> 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.

Well let's be serious now - look at the CPU. Somebody had to design 
that! But, obviously, that won't ever be me.

>>> 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.

Yes and no - the hard-wired ones are custom, but they're a custom 
version of a standard component.

>> 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...

It's the 6510, which is similar to the 6502 that everything else used 
but with a few minor alterations. It's not a C64-specific chip though; 
just a different model in the range.

>> 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.

This is the part I don't get. Mounting more chips on a board costs 
money, but making an ASIC costs orders of magnitude *more* money.

>> 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.

More like, they know their clients need a shaker that's guaranteed to 
work repeatably, so they can charge anything they like.

>> 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

Oh, there *is* electronics. (The mass spec needs to generate several 
kilovolts to ionise the sample, for example.) It connects to a PC via 
GPIB. (No, I've never heard of it either.) So there's a GPIB interface 
IC somewhere. And no doubt all sorts of self-diagnostic sensors and 
stuff. Still, apart from a couple of CPUs dotted around the place and a 
bunch of ADC chips, I wouldn't have thought there's must custom 
_digital_ stuff.

>> 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.

You don't just do it all in software? That sounds much cheaper...

-- 
http://blog.orphi.me.uk/
http://www.zazzle.com/MathematicalOrchid*

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