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SILICON SILIC CHIP www.siliconchip.com.au Publisher/Editor Nicholas Vinen Technical Editor John Clarke, B.E.(Elec.) Technical Staff Jim Rowe, B.A., B.Sc. Bao Smith, B.Sc. Tim Blythman, B.E., B.Sc. Nicolas Hannekum, Dip. Elec. Tech. Technical Contributor Duraid Madina, B.Sc, M.Sc, PhD Art Director & Production Manager Ross Tester Reader Services Ann Morris Advertising Enquiries Glyn Smith Phone (02) 9939 3295 Mobile 0431 792 293 glyn<at>siliconchip.com.au Regular Contributors Dave Thompson David Maddison B.App.Sc. (Hons 1), PhD, Grad.Dip.Entr.Innov. Geoff Graham Associate Professor Graham Parslow Ian Batty Cartoonist Brendan Akhurst Founding Editor (retired) Leo Simpson, B.Bus., FAICD Silicon Chip is published 12 times a year by Silicon Chip Publications Pty Ltd. ACN 626 922 870. ABN 20 880 526 923. All material is copyright ©. No part of this publication may be reproduced without the written consent of the publisher. Subscription rates (12 issues): $105.00 per year, post paid, in Australia. For overseas rates, see our website or email silicon<at>siliconchip.com.au Recommended & maximum price only. Editorial office: Unit 1 (up ramp), 234 Harbord Rd, Brookvale, NSW 2100. Postal address: PO Box 139, Collaroy Beach, NSW 2097. Phone (02) 9939 3295. E-mail: silicon<at>siliconchip.com.au ISSN 1030-2662 Editorial Viewpoint Older devices involved creative engineering While I am not particularly into ‘retro’ electronics like vintage radios, vintage computers etc, I find some of the articles on these topics quite interesting. You can tell that the designers of these devices had to be very clever to use the meagre resources available to them to solve some quite tricky problems. Take the four-part series of articles on Videotape Recording starting in this issue (on page 44). Younger readers (say, those under 30) probably don’t remember much about videotape. I was young when the VHS/Beta ‘war’ was raging, and by the time I was old enough to use a VCR, VHS had taken over. I remember the machines being quite finicky, and they would sometimes go wrong (in the worst case, ‘eating’ a tape) for no apparent reason. But for the most part, they worked quite well, albeit with video quality that I now consider awful. Having read the articles mentioned above, I realise now how complicated the loading systems were. With so many parts having to move in concert, in a device produced at a relatively low cost, it’s no wonder they went wrong sometimes! So my hat’s off to the engineers that designed those mechanisms; it must have been a lot of effort to get them to work reliably. Another thing that’s apparent in reading these articles is how much ‘outsidethe-box’ thinking went into developing the core technologies enabling video recording, especially helical scan. It seems kind of obvious in retrospect, but it took lots of smart people many years to develop a device which could record an hour or two of video on a reasonably compact, easy-to-use and low-cost cassette. It was an incremental, evolutionary process too, as is so common with technological advancements. There were several generations of video recording between the first useful machines (Ampex quadruplex) and the final ‘sorted’ generation of consumer machines, which I guess you could say was hifi VHS. Each generation made certain improvements, but often retaining shortcomings that would be addressed in future. It helped that the later semiconductor technology allowed more signal processing to be crammed into smaller machines. I guess my point is that you might enjoy those articles even if you’re too young to remember the technology being described, and aren’t terribly interested in the topics themselves. You might still learn something and enjoy the journey of discovery. I can make a similar comment about the article on Fetrons; they are interesting because they give you a glimpse of the transitional period when valves were being phased out in favour of transistors. Again, it took innovative engineering to make transistors operate like valves. Also, consider some of the techniques described in our Vintage Radio columns like reflexing, combined mixers/oscillators and some of the design choices in early transistor sets. Even if you aren’t really into radio, you can appreciate the amount of work that went into getting the most performance out of a few (then costly) active devices. That’s the sort of engineering that I really appreciate, and I think the people who came up with those ideas must have done a lot of brainstorming to reach those ‘Eureka!’ moments. Printing and Distribution: Nicholas Vinen 24-26 Lilian Fowler Pl, Marrickville 2204 2 Silicon Chip Australia’s electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au