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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. Advertising Enquiries (02) 9939 3295 adverts<at>siliconchip.com.au Regular Contributors Allan Linton-Smith Dave Thompson David Maddison – B.App.Sc. (Hons 1), PhD, Grad.Dip.Entr.Innov. Geoff Graham Associate Professor Graham Parslow Dr Hugo Holden – B.H.B, MB.ChB., FRANZCO Ian Batty – M.Ed. Phil Prosser – B.Sc., B.E.(Elec.) Cartoonist Louis Decrevel loueee.com 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 (Australia only) 6 issues (6 months): $70 12 issues (1 year): $127.50 24 issues (2 years): $240 Online subscription (Worldwide) 6 issues (6 months): $52.50 12 issues (1 year): $100 24 issues (2 years): $190 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 194, Matraville, NSW 2036. Phone: (02) 9939 3295. ISSN: 1030-2662 Printing and Distribution: Editorial Viewpoint Asking questions We get quite a few questions from readers and do our best to provide helpful responses. However, some questions are difficult to answer due to the way they are formed. There are ways to ask questions that are more likely to get you the answer you need, so here is some advice on how to do so effectively. • Keep in mind that these are just guidelines designed to make it more likely that you get the right answer to your question the first time. We’ll still try to answer enquiries regardless, but if you can help us by keeping these in mind, please do! • If asking a question about a specific project or article, quote the year and month of publication. It’s common that we have published several articles or projects on the same topic and with similar names. Specifying the year, month, and article name is the best way to identify a particular article unambiguously. • If you are having a problem, explain what the problem is. For example, if you say, “I built your widget in the January 2020 issue, but it doesn’t work”, that doesn’t leave us much to go on. Does it power up? Are any lights on? Is it doing anything at all? What is it doing, and how does that differ from your expectations? Have you tried any testing or troubleshooting steps in the article? • Try to keep questions short and to the point. We don’t need a lot of background information. Condensing the question into its essentials makes it easy for us to focus on what we need to answer. • If possible, send questions by email. Primarily, that’s because we can easily forward the email to the person who can best answer the question. That is not so easily done with phone calls (not everybody works in the same office) or letters. We may need to do some research, making it hard to give an immediate answer in the case of a phone call. • Try to avoid asking too many questions in one go. When we get several questions at once, different people may need to answer the various questions, complicating the process. It’s also easy to miss some questions (or their significance) when there are several. Ideally, ask the most important question(s) first, then follow up with more when you get a response to the first one. • Remember that you may not get an answer straight away, but you probably will get one within a few days. Sometimes, that’s because we need to do some research or have discussions before we can provide a definitive answer. In other cases, it’s because we’re busy (eg, trying to finalise a magazine). If we can answer your question quickly, generally, we will. Otherwise, we appreciate your patience. • If your question is about a project, have you checked if there are any notes or errata for it? You can download yearly PDFs of all our published notes and errata from our website at siliconchip.au/Articles/Errata (they’re arranged by the original article’s publication date, not the notes/errata). I hope this advice proves useful to our readers. Renesas acquiring Altium Japan’s Renesas Electronics Corporation, makers of many electronic products, including microcontrollers, announced the purchase of Altium this February for around $9 billion. Part of the rationale for the purchase was that they wanted to integrate ECAD software more tightly with their existing product portfolio, which makes a certain amount of sense. It is unclear how this will impact existing Altium users (if at all). Perhaps this will become evident following their Sydney ‘roadshow’ event at Olympic Park on April 4th (see the announcement in their ad on page 7). by Nicholas Vinen 24-26 Lilian Fowler Pl, Marrickville 2204 2 Silicon Chip Australia's electronics magazine siliconchip.com.au