Re: LM34 to A/D

On Fri, 31 Aug 2007 15:28:54 GMT, Joerg
<notthisjoergsch@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

[...]


Hell, I buy gain-of-four amplifiers for $190 a pop, and single
flip-flops for $32.


$190? That's 30 six-packs of Porter. Toirrty of 'em!

(when they are on sale)

Sometimes it's amazing how little is inside "lab grade" amps. A few
BJTs, some 0603 resistors, a milled case. Then it's all marked up by a
few thousand percent. Just like us their mfgs only cook with water, they
just use bigger pots.


The $190 amp is a tiny IC, not a box.

http://www.hittite.com/product_info/product_specs/amplifiers/hmc465.pdf


Neat. I wonder what their profit margins are on that one. Then again
it's probably a small market.


We use four of them in one of our products.


I'd be tempted to buy a reel of BFG hotrods and try out a discrete
version. Of course only if the production volume is high enough.

We attempted a home-made distributed amplifier, using gaasfets, with
mediocre results, and gave up when we found the Hittite gadgets. It's
a distributed amp internally, and they have a lot less parasitics (and
a lot more engineers) than we do.

But they sure get hot!

John

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