@BrandenBoucher haha

well, this one would leave a mark if someone stuck it in your arm :P (it's a USB-serial breakout with headers on it)....but my problem is that I'm getting some awfully perplexing waveforms on my 'scope

weird wave forms from the rs232?

@BrandenBoucher from the serial side, yup!

That leave a lot of room for interpretations. How is it weird? What were you expecting instead?

ok, that looks better actually, although the lack of response from the autobaud routines on the device I'm talking to (an AT89LP51) is awkward. the weirdness I was seeing was a squared-off ringing of about 500mV or so that lasts for 100-150uS after 0->1 edges

but, I didn't have my timebase set long enough to capture the whole character. now that I do, I'm seeing something that vaguely resembles a valid U coming out of a UART, but the lack of a response from the autobaud routine disturbs me

I usually use a logic analyser for testing my UARTs. I don't think I really ever looked at it on my scope.

yeah, something is horked with the autobaud on the bootloader I'm trying to talk to -- I'm sending it characters at the slowest published rate (2400bps) and it's not autobauding to them -- I have my serial port configured 8N2 (which is how the bootloader wants it) too

8N2 is unusual. It's usually 8N1

I agree that the AT89LP51 bootloader is weird in wanting 8N2 but that's what the datasheet says it wants

what's really weird though is I'm getting bursts of 15 cycles of 166kHz separated by a roughly 20uS pause sent back to me!

what the heck sort of serial port waveform is that?!

sent back from the AT89LP51?

Sadly, I'm not really familiar with the 8051's. More the XMegas.

yeah, sent back from the AT89LP51

imgur.com/a/gEQuK -- scope shots of the behavior

I'm not sure I can help you much from here.

@Shalvenay Looks like the device is broken. MOSI not able to pull low. MISO ringing both when hi and low. Bad regulator ? on board, something is oscillating

A bit odd that MOSI isn't oscillating (ringing ) also

@Marla MOSI (PC TX) is pulling low OK (the ringing is just some goofiness with wiring I guess) -- MISO (PC RX) oscillating like mad is weird, though. the CLK line is the 2MHz clock being force-fed to the uC. power source is a force-fed 3.3VDC from the BusPirate that's also generating the clock -- the board's unplugged otherwise so no issues there though (and no O/B regulator -- it normally runs on 5V from a regular wallwart)

What is that where MOSI only pulls halfway low ?

@Shalvenay I just zoomed out, I hadn't seen the 2nd waveform :) silly me

@Marla that's the ringing on MOSI I'm talking about -- its goofy, but I have this wired up with an improvised rats nest, so that's why

@Marla, are you referring to the first pic, about half way?

yes

I still think it's weird

@Shalvenay Look for a loose ground. This has BAD ground written all over it

@Shalvenay, are you saying that dip is part of the "ringing" you see in the second pic?

@BrandenBoucher yeah -- the ringing, as opposed to the full-amplitude oscillations going the other way

I've never seen square wave ringing before...

I mentioned possible ground problem because the square wave is oscillating (ringing) both when HI and when LO.

@Shalvenay Do you see oscillations during times of NO activity

@Marla the data coming back to me just sits there and oscillates in those same bursts of 166kHz no matter if data is being sent to it or not

@Shalvenay Mis=connected wires ? Looks like maybe 2 output signals fighting each other for the same wire.

@Marla I'll triple check

Signal looks to be , let's say : zero volts, then 5 volts, then 3 volts, then 5 volts, then 3 volts, etc . . . . Like 2 outputs on same wire, and neither can win. So with one pulling low, and one pulling high, the volts ends up being about 3 volts.

@Marla I just triple checked -- and no, it's wired up correctly

Desperate guess : Perhaps disconnect MISO (let float), Then see if MOSI gets better.

nope

MOSI still behaves the same with MISO disconnected

aargg

Could you disconnect load from MOSI, and still measure MOSI ? (Guaranteed no load).

If problem persists, then problem seems to be with device that is generating MOSI.

the ringing on MOSI goes away but MISO's still in its miserable state

@Shalvenay Ok, I was trying to see if somehow both devices decided to be Master.

@Marla haha. I've been calling it MOSI out of force of habit but it's really UART comms. good point on seeing about the ringing though.

now, to figure out why MISO is going berserk.

@BrandenBoucher depends on which deity you want to communicate to

There should be a "don't polish turds" reject button for edits

I would offer to have a look at the PCB/wiring/schematic and say what's the top 3 reasons, but I'm lazy today

?

Are there any datasheets left that do not include sentences like "when X is set to Y unpredictable results may occur"

unlikely, even a resistors datasheet should contain this

Vacuum Tube datasheets still don't

However, the old tube data sheets should have mentioned that "when X is set to Y", XRAY's may be emitted.

@Marla Still a predicted behaviour though

I vaguely remember that there may have been (amplifier) stability concerns

@PlasmaHH In German, if you count from 50 to 59, is that 10 or 9 numbers?

...

@Asmyldof I've encountered a lot more datasheets that don't say that than components where it isn't true.

morning

@Asmyldof in my world 10, but I am not a typical German in this regard

Some ask for quote conversations are weird... "I need size x, how much?" ... "What colour?". " does colour make a price difference?". . "no". ....

@PlasmaHH because the datasheet for those chips, which are made in the German part of the company, that I have been griping about, counts from 50 to 59 in 9 steps.

I thought maybe 55 didn't exist in German

But you're saying it's actually the 356th error in the Datasheet then?

@Asmyldof the management interns likely count that way and wrote the data sheet... Fits into the picture, doesn't it?

@PlasmaHH This company is beyond horrible

I'd almost quit my job, so in 12 months, when my personal NDA ends, I can write a tell-all about them

Are they near me? I could pay them a special visit...

@PlasmaHH No

And also I am not allowed to tell you who they are. For some reason. Well, it's starting to get clear why...

@Asmyldof It's German engineering. It's inherently perfect. Do not question the man behind the curtain.

@ThePhoton It seems to work like that....

We asked the man behind the curtain

Got a "Oh, yah, that happens" back several times

@Asmyldof Das ist verboten.

Rather than "Ah, shit, hey, if you do this and that, you can avoid that"

We had to still figure that out ourselves

Anyway, my beta version of Module firmware is nearly done, so....

CHAMPAGNE!

Or other alcohol

Definitely some though

Weirdly, after 2 weeks of trying and fiddling (and sending them "We write this, that's correct?" --> "Seems right") now that I added in the value for register 55 in the chain, suddenly everything works as we expected it to 2 weeks ago

@Asmyldof You got an NDA that ends? All those I've signed are valid till the information is put forward to the company by the company itself.

Which in theory is till infinity for some parts.

@Asmyldof Congratulations :-)

@Mast At least when dealing with vendors and customers, places I've worked have normally put a 3-year time limit on NDAs. In those cases an NDA is reciprocal so I guess that motivates them to not build up too many perpetual obligations they won't be able to keep track of.

@ThePhoton Those are usually covered by the NDA I've signed with the current employer. Their information becomes our information and I'm not allowed to talk about our information.

And there aren't much limits on those.

@Mast What I mean is it's not in my experience unusual to have a sunset date on an NDA. Of course in the employer-employee relationship there's no reciprocity so it doesn't surprise me the employer wants to demand a perpetual obligation.

What to do when someone attacks your reputation ? I can't think of anyone I have offended.

all within a 2 minute span

I know there is nothing to be done. I just wanted to rant. (but mainly I don't know who I offended)

@Marla If it bugs you, take a breath, go have a beer, come back later when you've remembered the actual value of Stackexchange rep in the real world. (Likely the mods or robo-mod will notice the pattern and give the perpetrator a knock upside the head by then anyway).

Laughing now. I already took a breath. I just needed to vent

Coming to gripe about it on chat is also acceptable.

@ThePhoton Thanks. I am just so easy going, that I couldn't imagine what I said to someone.

"Some of the people all the time, All the people some of the time, but never all the people all the time"

What dummy used an 0402 resistor in the feedback of a regulator --- didn't he realize I'd want to rework that? (Oh wait, it was me)

@ThePhoton 0402 is plenty large to be reworkable [even] by a Caucasian man.

@ThePhoton Allow me to show my ignorance. Is a 0402 resistor a package type ? Remember I am a dinosaur.

@NickAlexeev But not a Caucasian woman ?

@Marla You are a power electronics engineer first, and maybe a dinosaur second.

@Marla Non-PC scale of manual dexterity and patience. 1st place - Asian women. 2nd place - all other women. Distant 3rd place - Caucasian men (grows worse with age).

I guess I didn't tell it here in chat, but I just bought a Hot Air (combined with soldering station) surface mount heater. I am been practising removal and replacement of surface mount components. Trying to move myself beyond thru hole.

I started at the, "solder it, Hell, I can barely see it". Getting better now.

BTW, I know everyone is giving this guy shit for the way he asked the question: electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/216676/…

But I think this is a good question and is rendering some great insights.

If someone would have told me 35 years ago that I would be storing my solder in the refrigerator, I would have voted to have that person committed to the insane asylum

@Marla, solder wire or solder paste?

paste

ok, I understand that. Had me scared for a bit.

go ahead, I know you guys will do it, star that answer

@NickAlexeev I read an online newspaper a couple years ago : The news reporter said how women were handcuffed to the desk when assembling electronics ( he/she of course didn't know about static wrist straps)

@BrandenBoucher did @Shalvenay solve his MISO, MOSI problem ? The one with ringing (oscillations)

@Marla, I'm not sure. I didn't see anything more on it.

I gotta get me a cool name like "Three Phase EEL" (Shalvenay). Too bad we can't swap names like putting on a new dress

Yesterday I was up late. Testing a restored tube radio. Darn thing just wouldn't work. So I get up to get a glass of water, and realized that the antenna coil was in the cabinet wooden case. Those darned radios don't like it without that coil.

lol

Just goes to show, step away from the problem. Gain some perspective. (The perspective I gained was "mostly due to fatigue, mostly due to weariness" )

I can't remember how Frank Sinatra said it in "Guys and Dolls"

ah, now I know, "greatly fatigued, mostly due to weariness"

@NickAlexeev Sure, but if I know I'm gonna rework something I usually try to make it 0603 or bigger.

@Marla "0402" package is 0.040" x 0.020" Like Nick says, it's big enough to see, but not by much. (0201 and 01005 are in the "don't sneeze" category)

@Mast Thankyou.

My personal NDA, as employee, that precludes me from writing about what I remember, is valid 12 months after last day of employment.

Also, infinite NDAs are not legal here

@ThePhoton When I'm tweezering 0201's onto a board I call that "Salt-Graining"

As in: "I salt grained a modification into the transmission line, it should work better now"

@Asmyldof Also, don't drink coffee the morning you're going to be doing that.

@ThePhoton I always coffee before I salt-grain

@Asmyldof You like playing on "hard"?

If you're not playing the brutal setting, you're not doing it right :-P

@Asmyldof dude, manually placing 0201s. That is brutal

how do you even figure out polarity

@BrandenBoucher Nah. Manually rewiring wirebonds, that's starting to get annoying

@BrandenBoucher If they have one, by tape orientation

wirebonds? like on ICs?

@BrandenBoucher Well, not on a 0.1" header

To be honest, it's not what you'd see in a uC

But still, keeps you sharp

I'd imaging

I just remember my first time trying to place and hand solder 0204 LEDs

1: gotta get the right side up

2: gotta get them in the right orientation (which is marked on the bottom)

Can still see the chip in a LED, that's an easy alignment mark

3: gotta NOT melt the damn thing into a puddle of plastic.

I don't have great magnification gear. Just a head mounted stereo lens thing from Fryz

Very useful to a point

Hm, I think I don;t need a loupe for 0402 chip watching, but LEDs are more 0603 in my designs

Cost over size for something that needs to be visible

I should get some good loupes

@Asmyldof on average, how many hours do you sleep each day ?

@Marla Zero. I sleep exclusively at night

Some times

seriously, or I will come to spank you

well, that wasn't a wise statement

or perhaps I won't spank yiou

you

:-P

Between 2 and 7 depending

lol

@Marla You almost got a Monty Python YouTube reply for that.

:-D

@ThePhoton I thought I made a nice recovery :)

Oh, what the hell

It's always time for a Monty Python Youtube post.

at times I am envious of you all near Eindhoven. Sometimes I feel so remote here in Colorado USA.

There's only 2 of us in Eindhoven

@ThePhoton I bet when you go pub crawl, you do the "silly walk" between pubs

And @jippie spends most of the time sleeping or locked in the Monolith

@Marla Yes, but not intentionally

@Marla That's a good way to break an ankle.

@Asmyldof My NDA** states that in order to be covered by the NDA, the information should be reduced to writing 30 days from the time of disclosure, and each party should receive a copy, and the burden of writing is on the disclosing party.

** It's a version of the NDA for non-commitment preliminary conversations.

I don't believe in NDAs

@Asmyldof I don't believe in NDA either. But some people tell me they do exist

If I didn't like my boss as a person, I wouldn't even care about the supplier one we had re: telling you guys the company name

BTW, I just survived a Non Compete (2 year term since I sold my company). Now I can really have fun, messing with (is it allowed to say fucking with) the competitor who bought me out.

@Asmyldof Neither do I. At the very least, NDAs stop good will.

January 31

@Marla Speaking of non-compete agreements.

@NickAlexeev That is a bit what it is like

and oh so funny too

@Marla why'd you ask about the sleep?

@Asmyldof Because I see you so many hours a day. Even in my prime, I needed sleep

@NickAlexeev Non-compete agreements aren't (generally) enforceable in California, so I am under a non-disclosure agreement that says if I leave I have to let my current employer review any IP I create for a new employer for 1 year after I leave.

Not sure how much money I'd be willing to spend to test that in court.

@ThePhoton And that would not be legal here :-)

@Marla I do a lot of my thinking while on chat

@Asmyldof If I leave then I'll have to look for work in NL.

@Asmyldof I actually doubt it's legal in CA either, but who has more lawyers to argue about it with?

Ahw. You missed the boat on the best offer

@ThePhoton Over here you don't really need lawyers for that

@Asmyldof That's called socialism and here in 'Murica, we hates it.

Just the one legal adviser and a judge, since here we use common sense over precedent

@ThePhoton Non compete contracts are often difficult to deal with legally in the USA of course. But the main thing about Non compete is that no one wants to deal with the legal obstacles

@ThePhoton How would anyone prevent former employer from examining one's IP? Once it's filed with USPTO, it's public.

i.e. no one will hire you if the shroud of non-compete is over you

@Marla I think in CA it was so well established that employers had pretty much stopped even writing them. But I think I heard there was a CA supreme court case that may have pushed things back towards allowing them.

@NickAlexeev I'm supposed to let them review it before filing for any patent.

And I'm not clear whether the wording would also cover trade secrets.

@Marla I think that's the intent of the agreement I'm currently under.

I'm going to hide 10 chocolate eggs around the house

Which is why I think it's probably not enforceable.

My situation ( key employee , owner, manager, etc) did make things different for me. As for an employee engineer, yes, law is more protective

@Asmyldof By Easter, you might even forget where they're hidden.

No, I'm actually using it to test my memory by hiding them for easter next year

poor poor unfortunate chocolate Asmyldof

@Asmyldof If you like the orthodox calendar better, you get until May 1 to forget...

@Asmyldof Mice will be delighted.

I'm extremely confident about remembering till May 1st

Too easy

@NickAlexeev Have none

@Asmyldof Are they illegal in socialist Dutch utopia too?

I just realized, with us chat room chatters, and a little discipline, we could jointly rule the technology world

@ThePhoton yup

:-D

@Asmyldof More on the subject of wishful insanity how much people believe in NDAs. (I chuckled while reading the question.)

I read that when it was posted. Very amusing.

Other guy holds all the cards. I will just demand he gives me some of them.

I wonder how long it took the Prof to say "no"?

not to mention the fact it's very likely the professor is precluded from signing an NDA, especially in office hours

@ThePhoton While this question is an extreme case, this kind of attitude is not uncommon (for the startup crowd under 30 it's a norm). At least in our neck of the woods it is. I encounter this sort of behavior a lot.

@Asmyldof Not in the US. If a Prof, for example, wants to do research using some new chip from a big company, s/he'll almost surely have to sign an NDA. Obviously the Prof is going to negotiate to be able to publish something about what they do, but the collaborator company is also going to want to CYA.

Probably they'd have to get the school's lawyer's approval first, of course.

Over here the agreement will have to be with the uni, since they are excluded from exclusivity with anyone else directly wihtout written consent

Btw, who told Bill Shatner in the 80's that he could sing? And why has every producer accepted that thought since?

@Asmyldof He sings better than Nimoy, doesn't he?

Bill Shatner can sing as well as I can produce Cold Fusion

but that doesn't stop me from touting Cold Fusion

@Marla I have a suspicion you don't spend half the time you're engineering trying to create cold fusion and making a mess of it

I put an Alka-Seltzer in a cup, and the bubbles it produced, gave off more energy than the solar cell I had in my front roomn

I. Have not. Heard. Such lack of. . Rythmic, consensus. Between the melody. And. The words.

that is the greatest Kirk I ever saw

now let's get back to reality

poof

Aaah! boring!

poofs back

See, now I get to cuddle a sheep

you want NoT-Boring. Let's talk about a system that can distort (intentionally) a visual feed. Such that old people (need reading glasses), can see it. Distort the feed such that at a distance, close up glasses are not needed.

ahhh, I see, got your attention

Focus tracked, still cuddling a sheep, by the way, textual enlargement based on detected distance, in case you were wondering, that will just use the webcam to blow up what you're looking at based on a complex distance curve

not blow it up, but correct for the optical error without the user requiring glasses (optical correction)

Well, over time you lose pixels and focal distance, this results in blur

correct for it thru intentional distortion. Much like Ray Dolby corrected audio high frequency attenuation thru intentional distortion

Prefocal screen, oh and she's cuddling back too, which prefocusses based on your distance is possible, but the lost pixels....

bleh! ptheue! Thru is bad English

Now, come on, you can dodge the question.

I. Am. Answering it. If you, would.. care to. Read. IT.

But , pioneers like Ray Dolby improved audio, by intentionally increasing distortion ( encoding, decoding)

@Marla -- I fixed the oscillations -- they were apparently due to another chip trying to drive the bus, because when I reset the whole shebang, they went away

@Shalvenay Great News, I was earlier asking if you had fixed it

At the risk of sounding like the answerer, it sounds like there were 2 or more devices trying to drive the line ?

@Marla now, to figure out why the bootloader is throwing checksum errors before I can even stuff a command into it

@Marla I think so

@Asmyldof This new discussion doesn't let you off the hook

Blah

Schaaf het Schaap will hide me