About this site:
The AND-OR basis of a PLD.Welcome. I operate as PLD Designs here on
Vancouver Island 
,
BC, Canada. I became a big fan of the electronic devices known as
PLDs long ago when the
Signetics FPLA
solved some circuit design problems for me at Spar Aerospace. My
definition of a PLD 
is more inclusive than that of others.
As a side-line, however, I have been broadening my horizons and adopting a whole bunch of Web techniques, technologies and standards. This is not as abberant as it may seem: programming is what it is all about, whether soft, firm or hard! (On the other hand, though I am an Engineer, I do not consider myself a Software Engineer.) I produce technically compliant, validated, easy to navigate (and accessible) web pages with an emphasis on electronics design tools. Automatic (updating of contents according to when the site is accessed or to external factors) techniques are frequently employed.
The site's topic areas:
Electronics, with a diminishing emphasis on PLDs.
- The new ChronulatorSMD, based on ShareBrained's
clock;
- A collection of thoughts on some aspects of Open
Hardware;
- Coverage of my WWVB clock, or how does one write
2000 lines of assembler code in his spare time?;
- A basic introduction to PLD design software, from PALASM to
Verilog;
- A brief history of PLDs;
- My “colour clock” (as published in Circuit Cellar
issue #159), and pointers to some other unusual time-keepers;
- A summary of my most recent Circuit Cellar article on control shaft
encoders.
- A utility which generates closest-fit exponential steps. Originally used in PWM intensity
control of LED lighting, it is interesting how many other places the technique can be used. Click
“PWM step code generator” here or under Electronics
Calculators in the menu.
- A utility which performs basic PCB track resistance and voltage drop
calculations based on the track's dimensions. Click “PCB track
calcs,” here, or in menu under Electronics Calculators.
- Some notes on some very easy repairs of an otherwise pretty good consumer
battery charger, the neXXtech model #2300451.
Web technologies.
- A very smart triangle solver! (My first AJAX
application.)
- An Electronics Component Data Base, as described in
Circuit Cellar issue #205.
- A neat way of doing “Outlining” on the
web.
Some notes regarding conventions used in this site:
This styling is used for any word or acronym that has a “title” attribute (usually shown as a tool-tip popup by browsers). Just hold your mouse over the area long enough to see the meaning.
The following little images are used to indicate what will happen, in a general sense, when a link is clicked on.
opens a page on the site but does so
in a new window.- opens an external page in a
new window.
causes a popup to, well, pop up.
(JavaScript required.)
causes an image to be
loaded in the page's
illumination pane.
Only a few pages use this technique. (JavaScript required.)
Site Map, Contact information:
A generated-on-the-fly site map can be found here...
To contact us, follow this link to our smart contact form....