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This is a trade magazine for people who assemble systems from components. So they put a router in a box, or whatever, and need a power supply and amplifier and

This is a trade magazine for people who assemble systems from components. So they put a router in a box, or whatever, and need a power supply and amplifier and connectors to the outside world. The finished system needs to pass compliance testing, but they can't modify the parts they've selected - all they can do is fix the cabling and do things to the outside of the purchased components. It's kind of like EMI/EMC testing of hardware you have designed yourself; it's usually much cheaper to apply a bandaid fix (add ferrite cores, shield that cable better, terminate here not there, etc.) and add to a punch list for rev 2, than to go back to the drawing board and change the board/die/whatever. Of course if you can plan for this during design, you (and your boss/bottom line!) will be a lot happier.

bonkabonka 6y ago
In the mid 90s I had the dubious pleasure of being asked to repair a series of TEMPEST certified computers: standard Zenith 8086 clones (well, as standard as a Zenith got anyway) inside a massive steel chassis with all inputs/outputs wrapped around multiple ferrite cores before passing through some heavy-duty milspec connectors. Took a solid couple of minutes each machine pulling screws just to get the lid off so I could plug in a keyboard and monitor (Hercules Monochrome!) and assess the system. Took a dozen machines and made four or five working ones - lot of hard drive failures though Spinrite did manage to resurrect a couple. Still remember all those little jumper leads going from the peripheral cards through the ferrites and into the funky round connectors on the outside of the box.