Electronics Forum / Electronics / December 2004

If I buy a DVD Recorder, can I just plug leads into it from a standard DVd
player, and copy a DVD ?
Is it that easy ?

Can I buy a mobile phone in Japan, then use it in Australia with a pre paid
card ?
Whats the deal with this, can it be done ?
Thanks for any info. Ben

how to determine the exact coupling of the field to the parallel plate
metal waveguide?
thanking you

Much smaller than any LED it looks like the light is coming from a junction of
two conductors on a circuit board.
Is this a new development?
Bret Cahill

 I've seen and used the trace temperature vs. current calculators and
seen lots of information on calculating trace temps.  However, I can't
find any information about just how hot you can let a trace get.  I
know that copper melts at about 1100 deg. C, I'm pretty sure that the

Does anyone have a PIN layout for the DVI-to-Video Composite cable for HDTV?
I also need the PIN layout for the SVGA-to-Composite Video cable if you
have one.
Thanks.

Thinking of getting the Silicon Chip kit. Have seen the circuit and
part of the article on the net showing 4 x 11 watt CFL drawing 3.2
amps.
Only want to run one 18 watt CFL lead lamp off SLA batteries. I made a

I'm just after some advice/thoughts.  A friend and I have been thinking
and talking about renewable energy and such.  We're thinking that we
could use an exercise bike to charge some sort of battery, and then use
that battery to charge our mobile phones.

This is a lot of  24 viintage EECO tube circuits. About half of them have the
tubes installed...typically a 12AU7-type. I dis-assembled one to show how
they're constructed. There are several types of circuits here: Squaring
circuit; Multi-Vibrator; Thyratron Ring Counter; Gate ...

I have an AIM 65 micro kit (yes an old one now, early 1980 era) .. it
uses 4 lots of 4 digit alphanumeric displays  ..part no DL1416 or
DL-1416 or DL-1416A.
One of them is playing up in not displaying some of the characters

The other day I posted a few pictures of this dish like antenna I took from
my parents roof. If you live in Sydney you'll remember a service called
Galaxy TV. Thats the cheap a.s dish!
Ive read from the reply posts (thanks) its only good for UHF and picking up

In the last half of 2003 I bought a Digitrex GKX9000 DVD recorder from Big
W. Big mistake, as I found out when I started frequenting an Australian
website and forum devoted entirely to the GKX9000 (The site seems to be no
longer in existence). It was full of reports of the failings ...

I have an electronic project I am working on and need some help.  My
Father-in-law gave me a broken electric scooter so I could convert it into a
toy for my son.  It is very similar to this item:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=88433&item=5541373232&rd=1

I'm looking to interface the headphone jack on my laptop with an RCA
jack on my TV. I already have a cable that goes from 1/8th inch stereo
to stereo RCA. The problem is, the volume is terribly low and loud
noises (such as explosions during a movie) cause the output to saturate

Yep, that perennial question.  Not a troll.  I'm fixing up an old scope at the
moment, and the owner asked me for my view.
For me, it's a bit like ME working on live equipment (which I wind up doing
quite often, as the most practical way of proceeding).  It's a case of MY risk