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20 Jan, 15 tweets, 4 min read

ever have a hard time finding NE558 quad timer chips? i have a solution for you!

it's a tiny circuit board with four NE555 timer chips mounted on it along with 16 tiny pins so that it can be plugged into a DIP socket.

here it is in one of my Snark Barker sound cards.

works great!

here's how to assemble the boards...

make a little jig with 16 holes in it. it needs to be thicker than the length of the pins. i used one of the boards as a drilling template.

place the pins with tweezers

press them in using a vise. you can do this one row at a time and it takes a bit less force.

then you can solder in the chips. i start with a little solder on the corner pads so i can position the chips on the board.

don't forget to flip them over and do the reverse side.

there are minor differences with a real 558D: mainly that the outputs are push pull and not open drain like the 558. for most purposes this doesn't matter.

if you want to make some of your own, here's the link to the Osh Park project: oshpark.com/shared_project…

oh almost forgot: you'll want the part number for the pins. it is 0118 999 881 999 119 725 3

i'm kidding. the real one: Mill-Max 0542-0-00-15-00-00-03-0. you can get it from Mouser: 575-0542000150000.

(this was supposed to be released in December but the PC boards got lost in the mail.)

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22 Jan

why are chips often so expensive? how do chip companies determine the prices of their chips? a thread... 🧵

first thing chip companies do is to figure out the COGS - cost of goods sold. this is how much it costs them to produce a chip--not counting profit or anything else.

but before we can calculate that, we need to know The Life of a Chip, start to finish!

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do you watch YouTube? i have a suggestion for you... 🧵

don't give in to the tyranny of The Algorithm, and don't let it choose which videos you watch.

here's a few things you can do:
✅no autoplay
✅run adblock/script block (ad networks often run malicious javascript!)
✅subscribe to YouTubers whose content you enjoy
✅click Subscriptions, and only watch that. no home page, no trending, no "up next"
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21 Jan

oh wow i hear there's a new development board from a hobby electronics company, and apparently they did their own custom chip! it even has multiple CPU cores!

can't remember what it's called but the name starts with a "p"

anyway it's cool because this has never been done before, it's totally new!

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21 Jan

let's find out how this LED bulb works.

there's a tiny round circuit board underneath the sealed part of it! but i want to get to the LEDs.

OK, wow, that bulb made a loud pop when i cracked it open with the help of concrete and a screwdriver.

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20 Jan

here's an unusual vacuum tube! it almost looks like the truncated neck of a CRT, but there are some important differences... 🧵

for one thing, it's a bit larger, and the "electron gun" seems to be quite heavy duty. there's also a metal cylinder right in front of it. what's going on?