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Anchor-Electronics has been supplying Silicon Valley's engineers, students and hobbyists for over 35 years...
Apr 2009
Miniature Breadboard Modules
04/22/09 08:42 AM Filed in: New Products
From simple networks and arrays to more sophisticated circuits, The miniature UNI-SIP breadboard modules for through hole components permit the circuit builder to assemble re-usable circuits that plug in when and where needed. They also provide a low cost solution for producing a range of prototype and short run circuit designs when it is not practical to make custom boards. UNI-SIP boards can help solve a wide range of interconnect problems in both prototype and commercial applications.
Electrical Engineering vs. Computer Science
04/18/09 06:56 AM Filed in: Humor
Once upon a time, in a fertile-valley kingdom nestled betwixt San Jose and San Francisco, a king summoned two of his advisors for a test. He showed them both a shiny metal box with two slots in the top, a control knob, and a lever. "What do you think this is?"
One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said.
The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?"
The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."
The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years."
"With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard- boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes."
"The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs."
"Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too."
"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message 'Booting UNIX v.8.3' appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook."
"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. A Pentium with 32MB of memory, a 2GB hard disk, and a SVGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit microcontroller!"
The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.
One advisor, an engineer, answered first. "It is a toaster," he said.
The king asked, "How would you design an embedded computer for it?"
The engineer replied, "Using a four-bit microcontroller, I would write a simple program that reads the darkness knob and quantizes its position to one of 16 shades of darkness, from snow white to coal black. The program would use that darkness level as the index to a 16-element table of initial timer values. Then it would turn on the heating elements and start the timer with the initial value selected from the table. At the end of the time delay, it would turn off the heat and pop up the toast. Come back next week, and I'll show you a working prototype."
The second advisor, a computer scientist, immediately recognized the danger of such short-sighted thinking. He said, "Toasters don't just turn bread into toast, they are also used to warm frozen waffles. What you see before you is really a breakfast food cooker. As the subjects of your kingdom become more sophisticated, they will demand more capabilities. They will need a breakfast food cooker that can also cook sausage, fry bacon, and make scrambled eggs. A toaster that only makes toast will soon be obsolete. If we don't look to the future, we will have to completely redesign the toaster in just a few years."
"With this in mind, we can formulate a more intelligent solution to the problem. First, create a class of breakfast foods. Specialize this class into subclasses: grains, pork, and poultry. The specialization process should be repeated with grains divided into toast, muffins, pancakes, and waffles; pork divided into sausage, links, and bacon; and poultry divided into scrambled eggs, hard- boiled eggs, poached eggs, fried eggs, and various omelet classes."
"The ham and cheese omelet class is worth special attention because it must inherit characteristics from the pork, dairy, and poultry classes. Thus, we see that the problem cannot be properly solved without multiple inheritance. At run time, the program must create the proper object and send a message to the object that says, 'Cook yourself.' The semantics of this message depend, of course, on the kind of object, so they have a different meaning to a piece of toast than to scrambled eggs."
"Reviewing the process so far, we see that the analysis phase has revealed that the primary requirement is to cook any kind of breakfast food. In the design phase, we have discovered some derived requirements. Specifically, we need an object-oriented language with multiple inheritance. Of course, users don't want the eggs to get cold while the bacon is frying, so concurrent processing is required, too."
"We must not forget the user interface. The lever that lowers the food lacks versatility, and the darkness knob is confusing. Users won't buy the product unless it has a user-friendly, graphical interface. When the breakfast cooker is plugged in, users should see a cowboy boot on the screen. Users click on it, and the message 'Booting UNIX v.8.3' appears on the screen. (UNIX 8.3 should be out by the time the product gets to the market.) Users can pull down a menu and click on the foods they want to cook."
"Having made the wise decision of specifying the software first in the design phase, all that remains is to pick an adequate hardware platform for the implementation phase. A Pentium with 32MB of memory, a 2GB hard disk, and a SVGA monitor should be sufficient. If you select a multitasking, object oriented language that supports multiple inheritance and has a built-in GUI, writing the program will be a snap. Imagine the difficulty we would have had if we had foolishly allowed a hardware-first design strategy to lock us into a four-bit microcontroller!"
The king wisely had the computer scientist beheaded, and they all lived happily ever after.
Charlie the Office Cat
04/16/09 05:13 PM Filed in: Personal
Several months after our discovery, we had found homes for two of the three kittens. But try as we might, we could not find a home for the black-and-white, so we decided to keep him.
We called our newly-adopted friend Charlie, after his Chaplin-like mustache, and he carpooled to and from work with us. At home he slept in my bed with his head on his own pillow. One morning I found a baby tooth under his pillow–it was a complete revelation to me that cats, too, believed in the Tooth Fairy. Charlie woke up at five every morning and would awaken me by pouncing on my stomach, attacking my toes, or sauntering into the bathroom and deftly unspooling the toilet paper. When we moved to an apartment that didn’t allow pets, we decided to make the workplace (Anchor) Charlie’s full-time home.
Over the years Charlie had his share of kitty ailments. And once he had a serious injury. As best we could figure he cut his leg on the sharp underside of a metal shelf. The vet who performed the surgery for his severed Achilles’ tendon informed me that from then on Charlie would be called, "Tripod". Well, it took three different vets until we got the bandaging correct and then we were vigilant about not letting him walk on the leg (between re-bandaging he got to have an hour or so breather). Anyway, he healed well and after a bit even the limp disappeared.
For the last six years of his life Charlie would sleep most of the time. But several times a day he would wander up front to the customer area and enjoy greeting everyone and checking out the ‘aromas’. Usually once each day I would gather Charlie into my arms and we would stand outside so he could sniff the air and watch for birds.
Over the last 2-1/2 years of his life Charlie’s weight dropped steadily, from 13.4 lbs. to 6.8 lbs. No matter how much food he ate (his appetite was good) there was no weight gain. The only thing tests revealed was a slight kidney problem. Then on Nov. 21, 1997 Charlie suffered what seemed to be a stroke. With heavy hearts we decided it would be in Charlie’s best interest to help him into heaven. I said good-bye to him at noon on Nov. 25, 1997.
We love you, Charlie.
A Website at Long Last
04/16/09 12:18 PM Filed in: Business
As a company dedicated to supplying cutting-edge parts to high-tech engineers, it may seem rather surprising that we are just getting around to launching a web site. For the past five years, Anchor’s only web presence was provided courtesy the efforts of Herb and Bob at DemoBoard, who kindly posted a PDF file of our pricelist on their website. But now, with some serious in-house effort, we are proud to launch version 1.0 of our very own Anchor-Electronics website. Be sure to remember the hyphenated domain name–as we were unable to secure plain old anchorelectronics.com–and happy browsing!
Break Down
04/11/09 07:07 AM Filed in: Humor
A mechanical, electrical and computer engineer were on their way to a meeting when suddenly the car in which they were riding broke down.
"It's probably the cable that opens the valve on the carb has come loose, pop the hood and I'll have us back on the road in no time." offered the mechanical engineer.
"I doubt it," replied the electrical engineer, "It has been observed that 83.2 % of similar failures result from the distributor contacts becoming corroded or misaligned, I'll clean the contacts and we'll be on our way."
"No, no, no!" cried the computer engineer "This car is equipped with a state of the art computer, what we need to do is turn the key off, all get completely out of the car, then get back in and it should start like normal."
"It's probably the cable that opens the valve on the carb has come loose, pop the hood and I'll have us back on the road in no time." offered the mechanical engineer.
"I doubt it," replied the electrical engineer, "It has been observed that 83.2 % of similar failures result from the distributor contacts becoming corroded or misaligned, I'll clean the contacts and we'll be on our way."
"No, no, no!" cried the computer engineer "This car is equipped with a state of the art computer, what we need to do is turn the key off, all get completely out of the car, then get back in and it should start like normal."
The Rise and Fall and Rise of Silicon Valley
04/09/09 12:32 PM Filed in: Business
In 1984, just after the PC bubble had popped, it was all doom and gloom regarding Silicon Valley’s future. There were stories about how Silicon Valley was washed up, and that innovation would move elsewhere. There have been many boom and bust cycles since 1984, and each time during the down periods analysts emerge to declare that the curtain is closing on the Bay Area.
But Silicon Valley never went anywhere, it just re-invented itself and got bigger and more influential. Companies continue to stay here because of the area’s unbeatable incubator of innovation that you can't find anywhere else: capital, people, and media. You have to be here to be part of the conversation, to be part of the community, otherwise you can't hire the smartest people, and you won't have access to smart capital, or the smart media.
Sure, innovation is happening in other parts of the world, but never on the same scale as it is being done here. And it's not just computer technologies, it is clean energy, and biotech too. Economic crisis is simply part of the landscape of being here and to turn an old adage on its head: what goes down must come up (again).
But Silicon Valley never went anywhere, it just re-invented itself and got bigger and more influential. Companies continue to stay here because of the area’s unbeatable incubator of innovation that you can't find anywhere else: capital, people, and media. You have to be here to be part of the conversation, to be part of the community, otherwise you can't hire the smartest people, and you won't have access to smart capital, or the smart media.
Sure, innovation is happening in other parts of the world, but never on the same scale as it is being done here. And it's not just computer technologies, it is clean energy, and biotech too. Economic crisis is simply part of the landscape of being here and to turn an old adage on its head: what goes down must come up (again).
The Genie's Lamp
04/04/09 07:09 AM Filed in: Humor
Three men: an electrical engineer, a software engineer and a project manager are working together on an assignment. About midweek they decide to walk up and down the beach during their lunch hour. Halfway up the beach, they stumbled upon a lamp. As they rub the lamp a genie appears and says "Normally I would grant you three wishes, but since there are three of you, I will grant you each one wish."
The electrical engineer went first. "I would like to spend the rest of my life living in a huge house in St. Thomas with no money worries." The genie granted him his wish and sent him on off to St. Thomas.
The software engineer went next. "I would like to spend the rest of my life living on a huge yacht cruising the Mediterranean with no money worries." The genie granted him his wish and sent him off to the Mediterranean.
Last, but not least, it was the project manager's turn. "And what would your wish be?" asked the genie.
"I want them both back after lunch" replied the project manager.
The electrical engineer went first. "I would like to spend the rest of my life living in a huge house in St. Thomas with no money worries." The genie granted him his wish and sent him on off to St. Thomas.
The software engineer went next. "I would like to spend the rest of my life living on a huge yacht cruising the Mediterranean with no money worries." The genie granted him his wish and sent him off to the Mediterranean.
Last, but not least, it was the project manager's turn. "And what would your wish be?" asked the genie.
"I want them both back after lunch" replied the project manager.