Fullscreen HTML5Med Res (??MB)HTML4

PUBLISHER'S LETTER Publisher & Editor-in-Chief Leo Simpson, B.Bus., FAICD Production Manager Greg Swain, B.Sc.(Hons.) Technical Staff John Clarke, B.E.(Elec.) Robert Flynn Rick Walters Reader Services Ann Jenkinson Advertising Manager Brendon Sheridan Phone (03) 9720 9198 Mobile 0416 009 217 Regular Contributors Brendan Akhurst Garry Cratt, VK2YBX Julian Edgar, Dip.T.(Sec.), B.Ed John Hill Mike Sheriff, B.Sc, VK2YFK Ross Tester Philip Watson, MIREE, VK2ZPW Bob Young SILICON CHIP is published 12 times a year by Silicon Chip Publications Pty Ltd. A.C.N. 003 205 490. All material copyright ©. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Printing: Macquarie Print, Dubbo, NSW. Distribution: Network Distribution Company. Subscription rates: $59 per year in Australia. For overseas rates, see the subscription page in this issue. Editorial & advertising offices: Unit 34, 1-3 Jubilee Avenue, Warrie­ wood, NSW 2102. Postal address: PO Box 139, Collaroy Beach, NSW 2097. Phone (02) 9979 5644. Fax (02) 9979 6503. ISSN 1030-2662 and maximum * Recommended price only. 2  Silicon Chip Getting on top of the correspondence mountain As I write this editorial, it is Aus­ tralia Day. I have spent most of the day answering letters to readers. It’s been good really, because I have had the whole day to do it without interruption from the telephone or other workday distractions. It’s been good too because it drives home to me just how enthu­ siastic readers are about SILICON CHIP and electronics in gener­al. It’s good to be appreciated. But today I have had to finally admit that I and we at the magazine have a big problem with correspondence from readers. Quite a few letters have gone unanswered in the last year and there is little prospect that I can answer some of those older letters. I apologise here and now to those readers but perhaps I can explain why it has happened. Everyday there is a batch of letters from readers and many of them can be answered quite readily, although not necessarily on the same day. As you can imagine, there are times during the magazine’s production cycle when there simply isn’t any time at all to answer letters; the magazine must take precedence other­wise we will miss deadlines and the magazine will go on sale late. Generally though, most letters are answered within a week or so of their arrival in the office. Some miss out though and I would like to explain how this comes about. Some letters get passed over merely because they are too long to read at the time. They can easily be three or four (or many more) pages of closely written script and they can be loaded with questions. You see some of these letters featured in the “Ask Silicon Chip” pages and it is not unusual for a reader to ask six or more questions, often on unrelated topics. Such let­ters take a great deal of time to read and then formulate the answers. One letter can easily take an hour. I or someone else might be able to answer four out of five questions easily but the fifth might take half an hour or more and that is after doing a considerable amount of looking at older issues, data books and so on. Even an apparently simple request can take an inordinate amount of time. For example, one the letters I’ve answered today concerned the 2A SLA Bat­ tery Charger published in the July 1996 issue. The reader wanted to know how to alter it to drive a laptop computer and how to reduce its output to 12V. By the time I had read the letter several times to make sure I understood the problem, then referred back to the original article, worked out the circuit changes and wrote the letter, it had taken me 20 minutes. And that was for a straightforward letter. Some of them are really curly. Quite often we also get letters where people ask about designs featured in other magazines, some of which are no longer published. In some cases we can answer but in others we just can’t. Nor can we provide design information on topics which have not been published in the magazine. We are always happy to re­ceive suggestions but some we cannot respond to. If this sounds like a great long moan, it is not meant to be. We love to see those letters come in, even though we may shudder at the time it might take to answer them. So perhaps readers can help make sure their letters will be answered. First, keep the letters brief, to no more than one page, if possible. Second, please don’t ask too many questions or for lots of de­tail. Remember contiued on page 45 good and that multinational is even better. If you consider that EMC regu­ lations are a burden, wait for GST which is being openly pushed by big business. Whilst superfi­ cially GST is probably a more equitable system, the cost benefits to big business will be enormous yet small business will encount­er an administrative and cost burden nightmare or have I simply become paranoid? I. Purdie, Pendle Hill South, NSW. Upgrade article was timely I’ve just had to change a mother­ board so Ross Tester’s article entitled “A Heart Transplant For An Aging Computer” in the December issue was timely. Now the reason for the change was that the CMOS battery in the real-time clock (RTC) chip (“Odin” OEC­12C887) failed and the chip is no longer obtainable except at some ridiculous price. There was no sep­ arate battery in the system and no provision to add one externally. It struck me that in the photo of the ASUS board on page 5 of that issue, here was an identical-looking RTC chip down on the bottom edge, also without any sign of a separate battery. I don’t know if this particular board has a socket for one but it exposes a trap for new players. Anyone buying a new or secondhand comput­er or buying a new motherboard should make sure either that there is a CMOS battery external to the RTC chip or there is a socket on the motherboard to take one or, like me, they could end up with an orphan when the battery gives up the ghost. Now I have read somewhere that these batteries are supposed to last 10 years. Well, mine lasted 14 months (just outside the warranty). I also have another older machine with a similar type of plug-in RTCplus-battery chip, only this one is the “Dallas” chip. I’m told that these are somewhat more readily available but in any case are not interchangeable with the Odin. It could be argued that by the time the battery fails it’s time to upgrade the computer or its motherboard but that seems to be a pretty drastic solu­ tion for what is normally a $6 problem and we shouldn’t have to accept it. The second bit of advice, which may seem pretty irrelevant at the time you are all fired up to buy a new computer, is to get memory chip-sets of a size such that whatever your total RAM size is to be, you don’t fill the four available banks. Ross explained it but it needs emphasising. If you fill the available space with the smaller RAM “sticks” at the start it will be slightly cheaper at the time, but when you eventually decide to increase the RAM you will have to throw all those old chips away. Sure, you could try to find a buyer for them, but that will not be easy because by then every­body else will be having the same problem. If you don’t specify the bigger chips when you buy the computer, you may be given the smaller sticks (4Mb or 8Mb) or the smallest size that will fill the four banks. That is because they are the cheapest option for the dealer to supply. He’s unlikely to explain it to you because it’s money in the bank for him further down the track. The trouble is, you will be paying twice over at some further time when you upgrade. A final bit of advice is to ensure that you get a board whose BIOS handles the transition to the year 2000 – and fully. It’s easy to forget these things in the heat of the moment. Both the BIOS and the software must be “compliant” but at least if the BIOS is correct it’s something. P. Dawes, Orange, NSW. Publisher’s Letter – continued from page 2 that we will need to refer back to the article concerned and this can take a lot of time. You may be very famil­iar with the article, having just read it, but if it’s more than a couple months old we will need to take time to refresh our memories and then formulate the answers. Second, please type the letter or use a word processor, if at all possible. We do have trouble with handwritten letters – often, we cannot even decipher people’s names. Finally, please be patient. Remember that even though we may have received it within an instant of you pressing the button to send it to our fax machine, it could take a day or two before we can even read it. In fact, this desire for instant replies is one reason why we have not yet published our email address or set up a Web page – we know it will increase correspondence and we know that readers will be frustrated because they have not re­ceived an instant response. So there you are. I have come clean. I do apologise for not answering some readers during 1997 but eventually reality dawns. If you can help us by being brief and to the point, we will have a much better chance of replying to your queries. Finally, I must make comments about two articles in this month’s issue. The first is the one on floodlighting of build­ings. Now while the article is presented in a straightforward technical fashion, it is a subject that arouses strong feelings in many people and I’m one of them. Simply put, a great deal of floodlighting is extravagant, wasteful and unnecessary. While there are good reasons for lighting up some buildings for some of the time, most of the time it is just a serious waste of energy. If Australia is to make any progress at all on greenhouse gas emissions, this is one issue that should be addressed. Second, I know that many readers enjoy the regular articles by John Hill on Vintage Radio. After exactly 10 years of unbroken contributions, John has decided to retire. We thank John for his great contribution over the years and wish him many years of happy retirement. For those of you who really look forward to reading Vintage Radio in every issue, I am glad to announce that Rodney Champness will take over the Vintage Radio column, starting next month. Leo Simpson March 1998  45