[COLUG] Offtopic: Hardware Hacker List?

[jep200404]

Josh wrote:

> Does anyone know of a hardware hacker list? 

I don't. 

Here are a couple of good magazines: 

   Circuit Cellar http://circuitcellar.com/
   Nuts & Volts http://www.nutsvolts.com/

N&V has some forum for asking questions like yours. 

> I need a circuit 
> that will deliver exactly 16 pulses, each pulse being less than ten 
> nanoseconds wide.  I know how to design such a beast using discrete 
> components (i.e. 555 timer, decade counter, handful of gates) but it's 
> probably not efficient and I don't know if I can get chips with tight 
> enough timing to do this right.

10 ns pulses are rather quick. 

My first thought is that 10 ns is aggressive for a 555 timer. 
Take a look at Figures 2 and 6 of 
http://www.fairchildsemi.com/ds/NE/NE555.pdf

Ugly things happen to 10 ns pulses. 
Inductance increases with frequency 
and dominates impedance at high frequencies. 

Despite Dallas' cute "OneWire" misleading sales jive, electricity 
likes to go in loops. Loops have inductance. So regardless of which 
components you choose, how the components are arranged and 
connected will significantly affect performance. If I was 
too cheap for a proper four-layer board, I'd probably use 
dead-bug construction on a ground plane, using wire wrap wires 
glued to the plane for interconnections. Twisted pairs 
are nifty. 

You could consider using something less weird than the 
Dallas "OneWire" stuff. You could use really boring stuff 
like an LM75, and have fun bit-banging I2C. You might 
salvage one from a dead motherboard. Or use an LM35 and 
an analog input port. You could use a microcontroller with 
an internal temperature sensor. Silicon Labs makes MCUs 
with internal temperature sensors and many interfaces. 

   http://www.silabs.com/tgwWebApp/appmanager/tgw/tgwHome?_nfpb=true&_pageLabel=interactiveGuide
   http://www.silabs.com/tgwWebApp/public/web_content/products/Microcontrollers/USB/en/USBMCU_matrix.htm

Other stuff to search the web for: 

   Bob Pease anyhow
   dead bug construction

   http://electronicdesign.com/Authors/AuthorID/904/904.html
   Bob Pease, Troubleshooting Analog Circuits, Butterworth-Heinemann, 1991
   Horowitz and Hill, The Art of Electronics, Cambridge University Press, 1989
   http://www.instructables.com/
   http://electronicdesign.com/Articles/ArticleID/15245/15245.html
   http://www.national.com/rap/Story/0,1562,11,00.html
   Driving High-Power LEDs Without Getting Burned - Part 1
      http://www.national.com/rap/
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source_hardware
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_design

One thing leads to another and one
forgets what the original question was.