Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #01273



To: beam@corp.sgi.com
From: Justin jaf60@student.canterbury.ac.nz
Date: Fri, 05 Mar 1999 08:26:45 +1300
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: advanced circuits


> Are you sure?
>
> Even the humblest sorry 2-transistor excuse for an SE does not
> require its load to be inductive. It merely needs something with a
> relatively low initial resistance. Try an ordinary low-voltage
> light bulb - you'll find it flashing happily, and it's hardly
> inductive.

Ah. You're right, I do that frequently... Replace "non-inductive" with
"high initial resistance" or similar term :)
My first "advanced"* (there's that word again!) SE was built because the
two-transistor designs didn't run an IC-based bot very well (read:
terribly). Hopefully you suspected this was the shortfall I was
referring too.

*"advanced" here is relative to the basic two-transistor design. Ie an
SE with more components. (The precision with which I use words is
astounding... :-)

> Small and light do matter if you want motion out of a thumb-sized
> solar panel. Go SMT! 74HC logic in SMT is *very* tiny :)


Thanks for the SMT info. Very useful.

> That's probably best: Really pore it on, to make sure that the
> `advanced' bit is taken with sufficient salt.

Soon it'll be so advanced that things like the solar panel come as
optional extras in a modular "plug-in" architecture that you must
licence part by part. Maybe "advanced" isn't all that appealing...

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