Hacker News Reader

Comment by blueflow | Hacker News Reader

Most electronics are pretty useless without documentation/datasheets.

Some components might be self-explanatory from their inscriptions, like capacitors or resistors, but with undocumented semiconductors its instant game-over. Worst case are ASICs in epoxy resin...

View on HN

I haven’t been to this flea in about 5 years, but this is a flea run by a ham club, not like some mysterious unlabeled chips in a shenzhen alley. Plenty of old (10 years) computers, some very old (40 years) computers, radios (vintage AM receivers), radios (amateur radio), loose tubes of common varieties, test equipment, military surplus, misc cheap junk (bad bicycle lights), guitar amps, and a few electronics components (most commonly higher power LEDs on boards IIRC)

These types of meetings are more targeted towards electronics whose primary functions aren't governed by software- think like an oscilloscope that runs directly off of a series of chips instead of modern ones composed of an fully virtual stack on top of an operating system. So long as said components fall within reasonable specs (analog is typically much more forgiving than digital) and chips replaced with facsimiles these units can have a second life.

This problem is not specific to software-related items. You can't really use an transistor if you don't know its polarity, pin out, amplification curves and current limits...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com