EEVblog

Two almost identical complex designs published at almost the same time?
How does that happen? Let's explore the design engineering mindset.
Let's go back to 1996 and see how similar Dave's PC Logic Analyser design is to one published in Elektor Electronics magazine.
Dave's project design breakdown: • EEVblog #747 - PC Base...
EEVacademy #2 - Digital Logic Boolean & Demorgan's Theorems: • EEVacademy | Digital D...
Electronics Australia 1996 archive: archive.org/details/EA1996
Forum: www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/ee...
#LogicAnalyser #Design #Publication
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[@SantaClaw]

I want a floating Dave desktop widget that rants about stuff randomly. Maybe it could have animation to eat desktop icons from time to time

[@iwasinnamuknow]

Kinda like a...Bonza Buddy? (I'm not even sure if that's a real joke...i'll see myself out)

[@jamesgoacher1606]

I need that. Where can I get it. :-)

[@pr0engineer873]

As long as when you shut down the system it waves and says "Catch ya next time"

[@Arachnoid_of_the_underverse]

Much like the app that had the dancing ladies on the task bar hee hee

[@WacKEDmaN]

virtualgirl Dave?!....ill pass on the strip tease tho! :P

[@samuelschwager]

A: "My RAM is bigger than yours!" B: "I have more channels!"

[@trevorvanbremen4718]

My big 'takeaway' from this video was the Eureka moment when I realised that old EA magazines (and Silicon-Chip etc) can be viewed on the Wayback machine! I cannot remember exactly WHICH articles I wanted to view at the moment, but I am now 'armed-and-ready' to do so once I remember what I was looking for.

[@Xoferif]

In the early 90s I remember a hard-up engineer building himself a logic analyser out of a parallel DRAM chip and an old telly. =) The DRAM chip had its address pins hooked up to an always-running counter that kept it refreshed (and also governed the sample rate). The probes were hooked directly to the DRAM's data pins. To capture data the trigger circuit just asserted the DRAM's write-enable pin for a fixed time. To look at the results there was another circuit that asserted the DRAM's read-enable pin for a fixed time, and the data pins were also hooked up to a mono video signal generator that was wired into the old telly. There was a knob that varied the hold-off between the counter crossing zero and the start of the read pulse, so he could just twist the knob to scroll back and forth through the captured waveforms on the telly! I was really impressed with his ingenuity when faced with needing an expensive tool and having bugger-all money. =)

[@rocifier]

I must say that DaveCAD has definitely evolved since back then. There wasn't even a smiley face in the 90s!

[@Ma_X64]

Always when I was read this kind of magazines in my childhood, I thoght: "Who are that smart people who publish all this cirquits and texts like current going here, current going there? Who, for gods sake knows all that stuff..." And now I can see you and your lab and your lessons. Glory to Internet! :-)

[@ezion67]

7:45 A big part of the Elektuur/Elektor business model at the time was to sell PCBs for the published projects. Their choice for the double sided though plated option was probably motivated by this.

[@jtb2586]

Skip ahead to 4:12 for floating Dave head. Would be even better if you wear a green shirt.

[@aivansama6265]

Yea, green shirt is a great idea!

[@EEVblog]

Tried it, didn't work. Not green enough obviously.

[@ZXRulezzz]

@@EEVblog it's not easy being green ;)

[@mattb9664]

That would be pretty comical! I'd even go for green paint up the neck to purely make only a Dave head!

[@SomeMorganSomewhere]

Somebody needs to send him an #00FF00 green turtleneck ;)

[@stefansweerts3825]

@eevblog, hi Dave, Elektor was and still is a Dutch magazine that has been translated for over the world.

[@jenzbrettschneider8838]

There is a German Version Too ans is still existing. Elektor is a Part of my live more than 40Years

[@kevincozens6837]

Dutch? I always thought it was an English publication.

[@stefansweerts3825]

​@@kevincozens6837 they started in the Netherlands in 1960 as Elektuur and changed their name into Elektor roughly 10 years back, to have one name.

[@112vactech]

absolutely correct, it is a dutch magazine and I subscribed to the german edition from 1974 to 1996. i copied many projects but also submitted some for publication together with friends and they were printed in elektor. my enthusiasm for electronics was aroused by a school project which the school also published in elektor The cybernetic turtle.

[@petervfbeardow7954]

Used to get it in the UK occasionally back in the day (still have some in the garage), always assumed it was Dutch, but I guess the UK edition made it to Aus.

[@andy16666]

Huge respect, Dave. What a cool contribution to the community.

[@Rabennase3]

That was a nice journey back in time. Took me back to my apprentice days. Thank you!

[@Yosory]

You need to wear a green shirt, so you really are a floating head :D

[@BastiElektronik]

YES

[@emmettturner9452]

I was thinking the same thing... but then I started thinking that he should make a goofy fake body that tracks with it... like a shirtless Sylvester Stallone or a tentacled, bloody, space monster. ;)

[@Jimmeh_B]

I remember reading this article in my high school library. I can remember being very disappointed knowing that there was no way I was going to be able to get my hands on any of the kit or gear to build it. However it was "the" article that made the penny drop for me with regard to addressing, and from that I designed and built my first interface that drove 4 stepper motors from the parallel port. That was the first program I ever wrote that made something happen in the real world. I was VERY proud of it, my parent's were very indifferent about it lol. Cheers Dave! @EEVblog. Also, then and to this day, logic symbols all the way! They look much better than square boxes!

[@marcelvandenbroek537]

Elektors original name is Elektuur. first edition 1960 from the Nederlands. it's Dutch.

[@RogerBarraud]

Yeesshh. Ishn't dat veeeeeird?

[@zorgeloze]

I've got all volumes from 1970 to 2010 from my grandfather! :)

[@SomeMorganSomewhere]

Yeah, didn't think it was a UK publication

[@arjanvanraaij8440]

Oh yes Elektuur always thought is was a translated mag from germany, for a long time I bought old copies from the bieb.

[@countzero1136]

One of the most amazing electronics mags ever - TUPTUNDUGDUS FTW !

[@DreitTheDarkDragon]

41:10 - wow, transparent magazine (back) from the future!

[@johnfrank6302]

Thanks Dave, as always another great video. Good insight into your design.

[@Biela2008]

That see-through magazine is HILARIOUS!

[@RogerBarraud]

We had one of your LA's at work - my friend Mario built it IIRC :-)

[@byronwatkins2565]

The AC version does include the TTL voltage levels, so it is not unreasonable to advertise TTL compatibility. Once the technology is available and cost-effective, it is not unusual for 2-3 people to decide to build similar devices at about the same time using these parts. This is especially true for such useful (and expensive) devices as logic analyzers.

[@StreuB1]

5:00 HAHAHAHHA!!!!! Moving Davehead is even better. We could play a game of pong with that!

[@rasittutgun]

Vintage logic analyzer smackdown time! It is pure joy 😁

[@rikvdmark]

I love learning about stuff like this. It all boils down to logic choices :)

[@robertgaines-tulsa]

I was still in high school back in 1996. I don't care to think about my high school years because I was wanting to become an electrical engineer, but it didn't pan out. Just too many logistical problems to overcome. Tuition costs, lack of work experience, my father's failing health, and my depression were all conspiring to shut it down. I came within a hair of going to college, but cancelled out just before classes started because my father had an angina attack. On the bright side of never going to college, I don't have any student loans that I would still be paying on to this day. Education really is for the rich.

[@colinprewett4480]

I worked for Rod Irving Electronics in Northcote, then opened the store in A'Beckett st... That man as good to me, I wish I realised at the time.

[@Matlalcueitl]

We used classic symbols in Poland in 90s. I remember one could find IEC symbols only in Elektor back then.

[@Byteman72]

Was an avid reader of Elektor Electronics as early as 1985 at my local library in Glen Waverley, VIC. In my mind at least this publication made Silicon-Chip & Electronics-Australia seem amateurish.

[@rljzathras]

Yes, were well around in the 80's. Fondly recall their unique PCB artworks with the varying track widths. Quite artistic in hindsight.

[@chuxxsss]

Elektor was available in Queensland Newsagents. Plus in Elektor was available in 1993 too at the library in Wodonga.

[@krakerjako]

“That was tight as a nuns nasty, that design. Let me tell ya” Dave Jones

[@frogz]

let me tell ya, the man has experience!

[@ptronix]

I was taught iec symbols in college in the UK, Late 70's early 80's, then never used them again!

[@kensmith5694]

On an hand drawn circuit they were a bad idea. A little flyspect on the drawing and "AND" vs "OR" is lost.

[@countzero1136]

the most important requirement for any schematic diagram is that it should be easy to read, and in that respect, traditional logic symbols win hands down every time

[@SianaGearz]

Elektor is a Dutch magazine with distribution across Europe. Thing is the Netherlands is a small-ish country wedged right between countries speaking all the languages, and they quickly expanded into Europe-wide publishing in several languages.

[@GGoAwayy]

The facial expression in the video thumbnail really captures the essence and soul of someone asking himself… "copied?"

[@NZHippie]

Loved it Dave!!! another great Vblog...

[@Eddong]

There where prototyping services in the early 90... Used them when i was in school to make the PCB for my final project. Minimum order was 3 board for double size PCB. Price wasn't that bad, i had a 3x5 inch double size PCB with silk screen for under 100$ and that was in 1990-1991. Manufacturing time was 3-5 days and we could upload the gerbers to their BBS or give them à floppy. The big difference is it was locally produced PCB, instead of having them made in china. They where quite use to deal with student and even made some minor modification (after letting us know about theses of course). China kinda killed then, in the 2000.

[@ClayCowgill]

Wasn’t much cheap for PCB prototyping available in the USA in the mid-90’s. Right around 1996, AP Circuits out of Canada became available and they were $48 USD plus $0.85 per square inch for double sided plated (only using their limited drill list), but without solder mask or silk screen. Then FedEx shipping to the USA. I could get one 3”x5” with those specs delivered for about ~$85-100 USD.

[@tonyonofrio1147]

My first copy of Elektor was November 1976 , bought in Jan or Feb 1977. The magazines took about 3 months to arrive in Australia. I also collected Everyday Electronics (UK), Electronics Australia, Electronics Today International (AUS), and other random US magazines. It was the only way of learning electronics, other than Uni, back then.

[@RS-ls7mm]

Almost every digital EE I know designed their own logic analyzers at one time. Its just something that you need and generally can't afford.

[@RS-ls7mm]

@Mdmchannel They are pretty cheap now but when I started they were crazy expensive. (Wire wrap days). Besides they were fun to design.

[@babbadge]

Laurent Lamesch won the "Great Design Contest" of Elektor in 1995 with this design. He won a Tektronix TekScope THS720 with it. It was published in Elektuur (Dutch edition) of December 1995, with a picture of him receiving the prize and 4 pages describing the design with full schematics and pcb layouts. It can be downloaded from the Elektor website by members only. Apparently it was such a success that they repeated it with a more elaborate article in 1996. If you want I can send you a pdf of the original article (in Dutch).

[@arthurdaily4930]

Dave, the Elektor magazines are archived and available for download for subscribed members. Indeed I downloaded the magazine you reference as EN199605.pdf... Paid subscribers can download virtually all the magazines as PDF files back to 1974. Steve

[@UpLateGeek]

LOL! That FPGA logic analyser article is crack up. "Using a low cost computer monitor", and the photograph shows a Sony Trinitron monitor - one of the most expensive monitors on the market at the time!

[@yuridh]

The Elektor is a Dutch magazine but also published for a diversity of other countries for example the UK. The original Dutch name is Electuur but the international name is Elektor. I was back in the 90's very pleased by the audio publications. For me in Dutch of course. :-)

[@LaserFur]

The parallel port added ECP mode back in that era. We ended up taking advantage of that mode for a motor controller. ECP mode has buffering.

[@funtechu]

Lattice has a good record of having inexpensive, powerful chips. The iCE40 series is a particular recent favorite of mine.

[@blaedd]

Late 90s (98-2000) at Melbourne University was definitely traditional symbols in both class and textbooks. I think they *might* have mentioned/shown the other notation, but it was just a "you may see this in places" type thing.

[@EngineerCorner]

Great video. Enjoy your channel! Watching from Canada.

[@BBC600]

So am I (Saskatchewan)... Interesting Dave posted this video link to Twitter despite being it unlisted.

[@romelec]

@@BBC600 It happens from time to time, I guess he forgot to make it public.

[@EEVblog]

I didn't. I posted it to my website blog and a script auto-tweets that. Waiting until closer to midnight to release it on KZbin.

[@TomStorey96]

I prefer the ANSI style schematic symbols, perhaps because I grew up in Australia. I think it's nicer with a bit of visual difference between the symbols.

[@kensmith5694]

I think the boxes with text inside was really done so schematics could be printed on a line printer. Other than that, there is no good reason for them.

[@EEVblog]

Yes, the visual difference is nice.

[@jbrian8618]

Excellent article it reminded me of how excited I got using Lattice GALs in the mid 80s to replace oodles of 'glue' logic .. and having the capability of reassigning pin functionality without physically rewiring A sort of software solder :-)

[@alien8r33d]

The PCBs for projects featured in Elektor magazine were available from Elektor mail order. I believe they also sold complete kits for some projects.

[@pbyfr]

That's the only exemplar of Elektor (in French) that I have bought! It was over my head at the time, I finally understood it 24 years later! I didn't look in details, but it seems that, at least for France, you could buy the PCB of all articles of Elektor. And many projects of the magazine used double sided PCB because of that. The other magazines here were more hobby oriented and were mostly using single face PCB.

[@Zadster]

For anyone looking for archived electronics magazines, worldradiohistory.com has a huge archive, including the Elektor edition. Ironically, it doesn't have any Electronics Australia magazines as they received a take-down notice!

[@DrFrank-xj9bc]

By chance, I still have the German edition of that elektor magazine from May 1996. It was the last one, as I started working in industry in 1996. Very nice historic story.

[@Circlotron]

I remember I first saw Elektor in Australia no later than June 1982. Sure of the date because that was when i left a particular job. One of the guys I worked with showed me it.

[@RogerBarraud]

41:25 Open-source AND Transparent - that's EA! :-)

[@countzero1136]

Hey Dave; You can get UK Elektor PDFs (Including May 1996) from the worldradiohistory website (along with almost every other electronics magazine too) . KZbin doesn't like me posting links in the comments, but if you were to go to worldradiohistory and then add the . com bit, followed by a forward slash and then Elektor followed by another dot and htm, you will find a (mostly) complete archive of UK (and Indian) issues of Elektor :)

[@tomwimmenhove4652]

I had that issue of the 64-ch logic analyser. In the 'elektuur' (the Dutch version of the magazine). I wonder if I still have them somewhere...

[@johnnolen8338]

I'm always happy to see it when people actually get to build their own designs. From a systems perspective it makes complete sense that your designs were so similar. You were both designing logic analyzers working from the same pool of available parts. Since that's the case it would have surprised me more if you had come up with wildly divergent designs. One of my professors (back in the stone age) used to tell us that the art of engineering was being able to do for a dollar, what any damn fool could do for ten.

[@dmm8658]

I had a few Elektor magazines in Adelaide back around 1986.

[@coding_vlsi_vietnam]

In the early 90s I remember a hard-up engineer building himself a logic analyser out of a parallel DRAM chip and an old telly. =) The DRAM chip had its address pins hooked up to an always-running counter that kept it refreshed (and also governed the sample rate). The probes were hooked directly to the DRAM's data pins.

[@hopje01]

Here is the original edition: archive.org/details/Elektuur39119965/page/n27/mode/2up Elektuur started as a dutch only magazine for The Netherlands and Belgium. Later they made the translated magazines ‘Elektor’. And later on, also the dutch edition changed his name to Elektor.

[@KeanM]

I never made up this kit of yours, but I did make some others like the video overlay. Your mention of Peter Baxter (Tantau) reminded me of his ROMLoader kit that I made and used a lot. I still have it here somewhere...

[@thsinger]

Elektor was so popular in Germany I like their projects and for June/July every year they have a project Magazin with about 100 smaller projects.

[@RogerBarraud]

We had Elektor in the 80's in NZ. Dave. Pretty well-known here.

[@KeanM]

Yep, in Oz too. I remember reading it at the local library in the 80's, and buying it myself once I had a job. I didn't like it as much as Electronics Australia as many of the parts used weren't available locally.

[@trevorvanbremen4718]

Wow!!! THERE is a name from the past... FLTNS Roger!

[@AmauryJacquot]

here you go mate starts on page 21 of the PDF : worldradiohistory.com/UK/Elektor/90s/Elektor-1996-05.pdf Elektor had a thing at the time of redrawing all schematics and PCBs with their own software suite. they also had a PCB and chips programming subsidiary and would sell you those to assemble your project from the magazine

[@madhusiddalingaiah5301]

I think we're about the same age. In the late 80's, I was in school working part time at a high energy physics lab. That was great fun. Around that time, Analog Devices had just introduced the AD9002, an 8-bit 150 MS/s ADC. It had ECL outputs and wasn't cheap. We also had a shiny new Fairchild CCD camera that could integrate over many frames for increased sensitivity. Armed with the AD9002, a bunch static RAM (probably the same you used in your logic analyzer design), 74LS161s for address counters, and some logic to gate the address counters, I made a sensitive digital camera. It was all wire-wrapped by yours truly and sampled at 10 MHz. The crazy thing actually worked. My brother wrote a lot of the the supporting software on a Mac II. We took several pictures of ourselves to test it, but I have since lost the images, which is absolutely tragic. Fortunately you kept all your drawings and had a published article that was easily recovered. So you built a the equivalent of a logic analyzer, I built the equivalent of a digital camera. I'm sure other people had similar ideas. It made sense given the parts that were available at the time.

[@iampuesa]

I like how a magazine from 1996 has an article about vintage radio. How vintage is it now?

[@HighestRank]

Still using the classical em spectrum, just less bandwidth per channel. Can’t say stations for digital broadcast because things bob and weave around in the name of ip security.

[@nowt1002]

Worldradiohistory.com has all the 90s Elektor magazines. It's got most issues from 1975 to 2015. A great resource for electronics mags in general especially as they are all ocr'd and searchable.

[@jburdman7]

In an alternate universe there is a Dave explaining how two designs were developed independently, but his head is at the bottom

[@dipikaak1651]

Sir if possible please make a video of complete placement on a little complicated board...and also routing as well...i just wanted to know how to plan for the placement which IC's should be placed where so that routing can be done easily.

[@theantipope4354]

I'm amazed that I missed your EA logic-analyser project at the time, Dave, because that's something I absolutely would've built back then. While Elektor (an excellent mag, BTW) wasn't available in newsagents, it & other international titles (Dr Dobbs, Byte, etc) were available at specialist tech 'newsagents' like McGills in Melbourne, which is where I bought mags like that, right back to the 80s.

[@azlandavid8094]

I was buying Elektor magazine in news agents in Adelaide in the 80's

[@Falney]

I find quite often I come up with a great idea, build it then get told I could have brought it.

[@fifififi9959]

I set up the environment for lattice 1016 yesterday, let's play with them!

[@jecelassumpcaojr890]

Designs that used buffers/latches for inputs and outputs even when the FPGAs have the needed resources often were based on the idea of using cheap components to protect the expensive FPGAs from damage by whatever you were connecting them to. With SMD replacing even a very low cost part might be too much trouble, but since current FPGAs can't handle TTL levels you might have external buffers to convert voltages.

[@vhfgamer]

In 2019 in the United States, we still use the traditional logic symbols in school. I have never seen those weird IEC symbols until literally just now when I watched this video.

[@HighestRank]

Yet when writing out a truth table, digits reappear.

[@wecnn]

Borsuk-Ulam theorem! Classic!

[@ArclampSDR]

I love the floating Dave

[@ElTwOJaY]

October 1996 , I was barely one year old 😲 where is time going?!

[@pedrobaco563]

My god! I have that Elektor issue in my collection!!!!

[@uwezimmermann5427]

In the mid-1990s I was playing around with GALs and Lattice really didn't want amateurs to handle their chips. The specifications about how to program the chips was kept secret and any starter kit would have been beyond my budget. It was actually Elektor who published a book including a bare pcb for a LPT-programmer, but it was very limited to just two different GALs. Very soon after the supplied software couldn't be installed anymore on a more modern computer and that was the end for me. I still have plenty of GAL-chips lying around which I never used... Regarding the layout of the 74xx574 - I never understood the reason why the pinout of the 74xx374 was so messed up with alternating inputs and outputs - well until I got to know the ATmega32U4, I wonder what the designers were thinking when placing the IO-pins...

[@asmi06]

(looking at my own board with 50K gates Spartan-7 FPGA which cost me less than $100 for PCB fabrication & BOM cost together) - yea, things have gone a long way since these times. But then again - I was 12 years old in 1996, and couldn't really afford these things back then.

[@QlueDuPlessis]

I'm pretty sure I have that edition of Elektor.

[@km5405]

in the netherlands that style of logic gates is still the standard we use for logic diagrams

[@95rav]

I remember Elecktor from the mid 80's. It was a bit hit or miss getting a copy from the newsagent, but the library had them.

[@countzero1136]

I used to buy it in WH Smith in the UK but they didn't always have it and not in all their branches either

[@dynorat12]

Dave just wanted to tell you love the floating head lol

[@Maclman1]

Another example of 2 engineers designing the same thing in parallel: Stan Tannenbaum and John D Clark creating rocket fuel, MHF-1 and Hydrazoid. More info on page 69 of John d Clark's book "Ignition" (Tell Chris G of contextual electronics to buy that book if he hasn't)

[@SidneyCritic]

It's probably the same because of available parts, ie, there is only one version of the IC from one manufacturer that can do the job, so it needs to be the same circuit. PC interface was probably the most readily available and cheapest at the time.

[@3dlabs99]

You need some animated rocket platform bitmap graphics supporting floating Dave. Nice video -- thanks :)

[@Damicske]

I tought it was original Dutch, because I got the Dutch version of the Elector magazine (it's called Elektuur)

[@reinoud6377]

Brings back memories.?.

[@frankowalker4662]

Great minds think alike. :)

[@SomeMorganSomewhere]

Elektor was available in my local newsagent (in country Victoria) about that time, hella expensive though, I think it was something like $16

[@n0madfernan257]

id like dave head as my instructor for online learning electronics during these pandemic times

[@discoHR]

Why are there pullups at the inputs? Isn't it safe to assume the signals you're measuring are valid so they most likely already have pullups in their device and adding more pullups to the same signals can invalidate them if they're pulled up too much (low -> undefined, undefined -> high)?

[@froedlmetallmann4643]

One of my university profs once told us, that things like this happen because people try to solve the same problem all over the world, and sometimes it simply is time for an invention to be made.

[@vijo2616]

Wheels tend to be round. The constraints of the day steer the choices.

[@martin-ot]

USB side note: My first notebook (Digital HiNote VP715) had USB build in in 1997, and my current retro machine (Toshiba Libretto CT100) made in 1998, have USB in the computers port replicator. 1998 was also the year we saw the first pure USB-only machine (Apple iMac).

[@EEVblog]

Yep, just didn't exist in 1995, and only became mainstream a few years later.

[@martin-ot]

@@EEVblog Yes, true. The only (mainstream PC) alternative in 1995 would have been SCSI, but probably a bit more complex/expensive to interface compared to the printer port. And most normal users probably did not have SCSI as standard on their PC's. I fully understand your rationale for using the printer port.

[@markhodgson2348]

I used to subscribe to everday electronics,yes its amazing how ideas grow from the same problems

[@p_mouse8676]

As far as I can remember those IEC standards for gates were (and still are) very common in EU (at least for Elektor articles), although I personally always preferred the one you used, since it's more intuitive and shows much better what's going on. Especially for engineers from different fields and levels.

[@svenschneider8163]

They are still common in Europe.

[@vorgartenzwerg4245]

I am currently studying Electrical Engineering in Germany and we use IEC Symbols as well. To be honest i like the IEC more with the same argumentation you gave for the "old" ones. You can directly see what the purpose is by looking at the &, =,... I always have to look up the other symbols. I guess it is more like an American/European thing where one has the zig-zag resistor symbol and the other the rectangle one. Or verilog vs VHDL.

[@countzero1136]

@@vorgartenzwerg4245 I still use the zig-zag for resistors - for one thing it's much faster to draw by hand when you're designing quick and dirty projects with pen and paper

[@Crewchief227]

Engineers are not artists (I'm an artist just done w/ grad school), they follow the rules of physics and since the properties of electricity are the same no matter where, this really isn't illogical. 😆

[@pietpaaltjes7419]

I agree engineers seem to be the, kind of, opposites of artist. Still I like the Idea there is a overlap, I would like to call "creativity". Though the boundaries applied to an artistic process are much wider than those applied to an engeneering project, both processes are creative. Since the boundaries of an engineering project are tight, it is not a surprise, that, with the same surcomstances, the results are much the same. Still I like to regard the process a creative one. And if the result is exceptional, I would like to call it art :-)

[@mfx1]

Elektor is actually Dutch but they print in various languages including English.

[@punpck]

10:16 logical choice ... I also worked with the same ispLSI-thingys at about the same time

[@WreckDiver99]

How many projects did I TRY to build from these magazines and NEVER ONCE did I get them to work. It was so discouraging. Always about 4 issues later there was a big "Hey, correction to the project"...Yea, thanks...I already blew up $75 worth of chips thanks to your mistake...and now I'll have to save for another year to try it again....NOT. LOL...Granted those were in the late 70's early 80's. It really was frustrating. No wonder I went into computers instead of electronics.

[@NivagSwerdna]

So true... tried to build an ETI Metal Detector once.... I don't think it ever detected any metal.