#18 – Transistor Types and Where To Get Electronic Gear

Dave Jones: Welcome to the Amp Hour. I'm Dave Jones from the EEV blog.

Chris Gammell: And I'm Chris Gammell from Chris Gammell's Analog Life.

Dave Jones: How you doing, Chris?

Chris Gammell: I'm doing well, Dave.

Dave Jones: Excellent. What's happening up in Cleveland, Ohio?

Chris Gammell: You know, my basement's getting more unbearable to be in. It's a little cold in here.

Dave Jones: Right. Okay. It's going into winter over there, isn't it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. It's just coming into summer here, so I'm sitting here in shorts and a t-shirt.

Chris Gammell: Ah, yes. I'm jealous.

Dave Jones: Yeah. We've still got the crazy time difference, though. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It just keeps spreading apart. Yeah. I guess we've got another, what, four... How long does Daylight Saving go? Four months or something? Five? Oh, I don't know. Something like that. Maybe March. I don't know. Yeah. It's a pain in the butt. It's not as convenient as it was when we first started the show, that's for sure. Ah, well. What can you do?

Chris Gammell: Come home early from work.

Dave Jones: Yeah, exactly. And me, leave late for work. There you go, yeah. That's pretty much what we do. Yeah, Chris leaves early. I leave late. Ah, well. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Not to worry. It's worth it for all our listeners.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. Or 1,000 of them or something like that, which is fantastic.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, it's great. It's really great. So, shoutouts. Let's get started.

Dave Jones: Shoutouts. We usually start with shoutouts.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I saw that... I just saw on Adafruit today, they mentioned your review and that was the reason, the fact that the X-Tech won the multimeter shootout and that's why they're carrying it.

Dave Jones: Yes, the V-Blog. Yeah, that's right. So, well, and they've been using it for years as well, I think. Yeah, they said that too. It's one of their favorite meters and it's cheap. It's only 50 bucks or 45. Oh, really? I don't know how much they're selling it for or something, but it won the $50 shootout, so I'm not sure what they're... Oh, it's a $50. Okay. Yeah, yeah, it's a $50 meter, so yeah, it's a really good entry-level meter if you're into that sort of thing. That's good. It won't really... It won't have all the bells and whistles, but it'll certainly get the job done. It's as good as a first starter meter or a second spare meter because, as I've always said on the blog many times, you need at least two multimeters. You know, basically, if you don't have two multimeters in your lab, you're not really in the game. So, you know, you've got to measure voltage and current at the same time.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, exactly.

Dave Jones: Often, so yeah, if you don't have two meters... In fact, I've shown on the blog, I've actually demonstrated where you need four multimeters. If you're measuring the input power and the output power of some sort of system, like, you know, a DC to DC converter, you've got to have four multimeters because you have to measure those things at the same time. You can do it with two, but it's a real pain, so all the more reason to buy more gear.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah, exactly. And I'm sure Adafruit loves to hear that, too. Yes. As does Xtech.

Dave Jones: Right, so they have to give a discount. They should have a four discount. So, if you buy four, you get, you know, if you buy three, you get your fourth one free or something like that. There you go. That's the way to do it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Come on, Adafruit. I saw you listed on the Xtech site, too. They listed you, like, under the awards. They listed the winning the shootout on there.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, they were. Apparently, a cheer went up around the office when they won the $50 shootout. They were very excited by it, and they told me all about it. Oh, wow. And this whole blurb, they've set up a whole page on their website devoted to the thing. You can clip. Yeah, but I guess, you know, companies get excited when they win something. So, even if it is a lame-ass EEV blog award, you know.

Chris Gammell: Ah, well. You should do a contest. Who can ship me the most expensive gear the fastest? Right. At no charge, of course, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, absolutely. And you get to keep it.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, of course, yeah. Of course.

Dave Jones: Well, not all my stuff I get to review, I keep. So, there you go. Yeah, that's great. Yeah, I'm going to ship some of it back. Some of it, yeah, I wouldn't want to keep that anyway. But, yeah, other stuff, oh, I really want to keep that. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Ah, well, what can you do? Right. What about the, you guys don't have NPR there, do you?

Dave Jones: NPR, no, we don't.

Chris Gammell: No?

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Do you know what it is here?

Dave Jones: No. Tell us all about it.

Chris Gammell: I mean, NPR is just national public radio. It's like, I think it was started, it's mostly privately funded. There's some government funding through like public broadcasting stuff. But, it's basically just like public radio, kind of like, you know, like BBC News, like how they have radio programs too. But, also, there's a lot of other programming too. And, I'm a really big fan of it. But, they had a piece on hackerspaces. So, they were interviewing Mitch Haltman. And, so, that was another shout out for this week to NPR and kind of just highlighting hackerspaces. I thought that was pretty cool. And, saw it all over Twitter too. So, it's pretty great.

Dave Jones: Now, that I know what NPR is, we do have something similar here. I don't listen to it. There is a government sponsored radio station which just has basically news and they interview people exactly like this. You know, they might get somebody obscure from a museum on to talk about, I don't know, their work at the museum or something like that. So, yeah. And, I think there might even be some privately run channels somewhere. Yeah. I don't know. Don't quote me on that. But, I'm sure we have something similar.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. A lot of the programming in the US is pretty great. So, I like it a lot. Excellent.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I love all those private channels. For the first time here in Sydney, we've got our own private TV station. It's actually privately run here in Sydney and it's just dedicated to local material. Oh, yeah. They can't always get just local material but they can get material. You guys have had that for decades over in the US. You get those. You can even set up your own TV cable network, can't you? Your own TV cable show or something?

Chris Gammell: Not sure. In some states. I mean, they're private but, yeah. Right. You mean like local access kind of things? You mean like…

Dave Jones: Local access. Yeah. Yeah, because I hear about all these people in their shed just setting up their own cable

Chris Gammell: TV channel or something.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Is that how Wayne's World started out, was it?

Chris Gammell: Well, no. It started out as a Saturday Night Live skit but, I mean, that was the idea that those guys were in their parents' basement like… Basement filming it. …reporting that show. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. I haven't watched that for decades. Yeah. Local access is usually kind of… It's kind of fallen off. I mean, like you'll have like local government stuff here too but… Right. …usually kind of boring around here so maybe it's better over there. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, it's a pretty good channel here if you tune into the radio. They've always got something good on, interesting rather than just some stupid talkback radio host who's talking about bloody Paris Hilton or some shit like that. Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. It's garbage. So, it's always much better than that. So, yeah. It's usually all talk. They usually don't have much in the way of music and stuff like that. It's usually just talkback and interviews and stuff like that. Yeah. So, which is really good.

Chris Gammell: That's cool. That's really cool.

Dave Jones: Excellent. And you wanted to shout out to All About Circuits forum.

Chris Gammell: Do you ever go on there at all?

Dave Jones: I've seen it. I'm not a member. No. Sorry. I'm already a member of too many forums. I try and keep up to and, you know, I run my own electronics forums. Right. I guess they're competitions. Yeah. Sort of. They're doing pretty well.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. They have a ton of members. So, that's kind of the thing I like about it. But also, the standard side of their site is like an open source textbook on electronics, too. It's actually very good. Yeah. I'll say that. It's group edited and everything. So, just in case people didn't know about it. I mean, there's... I don't know. We've been kind of looking for... We don't really have anything for us. But EEV blog forums helps us out a lot and has a place to talk about the amp hour. So, that's really nice. But, you know, just in terms of, you know, always looking for more places to ask questions or find answers kind of thing. It's got a ton of people on there. So, that's pretty cool in terms of their critical mass there.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's amazing. They're about 10 times the size of mine. Because I've got about... Oh, there's about 10,000 posts in the general forum on mine. Yeah. But they've got like 100,000. So, yeah. I don't know how long it's been going for. But, yeah. They certainly build up a great forum.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And the nice thing too. I mean, like kind of like with your blog, how they... Excuse me. They can just point... Like for yours, they can just point to the video. Oh, Dave did a video of that. You know, in 99 or whatever. 99? No, no. Sorry. Like video 99. Not 1999. Oh, right. Okay, right. Haven't been doing it that long. Right. Yeah. So, they'll just point over to like the textbook though. So, someone asked like a basic question. It's like, oh, it's okay to ask this question. But make sure you read the textbook first. And that's cool. So, if people haven't heard of it, check it out. I like it.

Dave Jones: Yep. Absolutely. All these forums are great. I mean, when I was a boy, we've always got to have a when I was a boy. Oh, yeah. You know, there was only the Usenet news groups. You know, I was electronics, so I electronics design. And, you know, I've been a member of those for, you know, since the 90s or something. And, yeah, they just died. I don't read those anymore. All of those crappy Usenet, because they just get filled with spam these days. Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, yeah. They're just full of spam, man. And it's just dying out. It's really only the diehards left. And people just bitch all the time. You know, it's just, yeah. Usenet just goes to the dogs.

Chris Gammell: It's a really old catheterist people still on there. Yes.

Dave Jones: Usenet, yes. People are, oh, I've been doing it since it was a bulletin board for 30 years ago or something. Because that's where a lot of them spawn from. A lot of the same people have been on that forum for 20 years or something like that before the internet, before, you know, back on bulletin board systems where it started or something like that. Yeah, yeah. That's crazy. Well, before the web. Anyway, I'm not saying before the internet, because the internet's older than the web. Oh, right. Good point, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah. And it's a bit sad that they're dying off, but the interface kind of sucks. I much prefer these forums, these BBS style forums, which are much more friendly. You can have threads and, you know.

Chris Gammell: Even mailing lists are kind of getting to me, you know. Like, you know, sometimes you get like those daily digests and everything. Yeah. I don't need that.

Dave Jones: Yes, the old Yahoo groups. I set up the Oz Electronics Yahoo group back in. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, God. I haven't even visited that for, I don't know, five years probably. And occasionally someone will still join and I'm going, why? There's no activity, you know.

Chris Gammell: What are you doing?

Dave Jones: Actually, I'm thinking about shutting it down. Actually having a note on there saying, no, please go to the EEV blog forum. Yeah. Just anything else.

Chris Gammell: Anything else, please. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Those Yahoo forums. I'm still a member of one which has a community here in Australia. But, oh, gee. Yeah. The interface sucks. Yeah. It's just terrible. So, well, what can you do? It's hard to convince people because I've tried to convince people on that forum to go to move to a BBS style forum. I've even set it up for them. Look, here it is. Go here. But nobody goes there. Everyone's happy with their mailing list. No one likes to change.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. People hate change. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I know. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, speaking of that. See, I know, right? So, speaking of that. Exactly. I have been talking with some people on Twitter about this, about buying a fab and fixing it up for all those people that don't want to change from their old processors and their old chips and stuff. Yeah. And have you ever, I mean, have you ever looked at that or heard about that at all?

Dave Jones: I've heard about that. Yeah. There's companies that specialize in making these old obsolete chips to actually keep them going. And they charge an arm and leg for them, of course.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah. Yeah. So, like Rochester's one and Landstale's another one. Someone told me about. Yeah. But I was looking for it because I'm working on a design right now. To fix up an old board. And I was looking at the chip. I was looking for a data sheet. And it popped up somewhere. And I think it was on TI's site, actually. And they actually said, oh, we have stock of this. And this is like a programmable part from, you know, 30 years ago. Wow. Yeah. Like 20, 30 years ago. Probably. Yeah. Yeah. 30 years ago, almost. And it cost $50. And I'm like, oh, my God. Why? Why? I mean, and the thing is, and a lot, at least in the US, I'm not sure about in Australia. I mean, like the military, they have huge timelines where they, you know, need guaranteed parts for, you know, 20, 30 years. It's ridiculous.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I've worked on those military projects. And yes, it's a very serious issue. You have to support that device for 20 or 30 years. In fact, at the military companies I've worked at, they have what's called a component obsolescence engineer. And that is actually a full-time job. And they might have multiple people. Your full-time job is to find actual replacements for all these obsolete parts. Find out, you know, you might have to, okay, you can't physically get the chip anymore. But you might be able to make some sort of plug-in board which replaces it and goes into the dip socket that it replaced. Yeah. Well, basically, that's what I do. It's crazy. I mean, to be honest.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah, that's kind of what I do.

Dave Jones: That's a pretty big business. And you said, like, the chip is like, it costs about $50. That's pretty cheap, actually. If you can get, you know, because it's not like you're making 100,000 of these things anymore. Hey, it looks like we have a caller. I'm not sure if you can hear that, but the phone's ringing. It sounds like an alien.

Chris Gammell: I got to say, it sounds like a UFO is coming down.

Dave Jones: Should I answer it?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, go ahead, buddy. No, no, I won't. Yeah, so I was talking about, like, I mean, you wonder about it, though, because, you know, you hear about these fabs going on to business. And if it's a smaller fab, maybe, I mean, you know that's how a lot of these guys started up, like the Rochesters and everything. Yeah. They obviously have tons of talent on hand because they can replicate old processes and old, you know, old designs and stuff. So, they're obviously good at something, but they're good at a lot of things. But you wonder about if you bought a fab and you started doing that, you know, could you find enough business to make it a viable option, kind of like a boutique shop?

Dave Jones: Mm-hmm. I don't know. It's a very niche market. I certainly wouldn't like to try.

Chris Gammell: Right. That would be cool. But, yeah.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. But, yeah, you've got to charge, you know, 50, 100, 200 bucks a chip to try and recoup all those costs you put in.

Chris Gammell: So, I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The tough part would be matching the behavior exactly, right? So, you could probably move it to, you know, we talked on here before about like MOSIS and like, you know, doing your own development and trying to move the functionality. You could try and move the functionality like a newer process, which would make sense. But then you have to try and match timing and all that other crap that, you know, like even like capacitance on pins would start to, you'd have to match everything perfectly or else you know something's going to mess up in whatever you put the chip into. Yeah. So, you don't think it's possible though to?

Dave Jones: Oh, it's, well, I certainly wouldn't. It's, everything's possible, but geez, your odds are not good. I certainly wouldn't start up a new one sort of replacing old chips. Very niche market. No, I wouldn't.

Chris Gammell: You probably get a lot of pissed off customers too.

Dave Jones: Yeah, I, no, wouldn't touch it. That's why this is what only two or three companies out there actually do it. Yeah, that's true.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I mean, I've looked at them before because, you know, I've had things where I've, I've needed that kind of service and then I look at the price and I'm like, thanks but no thanks guys. You wonder about it though with like dip parts, you know? Yeah. I mean, you know, hobbyist market isn't a big enough chunk probably, but, you know, they're just going to, they're going so far away. Either they're, it's going to move towards like how Nathan Seidel said in that, that talk you posted too. You know, we talked about that last week about how they do a lot of breakout boards and that's like one of their, their big things. Yeah, absolutely. Maybe that'll just be the new standard. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, you've always got to plug into breadboards. So those sort of breakout boards where you convert surface mount into dip packages, they're, you know, easy and cheap to do. It just needs someone to do it. In fact, there's, I thought about doing this probably five years ago, actually, actually laying out and having these little boards, these little breakout boards for all the different packages on the market. Yeah. And I just didn't get off my ass and do it. And there's a lot of people out there who actually specialize in this. So now you can buy these boards, you can buy them in a panel. Like you buy a whole panel worth and they've got all the different footprints on there. Oh, cool. And you just snap them off and you solder on the header pins and you solder your part on top. Oh, that's smart. And it converts SMD into dip. That's great, yeah. Yeah, you can buy one of these panels for, you know, $20, $30 or something. Yeah. So you have one of those on hand and you can basically put any chip you like onto your board. That's cool. Onto a dip, converting a dip.

Chris Gammell: Do you have a link to that?

Dave Jones: But yeah, there's other things. Oh, I'm sure I could. I'm sure I can find them. You can buy them at your local JCAR store. JCAR do or used to sell them or something like that, these breakout boards, and they're quite good. But of course, one of the things you've got to watch out for is the lead inductance because these surface mount packages are small for a reason. Not only for, you know, the compact devices these days, but lead inductance is smaller. So if you just put the chip on a board and then spread it out to some big 40-pin dip chip that you can plug into your board and you don't put bypass caps on the board as well, then you can be screwed. So if you're just breaking out the chip, yeah.

Chris Gammell: Or if you're pumping a lot of current through it, then you get the…

Dave Jones: Or if you're pumping current, then, you know.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, LDI-DT and you get voltage spikes and… Yeah. Yeah, it's a mess.

Dave Jones: It's not good. So you've got to have local bypassing on the board. So it's not like you can just whack the chip on there. Yeah. You've got to actually at least put a bypass cap or, you know, a lot of chips these days have, you know, different rails. They have multiple rails. So you've got to put multiple bypass caps. You might even put a local voltage regulator on there so that if it's a part that only works at 1.8 volts or something for some reason, then you put a voltage regulator on there and it can work from anywhere from 3.3 or 5 or something like that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. These boards have a fair bit more to do than just actually converting the pin footprints.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. That sounds like a mess. I mean, yeah, that's the same kind of stuff I'm dealing with right now. Like even level translators I'm doing. Thanks.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. I don't like it.

Chris Gammell: What was Jcar you mentioned? What is that?

Dave Jones: Jcar is a local retail electronic store here in Australia. They've got, they're the biggest. They've probably got, I don't know, 100 stores or something like that. And they sell parts. They still sell parts. They've been going for 30 years at least. Really? I think. And yeah, they started out as a little, one little shop somewhere and they've spread. Yeah. So you can still go down there and buy your parts. It's like the equivalent of Tandy in the US. Tandy. Oh, it's not called Tandy in the US, is it?

Chris Gammell: Radio Shack, maybe?

Dave Jones: Radio Shack. They're Radio Shack in the US. I guess it's equivalent to that. But a lot of people say Radio Shack's gone down the shithole. They are. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: They're totally, they're trash. They'll sell you five resistors for 99 cents.

Dave Jones: It's like, you can get away from me. They've always done that. They've always. No. You can go in there. I remember when.

Chris Gammell: No. Yes.

Dave Jones: When I was a kid, I'm telling you, 30 years ago. I'm not kidding. 30 years ago, I walked into my Tandy slash Radio Shack store. Yeah. And I bought my five resistors in the blister pack. Yeah. They have it in those little bubble packs. Yeah. Five resistors for a dollar or whatever. That's ridiculous. And that's where you would. They still do it.

Chris Gammell: Talk about nickel and diming people. Holy crap.

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah. I know. But that was their business. You know, because a lot of people, they might only make one of something. Yeah. So, you don't want to buy 500 resistors. Yeah. A bag of a thousand.

Chris Gammell: You also don't want to buy five resistors for a dollar. That's ridiculous. Yeah, I know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. That's why other stores existed. You know, here in Australia, it was Jcar, Dick Smith, and places like that where you could go in, you could buy bulk parts. Really? You know, you didn't. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They have big drawers and you could just, you know, oh, yeah, I want a hundred of those. Yeah. And 50 of those.

Chris Gammell: See, that sounds like almost like a hardware store then.

Dave Jones: And it's almost like a hardware store for, yeah. So, Jcar is basically that here. It's a local store. Yeah. And I hate it. On the local electronics forums here on Usenet and stuff like that, everyone keeps bitching about how Jcar's not like it used to be. They're saying, oh, it's not like the old days where you go in and you could buy parts. Yeah. It's bullshit. If you read the latest catalog, it's like 400 pages or something. And it's got more parts than SMD parts. It's got more parts than they ever have. So, all these people crapping on about the old days and how good it was. Ah, give me a break. Sounds like you. Yeah. It does sound like me, but at least I'm practical enough to realize that they've got more parts than they ever have. Yeah. Because the reason they complain is you go in there and half the shop is these farting novelty gadgets.

Chris Gammell: Oh.

Dave Jones: Right? So, that's the problem.

Chris Gammell: That's the direction Radio Shack took. They do cell phones now and cheap crappy toys. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yep. That's exactly what Jcar... But Jcar don't go into the consumer side, so you can't go in there and buy a cell phone or a TV or something like that.

Speaker ?: Oh, okay.

Chris Gammell: Okay.

Dave Jones: But Jcar, you go in there and it's all farting novelty toys, flashing LED lights and all that sort of... But they explain in the latest catalog or last year's catalog why they do that. It's because they have to pay the bills. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So, they can stay alive. And they're basically telling people, look, if you want us to keep selling new parts, let us sell half the shop has farting novelty gadgets. We're sorry, but that actually does keep us in business.

Chris Gammell: So, yeah. Yeah. I don't know. Hopefully, people that go in to buy those farty novelty gadgets, as you call them, hopefully, they eventually get interested in electronics.

Dave Jones: They get interested in electronics. And I'm in there a fair bit. If I just need to buy one or two parts, I'm desperate. I'll go to them occasionally if I'm driving past. And you'll get people in there, oh, how do I build something to charge my mobile phone or, you know, out in the bush or some other weird thing. And then, you know, so they want to build up these little simple circuits. Yeah. And they don't know how. So, they go in there and they ask advice. Yeah. That's the other thing. The other complaint is that people in Jcar and other electronics stores aren't like they used to be. They used to be hobbyists. So, you go in there and you could actually ask them questions and they would know stuff. Yeah. But these days, no, they're just, you know, pimple-faced kids who don't know shit. Well, the hobbyists probably got older. That's the majority. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: The hobbyists probably got older, got jobs, and, you know, the younger hobbyists didn't fill in.

Dave Jones: I won't say it's everyone in the store because it's not. They do have some quite good hobbyists in there.

Chris Gammell: Interesting. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Actually, I've got a very good friend of mine who I published a design with in electronics Australia way back in the old days. And he works at Jcar. Oh, cool. Yep. Yeah. So, not everyone's a dumbass in Jcar.

Chris Gammell: That's for sure. That's really, I mean, like, I'm trying to think if there's stuff around here. I know there's some surplus stores. Right. But I don't know if there's, like, a place you can just go and buy parts like that. I mean, like, unless you go to a... Yeah. I mean...

Dave Jones: Well, there's Fry's. It's basically the same as Fry's, right? Well, Fry's is in Ohio.

Chris Gammell: It's not in Ohio.

Dave Jones: Oh, well. Okay. Right.

Chris Gammell: Right. Yeah. And that's actually... I was reading about Fry's. They help start, like, the Silicon Valley revolution kind of stuff, too. I mean, like... Oh, yeah.

Dave Jones: Absolutely.

Chris Gammell: I never realized that. I was reading an interview with the owner because it's still family owned. Right. But that's... Yeah. We don't... I don't think... Maybe it's just Ohio. I don't know. We don't have anything around here like that.

Dave Jones: Have you actually been into a Fry's?

Chris Gammell: Yeah. When I used to live in Austin, they had one down there. And that was mad. I didn't... I only went in, like, once or twice. Yeah. Yeah. But it was...

Dave Jones: It's insanely huge. Yeah. I've been into them. And they're themed. Like, I went into two of them. One was, like, an underwater Nemo.

Chris Gammell: Really?

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. Captain's Nemo, bottom of the sea. Yeah. Because all the stores are themed. Yeah. Well, I think most of them are.

Chris Gammell: Huh.

Dave Jones: And they're just absolutely enormous. And they've got giant underwater fish tanks and, you know, to make you feel like you're under the sea and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But they... Yeah. They still carry all the parts. But, like, 90% of the store is just all consumer computers. Yeah. And they even have washing machines and white goods, I think. So, yeah. I don't know. It's one of those... It's one of those things. But, yeah. J-Car here in Australia still sell parts. Altronics here in Australia still sell parts like that. You can walk in off the street. And they're beautifully stocked. But Altronics only have, like, four stores. They've only got one store here in Sydney and, like, four stores all over Australia. Whereas J-Car's huge. They've got, like... Yeah. They're so big, they even now sponsor the local team. They sponsor a football team here in Sydney. So, they're... Oh, wow. Yeah. Yeah, and the owner, Gary Johnson, he flies like an F-4 fighter jet or something. He owns an F-4 fighter jet and a Ferrari. And, you know, he's quite a rich man. And, yes. Owns a football team.

Chris Gammell: And just to clarify, when we say football, you mean soccer, right?

Dave Jones: No, football is in league, which is rugby league. It's a football. It looks the same as your guys' football. It's... No, we don't call football soccer. We call soccer here. We call soccer soccer here. You do? Okay. Whereas in Europe, it's called football. Football. No.

Chris Gammell: But you guys play Aussie rules football, right?

Dave Jones: There's Aussie rules football and there's league as well, what's called league. And it is... It's basically... Well, a really tough version of your football over there, but we don't wear pads and all that sort of stuff. They just slam into each other and they don't... Yeah. Okay. Got it.

Chris Gammell: Got it. Well, speaking of the where to buy electronic stuff, I had a thing. I was talking to... I was... I'm looking for stuff right now. I'm looking for gear from my lab. Right. And I didn't know about just online places even because when you think about Sydney versus... I mean, Cleveland's not a big city compared to... Sydney is the equivalent of New York or San Francisco in terms of Australia. Oh, yeah. Absolutely. Australia. But do you ever do online stuff at all or no?

Dave Jones: I buy everything online. I hate walking into a shop and talking to a human. Yeah, I buy everything. Absolutely. I just sit in my cubicle and I order stuff and it turns up it's just so convenient. I... Yeah. I don't know. The retail... The humble retail store is just... It's eventually going to go out of existence, I think. Yeah. Yeah, it's surprising. There's so much more selection online. It's cheaper and you can get it delivered. Why would you have to drive somewhere, get out of your car, go inside and...

Chris Gammell: Well, same day kind of stuff. I mean, you can get same day some places but... Oh, yeah. Well... What are some of the places you do online though? Because I'm just... I'm looking for a list basically. That's what I'm looking for and I have some on here.

Dave Jones: Anywhere I just do eBay if I'm searching for something. Probably the first place I might go is eBay. Oh, really? I use... Yeah, Google. And, you know, I'll just Google the damn thing. And there's all these price comparison websites. I'm sure they got them in the US but in Australia you can... Oh, yes. Google does it. Yeah, they do. It used to be called Google Shopping or something. Right.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: I think they've changed the name but... Yeah, we've got similar local ones here and, yeah, you just type in your product and it searches all these, you know, 20 different online stores and finds you the cheapest one that has stock.

Chris Gammell: Oh, so you don't even care where you go then?

Dave Jones: I don't even care where I go. So I literally, yeah, I don't go back to the same place. Oh, okay. So...

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I was looking for ones because I was, you know, like, I wanted to find... Because sometimes, you know, like, you don't know exactly what you want. Do you know what I mean? Do you ever have... Maybe you don't. Maybe because you've been around longer.

Dave Jones: You want to browse around and I do that on eBay. I'll browse the test equipment. This is before I started the blog and now I've got more... Now I've got test equipment coming out my arsehole now. Yeah, yeah. So, yeah, but I used to buy and sell test equipment on eBay all the time just because I enjoyed it. Yeah. So, I've owned, you know, 100 multimeters over the time. I'd just buy them and sell them on eBay. I'd buy them, do them up, play with them and sell them.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's like that one you had there about the guy from the forum that bought one for 500 bucks, right?

Dave Jones: Oh, that's right. Let's talk about that. Yeah. He... Where is it in the list here? He got a Tektronix... Let me find... I'll actually get the details. It'll be much more interesting if I have the... If I have the details. Here it is. He bought... He scored a 300 megahertz Tektronix DPO 4034 four-channel scope with probes and a Fluke 87 for 500 bucks on that Craigslist website. Yeah. Which is not here in Australia. Right. We have Craigslist but it's not a big deal. I think it's big in the US. Oh, yeah. It's huge. Yeah. Huge? Right. Yeah. Especially in the Bay Area. So, he didn't buy it on eBay. Yeah. And basically, he bought it and he was showing it off on the forum. Look what I got and everyone's just, you know, their jaws drop in. This thing, you know, it's a $10,000 scope. It's still a current model. Wow. And I said straight away, look, you could get six or seven grand for that on eBay. Sell it. You're a fool if you don't sell it. And I put up a poll there. I haven't seen what the latest results are but I think it was about 50-50. Half the people said sell it. Other half said, you know, keep it for bragging rights and stuff like that.

Speaker ?: Ah, bragging rights.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Who needs bragging? I mean, it's just if you need the capability. If you don't need the capability, then definitely get rid of it, you know?

Dave Jones: Exactly. Well, I demonstrated that he could sell it for six or seven grand and he could get an almost equivalent functionality Agilent scope. In fact, a 500 megahertz Agilent scope with similar sort of sample rate and performance secondhand on eBay for four grand or something. So, he could pocket. He could get the same performance scope or better yet he could pocket three or four grand. So, it's a no-brainer, I think.

Chris Gammell: That is a nice looking scope. I'm looking at pictures of it right now.

Dave Jones: Yeah, it's pretty pornographic. Yeah. That's awesome.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But really, you know, what do you need that performance for? I would certainly sell it. Right.

Chris Gammell: Unless you're working up near three, I mean, the 300 megahertz range. I mean, like, unless you need that kind of high-end stuff and you need all four channels all at the same time. And even that might be kind of questionable. It's like, really? What are you really buying? What are you really using it for, you know?

Dave Jones: Exactly. And it's got, like, 10 meg memory depth or something like that. It's massive.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: It's just incredible sample rate.

Chris Gammell: We better not get you too excited on here, huh? And we lost the...

Dave Jones: Well, I've had... I get excited about this stuff. Yeah. I've had really expensive gear before that I've got from previous companies or I've scored on eBay really cheaply as a bargain. And then I'm going, well, you know, look, I've got this scoper, I've got this bit of gear that I know is worth X thousands of dollars or even in some cases, tens of thousands, up in the tens of thousands of dollars. And I'm going, well, if I had that cash, would I buy this bit of gear? Yeah. That's a good question. And the answer is always no. Right. So, if I answer myself no, then I sell it. So, there's no point keeping it.

Chris Gammell: You know, I heard a really great thing the other day. It basically, I think it was about, oh, it was recording stuff when I was getting the H1. You know, the... Right. And someone was talking to me about it and his philosophy was go as cheap as you can until you can't use it anymore. And most of the time, you're going to use it for the base functionality. And then eventually, you're going to realize, okay, there's definitely limitation here. And right now, I need a new scope. And as long as it's, hopefully, it's not an emergency situation or, you know, new scope, new DMM, whatever it is. And, you know, until you get to that point, you're just drooling and getting marketing hype, you know, and that's taking control of you. So, I really like that rule. And I've been using that for purchases lately because, especially text-to-clone, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I always buy the cheapest thing. You know, I'm perfectly capable. I could, if I wanted to, yeah, I could go out and buy a $5,000 oscilloscope from my lab. Right. But I think I'd be an absolute dickhead to do that because I know I would never use it. Not the person you bought it from. They'd love you. They would love me.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: But, like, I can get by with just almost 99% of the stuff I do get by with my, you know, 100 megahertz Rigol, my $400 Rigol. Yeah. Cheap as chips does 99% of the work. And if I need the extra capability, I could go out and rent. You know, you can rent these high-end scopes for $200 a day or something like that. Yeah. So, it's cheaper to go out and do that. You could rent it five times or ten times before, you know, you actually pay for that thing. Yeah. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: That's a good point.

Dave Jones: Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I like it.

Dave Jones: I don't get it. So, anyway, I'm not sure what he's done. I haven't kept up to date with that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well.

Dave Jones: He was thinking about, I think he was thinking about putting, like, a crazy price on eBay. And if he got it, then he was going to sell it. But I don't know.

Chris Gammell: Not the worst idea. Anyway. Yeah. Anyways, I wanted to get back to this list of places online. Do it. Just because some of them seem really cool. The one I was really looking at, actually, I found out from Lemore Fried's site, LadyAda.net. That's actually how I found it at first. And it's electronicsexpress.com. Right. Or L-X-P. E-L-E-X-P.com. And I was on there. And the reason I was asking around on Twitter is because it just looks like this really horrible interface. Like, it looks like it's, like, out of the 90s. I thought the site might be dead. And I was actually checking, you know, when it was last updated and stuff. And it is active. And I did find someone, actually, from Cleveland who told me that they bought from it. And so, I was asking. His name's Sam. Right. He's from the local hackerspace. But he gave me a couple other lists, too, because, you know, I've just been looking around. So, other ones he listed were Goldmine Electric or Electronic Goldmine. Yeah, I bought stuff from them. You have? Yeah. Yep. And then All Electronics.

Dave Jones: They've got lots of surplus. I think it's mostly surplus. I don't think a lot of it's new on Electronic Goldmine. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Then All Electronics.com. I was on there today. I was talking to a co-worker about that, too. And that seemed like a lot of good, like, connectors. So, if you're, like, making cables or if you need, like, AC, DC, wall wart kind of stuff. Futurelec.com. God, some of these names are horrible.

Dave Jones: Futurelecs are, I'm not going to say dodgy. But they're slow. Because they have, and they make it out that they're an Australian company. They have, you can go to futurelec.com.au, and they have an office here. I'm using the quote marks. Yeah. Office. And it's just one guy's home address. And he doesn't actually ship anything from there. He's just, like, a local contact. But they make it out like it's an Australian company. Oh, it's kind of shady. To Australian customers. And they ship it from, where is it? Hong Kong or somewhere else. But instead of getting it next day, like you do when you buy parts from Hong Kong via eBay. Yeah. They come incredibly quick. Hong Kong to Australia is, like, overnight.

Chris Gammell: Really? That's awesome.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Oh, it's just incredible. Yeah. But, yeah, they take two to three weeks. Because they pull orders together, I think. And then they're trying to save their own local shipping costs. Their own internal shipping costs. So, they wait until they've got 50 orders or 100 orders together. And then they ship it. And then they distribute it. Right.

Chris Gammell: They probably do container shipping, too. You know, like the big.

Dave Jones: Probably something like that. Yeah. Yeah. And I've heard people complain. Oh, it took me two months to get my parts. Oh, God. Or a month. Yeah. You know. But they do eventually get it. So, you do get it. So, they are the real deal.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Don't think you're going to get it same week. I don't think anyone gets anything same week from Future Lick. Yeah. Anyway.

Chris Gammell: Another one was Electronic Surplus. It's actually a Cleveland one. But they have a website, too. So, I haven't been there yet. It's up about half an hour from me. But BGMicro.com. Yep. Yep. I'll browse his site. Yeah. And he lists Alltronics.com. Surplus stuff again. Yep. And then Triode Electronics was kind of. Some of these were tube stuff. So, I don't really do tubes. Right.

Dave Jones: No.

Chris Gammell: Same here. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Come on. You're an analog guy. You have to do tubes.

Chris Gammell: No.

Dave Jones: No? Jeez.

Chris Gammell: I mean, I did.

Dave Jones: That warm glow. Oh, yeah. That warm analog sound. Doesn't do anything for you. Oh, yeah. No. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Unlike the sound of 50-year-old electronics. Although, some looks nice. I mean, I like. But the thing is, like, I have my piano. And I love. You know, that's all. It's solid state in there. But it sounds great. You know, it's using BJTs. Still. Oh. It's warm. I'll tell you that. Right. Not a warm sound. I mean, it is a warm sound, too. But that's kind of the internals of the piano, too. How the mechanics work. So, I don't know. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Anyway, so that's. Apparently, you can get digital DSP stuff now that tries to simulate the tube sound. Oh, yeah. So, you get these digital systems. And you can put it into tube mode. Oh, yeah. It gives it the warm fuzzy. Yeah. And they've mapped the distortion profile of a tube. Yeah. And they do that in DSP to.

Chris Gammell: Some of them are really ridiculous. I've seen a guitar pedal where it's all solid state. And then they have one single tube in there. And it's basically. They're using it as, like, an LED, I think. I mean, I think they actually put. I think they actually put signal through it. But it's, like, one tube. And it's, like, come on, guys. Like, I mean, it's probably, like, you know.

Dave Jones: It adds some distortion. A follower or something. That's what it does. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: I mean, it's, you know. Makes, gives it that warm fuzzy sound. Yeah. I don't know. Classy. Amplifier. Blah, blah, blah. You know, burns a ton of power. And that's about it. Enjoy.

Dave Jones: Now, you wanted to talk about different transistor parts. Speaking of transistors. Oh, yeah. Like the old-fashioned. You know, the BC547. The 3904.

Chris Gammell: I never heard about this. Like, the. So, 3904, 3906. I wrote that wrong. Mm-hmm. Yeah. So, that's, like, standard in the U.S., you know. NPN, PNP. And then I was talking to someone from New Zealand that I know. And he said, no, no, no. They're totally different here.

Dave Jones: Yep. They're BC547, 548, 2N22222 is another one. Yeah, I've heard of that one. Which is the equivalent. Yeah. Yep. Well, they're all general. Yeah, they're the standard general purpose ones here. And J-Car, the local company here, I talked about. Yeah, yeah. I think they sell, like, a PN100 and a PN200, which is another equivalent generic. You know, and they always advertise as being, oh, compatible with the BC547 and the 3904 and the 2N22222. And, oh, geez, I'm out of breath just talking about it. Yeah, I know, right? Yeah, I know.

Chris Gammell: It's weird, though, that it's, like, geographical, you know. Like, I was looking up who made the BC547 first. I thought it was ST, maybe. Was that who it was?

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah, I couldn't tell you. But it's been going since before I was itching my daddy's pants. As for, I grew up, you know, for BC547 here in Australia was the standard, you know, NPN type. But they also did the 3904. That came along probably in the 80s I started to see. Yeah, yeah. Late 80s I started to see the 3904. And then there was the 2N22222. Yeah. So, yeah, I mean, the local J-Car stock all the different types as well. They do stock them if you want them. But they do have these, you know, you can buy a bag of 100 of these generic ones. And I still have, you know, a bag of a couple of hundred BC547s out there. Yeah. And there's different types. There's 547, 548, 549 to get. Don't quote me on this. Jeez, I haven't used them for decades. But, yeah, they've got slightly different characteristics. Yeah, yeah. And they were three in that range. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I clicked over to the wiki page and they have. Apparently, it's European more so, it says.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay.

Chris Gammell: And then the 3904 is North American, like we said. And then apparently there's a Japanese one too, the 2SC 1815. I never heard of that. Oh, I haven't heard of that one either. No. Right. That's just weird. I mean, it's cool that it's, you know, it's different geographically. You know, it's kind of like a, it's like a evolutionary thing almost. You know, like how there's like biodiversity if like an island is all isolated, like, you know, a really big island with funny talking people on it. Right.

Dave Jones: This reminds me of the biggest thing, one of the big things you had on your hobbyist bookshelf when, you know, back before the internet and the communications revolution, kiddies.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, yeah.

Dave Jones: You had your transistor substitution book. Oh, yeah? Your transistor substitution. Yeah. Haven't you, have you seen those?

Chris Gammell: Never touched one. Nope.

Dave Jones: Hang on, hang on. I'll go to my little cupboard here. It's right next to me. Hang on. Let's take a break.

Chris Gammell: Never more than a couple feet away. Too bad you don't have any utility belt, Dave.

Dave Jones: No, this could be embarrassing. Oh, wow. He's letting all the bats. Have I ditched my transistor substitution table?

Chris Gammell: Yeah, he's letting the bats out of the cabinet right now. He's getting attacked by bats. Make the headphones back on.

Dave Jones: No, there. I thought I still had my transistor. I'm sure I do. Yeah, it's probably somewhere. I thought it was in my cupboard. It's probably upstairs in one of the, up in the attic. As you guys call it up there in the US, I think. What do you call it? It's your, well, the roof. We just call it the roof. So, it's up in the roof.

Chris Gammell: Up in the roof. Up in the roof. I guess so.

Dave Jones: That's where we store stuff. We store stuff up in the roof. You guys store it in the attic.

Chris Gammell: That's attic, yeah.

Dave Jones: So, yeah. Anyway, the transistor substitution book. It would be like two inches thick or something like that. And it would list 100,000 different transistors and their substitutes.

Chris Gammell: Wow. That must have been really tedious. Did you like highlight the ones that you usually use so you could always kind of thumb back to it?

Dave Jones: Yeah, and you would bookmark it and stuff like that. But yeah, so if you were servicing a bit of gear and you had this weird transistor, because you would look it up in your transistor substitution book. Oh, it's right. I can just use a BC547 for that. Great.

Chris Gammell: You know, when I blew out a transistor, I talk about this on my website when I was doing it, but I blew out a transistor on the Wurlitzer piano. So, like, Wurlitzer, it's like a, you know, it's an electric piano that, like, Ray Charles played, blah, blah, blah. Yep. And so I blew out the transistor. But they had, like, this internal part numbering system. I got the schematic, and then I'm like, what is this? You know, it was internal. So I ended up finding it on some message board. Someone characterized it, thank God. But yeah, it was horrible. Yeah. Just finding that stuff. I mean, it's, I don't know. Standardization is good in that regard, for sure.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, there's still websites that you can, like, you don't need the book anymore. You can go to these transistor substitution websites, and they're still, you know, everyone in the service industry will bookmark those. They'll use them every day, because they're still servicing amplifiers and P&As and God knows what. Yeah, yeah. Yep.

Chris Gammell: I like it when they do that for, like, op-amps, too. I mean, it's a little less common, but, like, you know. It's a lot, yep. But, like, a lot of vendors will, you know, they'll design an op-amp actually to match or beat some other op-amp. And I want them to tell me in really big letters, you know. I just want to know that. Which ones it beats?

Dave Jones: Well, a lot of the manufacturers, I love the manufacturers that have the cross, oh, God, what's the word? The cross-comparison thing. The part number cross-comparison. Oh, I'm sure it's a different word. I've got a, yeah, having a mental block. But, yeah, you can type in the competitor's part number, and they will tell you which one of theirs is better or equivalent. So, it's great. It's a good service.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I like that. So, no luck on the book, though, huh?

Dave Jones: No luck on the book. No, I'm sure. I think it's up in the, I think it's up in the roof with, you know, I keep them in storage boxes up there. I've got my old books and magazines. All my old Electronics Australia magazines are all up there because the wife doesn't want me to keep books down here because, oh, you know.

Chris Gammell: Too cluttered, yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah, yeah.

Chris Gammell: So, before we step away from Australia, I thought I should mention I saw on the Freetronics Twitter account. Oh, yeah? They're starting to sell. So, at first, I was like, well, where the heck would they sell Arduinos? But they're selling their 2010 board, I think, in stores soon. So, it must be...

Dave Jones: J-Car and Altronics. Yeah, that's great. I guarantee it's J-Car and Altronics, yeah. That's really cool. Either or both, yep.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: But, once again, it's... Well, the average punter does go into J-Car. The average punter doesn't go into Altronics. They're a bit... Well, Altronics are really into the audio side of stuff. They design their own audio amps and stuff like that. So, they're really big in the Australian audio industry. But, yeah, J-Car, people do walking off the street, but usually they're after a farting gadget or something. But having those boards in there is good because people see them and they go... And especially if the staff know what they are and what they're capable of, and they've got the info to back it up, you know, they can go, hey, you can buy one of these kits for, I don't know, what is it, 30 or 40 bucks or something or 50 bucks. Yeah, and they can go away and they can do really cool stuff with it. So, hopefully that will encourage people to, you know, be involved in Altronics. Because I'm sure they have people come in and they go, oh, how do I control my Christmas lights? You know, I want to flash my own Christmas lights to music. And they can go, well, use one of these boards and a microphone or, you know, something like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I'll have to check on that. Yeah, it's good. One of my friends at work does that. And this year, I think he said he was... I hope I'm not blowing any surprises, but he said he was going to do it by text message where people could text and control the lights.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Yeah, I've seen that. I've seen stuff like that. You can stand out front of the house. And I think a couple of people do it here in Sydney. They actually advertise on the sign out front of their house. Yeah, yeah. You know, the text and mobile number to text too. Yeah. Yeah. You can, you know, you can start the sequence or you can choose a different light sequence or something. That's pretty cool.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, I like that. It's cool. It's cool when it's synced to music too, but...

Dave Jones: Oh, yeah.

Chris Gammell: I was going to ask you about... I guess it's sort of... It's not really that relevant. Right. But just, like, do you guys know anything about Thanksgiving over there? Like, you know how we have like this huge... Not a huge holiday, but like a... No, Thanksgiving.

Dave Jones: Thanksgiving is a total US thing. Well, I know that, but... I don't even know what it is. What is it for? What's the... It's supposed to be like...

Chris Gammell: What was the original purpose? Like, you know, people coming over and discovering America, blah, blah, blah.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. It was the discovery of America thing. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Mostly it's eating turkey these days and, you know, hanging out with family, but...

Dave Jones: Right. So I'll be doing that. No, Thanksgiving. Yeah. Right. Yeah, I don't know. Oh, when is that?

Chris Gammell: Thursday.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. Yeah. Cool.

Chris Gammell: It's interesting because, you know, like, there's always like holidays like that in a lot of countries, you know, like, and... We're just shutting down, you know, like... Or like Chinese New Year, right? That affects everybody now. Like, and that's a huge shutdown. Oh, you betcha. You know, we get a two-day shutdown in the US now and... Okay. And effectively it's three because people are going to take Wednesday off probably too.

Dave Jones: Right. Got it. Well, I was thinking about doing a live show tomorrow as well, so maybe I shouldn't because it's probably Thanksgiving. I... Because the last live show I did was on, like, July 4th or something like that and it's like, yep, oops.

Chris Gammell: Chose the wrong date. Today's Monday here, so you could probably do a live show. Tomorrow.

Dave Jones: Oh, right. Okay. Oh, yeah, because it'll be Tuesday. Yeah. That's right. Yeah. I might still do that, but yeah, happy Thanksgiving to all you US folk out there. I'm sure it's a big deal.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Whatever.

Dave Jones: Right, yeah. But the answer is no. We don't have Thanksgiving here. Well, I know you don't have Thanksgiving.

Chris Gammell: I know.

Dave Jones: Well, no, but we don't. Oh, we have...

Chris Gammell: You have, like, Founders Day or something like that?

Dave Jones: Well, we have Australia Day. Yeah. Which is the big... Yeah, I like that. You know, we celebrate being Australian and, you know, yeah. And you get drunk and that's Santa. So, you know, it's a day off work. Yeah. All right. Yeah. All right. That's good. That's probably the equivalent thing here, I suspect. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Everyone loves holidays. We just don't get enough holidays from work.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. So, I was going to talk about some project stuff because I've been doing projects on the side. And so, I ran into a scheduling problem recently. And do you ever... I mean, this is for, like, a contract thing I'm doing, but I got all of the timing down, right? So, I'm like, all right. So, I think this will take this much time. This will take this much time. And we got to the end and I'm like, this is going to take 10 weeks. Uh-huh. And it was just, like, the stark reality of it, you know, just looking at it and being, like, in it stretching into, what would that be, like, February? I was like, oh. Yeah.

Dave Jones: So, it stretches over Christmas time and things shut down over Christmas. I know. So, you've got to factor all that in.

Chris Gammell: I know, right? And I just... Yeah. You know, I've had that a couple of times. I had that a different time where I was quoting a job to somebody. Excuse me. And it ended up being, like, you know, 14, 15 weeks and 10 grand of his money. And he's like, maybe I don't want this that bad after all.

Dave Jones: That's right. Oh, yes.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And that's, they're usually realistic, you know, timelines because things just take time. They do, yeah. You've got to do them in sequence, especially if you're the only person working on the damn thing.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Well, and even if you're not, there's...

Dave Jones: You can't load and test your PCB before you lay it out. There's a sequence of events that have to...

Chris Gammell: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Dave Jones: Especially when it involves a customer when they've got to get sign-off. You know, you might have to do the, you know, the general concept first. They've got to sign it off. You've got to go back and forth. Right. A few revisions and then schematic. Yeah. You've got to go back and forth and then... Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And that's actually another point I wanted to make, too, about the... Like, so say you're going to a customer... I mean, you used to do this kind of stuff, didn't you, Dave? You said you used to do, like, contracts. Yes, I've done it. Yeah. And, like, you know, when you go to them and you're like, okay, they say, okay, I want a flashlight and I want the flashlight to have, you know, a switch on it. I want it to have light output when the switch is turned on and I want it to use two batteries. And so you come back and you have a flashlight that looks like many other flashlights. It has a switch that, you know, it's a little slidey switch. It has a, you know, a very low wattage light bulb and it uses two batteries. And they're like, no, no, no, no, no. I wanted a push button. I wanted to output purple light and I wanted to use 14 AAA batteries.

Dave Jones: And you're like, what? The constant moving goalposts. That's the thing. That's... Even though it doesn't matter whether it's one person contracting you for a job or whether it's a big company or whether it's you're working at a big company, those goalposts always move. And if people don't understand that concept of the moving goalposts, it basically means the spec, the holy grail of getting a project on time. And on budget is to get a firm spec up front that everyone agrees on and that's set in concrete. And then you just go off and do it. You produce exactly what the spec says. But yeah, halfway through, they'll go, oh, they'll move the goalposts. What's called moving the goalposts? It'll be, oh, they'll change. No, I want it to be a bit faster. I want it to use less power. I want it to use D cells instead of double A's or whatever. And you often have to read that changes. Oh, okay, I need a new case for that or I need new... And you just have to almost start again sometimes. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Well, I think the worst thing too is that a lot of times you could even think you have a concrete thing, right? So you get three or two weeks and then the whole time you were... And this is what happened to me. You know, the whole time you're talking about light output and they're thinking, okay, it's going to be LEDs. And you're thinking, oh no, it's going to be a CFL or something like that, you know? Right. And the whole time, you know, you're speaking the same language, but you're actually not speaking the same language.

Dave Jones: You're not talking about the same thing. Absolutely. Yeah, exactly.

Chris Gammell: And so Jack Gansel writes about that a lot and he loves talking about that requirements and it's kind of like a manage-y topic. But I had never really run into it until, you know, recently and it's just so frustrating. It's like, you know, like you're speaking the same language, but no, not really. And it's not like you and I don't speak the same language because you say weird things. But, you know, it's difficult, man. It is. And that's why you said you don't like it anymore, right?

Dave Jones: That's why I don't do it anymore. I just refuse. I get asked all the time, can you design me this? And I, you know, look, we'll pay you a shitload of money. No, I don't want to do it. It's too much hassle. You know, it's no, I just don't want to do it. It sucks up your life and you end up and if you're contracted, a lot of people will, if you want to start up your own business doing subcontract design or actual, you know, actually designing contract stuff for people, then you've often got to give a fixed price quote up front. So, yeah, if you go over, then you have to eat it. You know, you've got to eat the deal. So, yeah, I just, no, I just don't want to do that anymore. I gave that up a long time ago. It's just a pain in the ass. And one of the, it's almost like doing auto routing on PCBs. It's the old analogy thing. If you want it, if you want that to work, auto routing to work, you've got to put so much effort up front into specifying all the rules that, you know, it takes so much time and effort. You may as well design the product. And it's the same thing here. If you want everyone to be on the same, you know, on the same page, in the same mindset about what the final product's going to be and look like, you've got to put so much working up front that you've done, already done 90% of the work. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: Why not just write it the whole time, right?

Dave Jones: Yeah. So, it's almost a given that the goalposts are going to move during a project. It's horrible. You know, you just have to assume it's going to happen because in 90% of the cases, it will happen.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: That's a pain in the ass.

Chris Gammell: It is a pain in the ass. Yeah. I mean, yeah, it's, some cases are better than others. I mean, in my case, it was just a miscommunication, you know, but man. Right. Yeah. I think about that, you know, like I think about starting my own business sometime and if it, you know, I think about like, whoa, easy day. It sounds good in theory. Well, I mean, I think, I think if I was going to go full time, just do my own thing, I'd want to like try and develop a product that I came up with, right?

Dave Jones: Exactly. That's what I want to do from now on.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. And I think, I think that's the way to really go because, you know, you know, no matter what, you're always working for someone, right? You're either working for the customer or you're working for the guy that's talking to the customer in the case of being a subcontract person. But man, I don't know. I feel, I know there's a ton of stuff that's, that's related to that, that, that I have no idea about, you know, I don't know how to talk to customers, right? I don't. Yeah.

Dave Jones: I'm like, why the hell do you need that? Well, when and if I go to the blog full time, I'll need some supplementary income and I won't do that by doing contract design work for someone else. Screw that. You'll never do a blog again. Yeah. No, exactly. They'll just suck up all my time because everyone I know who works for themselves doing subcontract design and, you know, board layout or something like that, they just work their ass off. They don't have a life basically and it sucks. So what I'll do is I'll design my own products that I think, you know, I'll find a niche market for a product and I'll design it and sell it. And then I don't answer to anyone but myself and the project doesn't get done or if it's a month late, who cares?

Chris Gammell: Right.

Dave Jones: You know, and I can change my mind and yeah.

Chris Gammell: I think the tough part about that then is the sustaining, you know, so you. You got to sustain it. Yeah. So then you'll end up talking to.

Dave Jones: It's the same thing with contract design as well. You can have a contract and as soon as it's finished, you may not get another contract design for three months. So you got no income for three months. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. True.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Yeah. The whole idea about doing your own projects is that you slowly build up a portfolio of actual products and you build up so that, you know, if people, so that you'll get continuous sales of those individual products. Yeah. So.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: Yeah. I think they say once, I think Artifruit or somebody's talked about this in some lecture or speech somewhere that, you know, once you've got like, start out with, you know, two or three different products and then you can set up your own store and then people will come back to it and then, you know, slowly add new products in and.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I mean, that's how they started too. So that's. Yeah. Exactly. That's the good. That's the way to go. Cause then you, you get like the foundation under you. Cause I mean, I forget who it was. I was reading someone's stuff online the other day. It's talking about like shipping. I don't know anything about shipping, you know, like. Oh, shipping's a pain in the ass. Yeah. Right. I mean like.

Dave Jones: It's the worst aspect of a kit business. I can assure you.

Chris Gammell: Oh yeah. Well, I mean, yeah, but maybe there's a business out there for someone that loves shipping.

Dave Jones: Well, they're called. UPS. Fulfillment services. You can get. Oh yeah. A company to fulfill the orders for you. They take the orders.

Dave Jones: Oh cool. Pack it and ship it and. Yeah. All that sort of stuff and handle all that sort of stuff. It's a particular pain in the ass here in Australia because every single item that gets sent overseas, you have to do a custom clearance form for. Yeah. So, you know, so every kit I send to every microcurrent kit or micro watch kit I send out or other stuff. I've got to fill out, I've got to hand write these bloody customs forms and it's, oh, it's just horrid. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I'm not sure if it's the same in the US, how bad it is over there if you want to ship overseas.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. I've never shipped overseas.

Dave Jones: Right. Yeah. It's difficult. Most of it, like, you know, 90, 95% of stuff I've sent over the years, either via eBay or something else or via my own kit business has been overseas. And yeah, it's not fun. I dread it. I really do.

Chris Gammell: Yeah. It's too bad.

Dave Jones: Yeah. But anyway, yeah, I'll eventually get back into the kit business and people keep asking about the microcurrents and other stuff. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm getting back into it. I just need the time.

Chris Gammell: Oh, yeah? So... Any, no updates on your secret project or anything like that?

Dave Jones: Well, it's coming too. I've, yeah, I've got to do my final testing and then I'll have, I'll release info on that and I'll have a kit available. Yeah. I don't know how much to kit up for. I'll probably kit up for a hundred of them because I think it'll be reasonably popular. So... And I know what it is. So people can bribe me if they want to know what it is.

Chris Gammell: I can tell people.

Dave Jones: Right. I won't tell. Yeah, I'll probably show people soon what it is. Don't get too excited.

Chris Gammell: That's good to get feedback and stuff too, you know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, absolutely. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. So... But then people always want something different. And I've already changed my own mind three times on this project. Yeah. So, you know, when you start getting feedback from other people, you've just got to, you've got to block all that stuff out unless it's a really good idea, a compelling idea. Yeah. No, you end up going starting from scratch. You're better off getting something out there first. Yeah, I agree. And then... And then you turn it the next time.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: And then turn it, you know, when you spin your board again, yeah, do an update. Oh, here's the updated version with, you know, feature X. Yeah. Or whatever. So, yeah. The golden rule of doing that is just get something out there. Yeah. Otherwise, you'll just end up like me and you'll have a dozen projects that are never finished. Yep. So, I'm surprised I get the number of projects out I do.

Chris Gammell: Yeah.

Dave Jones: So... That's good. Ah, it's unbelievable.

Chris Gammell: Well, hopefully you'll get to it full time. That'll be interesting hearing about that if that ever happens.

Dave Jones: Yeah. Well, that will be a big deal because I just went to the YouTube thing this weekend. Yeah. Yeah. This past weekend, I just got back last night, flew back in. Yep. By the way, I flew interstate here in Australia. I just want to rub it in for all you US people.

Chris Gammell: Oh, you didn't get raped?

Speaker ?: Wow.

Dave Jones: I did not get sexually molested. Oh. I did not get nudie x-rayed. And I did not even get ID checked. Wow. Or explosive sniffed. Okay. I flew, walked onto the plane, flew interstate. They didn't even ask for ID.

Chris Gammell: Wow.

Dave Jones: That's how you do it. Okay.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, they probably did. They probably listened to you. They're like, if he's not from here, he's just, he's too good to not, I mean, he's just allowed through. Come on.

Dave Jones: Right. So, that's brilliant. I didn't even have to show any ID. Fantastic.

Chris Gammell: That's great.

Dave Jones: Hop on the plane, away you go. Lucky you. Brilliant.

Chris Gammell: I am not getting on a plane this holiday. Nor any holiday in the near future. Ugh.

Dave Jones: Well, it's just horrid, packed.

Chris Gammell: Oh, no. I mean, I'm not going anywhere that I need to get on a plane.

Speaker ?: Oh, right.

Chris Gammell: Okay. But I'm thankful for that. That's very good. Like, worst travel time of the year. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. Yuck. Hey, so how about this last thing? This new segment we were talking about?

Dave Jones: Oh, yes. Go for it.

Chris Gammell: So, we were thinking about Workplace of the Week. So, people that wanted to... Da-da-da-da! Oh, ooh. That's a Workplace of the Week. Music. That's the best we can do for sound effects. So, we need some sound effects. Wah, wah, wah, wah. Yeah. So, if you listen at work, if you have other people... If you tell someone else about us at work, and if you talk to your boss, and he's like, yeah, listen at work while you're soldering. Listen all together. Who cares? Send in pictures. Let us know where you're from. We'll highlight you on here. Projects, if you're allowed to show them. And, really, anything else you think is relevant. Absolutely. If you work by yourself, that's okay, too. You know, the people that are doing the contract electronics that never, ever get to leave their house, that's okay, too. I was talking to John S. from Arizona. He said his only... I think it was him. He said his only people that he works with were five Labrador retrievers and some other huge dog. So, that's okay. Take pictures of them. Send them in. And, yeah, well, you know, that'll be a segment. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. Well, I've actually... I just got an email this morning. I can shout out to a... It's not a workplace, but it's a bunch of students. Here we go. Oh, great. It's the robotics class from Chatteroy, Washington. Wow. USA, of course. So, there you go. Yeah, they said, oh, it'd be great if you can, you know, actually mention us on the show. Well, that's on the blog. But, yeah, I'll mention you on the radio show. So, I have to email back and say, there you go. You got a shout out on The Amp Hour.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's great. So, that'll be our first one.

Dave Jones: Yeah, so they're working on robots and stuff like that. And, yeah, they want to get into electronics and the actual electronics used in the robots and stuff like that.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, that's awesome.

Dave Jones: Yeah, so we'd love to hear. Fantastic.

Chris Gammell: Maybe next week we can hear more about, like, what they do, too. And, you know, just kind of backstories. That's the kind of thing you want to hear in school groups.

Dave Jones: Yeah, send in photos and stuff like that. And we want photos. Photos, yeah. Yeah, put them up. You know, it's a radio show. People... Which is great. But we want people to visit the site as well. And if there's photos there, then they've got a reason to visit.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, definitely. And leave comments, too. We like that, too. That's nice.

Dave Jones: Yeah, absolutely. Rather than just leeching our content from the iTunes podcast or something like that. Whatever. Well, that's okay, too. Listening is okay. Whatever.

Chris Gammell: Yeah, so how should people contact us, I guess? We should probably... Well, I'll put a page up. How about that? If people want to do that...

Dave Jones: Yeah, absolutely.

Chris Gammell: Just... I'll put a page up. It'll say, you know, Workplace of the Week. And we'll highlight it on there. How about that?

Dave Jones: Yep, that sounds good.

Chris Gammell: All right.

Dave Jones: And then we can talk about it for 10 minutes. Great. All right. Extra material each week.

Chris Gammell: Free content.

Dave Jones: Yes.

Chris Gammell: Sucker. No, I'm just kidding.

Dave Jones: Because we've got a whole bunch of content on here that I don't think we even... Yeah, it's been hanging around for weeks. I don't think we've gotten to it.

Chris Gammell: We've got to kill some of it. I don't know.

Dave Jones: Yeah, well, how much time have we got left? Because we wasted a fair bit there with the little screw-up we had.

Chris Gammell: My clock says 106 we've been running. So we're at least an amp hour, probably, maybe.

Dave Jones: Oh, we are. Okay, so we're over. Yeah, probably. Oh, okay. Well, better call it quits and save all our stuff carried over to next week. Yeah.

Chris Gammell: So if people have suggestions too, we always like suggestions. And, you know, thanks for listening.

Dave Jones: Absolutely. Catch you next time. Bye.