Electronics Forum / Basics / October 2004

Does anyone know how to measure the Q value of an inductor, using
Agilent's ADS?  Or any simulation package?
I have a inductor from the SMT library, and it seems to have a higher
Q value than the data sheet says it should have.  I want to measure

I have a device that uses 6 AA Batteries at one time. One of the dual coil
battery contacts is missing. Does anyone know where I can get a replacement?
I've tried Radio Shack and a hardware store and they didn't have one. Thank
you.

I have a portable electronic navigation system - a Pilot III from Garmin- which
I use to find my way around the counties in the state where I work. It operates
via batteries or by pluging it into the cigarette lighter.
While using the navigation system, the batteries exploded. As I ...

I have a question about microwave ovens which probably sounds a bit
silly, but here goes...
Prior to purchasing a small microwave from an online store, I needed
to check whether it had vents on top of the unit, as in my small

The lastest issue of EDN (Oct 14, 2004) has an article
on RFID that includes a line that has me puzzled:
"With all other things being equal, high-frequency RFIDs
have longer range than their low-frequency counterparts,

Just a couple of days before halloween, it's important for your light-up
pumpkins and displays to work properly. Unfortunately, one of our displays
blew a bulb the other night and my wife is somewhat upset about it.
So, after going to four stores (two home depots, one lowes, one ...

How can a 60W bulb only draw 60W of power if it's internal resistance is 19
ohms? Or does the resistance suddenly increase once the filament heats up?
Thanks.

why sms is only 160 characters?

Our house is 7 years old and there's a GFCI outlet (always on)
installed in our garage.  I wanted to tap into the GFCI outlet to have
electricity for the new fluorescent lights I installed in the garage.
I didn't want to tear up the drywall so all I did was take an old

I live in Latin America and am having a problem with refrigeration in
my house that I think must be related to the electrical supply.
The refrigerator works properly for a period of time, several days,
and then does not, for several days at a time, with the temperatures

I have a Treo 600, which includes MP3 player capability.  I would like
to plug it into the auxiliary jack on  my car stereo via a patch
cable, but there's a technical problem where the Treo mis-detects my 6
foot cable (I would prefer a shorter cable and used to have one about

How much noise should I expect from a 5 volt 800mA, switching,
regulated wall-wart?
The wall-wart is powering a PIC processor and some other
logic and works well when plugged into a surge protected

Hey all;
I've got a multimeter and a scope, but no capacitance meter. If a cap is
open, it should show infinite resistance on a meter, without charging up. If
it is shorted, it should show very low resistance.

Energy saving lamps: Ive finally figured out how they work. Simple really.
You too may have noticed the delay in illuminating when switched on - well
this is the key, they actually slow down the electricity hence they use
less of it.

I am teaching myself from Thomas L. Floyd's "Principles of Electric
Circuits". So far (chapter 4) it seems that he has done a good job
describing all of the units and how they should be visualized except
for Joules (energy.) This he pretty much just says is "the amount of