On 6/11/2010 8:31 AM, Invisible wrote:

>> Have you ever opened an electronic gadget and peered inside? That PCB
>> isn't off the shelf.
>
> Sure. But that isn't logic design. That's designing a PCB - an entirely
> different task.
>

Look at a PC, someone had to design that north bridge, and the south 
bridge, and the bus arbitrators, and all of the little glue pieces that 
keep information flowing from one point to the other.

Often if you look closely at what is going on in a PCB you'll find that 
there will be logic gates being used to manage signals in the device.

>> There may even be a customized chip on it.
>
> Only if it's a ROM, PROM or EPROM. :-P
>

Generally ROM's are about as off-the-shelf as you can get.

>> For example, my Wacom Intuos3 (RIP) was waterlogged, so it was an
>> opportunity to look inside. They have a chip on the board with their
>> logo. Probably some customized DSP to translate the signals generated
>> by the stylus and tablet grid.
>
> I found a picture online of the motherboard for a C64. There was a chip
> with the Commodore logo on it... but it was a bulk standard 6510.
>

I thought there were a few small additions to it...

>> These sorts of things need design all of the time. I work for a
>> company in the construction industry. We produce software for a niche
>> market. I've worked for an industrial equipment manufacturer (a sister
>> company) those machines need electrical design, and software to make
>> them work, some of that software is actually rather involving
>> mathematically, and a portion of it requires an understanding of
>> calculus to really get a grip on how to properly set the tuning
>> parameters.
>
> And how many people in the entire world need to work on this software?
> 3? 17? 25?
>

Way more than that. Any company that wants to create a building can use 
the software to do that.

>> Somebody needs to design the drives that control the motors. They may
>> even want to produce a custom CPU for those drives because an
>> off-the-shelf CPU may not fit their needs exactly.
>
> Given the vast profusion of extremely low-cost off-the-shelf
> microcontrollers in existence, this seems highly implausible.
>

Until they realize they can take up less space by embedding a simplified 
version of the micro controller with some of the external logic they're 
using, which makes the device smaller and lighter and cheaper to ship.

>> Someone needs to design the IO controller so each solenoid on the
>> machine can be controlled by the host system
>
> Again, this sounds like a question of analogue rather than digital
> electronics.

A lot of control system design is strictly digital. Unless you have a 
sensor somewhere that gives an analog output.

>> There are plenty of opportunities to apply your skills. Look at the
>> machinery at your company's lab, look at the analysis equipment. There
>> are people who design these things, and are always looking for ways to
>> improve the design, implement new features and cut costs.
>
> Have you ever been in a real lab? ;-)

No...

> We have a special machine. It's only purpose is to shake things. But it
> must shake in a precisely-controlled, completely repeatable mannar. So

> a license to print money!

A lot of that is recouping the time their engineers spent designing that 
device. But, then they turn around and find ways to make the device less 
expensive (for them) to produce. They know what their clients will pay, 
and what a fair market rate is for the machine, so they'll charge that 
and pocket the rest.

> The most high-tech thing we have is the mass spectrometers - and that's
> about physical engineering, not fancy electronics. The next thing on the

I'm sure there's some electronics somewhere to translate the readings 
into something that is either plotted on a piece of paper or sent to a 
computer via serial communications

> list is the autosamplers - but they use a Z80 CPU to control a couple of
> stepper motors. That's it. Somebody wrote the software, somebody
> designed the mechanics, but no IC design involved.

Maybe not, but they probably have some logic somewhere outside of the 
CPU to manage signals, enable and disable drives, and such.

-- 
~Mike

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