Would re producing a discontinued parallax kit be in bad taste?
rwgast_logicdesign
Posts: 1,464
So ive been looking into making some kits and selling them for quite a while, the reason I havent is becuase I want to be confident that my designs are the best they can be.
Anyways i recently have been using a basic stamp to learn alot of stuff, parallax just has so much material about the bs2 compared to the propeller. All these stamps in class books are great for people new to micro's using th bs2 gives you a clear way to learn about how to control hardware. Everyone knows basic! So you really can focus more on what signals your sending reciving from the chip than learning spin or pasm, not saying spin is hard but its nice to learn a new concept like hardware using a concept most people are familiar with like BASIC.
Anyways one of the kits parallax made is called Elements of Digital Logic which comes with a book/pdf, logic trainer board, and a logic simulator, the software and pdf are obviously available for download, but the product is discontinued so you cant buy the boards anymore. I decided I would just order the chips and throw them on a protoboard. When I looked at the original board by parallax thoug I realized alot of what made the board educational was the layout combined with the silkscreen pictures.
This board is very simple not a complicated layout at all. I was thinking that i maybe it would be nice to strip the stuff off the pcb for the bs2 module and just throw a 15 pin header on there to make it compatible with a bs2 HW board or even a prop or arduino (although the reader would have to translate the basic code to spin/wiring) This would make it smaller and less exspensive than the original. Then I would lay out the rest of the board the same as parallax with the all the gates on the silk screen.
Basically I just want to run through this text and need a board, but if im gonna make a real pcb might as well make 10 or whatever and sell the rest to anyone else looking for this kit. My question is this isnt in bad taste is it? I would assume since all the schematics and texts aqre released and parallax has discontinued the product it should be ok?
Anyways i recently have been using a basic stamp to learn alot of stuff, parallax just has so much material about the bs2 compared to the propeller. All these stamps in class books are great for people new to micro's using th bs2 gives you a clear way to learn about how to control hardware. Everyone knows basic! So you really can focus more on what signals your sending reciving from the chip than learning spin or pasm, not saying spin is hard but its nice to learn a new concept like hardware using a concept most people are familiar with like BASIC.
Anyways one of the kits parallax made is called Elements of Digital Logic which comes with a book/pdf, logic trainer board, and a logic simulator, the software and pdf are obviously available for download, but the product is discontinued so you cant buy the boards anymore. I decided I would just order the chips and throw them on a protoboard. When I looked at the original board by parallax thoug I realized alot of what made the board educational was the layout combined with the silkscreen pictures.
This board is very simple not a complicated layout at all. I was thinking that i maybe it would be nice to strip the stuff off the pcb for the bs2 module and just throw a 15 pin header on there to make it compatible with a bs2 HW board or even a prop or arduino (although the reader would have to translate the basic code to spin/wiring) This would make it smaller and less exspensive than the original. Then I would lay out the rest of the board the same as parallax with the all the gates on the silk screen.
Basically I just want to run through this text and need a board, but if im gonna make a real pcb might as well make 10 or whatever and sell the rest to anyone else looking for this kit. My question is this isnt in bad taste is it? I would assume since all the schematics and texts aqre released and parallax has discontinued the product it should be ok?
Comments
I think you'll need our old PCB files if you want to produce the PCB. What about the Word files for the EODL book? Let me see if I can round them up.
I miss this kit as well, so you're in good company. We've got to keep a close watch on our marketing and inventory people because they love to liquidate and discontinue slow-moving inventory. Sometimes this has bad consequences because people think we're starting to specialize in killing "old" products and they wonder what's next.
You have our support to do whatever you want with this kit.
Ken Gracey
This is why Parallax will remain a favorite company. Above and beyond!
-- Gordon
Once again, Parallax is revealed to be the classiest act on the block.
If you need my email it is rwgast@lowlevel-logicdesign.com
Amazing response. Actions of a top shelf company that puts the customer right up front and center. Many other companies would have said "Mine, Mine, MINE, you can't have it. If you do we will dog your a$$ in court and make you wish we never heard of you." Parallax is simply a first class company in my book!
Frank
rwgast, I'll take a look for the Bill of Materials today. I'm sure it's right where it should be in our network. Again, make yourself at home.
...hmmmmmm, how about the BSLA?
Wouldn't THAT be nice. Unfortunate that USBEE owns that.
Probably the exact same thing rwgast_logicdesign was looking for. I have one left, and I smoked one plugging it in backwards. You'd think after 30 years I would know where pin 1 was.
...ain't on their current products list: http://usbee.com/index.aspx
But, yes, that would be nice.
You only blew up one? I blew up two! How dumb was that?!?
Yes, they where discontinued a while ago.
I threat my one-and-only with much respect.
The best positive feedback is the kind you don't ask for!
-- Gordon
I could have spent hours and days looking through our discontinued product archives in the Parallax network. There's a ton of neat stuff, some of which never materialized and other projects that grew into something else which became more important. Some were outright failures, but every single one provided some kind of value.
I also second all the posts here. The best company I have have to pleasure to work with.
@ KenCongrats on 4,000 posts!
Jim
Ken, the reason we leave impressed responses when you do stuff like this is that, while it does make perfect sense, it reflects a corporate philosophy that is stunningly human and personal compared to the usual approach. I've worked with literally thousands of companies in my 25+ year career, and I can report that nearly all of them are driven primarily by greed, paranoia, insecurity, and fear. Family owned companies, including the one I work for, tend to be a bit better because the distance between the bottom and top of the hierarchy isn't so vast, but they're still mostly driven by hierarchy and a deep division between people whose last name is on the sign out front and those whose last name isn't. The ability to casually say, hey, this stuff that used to be a product of ours but we got tired of making it, if you want to make it now no problem -- I don't think you realize just how unusual it is for a company to even have someone who would be both capable of and willing to make such a decision, much less to do it so quickly and without having six meetings and a consultation with the lawyers.
It was a real privilege to meet you and the rest of the crew at UPEW '10; the sense of community was unlike anything I'd ever seen, and the way you work with people like Jeff, Gordon, and Bill H. who are not formally aligned with you is also very special. We know you're not looking for bennies by doing stuff like this; the fact that we know that is one of the things that's so special. We're also not looking for bennies by gushing about how wonderful you guys are. We want you to know you really are that different and thank you for having the priorities you do.
The WAM book just made alot of fundamental hardware concepts id been having trouble with make seanse. Its basically been the glue between theory and practical usage of hardware for me. I was going to do the basic analog to digital text next but have been looking for a good hands on tutorial for discreet logic for a while, I discovered the Elements of digital Logic through the WAM book and I was really excited till I realised it was discontinued. I think discreet logic is a must for anyone who wants to truly understand hardware in this day and age and im hoping this book will be the glue between the theory ive ready with schematics of lots of gates tied togather and acually using it in real applications!
Im definately not the sharpest tool in the shed otherwise id probably not need this kit but i can definately get a PCB togather for myself and anyone else who missed out on this kit and is on a quest to learn as much as possible. Thank you very much for the help ken!!
The only thing thats kind of a problem to get this kit going again at least for me is the software,
Ive messed with DPI settings resalution etc etc and I can not get this software to size propelrly. Who ever coded this thing decided to disable the maximize button along with resizeing, Is it possible to get the source to recompile this thing? I dont plan on doing anything besides either getting it sized right or enabling resizeing, if youd like me to sign something or write a statement saying I wont give the source away I have no problems with that, or maybe who ever wrote it could address this bug even though its discontinued there are still people who own the kit.
I took a quick look and didn't see it where I expected to find it, but I'll look around on our engineering drives a bit more and find it. It's possible that we no longer have the source, but really not too likely.
Ken
This reminds me of the same problem in early versions of this Educational Tool - a nifty ASCII ART Schematic Editor.
http://www.tech-chat.de/download.html
All the teaching elements of a 'full' Schematic, but very easy to understand, and you can paste the result in your Source Code.
Early versions of this were fixed-size, and I suggested re-size would help teachers, and allow more on a sheet.
It was quickly fixed, but I think it can be slightly more work than simple 'enable', as the sheet-size needs to be managed.
- not a lot of work.
There may be other issues, as I just downloaded that, and attached is how it renders on my PC
Seems to be not quite the same, looks slightly 'exploded' on your screen shot ? Strange effect.
(your capture is in the background)
4x5n - I accidentally modified your post in an attempt to reply to this one, and then I was unable to recover your original post. Sorry about that, and thanks much for the fine compliment!
Ken Gracey
george2220@aol.com
thanks for the materials and support, and thank you for trying to find the source files for me. it seems as though maybe its just a problem with my pc and not the software so ill just keep looking into it.
@jmg
hmmm so im not really sure what you mean about my screen shot looking different. you took yours on a different page of the tutorial so its hard to do a side by side comparison. the only difference that i see is the words on mine look a little bolder. i took that scree shot at 1024x768 when i was testing the program in different resalutions. do you have any idea what cohld be going on? i got the software off the stamps in class page in the elements of digital logic design book, is this where you downloaded yours?
@george
This is to BSLA he was referring to:
http://www.usbee.com/basic_stamp.html
Wish they would make the source public for that one.
Google found my copy here
http://academic.greensboroday.org/~regesterj/potl/Electronics/LogicGates/pls.exe
I have XP and 1024 x 768
The difference seems to be your capture is 'exploded' so the connections break, and the larger separations push the LED off-screen - not easy to see how - unless your changing display settings confused it.
Try it on other PCs to see if you can get the same as my grab.