone without a degree in Electrical Engineering.  The book’s roughly 400 pages include topics such grounding and shielding sensitive circuits, some basic tips for routing PCBs, why it’s usually better to buy a switching power supply than build your own, some comparisons of batteries, and how to pick a fuse.  (Sadly, the latest microcontrollers and Lithium battery technologies are missing – not surprising, since the 2nd edition was released in 2005.  Time for an update?)

I like Williams’ writing style, and usually pick this book up first to see if he has a quick solution to the problem at hand before diving into one of my more dense engineering texts.  While this book isn’t a replacement for my other (heavier) reference books, it’s a welcome addition to my desk.  I keep it within easy reach.

Last May, my brother and I went on a week-long roadtrip across the US.  Ambling down the highway in a very large moving truck, we travelled from California to Texas by way of  Tuscon, Socorro, Albuquerque, Santa Fe, Los Alamos, and quite a few rest stops, gas stations, and fast food restaurants in between.

Intoxicated by the chile verde, we spent considerable time in New Mexico, a state that neither of us had visited before.  One of the highlights of our visit to the Land of Enchantment was a side trip to Los Alamos, birthplace of the atomic bomb and home of two major attractions for any electronics geek:

Los Alamos National Labs

Sadly, armed guards prevented us from taking a close look at the Los Alamos National Labs.  Actually, the museum is pretty decent, and includes scale models of Fat Man and Little Boy, some exhibits about radioactivity and nuclear weapons, and a short film about the history of the labs.

The Black Hole

The Los Alamos Sales Company, aka The Black Hole, is a surplus store started in 1951 by the late ‘Atomic’ Ed Grothus, a former LANL machinist turned peace activist.

I have never seen a more fascinating collection of electronic test equipment, laboratory glassware, chunks of machined aluminum, LN2 dewars, bell jars, dusty old databooks, and just plain weird stuff.   Good news: most of it is for sale, although there are very few price tags around and some items are probably in the “if you have to ask…” category.

A controversial Los Alamos institution, it has even been the subject of a documentary, although I haven’t managed to track down a copy (yet).

Here are some photos to give you a taste of what it’s like to wander around The Black Hole:

A geiger counter near the front door clicks away in response to some radioactive source nearby.

One of several aisles of surplus test equipment. You name it, it’s here.

Mmm…  Organic Plutonium!

Anadex CF-300R Timer with gorgeous nixie display.

Racks of vintage test equipment.  Scopes, counters, power supplies, etc.

Period datasheet for the Fairchild uA741 operational amplifier.

Pan Am hard hat.

Oscilloscope with permanently attached scope camera.  This is the same setup you see in the pictures of atomic bomb test shacks in books such as How To Photograph an Atomic Bomb, by Peter Kuran.

Honestly, the pictures capture only 1% of what you’ll find here – you have to actually visit to appreciate this place. Oh, and budget an hour or two minimum.  If you enjoy looking at dual trace oscilloscopes and dusty cold war relics as much as I do, you’ll need an afternoon to really do it justice.  If you want to see more, check out my Bradbury Science Museum and The Black Hole albums on Flickr.

By the way, The Black Hole is listed on the Surplus Electronics page of the MightyOhm Wiki.  Is there a surplus electronics store in your city?  Add it to the wiki!

Here’s a quick look at the new Blinken Button kit from Interactive Matter.

If you want to try your hand at surface mount soldering, this is a fun project that can be completed in a couple hours with a decent soldering iron and a pair of tweezers.  The instructions aren’t perfect (I had to short across the PCB pads for D1 and D2 to get my programmer to talk to the AVR, and at the moment you have to install Eclipse to compile the hex file) but I am confident that these minor issues will be fixed shortly!

I would love to know what this datasheet says because I’d like to use this part in a project.

Details such as “the part will self ignite if you hook it up thusly” would be particularly helpful.

Can anyone read Russian (Cyrillic)?

Update:

Thanks to everyone who stepped up to translate the datasheet!  You guys are awesome!

Here is a photo of the tube that I am pretty sure goes with the datasheet above.  It’s a CI-3BG Glass Geiger Müller Tube from Electronics Goldmine.

Electronics Goldmine’s description mentions that this tube is intended to detect gamma rays.  Based on the translations, this is true, but the tube appears to be sensitive to beta radiation as well.  This is one of the things I was hoping to learn from the datasheet, in addition to the driver requirements and any hints about it’s original application.

The unique part about this tube (to me) is that the envelope is made of glass, and the “active area” (or whatever it is called) is fairly small – this is perhaps consistent with the intended application in very high radiation environments.  If anyone knows anything else about these tubes and their differences compared to more “traditional” metal-can Geiger tubes, please leave a comment!

No idea what I am talking about?  Wikipedia to the rescue!