repak shawahb
it's like killing and eating a real live angel

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rsw@jfet.org


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Mon, 29 May 2006

wahboid omnibus

A few things of note: Wednesday night I went to a 30 Seconds to Mars concert. It was kinda cool, though I have to say that I think they were better opening for Sevendust back-in-the-day. Jared needs to be a bit more disciplined with his vocals, and for fucks's sake turn up the mic!

Saturday night, Mike, Matt, Cyrus, and I had one of the greatest days of all time. We started off with some sammiches, played Starcraft while our food digested, then went to the park and played football. After that, we returned to the ManHouse for some swimming and then a bit more Starcraft before heading out for dinner. On the way home from dinner, we noticed that there was a movie theater up north playing Transformers. No shit. We had to burn a little time before the midnight showing, so we played some pool. How can you beat a day like that?

Yesterday we had a barbeque, so I mowed the lawn, cleaned off the deck, and cooked up some mean shit. We ate and then all hung out in the pool (like a dozen of us at one point), which was truly excellent. Especially water football.

Now, bed. I know, it's not technically Monday until I wake up.


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Thu, 25 May 2006

intense research

(01:35:18) scrap1r0n: y'know
(01:35:22) scrap1r0n: I was doing some rezerch
(01:35:48) scrap1r0n: and I've come to the conclusion, as you can see from my earlier missive to F-A, that I need to know more about nonlinear dynamics
(01:36:00) krazyllama: I see
(01:36:17) krazyllama: maybe you should focus on the classical humponic oscillator instead


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Tue, 23 May 2006

a momentary lapse of reason

In a fit of duty-to-the-company, I decided to forego the opportunity to work on the project I really wanted to do in favor of being the lead analog designer on the Si3226 project (because there's no one else to do it, and business-wise this is the more important part). This means that I will actually have up the threeeeee (probably more like four or five) people working dirrrrectly under me. It also means that all the fun design stuff I'd already done on Kiera is kind of lost (but not quite, because I think I'll still try to work some with Tim on the design). Too bad Mike went over to the Wireless *cough*evil*cough* division, else he'd have done the job that's now mine. He's better at organizing stuff...

Strangely enough, somehow he's still doing a block similar enough that we're probably going to share digital design and a good bit of the architecture. I wonder if that means one of my previous ADC designs I'd been planning to reuse will end up in a Wireless part. That would be kinda hot!

Tesla (the new name for my headphone amp) is nearing completion—I just have to sit down and grind out the last of the layout. I have my Digi-Key order together, and the power transformers and tubes are already here.

...which reminds me, I'm probably building enough of them that I can give away one or two at cost. Let me know if your headphone listening needs aren't presently being satisfied and we'll see what we can do.


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Mon, 15 May 2006

business is good. business is booming

I've been doing my best impression of a shiftless layabout for the past week—they comp'ed us a week of vacation after tapeout to thank us for all the overtime we put in, so I've been catching up on life—but I did manage to do a couple interesting things.

First, embarassingly enough, Mike convinced me to start playing City of Villains (remember last summer and City of Heroes? I sure don't), but I've only played a small bit of it thus far. It does seem damn cool, and I'm intrigued by the way they've subtly changed the hero archetypes to make altogether different-feeling characters that are still very familiar in their powers. May, you gonna start playing with me now?

Second, I decided that I'm done "missing out" on that "magic vacuum tube sound," so I've designed and am now in the process of building the amplifier you see to your right. whamp (Wahby's headphone amplifier) is the best name I've come up with thus far, but please feel free to suggest others. Note that a couple years designing circuits for ICs has rendered me completely incapable of anything approaching simplicity. Also, the extent to which an op-amp with a non-inverting second gain stage is a pain in the ass to compensate is left as an exercise to the reader (and then note my solution, a pretty cute one if I do say so myself).

For those of you about to protest, "but that's mostly solid-state!" you're absolutely right, but consider that the majority of the amplification is coming from the vacuum tubes, and thus the majority of the audible distortion (which is what really creates the "magic"). Put another way: input refer all the distortion, and all but the distortion from the 12AX7s is attenuated by the gain of the input diff pair. Thus, the "sound" of the amplifier will be mostly dictated by the input pair. This claim is supported by my simulation results, which show that most of the harmonic distortion is in the even-order overtones, the characteristic distortion profile of a vacuum tube amplifier. By the way, I expect that at reasonable volumes I'll get less than .002% THD into my 250 Ohm beyerdynamic DT-880s, which may actually mean that I've designed it so well that it doesn't sound like a glass amp after all. At least it'll look cool...

Edit: updated the schematic to the latest version, which now uses a slightly different compensation scheme and some snazzier output transistors.


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Sat, 06 May 2006

taking no responsibility

Wow.


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then cigarette

Guys, go find yourself the video of the Pussycat Dolls featuring Big Snoop Dog (his newly-assumed moniker, it would appear) performing "Buttons."

Girls are also welcome to watch it, but either (1) I'm right and you won't enjoy it nearly as much as the guys, or (2) you've been keeping secrets from Papa Wahby.


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Thu, 04 May 2006

and we're off

Just got the email. The PG has been inspected and approved. Hawsome.


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next time, it's a grenade

My boss has started giving me cans of soda and warning me that next time it'll be a grenade. I wonder if I should be worried about this.

We've just about finished the arduous PG checklists, but we already know we're taping out with a code bug—one that I introduced. Shit. Fortunately, we have the ability to patch the ROM while the chip is running, so it's not a problem (literally a one-line patch), but how much does it suck to be the source of the first known bug?

This whole leakage cal fiasco really bothers me, but hey, screw it. I mean, yeah, it was my fault and all...

In my defense, what the hell were they thinking having an analog designer write the code?


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Wed, 03 May 2006

in the throes

Tapeout hasn't happened yet, despite 18-hour days since last Friday. It looks like today will be the day, assuming that we can get the ROMs generated and all the antenna diode violations fixed. Then I shall take some comp time.

Much-needed relief came today in the form of two beautiful new Dell 20 inch 1600x1200 flat panel displays the IT guys delivered to my office. LCDs may suck for gaming, but for shit like layout they are a God-send. Between these two and my laptop running dual-headed with my 2401FPW, I could theoretically have a 7040x1200 display going on my desk (using xdmx). At some point I might just have to do that for shits and giggles.


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