2023-10-23 08:12:45 <KipIngram   > This is a neat little circuit:
2023-10-23 08:12:48 <KipIngram   > https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/7b/Cockcroft_Walton_voltage_multiplier_circuit.svg/440px-Cockcroft_Walton_voltage_multiplier_circuit.svg.png
2023-10-23 08:13:41 <KipIngram   > When the input is negative, it charges C1 through the diode.  When the input then goes positive, C1 can't discharge through that diode, so the input voltage just lifts the other side of C1 up higher, pushing charge through the next diode.
2023-10-23 08:14:00 <KipIngram   > And so on up the ladder - Vout winds up building up to a very high level.
2023-10-23 08:14:53 <KipIngram   > A circuit like this was used to power the particle accelerator that caused the first artificial splitting of an atom.
2023-10-23 08:30:51 <KipIngram   > one neat thing about it is that you can string together as many stages as yo want, and each stage only has to manage a modest voltage at any given time.  That is, the voltage across any one capacitor or diode is always manageable.
2023-10-23 08:31:55 <KipIngram   > Real ones are made quite large, so that there's more separation between the high voltage point and ground.
2023-10-23 09:02:02 <gordonjcp   > there are some massive ones outside the canteen at CERN
2023-10-23 09:04:19 <gordonjcp   > bits of old apparatus including some Cockcroft-Walton spark gaps, just for the art value
2023-10-23 09:25:45 <KipIngram   > That first circuit I posted the picture of is Cockcroft-Walton.
2023-10-23 09:27:11 <KipIngram   > Oh, well, I guess I just posted the one.  I was looking at others earlier.
2023-10-23 09:27:48 <KipIngram   > There are a variety of configurations all of which kind of do a "charge caps in parallel, discharge in series" kind of maneuver.
2023-10-23 13:23:21 <zelgomer    > KipIngram: what do you like for schematic capture?
2023-10-23 14:41:59 <Zarutian_iPad> zelgomer: I know you did not ask me but I recommend logisim evolution for schematic input of logic circuits and KiCad for electronic schematics
2023-10-23 14:42:19 <zelgomer    > Zarutian_iPad: thanks
2023-10-23 14:43:04 <zelgomer    > i was a geda user but recently found it was dropped by the debian repos somewhere along the way. i never liked kicad but now i'm being forced to learn to like it, i guess. i keep asking around hoping for some nice alternative :)
2023-10-23 15:00:48 <thrig       > the alternatives tend to be $$$$
2023-10-23 15:01:15 <Zarutian_iPad> Altium is good but just too eyewateringly pricy
2023-10-23 15:01:57 <Zarutian_iPad> EagleCAD has been surparsed by KiCad and was never that good
2023-10-23 15:11:05 <veltas      > Wow this Arch install is very messed up
2023-10-23 15:11:23 <veltas      > Leave it for 5 seconds...
2023-10-23 18:41:37 <KipIngram   > zelgomer: the last schematic capture I did for an employer (i.e., with commercial tools) was in the late 1990's.  I did some consulting a few years after that, and for that work I used the gEDA schematic capture package and the open source pcb package for layout.  I liked pcb quite a lot, but gEDA schematic capture always seemed a little clunkly to me.  It "worked," but always seemed a little rough around the
2023-10-23 18:41:39 <KipIngram   > edges.
2023-10-23 18:42:18 <KipIngram   > After that I was mostly in management / executive roles.
2023-10-23 18:43:04 <KipIngram   > And the kind of work I mostly used to do switched over to Verilog, which I can "vagurely use," but I'm not what you'd call highly proficient in it.
2023-10-23 18:44:26 <KipIngram   > The last regular job schematics I did were Xilinx FPGA layouts, using the tools they used to ship.  Stuff people use Verilog for now.
2023-10-23 18:45:23 <KipIngram   > That shift makes me a little sad, but I do see that Verilog probably makes it easier to do larger designs.