Thingmaker

Welcome to Wikipedia again!

"I always liked the impossible... I found quite often impossible problems could be solved with extremely simple methods..."

How wonderful that sounds, William! Wikipedia should be proud when such remarkable personalities as you want to participate in it!

A few years ago, I followed with interest your professional comments, especially on the talk pages dedicated to TTL and ECL logic gates (e.g., in Archive_1). Unfortunately, no one paid any serious attention and do not reflect them in the Wikipedia articles...

I (Circuit dreamer) contributed closely in Wikipedia during 2006-2010 and then I managed to make a lot in its circuit section; see for example my list of contributions... and especially the articles about digital circuits.

But my efforts to find clear, simple and powerful explanations of basic circuit solutions were perceived by Wikipedians as original research. As a result, I was banned from editing and actually I abandoned Wikipedia...

Then I (Circuit-fantasist) entirely moved to Wikibooks where I created Circuit Idea - a book about great circuit ideas; see for example the story about ECL.

Best regards, Cyril (Circuit dreamer).

Thanks Circuit dreamer. I guess there are two of us banned from Wiki's logic circuit descriptions. It appears they prefer information from amateur handbooks to first hand knowledge. I just made a new comment about the DTL description. It is a disaster! I will check the sits you referenced. ThingMaker

I just looked at your Archive_1). It makes me want to go back into hiding!ThingMaker

Diode-transistor logic

Just to let you know that I moved your comment from the article itself on to the article's talk page: Noyster (talk), 22:02, 21 July 2014 (UTC)

I don't understand! As far as I know I put my comments on the Talk page. If I placed it on the article I regret the error.ThingMaker

Hi Thingmaker. Your story about the development of logic gates is just incredible... you have to publish it in some more suitable and reputable place... I just want to say a few words in defense of what is written by me in the DTL page:

"The two resistors R3 and R4 form a resistive summing circuit with weighted inputs that adds the negative bias voltage V− to the positive diode logic output voltage... As a result, the unipolar (positive) diode output voltage (about V+ for logical one and 1.0 V for logical zero) is converted into a bipolar voltage (a few volts above and below ground) to drive the output transistor"

I understand your reaction since the written is a bit unconventional explanation... but to be honest, it is still true... You are right that "R3 and R4 provide a current sum to drive the base"... but it is also true that actually they add voltages... R3 and R4 act as voltage-to-current converters that convert the diode output voltage and the negative bias voltage into currents... then these currents are summed (subtracted)... and the current sum drives the base. This summing circuit is so important that I have dedicated a separate story about it in Circuit Idea wikibook.

I understand very well the purpose of this resistive network and the additional negative supply - to drop the base voltage below the zero voltage... to make it negative... and thus to cut-off surely the transistor (especially if it was a germanium type)... You can think of this circuit also as a voltage divider with a "shifted ground". When its output voltage exceeds V_BE0 (appr. 0.7 V), it is shorted by the forward-biased base-emitter junction; when it is below this threshold, the base behaves as an open circuit. A similar but not so reliable effect can be achieved by replacing R3 with a diode or a base-emitter junction (as in TTL).

I have considered this bias technique in RTL article as well. Regards, Circuit dreamer (talk, contribs, email) 07:28, 22 July 2014 (UTC)

Please indent your replies on talk pages

See WP:INDENT. SpinningSpark 13:12, 10 August 2014 (UTC)

Should I clean out my sandbox and go home?

As I said on the Diode logic talk page I am wondering if I should just clean out my sandbox and go home. I have a great deal of experience and knowledge in electronics and some related fields that I believe Wikipedia could benefit from. I believe I qualify as an expert on discrete transistor circuit design. There are few of us left. I had a very unique and successful career with IBM ranging from transistor circuit design through fixing a difficult problem with TI’s integrated circuit design (while working for IBM) on to inventing the capacitive keyboard, defining a satellite communications system and digital signal processing including the speech processing algorithms. I trained and taught the circuit design engineers that supported the IBM Research Triangle Park Lab and even years later was considered the expert that often solved their impossible circuit problems. After my age of fourteen I learned relatively little electronics from class rooms and even less from books. On a few occasions an engineer might tell me something he learned in school then I would improve on that to make a better MODEM or speech coder. I have forty-five “formal” inventions, thirty of which resulted in patents and fifteen in patent publications. Nearly all in the field of electronics with many in electronic circuit design.

I only tell you this to establish my strange background. My knowledge was sufficient to carry me to a very successful career. I know a lot of things. I can’t tell you where I learned them because I seemed to just know them. That knowledge has been tested in the battle to succeed when competing with thousands of electrical engineers with conventional educations.

Much of the confusion with the Wikipedia transistor logic circuits is due to the fact that several of the types (RTL CML and DTL) came from the world of discrete transistor circuit design. They are misunderstood in the world of integrated circuits. Many of the published citations came from books written for hobbyists. Some come from component handbooks written to encourage the use of their products with no knowledge of a practical design. Both often present circuits that won’t work and were never used in a serious application. I know these circuit families from a practical application view point and can fix the articles. Some of these circuits can be properly cited like CML. Some were kept trade secrets because of the competitive nature of the business during the discrete design era.

I am not a research journalist. I am not skilled at searching literature for information I already know.

For the most part I hope to offer information that is recognized and accepted by those skilled in the art. It doesn’t seem like such information needs citations especially irrelevant ones to make them appear authentic.

So I ask, does Wikipedia want my help?Thingmaker (talk) 14:20, 23 August 2014 (UTC)

A miracle in Diode logic

Thingmaker, you made a real miracle in Diode logic talk page - you made electronics Wikipedians begin reasoning with their own mind... and not just blindly quote someone else's phrases... I tried to do it for five years... but I did not succeed... Circuit dreamer (talk, contribs, email) 12:30, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Thanks! I am trying!Thingmaker (talk) 14:30, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I am also trying to reason about this elegant simplicity - diode logic gates:)

About the extended diode biasing (+12V instead +6V and -6V instead 0V)... It seems it solves sooner the problems introduced by the relatively high pull-up and pull-down resistors than by the non-ideal diodes. But real diodes can cause some interesting effects. Thus, if we cascade a few diode ANDs, the logical 1 voltage will continuously increase above the nominal +6V voltage (+6.7V -> +7.4V -> 8.1V... for Si diodes); if we cascade a few diode ORs, the logical 0 voltage will continuously decrease below the nominal 0V (-0.7V -> -1.4V -> -2.1V...) It seems we should (if possible) alternate AND and OR gates...

Current steering... In your extended bias configurations, at least one diode is open - in AND gate, this is the diode controlled by the lowest input voltage; in OR gate - the diode controlled by the higher input voltage. So, the AND circuit always "pushes" a current into while the OR circuit always "sucks" a current from some (or all) input(s)... Even when all the input voltages are high (in AND) or low (in OR) the current has to pass from somewhere... and if there is at least small difference between the input voltages, it steers between the input sources... Circuit dreamer (talk, contribs, email) 14:59, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Don't think of a diode as a switch. It is just a nonlinear resistance that conducts current in the forward direction with very low voltage drop and in the reverse allows very little current at any voltage (ignoring breakdown). The diode with the most positive input for the OR or most negative for the AND simply pulls the output with it. The current changes or switches, if you prefer, from one diode to another but the diode does not act as a switch. As far at the accumulated diode drops for several stages I have never seen more than two stages, AND and OR or OR and AND used at one time with simple diode logic because the signal gets too degraded. Also without special design the AND can not drive the OR or vice versa because they don't have enough output current drive. The +12 and -6 volts help this.Thingmaker (talk) 20:02, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

Thingmaker,

What do you have against this to think of the diode as of a switch? "Diode" is a general, neutral, meaningless name of this 2-terminal element while the generic name "switch" shows its function in this application - to commutate the current. We can use a diode as a switch (if we neglect V_F)... or as a voltage stabilizer (if we pay attention to V_F)... or as a log/antilog converter (if we consider the exponential shape of its IV curve)... or as something else... IMO here the diode acts exactly as a switch, not as a voltage stabilizer or a non-linear element...

There is an interesting contradiction here. If an AND gate drives an OR gate, the pull-down resistor should have many times higher resistance than the pull-up resistor not to decrease the logical "1" voltage and v.v., if an OR gate drives an AND gate, the pull-down resistor should have many times lower resistance than the pull-up resistor not to increase the logical "0" voltage. Regards, Circuit dreamer (talk, contribs, email) 20:55, 24 August 2014 (UTC)

I agree that diode is not a great name for most rectifiers. Even resistors are diodes. I believe diode is a leftover from the vacuum tube diode which had more than two terminals but only had two active elements in the tube. That said the PN diode is called a diode.

The PN diode is not a switch. Switches have some active quality usually with an outside control. Toggle switches are activated by a mechanical force such as the finger. Some switches are activated by a magnetic force like relays. Bi-polar and field effect transistors are actually linear amplifiers that exhibit switch like characteristics when overdriven. These are controlled by a third terminal providing a current or voltage to cause them to switch. It is reasonable to call a tunnel diode or neon bulb a switch even though they have only two terminals because they have a negative resistance that makes them an active device with gain that causes them to jump from one state to another.

If the PN diode is a switch then a resistor must be a switch. The resistor has a current voltage function defined by Ohm’s law. The diode function is defined by the diode law. The current voltage function of a resistor is a straight line on a liner scale. The diode is a straight line on a log scale. Neither have any discontinuities or sudden changes in their behavior. Contrary to the illusion, PN diodes do not have a knee. The apparent knee is simply the plot of an exponential curve on a linear plot. It moves with the scale of the current axis. Just like the resistor the PN diode is a passive device that simply conducts current as defined by a simple equation.

The log/antilog converter is a great reason why it is not good to think of the diode as a switch. How can a switch create a log function? I used two diodes to generate the sinusoidal output for most of the MODEMS I designed. This eliminated expensive bulky filters that would distort the signal. A switch could have never done that! I like diodes. If they were switches I wouldn't care much for them and my favorite patent would not work.

I know some instructors may call the diode a switch for simplification. It is not much more difficult to understand the diode as it really is and that, I believe makes its applications more readily understantable. When I first started teaching transistor electronics (design) I had some students that had just finished a basic electronics course taught by an engineer in Advanced Technology. He had taught them that the transistor collector output was a variable resistor. The engineer told me it didn’t matter. It was just basic electronics. I believe it is usually easier to learn it right the first time than have to un-learn it then re-learn it.

I am not trying to lecture you! I am fascinated with the work you appear to be doing with young people. I am impressed with your effort to teach them to think. Universities spend too much time learning facts and not enough time learning to think. Throughout my career I found I had an advantage because I had my self-education that taught me far less than everything I would need to do but taught me how to think of how to do all the things I would want to do. What others didn’t know how to do was impossible for them. I didn’t know how to do anything so I didn’t know what was impossible. I enjoyed all the fun projects that others avoided just because they didn’t know how to do themThingmaker (talk) 16:08, 25 August 2014 (UTC).

Thingmaker, you are a remarkable man as I have never seen. Perhaps the unique in you is due to the complex and unusual road of life, which you walked as a circuit designer. I see that you know the circuitry in depth and you have an amazing intuition and sense. The only problem is whether Wikipedia will be able to take advantage of your talent and professional expertise...

Your thoughts on whether the diode is a switch are extremely interesting for me. I have thought a lot on this issue and I keep thinking... and continue seeking an answer...

Really, standard switches that you are talking about, are 4-terminal (2-port) devices with separate input and output parts while diodes are quite odd 2-terminal switch where the input and output parts are the same. Similarly, conventional amplifying elements (tubes, transistors, etc.) are 2-port devices while elements with negative resistance are 1-port devices.

Reference point

You can think of the diode as of a "circuit" consisting of two elements - a standard 2-port switch controllable with voltage, and an op-amp whose inputs are connected to the output switch terminals (port) and the output - to the input switch terminals (port). If there is even a small voltage difference between the terminals of the switch, the amplifier will close the switch. The only paradox here is that this configuration will not work if the switch is ideal (with zero resistance between the output terminals)...

IMO the hysteresis is desirable but not mandatory for the operation of a switch. Conventional logic circuits (DTL, TTL, ECL...) are switching devices without hysteresis.

As a conclusion, the diode is an imperfect switch... but it is still a switch... and the higher the voltage across the load, the better this switch is... A good illustration of diodes acting as switches are all sorts of rectifiers, e.g., a diode bridge (Graetz) circuit...

About the nature of the transistor... I also think that it is a variable (controllable) resistor. It can not be anything else than a variable resistor that dissipates energy. We should only specify that, looking from the output, this resistor is a non-linear constant-current resistor. So, the transistor's collector-emitter "resistance" depends both on the input voltage (current) and the output voltage (current). I don't know why... but this is the situation...

Yes Thingmaker, you are right about the role of the self-education - it has some flaws, but it has also something very positive - the freedom to do something favorite... Regards, Cyril (Circuit dreamer (talk, contribs, email) 21:29, 25 August 2014 (UTC))

That's an interesting device you invented but why no just use a PN diode? It is so much simpler and it can provide log functions and generate sine waves and provide special biasing for tunnel diodes and a whole lot more. As for your transistor with a variable output resistance how do you make a current source? The collector of a common emitter transistor looks like a current source with a very high shunt resistance returning to a very high voltage. The collector current is Bata times the base current and alpha times the emitter current. What could be more beautiful? I have a patent that makes an electronically variable resistance using a transistor but it is a little more complicated than just a transistor. The resistance is formed with a physical resistor reduced and changed in value by a change in amplifier gain. I guess if the transistor is a variable resistor I didn't need my invention. I wish you would try to consider the diode as just the Shockley diode equation and a transistor as the beautiful thing that it is. I would have hated being a circuit designer with your models. How can you make a differe4ntial amplifier with high common mode rejection with a transistor that is a variable resistance? Life is so much simpler when you don't oversimplify it.Thingmaker (talk) 00:13, 26 August 2014 (UTC)

The "op-amp diode" above is not my invention. I saw it in the early 80's, when I was making my diploma thesis, in a Bruel&Ker vibrometer circuit diagram... and it was very surprising to me... Really, a "PN diode is so much simpler and it can provide log functions and generate sine waves and provide special biasing for tunnel diodes and a whole lot more"... but here we use it only as a switch... a 2-terminal "self-controlled" switch... as I have shown in the fist (most left) picture in this draft.

About the transistor... I understand your considerations very well. But saying "think of the transistor as of a variable resistor", I want to explain to the reader (an electrician, student, hobbyist...) how the transistor controls its collector current by varying its instant (static, chordal) collector-emitter resistance R_T. Look at a laboratory exercise with my students in 2008 where we "invented" a simple BJT current source (the output part of a current mirror). The first picture is more conventional; it shows only THAT the current stays relatively constant when R_L (Rc) varies. The second picture shows something more... and it is very important for understanding - WHY and HOW the collector current stays constant (R_L + R_T = const -> VCC/(R_L + R_T) = Ic = const)... I have shown it in the last page of another draft about the simple transistor current source... IMO the pictures need no translation... Circuit dreamer (talk, contribs, email) 21:26, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Show me the solid state physics that explains all this. As I said I had students that had learned no electronics till they took the basic course caliming the transistor collector emitter was a variable resistor. With that little education and miss learning I easily taught them how a real transistor works and they thanked me for making it so simple. PN diodes are not switches and transistors are not variable resistors. They are simple devices explained by solid state physics and simple equivalent circuits such as the "T" transistor equivalent circuit. Even the "H" equivalent circuit that is more remote from the actual physics shows it as a current source with a very high shunt resistance. That is the only resistance connecting to the collector. That resistor varies inversely with the current but is too large to be your variable resistance. It isn't difficult to teach the correct science even in basic electronics where the student knows very little going in.Thingmaker (talk) 22:27, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

If your objective is to encourage thought by propose strange ways to think about how things might work and that is understood by the student then I might accept these ideas. It should be made clear that this is not how they actually work but is just a mind game.Thingmaker (talk) 22:49, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Well, though the discussion was helpful for us... I just have not understood the meaning of this "Reference point" inserted inside my comment... Circuit dreamer (talk, contribs, email) 06:18, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

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About your amazing tunnel diode story

This funny picture reveals the basic idea behind a tunnel diode amplifier (for simplicity, biasing circuits are omitted and the input voltage source is floating). The operation is illustrated graphically inside the circuit diagram by superimposing the two almost parallel IV curves. When the input voltage wiggles slightly, the intersection (operating) point moves vigorously.

Thingmaker,

I would like to thank you about the impressing story about the Esaki diode... and in gratitude I give away this funny picture to you. Circuit dreamer (talk, contribs, email) 22:02, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

Now that might work if it doesn't break into high frequency oscillation.Thingmaker (talk) 22:44, 27 August 2014 (UTC)

This is a conceptual picture that shows only the fundamental idea. Here are my explanations about the circuit operation that probably you have not ever seen; there are based on the same assumption that the tunnel diode is a (self)variable resistor. The mechanism of this "over-dynamic resistance" is revealed graphically here... and the mechanism of the "jump" in the case of a bistable mode is shown here.

Circuit dreamer (talk, contribs, email) 11:27, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

I have understood vacuum tubes including the vacuum tube diode as well as the selenium diode for 66 years. I have understood the solid state physics of the pn junction and how it gives us the pn diode and transistors for 56 years. I have never heard of them having switches to provide their voltage current characteristics or transistors with variable resistors to achieve their collectors output properties. None of these switches or variable resistors could possible work without thousands of switches and an amazing combination of analog computer functions. All of that could not fit in a simple pn diode junction. I can't imagine why anyone would want to explain them this way.Thingmaker (talk) 22:42, 28 August 2014 (UTC)