The SC/MP is finally alive!

[Antonio Carlini]

Tony Duell wrote:
> I used to do a lot of building.. Alas it's technically illegal
> now in the UK. The idiot government decided that the EU EMC
> directives should apply to 1-offs, prototypes, and
> experimental designs. 

I expect that is an overly strict interpretation of the law.
Cretainly you cannot go around causing interference, but protos
just get built at work (or at least parts of them do) and we
have no on-site screened facilities either. I seriously doubt
that we are unique.

>                            Oh well... Fortunately this law
> doesn't seem to be enforced unless you deliberatley make a
> radio transmitter and use it to interfere with something. 

I think you have misinterpreted the law. The number of 
electronic-project-building magazines on the newsagents'
shelves has dropped somewhat, but they are still there and
if they were blatantly encouraging illegal activity I would
expect them to have had a much harder time of it. Some of
them are still doing mains-powered projects. (I was going
to add "SHOCK, horror" here, but I thought better of it).

> More serious is the fact that getting the necessary chips are
> getting very hard to get now. More modern 'replacements' seem
> to come either in difficult-to-handle BGA packages (SMD is not
> a worry for me) or need expensive programmings tools.
> Fortunately my junk box is still well stocked bujt that won't
> last for ever. 

I have a reasonable stock of resistors, capacitors, diodes
and common transistors. But on those occasions when I have
gone looking, I don't recall experiencing much difficulty.
I supposed I ought to try picking up a late 80s edition of
PE or ETI and seeing how many semiconductors are still
available via net these days.

Now if you want replacement VAX chips or maybe HD6120s, then
I would expect some initial difficulties ...

Antonio

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Antonio Carlini arcarlini at iee.org