From: null@void.com
"Jim Wilkins" writes:
> "Richard Smith" wrote in message news:m11pinekna.fsf@void.com...
>
> "Jim Wilkins" writes:
>
>> "Jim Wilkins" wrote in message news:10mnke2$2ful0$1@dont-email.me...
>>
>>>..learned it mostly by studying the data sheets for
>> new devices, which went beyond what anyone had learned in school."
>>
>> Here is an example that I studied when asked to design a controller
>> for the new small hard drives in the early 80's.
>> https://deramp.com/downloads/floppy_drives/FD1771%20Floppy%20Controller.pdf
>
> This is the manual-read which saved someone's life
> https://twindisc.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/MG-MGX-Operato
s-manual-1016313_RevL_0818_CD.pdf
> Labelled Pages 3-5 to 3-8.
>
> Not on your level of sophistication, but the "stripped" diagram was what
> conveyed what the things do and how they work.
>
> A few days later a boatperson got caught in the bight / loops of their
> own rope on a nearly 30m work-boat...
> I knew the fingers of one hand had more digits than there were seconds
> for whatever needed to be done to have been done...
>
> Having seen that diagram, I knew the answer in that moment - get along,
> hail the skipper and get the boat to power astern into the current until
> the boatperson could climb out of their own rope.
>
> Manuals can be the raw information source which provides "the penny
> drops" moment.
>
> -----------------------------------
> Shifting to neutral would still have allowed the propeller to continue
> to pull in the rope from the current flow?
>
> Understanding the electrical schematic of my car saved me from a
> lawsuit. It was a habit acquired from designing automotive electronics
> test equipment. I also quickly realized that a leaking thermostat was
> why the torque converter wouldn't lock up in cruise on my present car.
>
> I saw that the low fuel level sensor was a negative temperature
> coefficient (NTC) thermistor (variable resistor) on the fuel pump in
> series with the dash warning lamp. Immersion in fuel kept the
> thermistor cool and high resistance, when exposed it would heat up,
> the resistance drop, and the current rise enough to light the bulb,
> which then limited the current and further heating.
>
> That process had been claimed to be a trade secret of the previous
> employer of the developers of the machine I was working on, though the
> thermistor maker had published how to design it, a tricky balance of
> temperature, varying resistance and heat loss to air or liquid. Heat
> conductivity tapped into my Chemistry and Physics training, the power
> division between variable loads in series is a Calculus problem.
>
> The lawyer asked me innocent questions at first and then where I got
> the idea for my no-moving-parts liquid level detector circuit to which
> I could immediately answer "Oh, that's how my car's low fuel light
> works", which cleared me of the Intellectual Property theft
> charge. The rest of the lawsuit crippled the company and ended the
> project. I had lost the previous job the same way. The cost and
> distraction of fighting a suit is enough to ruin a small company
> putting its resources into new product development, whether they would
> win or lose.
The rope was already attached to the boats bits, and had just had the
loop of its eye-spliced end put around our barge's bollard. The line
would have gone tight as the vessel powered against that spring-line
with the rudders over 45deg to bring its stern in against our barge
despite the fast current onto its stern.
Even running-out through the fairlead the boatperson didn't have good
prospects.
There was no entanglement with the propeller.
To advantage - in general polypropylene rope floats - don't get any
lose on the water, but most of the time a mishap will be got-away-with
as the rope floats clear of the propeller(s) (?).
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)
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