Need Tubes?

[Structo]

[img:644:800]https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/-1kiW ... /Eniac.jpg[/img]

ENIAC!
At least they don't have to pay to heat the place!

[Reeltarded]

It's a train station for tube powered locomotives.

"Yes, I'd like to order a.. a.. I need to buy matched tubes.".

[Aurora]

ENIAC contained 17,468 vacuum tubes, 7,200 crystal diodes, 1,500 relays, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors and around 5 million hand-soldered joints. It weighed more than 30 short tons (27 t), was roughly 8 by 3 by 100 feet (2.4 m × 0.9 m × 30 m), took up 1800 square feet (167 m2), and consumed 150 kW of power.........

The rest of the story here......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC

[Structo]

Holy Crap, 150 KW!

[Reeltarded]

I can drop that with series zeners. We'll build a huge Air Brake for it.

This is going to be a cool forum project. Anyone have a layout?

[XgamerGt03]

I know this isn't tube related, but it is ENIAC related. I'm currently looking at going back to get my Masters, or possibly even PhD, in Electrical Engineering. I started thinking about something I could do that would really challenge my abilities to design and layout ICs and I thought about creating a CMOS ENIAC.

Then I found this...
http://www.upenn.edu/computing/printout ... /chip.html

An estimated .5W compared to 150kW. We've come a hell of a long way.

[Cliff Schecht]

Nice find, I haven't seen that.

I was doing PhD in EE last semester but quit after enduring two tapeouts in three months time. I'm talking going from blank schematics to full layouts ready to be manufactured in two different technologies in three months. After that I quit simply because I was not enjoying the daily 12-15 hour work days. No time to build amps and all..

Masters can either be an enjoyable experience or a painful one depending on how well prepared you are for grad school (especially if you are doing research). If you get a good advisor and are doing research in a topic you enjoy then it can be great. If you have an asshole advisor and don't care about your topic then it's going to be a long 1.5-2 years for your masters. PhD is really a minimum of 3 years but usually closer to 4 if you are decent. I've seen guys get out in three years and I work with guys that have been doing research non-stop for 3 years with no publications to show yet.

I won't say whether or not grad school is for anyone but I will say make sure you understand exactly what you are signing up for. Make sure your advisor and your research group are people you don't mind spending a lot of time with and pick a topic that interests you enough to beat it to death. There is a lot of pressure put on PhD students to perform and eventually you find out that the process is as much about learning your own limits as it is learning about whatever it is you're researching. Some people get through easily, others struggle for years and it causes them a lot of problems (health, financial, overqualified for jobs). This doesn't happen to everyone of course but you'll be hard pressed to find a PhD EE student who isn't in some way miserable.

FWIW and maybe IMO a PhD is meant for if you want to teach or do research, otherwise a masters is good enough for 95% of the jobs you'll be looking at. The jobs that PhDs do get can be very high pressure too which is not for everyone, certainly not for me. I really enjoy IC design but the pressure to perform (especially in the industry) drives a lot of engineers crazy. I'm hoping to go into power management IC design if everything pans out as I've (sorta) planned it to but I will be ready to bail if I find myself in a bad situation (especially bad managers, that's the worst).

[Structo]

Yeah it's amazing what they have done in miniaturization in circuits.

I sometimes wonder how it was possible for the industry to advance at such a pace.

[img:400:309]https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-fLL0 ... pscale.jpg[/img]


I remember when the first transistor radios became popular.
The more transistors it had the better it was deemed.

Your friend has an 8 transistor radio so you have to go and buy a 10 transistor model.
By the way they are excellent sources for Germanium transistors.
But please don't ruin a working radio just for the transistors.

[kbperry810]

I can drop that with series zeners. We'll build a huge Air Brake for it.

This is going to be a cool forum project. Anyone have a layout?

I started drawing one up on a napkin after watching a performance of John Mayer playing one of these on You Tube