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Does it blink 12:00??

I have several HP 5071As, and if the clock's not set, they show no time at all.

Seriously... how do you set the time on one of them?

From the front panel. I think HP put the clock on it as a gag, because there's no highly-accurate way to set it. The 5071's primary purpose is to provide extremely accurate 10 MHz and 1 PPS references. There are other gadgets that can derive the time from GPS to within 10 ns of UTC and will steer the oscillator on the 5071 to that spec.

Pretty cool stuff.

In case you felt like buying one.
http://we.home.agilent.com/USeng/nav/-11265.536880 128/pd.html

At that price why not buy two?

And here is where the problem of solving problems lies! You now have 200PhD's solving the problem from THEIR perspective. You ever noticed several people will look at a problem and each one of them will come up with a different, sometimes conflicting, solution? Have you ever had a conversation with someone who believed something so totally absurd to you but to them it was completely rational? Some of the greatest inventions of the last century were complete accident/mistakes that came about because someone was thinking outside the box and dared to try and achieve something great. They may not have achieved what they were hoping for but their inventions changed the world nonetheless. The majority of these off shored PhD's are wrote scientists. They follow the path already etched out for them and ever so slowly etch a little bit more. There is nothing wrong with this approach but it will rarely achieve the kind of breakthrough wanton reckless abandon to scientific principles will achieve in the same amount of time. Hewlett & Packard were tinkerers who thought big and were also smart enough to start their own company. Carly didn't start the process of spinning off hp's true core business unit (now Agilent Technologies http://www.home.agilent.com/) but she did let it happen. For anything to really last there has to be a balance of PR/R&D/BST (Blood Sweat & Tears). She tried to rob Peter (R&D) to pay Paul (PR) and it caught up with her.

Mr. Fact person, you can learn something if you want: Hydrogen heats upon expansion.

Since people apparently called bullshit on my initial post, here is some evidence to support my claim that hydrogen DOES heat up as it expands:

Agilent - Hydrogen Safety Guide: "Hydrogen temperature increases as the gas expands. Hydrogen that is allowed to expand rapidly from high pressure can self ignite."

Ask a NETL Researcher Archive: "The safety concern here is if the impurity is oxygen. Hydrogen gas heats up on expansion and can self-ignite in a very powerful and nasty explosion."

Perhaps people need to do a little more research before moderating or replying...

This article, dated 17 Jan 2002, says that the system is off. This one, dated 30 june 2002. says its on, ready to be deployed in 2005.

Here's some background info on the sensors. Agilent was one of the first companies that made these types of parts (as I remember). Currently, I'm sure there are a couple of other manufacturers out there.

http://we.home.agilent.com/USeng/nav/-536893499.0/ pc.html
[click the "Optical mouse sensor" link in the middle of the page.]

I'm sure you can buy development kits, but they're sure to be reeeeaaaaallly expensive, plus they might start redirecting you if you ask to buy a handful of these. On the other hand, you might be able to sweet-talk a couple samples of they're willing. ...couple minutes of seraching...
I just remembered that http://www.newark.com/ electronics distrubites a lot of Agilent stuff, and a little searching results in:
http://www.newark.com/NewarkWebCommerce/newark/en_ US/endecaSearch/searchPage2.jsp?N=4&Ntk=gensearch_ 001&Ntt=adns&Nty=1&specialorder=on
And bingo, you can get the plain chip for $5 to $10, given 40-150 days lead time in quantites of 20 or so. It's an answer, but I doubt its the one you're looking for.

Still, like KFG says, it's easier to rip apart a mouse. They've done all the optical work already, which is likely to be difficult part. If you think getting small quantities of electronics is bad, try getting small quantities of optics. $15 for a bloody *!@#@#* lens isn't unheard of.

hjames

And I'm also certian that the US didn't just complete the first non-government manned space flight and doesn't have billions of dollars going to develop private space flight.

Give me a break.

China is emerging as an ecenomic powerhouse, and it looks like it will continue down that path, provided their government doesn't screw up. However please don't pretend like all good things come from China. I gave just a small list of the US companies that produce advanced hardware, including what drives almost all the devices you listed. Your MP3 player may be built in China but it's usually using TI DSPs and AD opamps.

You know it's perfectly possible for China AND the US to be economic powers, and for both to benefit from trade with each other.

Or it may be your blood floating through a little nanomachine.

We have heard enough about 'System-on-a-Chip', nows its time for 'Lab-on-a-chip'

Agilent has an interesting blurb on the subject.

The lab-on-chip concept envisages such things as a disposable device smaller than a postage stamp, with the ability to steer blood and reagents around on a electrode grid or nanotubes. Mix, split, deliver to sensors. Results provided electronically to an external device. Blood work can be done on the spot without waiting for lab results. In large part these devices could be fabricated using technology very similar to that which produces the nm range features for current ICs.

HP is going down the tubes due to a combination of Carly and the Compaq merger. The Compaq managment mentality has certainly taken over.

If however you still want to work for a company where the HP idea and the HP way live on... head over to Agilent Technologies. They aren't perfect, but it's probably a good thing for everyone there that they were spun off. It's also clear to anyone that has to work with HPaq or Agilent on a daily basis that Agilent is the only one of the two retaining any of the things that made HP a decent company.

The optical sensor that Microsoft's (and others') optical mice use, is made by Agilent. Gary Gordon, who works at Agilent, invented the optical mouse. Microsoft just happens to license the technology.

I feel I am being trolled, but here are some articles I dug up.

This one talks about delay, and that most humans can start to detect delay at around 250ms. On the second page, it goes over different G.7xx codecs and tells you the MOS score for each one.

http://www.networkcomputing.com/1202/1202ws3.html

Here is an article about measuring MOS in a network:

http://www.telecommagazine.com/default.asp?journal id=3&func=articles&page=0011t16&year=2000&month=11

Here is an SLA from MCI that has provisions for MOS:

http://global.mci.com/terms/sla/business_connectio n/

Fluke wont have a meter for this, but Agilent does:

http://we.home.agilent.com/USeng/nav/-536885778.53 6882651/pd.html

Cisco more or less agrees with me about the delay (scroll down a bit):

http://www.cisco.com/warp/public/788/voip/delay-de tails.html

So, you probably never heard of this stuff because it doesn't matter in a classic digital or analog network mainly because you are using dedicated circuits and g.711 all day. When you start using data networks and codecs like g.723.1, you need to worry about this shit.

BTW, it took me about 5 minutes to find this info using that Google thing. You should check it out.

ft

Actually windows runs rather well on embedded devices. I remember using Win2000 on my last job - it was on a DLA! (Digital logic analyzer) by Agilent.

Perhaps it's the added benefit of a tried and tested system - been around for years and most of the bugs have been patched/found/fixed.

But I'm sure they have some special deal with MS. Money would hardly be an issue for them (fas in forking it out for licenses), so perhaps the only reason for picking MS over Linux would probably be some level of support promised by MS (or even publicity).

There is Agilent VEE (now obsolete) and to a lesser extent, LabVIEW from National Instruments.

I had a job where I did work in VEE and there were a few disadvantages to using it than functional or even object-oriented programming. For one thing, code wasn't as tight as it would have been with text-based programming. I always felt I could get code to work the way I wanted it to when it was another programming language. Another issue is that since VEE is an interpreted language, it's very, very slow to execute compared to an equivalent programming language. Third, the timing issues were horrible if you decided to make your code execute multiple "threads" at the same time, which was more like how Windows 3.1 did its multitasking.

However, VEE was easy enough to use that any old engineer could program in it, even those with little or no coding experience. Technicans could also troubleshoot the code if it was documented well enough. Also, nothing could beat it in terms of cranking out a prototype electrical test when you need to get data quickly.

I have no experience or contact with oscilloscopes, so would someone please inform me why they cost so damned much, even used (and up to friggin $20K, new!).

Target market: High end 'scopes like a digital storage oscilloscopes are made for a target market of an electronic engineering company, or electronic test centres, not your local (radio) ham or TV repair person. So does a company worry about spending $20K for a piece of equipment to sit on the desk of a $75-150K EE who is desinging something expected to make millions of dollars profit? No.

Oscilloscopes are built to last, the 100MHz analog one I own is older than I am I think.

Tektronic and HP/Agilent build them to not be obsolete, and the replacement cycle is likely about 5 years or longer depending on what electronics market segement your in.

This 'material' is an electrical circuit in a transmission line. They were simulated using Agilent's ADS software, which is used for design of "products such as cellular and portable phones, pagers, wireless networks, and radar and satellite communications systems" (from Agilent's page). The electrical fields are closer to microwaves then visible light & can be measured in voltages. No-one is going to beat data-density records using microwaves & to even talk about lenses is a trifle far-fetched. The principles & physics behind this breakthrough are general but in practice these man-made materials are going to have to be manufactured & we're nowhere close to that. This discovery was published in Applied Physics Letters (Vol. 82, No. 12, 24 March 2003, p. 1815 for those of you with institutional subscriptions).

This is somewhat akin to applying rules for radio waves to infrared photons, sure the equations all work but in practice the two electromagnetic fields behave somewhat differently.

Chris

PhD candidate
Dept. of Chemistry
University of Toronto

Here's a PDF with some info on their different instruments. The first half of the document is GPS theory, the rest is the different instruments.
From the pictures, a couple of them look to be rack-mountable.

Introduction to GPS timing solutions

No mention of calculators. Will they stay in that business? HP made, and makes, great calculators. Had to put new batteries in my HP-11C today, after fifteen years.

I hear you. I grew up around HP test equipment and such and bought a HP-48 in 1993, I had a HP-11 in highschool. I always associated the HP brand with quality.

The bad news is that HP is going down the tubes.

The good news is that HP spun off their test and meaurement division a couple of years ago as Agilent .

I have been pleasantly surprised in dealing with Aglent. For example, I purchased some parts for an HP stethoscope from their online store using a credit card, I got an email the next day telling me that the parts had shipped an that they were not charging my credit card because I was a student! They had my money, but they gave it back!

So, my point is, they got the names backwards when they spun off Agilent: People looking for the old "HP way" should look to Agilent, people who expect HP quality from the new "HPQ" are in for a surprise.

I guess they did not know what to do with the calculater division when they split. I am sad that it went to the HP part, because if they had given it to Agilent I might be posting this on my '69gx calculator.

"...whereas HP has it's fingers in a lot of pies, like calculators, test equipment,..."

Actually, HP spun off their test equipment line into a new company, Agilent, back in 1999.

Long live RPN!

Silly Boy, Test equipment was spun off to Agilent in 1999!

There are plenty of test and measurement equipment available for the optical market. Look around Agilent's T&M lightwave page.

Agilent ArctiCooler HACA-0002

The Agilent cooler is small so it presents no mounting problems. It is very light, so it won't shear the socket off your mainboard. It is quiet, so it won't drive your wife/husband/parents/kids/dog/cat/neighbors berserk. Best of all, it cools the 1.4 GHz Athlon better than any other cooler around, including those enormous bricks with 8500 RPM fans.

Yeah, whatever. The technologies are completely different.

Remedial overview: How Do Optical Mice Work?

Aligent, a spinoff of HP, created the optical mouse sensor.

AFAIK Microsoft was the first to actually build and sell an mouse using a modern (Aligent's) optical sensor.

Yes, HP's Test and Measurement division was one of the groups spun-off to Agilent back in November '99.

--bal

I just hope HP sells of the stuff they make that doesn't suck (calculators, printers, and medical/testing equipment) before they make something really stupid and tank.

They did of course split off test equipment as Agilent Technologies.

This may be more than you're looking for, but here goes...

http://wirescope.comms.agilent.com/products/ws350/ default.htm
---
nuclear presidential echelon assassination encryption virulent strain

• A good place to start might be http://jobs.hp.com/.
• Agilent is a spin-off of some HP divisions, they also take interns: http://jobs.agilent.com.
• Finally, HP spun off it's Mechanical Design Division into CoCreate Software, whose jobs page is here.

For some reason, they sold off their old name to the PC purveyors, and took one of the new, shiny, meaningless ones so fashionable now. If they stay on course, in a decade, all electro-geeks will revere ``Agilent'', and not care about that run-of-the-mill computer company (what was it's name again?). The quality is in the product, not the name.

The HDNS-2000 is a low-cost reflective optical sensor that provides a non-mechanical tracking engine for implementing a computer mouse. It is based on optical navigation technology which measures changes in position by optically acquiring sequential surface images (frames) and mathematically determining the direction and magnitude of movement. The sensor is mounted in a plastic optical package and designed to be used with the HDNS-2100 (Lens), HDNS-2200 (LED Assembly Clip), and HLMP-ED80(High Light Output 639 nm LED), providing a complete and compact tracking engine. This optical tracking engine has no moving parts and requires no precision optical alignment enabling high volume system assembly. The HDNS-2000 offers a PS/2 or quadrature output mode for interface flexibility. Resolution is specified as 400 cpi at rates of motion up to 12 inches per second.

The link to fact sheets, etc. is here.

Agilent Technologies is working on a solutio n for switching these signals without them passing through an electronic switch, but I think repeaters are fundamentally electronic, if I'm not mistaken.

I applaud all those creative technical minds trying to come up with interesting and useful applications for this networks, but without hard info, we're just pissing in the wind and blowing hot air.

There's a fairly recent and detailed IEEE report on the Iridium network

Here's a chart of competing systems that are up, or will be up soon

Here's a fairly complete description of several current satellite telephone systems with info on frequency allocations, ground stations, and other important network details [has a chapter on iridium]

Here's a article in Test System News testing Iridium handsets and network for real world performance

More to come....

I've got some HP calculators that are top-notch instruments.

Oh, yeah; they make some killer testing equipment too, and don't forget about that oh-so-cool electronic stethoscope http://www.healthcare.agil ent.com/mpgsupplies/stetscope/!

Yeah, they've made some pretty sucky decisions on the personal computing end of things, but that ain't all they are.

Well, on Agilent's website, they say they use planar-lightwave circuits (whatever they are) that intersect at cross points. In the cross points, there's a fluid that allows the optical signal to pass through uninhibited. To reroute the signal, they insert bubbles into the cross point. The bubble refracts the signal, sending it to a different circuit. They say the bubbles can be generated and removed "hundreds of times per second". (See Introducing the Agilent Photonic Switching Platform for more technical details.)

So, my question is: Have they perfected some way of creating bubbles of the exact same size every single time, and if so, how? Bubbles don't seem (to me) to be something you can regulate by size easily. Anyone with more info, I'd love to be further informed.

Eruantalon

I expect the URL should be: Agilent
All Optical! I have been waiting for this. Now what about the dark fiber?
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