Re: One of My High Technology Contributions to Microchip Design

From: John Larkin (jjlarkin_at_highlandSNIPtechTHISnologyPLEASE.com)
Date: 07/17/04 

Date: Sat, 17 Jul 2004 09:10:01 -0700

On 16 Jul 2004 17:19:56 -0700, Winfield Hill
<Winfield_member@newsguy.com> wrote:

>John Larkin wrote:
>> Hey, Here's my latest gadget:
>>
>> http://www.highlandtechnology.com/DSS/P400DS.html
>>
>> Actually, three of us here worked on this for about three years as
>> sort of a background project, when we didn't have a paying customer
>> screaming for delivery on something. I never appreciated how much
>> hassle a benchtop instrument would really be until this got serious. A
>> VME or PCI board is blindingly simple compared to all the stuff you
>> have to put into a box like this. And by the time you finish it,
>> things have changed so much you're dying to redesign it again from
>> scratch. m.u.s.t..r.e.s.i.s.t..t.e.m.p.t.a.t.i.o.n.
>
> I'm impressed. OK, how much does it cost? I'd like to see a
> scaled-back version, with 0.1ns resolution, and 8 channels, etc.
> Smaller perhaps and cheaper. Scalable to 16, 24, 32 channels.
>
> Thanks,
> - Win
>
> (email: use hill_at_rowland-dot-org for now)

$3840, just a hair under brand S. I'd like to do a cheaper version
with a simpler technology, but my marketing people don't want us to
kill our own product just when it's getting up to speed. If you want a
lot of DDG channels, a rack full of VME modules is the usual way to
go. It's more common, actually, for people to want a lot of channels
of time measurement, as opposed to many channels of time delay.
Exceptions are big laser arrays like NIF, and implosion experiments.

Actually, a huge-number-of-channels delay gadget would be a fun thing
to do, but I'd guess you wouldn't sell many.

John