[ARC5] Meter. Feet, Pounde etc.,,

[mstangelo at comcast.net]

I also did some work in the late 70 on analog IC design. One of the challenges was replacing all those big capacitors, resistors and inductors with silicon hence the need for additional transistors. I do agree the simple vacumn tube solutions were elegant but so were those early IC designs.

We'll soon be lementing on how  analog has been replaced by digital signal processing!

Mike N2MS

----- Original Message -----
From: Dennis Monticelli <dennis.monticelli at gmail.com>
To: Bob Macklin <macklinbob at msn.com>, Discussion of AN/ARC-5 military radio equipment. <arc5 at mailman.qth.net>
Sent: Fri, 01 Oct 2010 13:37:51 -0000 (UTC)
Subject: Re: [ARC5] Meter. Feet, Pounde etc.,,

When I first started working in analog IC design, we used to have a rule of
thumb.  A discrete solid state circuit rendered in IC form would end up
using 7 times the number of transistors to do the same job.  While we didn't
have a rule for tube-to-discrete transistor conversions, let's just say for
sake of arguement that was roughly two times.  Do the math and then mulitply
one final time for the extra bells and whistles that invevitably get added
and it's not hard to fathom how the same basic transceive function
implemented with vacuum tubes ended up consuming so many transistors and
IC's.  Another factor is the heater burden of vacuum tubes, which greatly
encouraged set designers of old to "get clever" and do elegantly simple
designs.

BTW, converting an old CB to 10 or 12M is fun.  Maybe not practical anymore,
but still fun good buddy.

Dennis AE6C

On Sat, Sep 25, 2010 at 7:20 AM, Bob Macklin wrote:

> The last few say I have been looking into converting a CB transceiver to a
> 10M transceiver. It sure takes a lot of transistors and ICs to do what we
> used to do with less than 10 tubes.
>
> Bob Macklin
> K5MYJ
> Seattle, Wa.