And I thought I was bad...

[Jazz P Bass]

Yeah the pentagrid.

A tube designed with a goal.
Lower the tube count.

The engineering involved in that one tube must have been awesome.

[nsubulysses]

I guess he was trying to save money on parts? He sure didn't save any time though.

i came across a site recently and it made me think of this guy who desoldered all these components. I wonder if he was on a mission, since when something fails probably 95% of the components are still good ??

Manufacturing Eats a Hole in the Earth Every Day - iFixit

Microchips are in everything—computers, cars, even refrigerators. But making those tiny chips costs more than you’d think. It takes about 70 pounds of water and hundreds of chemicals—including arsenic—to make a single microchip; your cell phone contains dozens of them.

[J M Fahey]

165 pounds of raw materials to manufacture a cellphone and over eight gallons of water to produce one microchip.

Sounds like 165 pounds of cow manure and 8 gallons of cow pee to me.
Absolutely NO clue and that's the understatement of the Century.
Yes, it has the prestigious IEEE heading on top, but is signed by 2 chicks who sound like 2 secretaries or something which double as Treehugger Association secretaries or something.

I'd LOVE to see a detailed breakup of what's needed to make a "microchip" (late 60's lingo by the way).

FWIW cellphones are NOT junked because they stop working and cases can't be opened for repair (they plead to "use screws instead of adhesives") but because new ones are available: cool, yummy, killer and inexpensive.

What do they suggest to stop *that*?

Forbid anything more advanced than:


FWIW (and quoting EE Times, just not the Greenpeace Division) , in a single 300 mm silicon wafer you can have from some 70000 simple 1mm x 1mm chips (think Op Amps, simple logic, etc.) to 150 20mm x 20mm MONSTER do-it-all chips.

So 8 gallons of cow pee must be multiplied by 150 or 70000 for a single wafer?

"Somehow" I doubt so.

Won't even apply that to the 165 pounds per chip.

Sorry, "micro chip"

Let's SAVE the World Brother !!!!!


(yes, you are seeing right, Grandma also grew her own beard)

[dmartn149]

Sounds like 165 pounds of cow manure and 8 gallons of cow pee to me.
Absolutely NO clue and that's the understatement of the Century.
Yes, it has the prestigious IEEE heading on top, but is signed by 2 chicks who sound like 2 secretaries or something which double as Treehugger Association secretaries or something.

I'd LOVE to see a detailed breakup of what's needed to make a "microchip" (late 60's lingo by the way).

FWIW cellphones are NOT junked because they stop working and cases can't be opened for repair (they plead to "use screws instead of adhesives") but because new ones are available: cool, yummy, killer and inexpensive.

What do they suggest to stop *that*?

Don't forget that a modern cell phone is also your video camera, still camera, computer, stereo system, record collection, library and much more. How much material gets saved by not manufacturing those items, while at the same time giving millions of people all over the world access to information, and communication possibilities that couldn't even be dreamed of just a few decades ago.