
Cartoons in Tektronix Schematics - segfaultbuserr
https://vintagetek.org/tektronix-schematic-cartoons/
======
pjc50
The magnum opus of Jim Williams known as "App Note 47" has a cartoon at the
end, and possibly a few more in the middle. As well as a copy of "Murphy's
Law".

The cartoons in schematics are very much a product of their time - they were
hand-drawn by skilled draftsmen who enjoyed drawing. I suspect most of them
had a spare pad of doodles next to their work table.

~~~
blattimwind
They also attempted to make schematics logically cohesive, if possible. For
example, in oscilloscopes signal paths are typically differential and DC
coupled, but there are often sections where high and low bandwidth components
are fed through different paths. In Tektronix schematics these symmetries and
asymmetries, which paths are critical and which aren't, which things may look
symmetric but are not, these are all very visible. This isn't always possible,
though. For example, the Z blanking signalling in 7000 series scopes is
distributed over approximately six or seven circuit boards just in the main
frame, and the schematic drawers clearly came to their limits trying to pull
this together into cohesiveness.

If you compare this to the schematics of more modern electronics, they are
often madness. Even though it is far simpler to re-arrange schematics using
EDA, it clearly isn't done a lot, because parts are sprinkled around randomly,
everything is just on one enormous sheet or everything is randomly split up
across sheets with numbered net names making connections etc.

~~~
cyanoacry
As someone who's worked on (and drafted!) several schematics in the aerospace
industry, I have to say: there's no reason it has to be that way!

The places I've worked have pretty rigorous style guides, and I personally try
my best to make schematics readable and understandable. I suppose this is the
same thing as code quality guidelines: you can set expectations and examples,
but folks don't necessarily have to follow them.

My cooler projects are all stashed away somewhere in a company drawer, but
here's one that I did early on:
[https://bitbucket.org/cyanoacry/ee91/raw/5d934fdc18e556938dc...](https://bitbucket.org/cyanoacry/ee91/raw/5d934fdc18e556938dcfda266e9fa5464448b620/docs/documentation.pdf)

~~~
pjc50
Nice little project. I wonder if the SiC MOSFETs that are becoming widely
available would help with doing that kind of design?

~~~
cyanoacry
Maybe! I've worked with some SiC FETs, but the issue I ran into with FETs in
amplifiers is that they're typically made with switching in mind. If you run
most FETs in linear mode, you get some pretty interesting failure modes[1].

But, Wolfspeed's SiCFETs /do/ have a published SOA (see fig 22[2]), so maybe I
should revisit this...

[1] Figure II-3: "Visual Image of the IRF1405Z failure. This type of visual
pattern is more attractive when observed on the surface of the moon, instead
of on the surface of parts that are trying to land there."
[http://www.irf.com/technical-
info/appnotes/an-1155.pdf](http://www.irf.com/technical-
info/appnotes/an-1155.pdf)

[2]
[https://www.wolfspeed.com/downloads/dl/file/id/145/product/1...](https://www.wolfspeed.com/downloads/dl/file/id/145/product/1/c3m0065090j.pdf)

~~~
aidenn0
Even FETs that have a published SOA, it often ends up being roughly "don't
spend more than about 10% duty cycle in the linear region" because FETs have
been so strongly optimized for switching applications.

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Scene_Cast2
I wonder if it's easier or harder to do something like this in a modern
corporate environment.

Wikipedia has a list of software easter eggs, let's see if we'll discover more
of them as time goes on.

~~~
minikites
I used to like easter eggs in software but as the security landscape has
changed, easter eggs now show a lack of oversight. If a programmer can slip in
an easter egg, what else can they slip in?

Larry Osterman says it even better:
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/10/21/wh...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/10/21/why-
no-easter-eggs/)

~~~
mrob
I think the best solution is to add an "easter eggs" section to the manual.
Few people read the manual, so they're still hidden enough.

~~~
ryandrake
If they are documented, as a user I would still think, "What else could they
have been improving/fixing if they weren't working on easter eggs?" I wonder
if in an alternate world, Excel minus the flight simulator easter egg could
have been $1 cheaper or had 5 more bugs fixed.

~~~
makapuf
As a dev, I can relate to working overtime for a small eater egg, or even if I
were a manager I could understand those (security implications
notwithstanding) if it would boost morale or team cohesion better than an
akward social event.

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Animats
A picture of my old Tektronix 2225's warning tag:

[https://i.imgur.com/jYNCC4d.jpg](https://i.imgur.com/jYNCC4d.jpg)

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WalterBright
I like a bit of whimsy in otherwise dry stuff. We try to enliven the D
language spec with a D-Man cartoon here and there. I'd do more if I had any
talent for drawing.

[https://dlang.org/spec/iasm.html](https://dlang.org/spec/iasm.html)

Go's gopher cartoons are a nice touch, too.

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moftz
I love finding easter eggs in die layouts. Even if it's not an easter egg but
just someone's name, it's always nice to see how people have chosen to
essentially scratch their name into history.

~~~
bcaa7f3a8bbc
> _scratch their name into history._

 _etch_ their name into history ;-)

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microDude
To my surprise there is a museum right down the street from my house
(Beaverton/Portland, OR USA). That I must have just been missing. Thanks for
posting!

~~~
segfaultbuserr
Glad to see my post brings a nice trip to you.

From the comment sections, it appears to me that Hacker News has no shortage
of hobbyists and professional electronics engineers, but when I search
relevant terms like "Tektronix", "oscilloscope", "spectrum analyzer", or
"SPICE", there's no much information here, only two or three top articles. I
guess it's unfamiliar to the Silicon Valley CS majority who doesn't have
enough appreciate of hardware engineering. I'll try to post more of them in
the future.

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TheOtherHobbes
Somewhat distantly related - the Pro One synthesizer from the early 1980s had
some "appropriate" graphics silkscreened on the PCB and the copper etch. A
list and photos here:

[https://jamebus.backpackit.com/pub/294552](https://jamebus.backpackit.com/pub/294552)

------
watersb
Great cartoon overview of switching power supplies from TDK:

[https://www.global.tdk.com/news_center/publications/power_el...](https://www.global.tdk.com/news_center/publications/power_electronics_world/pdf/aaa60600.pdf)

~~~
segfaultbuserr
I wonder if cartoons like these (a distinct form of cartoons, unlike
Tektronix) is a feature in Japanese media communication culture. I've seen
similar comics of this style in Hakko's soldering 101 marketing materials [0],
factsheets of Panasonic's solid aluminum capacitors, and user guides of
Japanese laptops like Toshiba and Sony.

[0]
[https://www.hakko.com/english/hikaru/pages/](https://www.hakko.com/english/hikaru/pages/)

 _Hikaru 's diary on learning to solder_. A short story about soldering, from
basic tools and safety precautions for getting started to solder things, good
and bad solder joints, and the purpose of flux, it later goes on to explain
how simple and thermal-regulated irons and how their heating elements work,
point soldering and drag soldering techniques for SMD components, wave
soldering and reflow soldering, and finally SnPb and lead-free alloy.

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chrisdhoover
Back at the hi fi shop in the mid ‘70’s my older brother came over to my bench
with a big smile to show me an amplifier schematic with a race car drawn on
the arrow indicating an output.

We were simple people then finding amusement in the smallest things

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
It isn't such a small thing but rather emblematic of a culture killed off by
Danaher.

~~~
rusk
Man thats just how things are now

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raintrees
I miss my old Tektronix Oscilloscope... I was learning electronics, a whole
new world opened up. That was a great feeling, probably why I keep learning
new software languages.

