Comment by ErroneousBosh
4 hours ago
> There’s an old electronics joke that if you want to build an oscillator, you should try building an amplifier
It's funny, I was just thinking this morning about an old article in (I think) Television magazine that I read in the 80s when I was getting into electronics. The author was talking about some service notes he'd received for a particular model of Philips radio, which had just come out, and it was when shops tended to have their own service department that would repair things right there in the shop - and also, apply any "factory fixes".
One such fix was described as "Fix VIUPS", and involved changing a couple of resistors and adding a couple of capacitors. Not really any difference, but the author did think it seemed to make the amp a bit more stable and less inclined to make squealy ploppy noises at high volume when the battery was low. But, curiosity got the better of him, so he rang the Philips rep - what's this "VIUPS"?
No idea. But I'll get hold of someone at head office you can ring. Okay, what's this "VIUPS" thing? No idea, said the head office guy, but I can put you in touch with one of the factory engineers in Eindhoven.
So, a call came in, an international call! Quite a big deal in the 80s. "What's this VIUPS Fix thing in the service notes?" he asked the guy.
"Aha yes", he said in a heavy Dutch accent, "the VIUPS is the noise the set makes when the fault is present."
VIUPS VIUPS VIUPS. Yup.
> There’s an old electronics joke that if you want to build an oscillator, you should try building an amplifier
The most easy way to annoy a neighbor using AM radios, it's using a regenerative AM receptor with too high gain. Could oscillate and begin to emit noise at the same freq that are you tuning. Adding a simple carbon microphone to it, and setting the gain to the max, was a very easy way of building a AM radio emitter.
Pretty sure just blasting that rock and roll "music" out the window is easier.
Damn hippies.