12 ms·

Interestingly, in the world of electronics this used to be true too. The first Diode on a circuit board would be marked "D1", no matter which country produced

Interestingly, in the world of electronics this used to be true too. The first Diode on a circuit board would be marked "D1", no matter which country produced it. Datasheets for components would be in english. Any text on a circuit board would be in english (ie. "Voltage Select Switch" or "Copyright 2025".). However, a few years back it became common for most datasheets to be available in mandarin and english, and this year most PCB fabrication houses have gained support for putting chinese characters onto a circuit board (requires better quality printing, due to more definition needed for legibility). Now there are a decent number of devices where the only documentation is only available in mandarin, and the design process was clearly done with little or no english involved. Not everything changes though - gold plating thickness is measured by the micro-inch. Components often still use 0.1 inch pin spacing. Model numbers of chinese chips often are closely linked to the western chip they replace, the names of registers (in the cpu register sense) are often still english etc.

Twirrim 2y ago
> Not everything changes though - gold plating thickness is measured by the micro-inch Considering how much manufacturing and science etc. has fully migrated to metric, even in the US, this seems bizarre to me.
- tadfisher 2y ago
  Like in machining, there's a long history of measuring everything in "thou" (micro-inch sounds proleptic to me, and you'll see "mil" used in the EDA space). All the tooling uses it, standardized components use it (I can drop a 74-series TTL chip from the 1970s in a modern board), and everyone learns it when they start using EDA. Recently there has been a shift to metric in EDA software, so you'll see often see multiples of 2.54mm, and packages are switching to metric for the fine-pitch stuff. Often you'll have spacing in both units in the same design.
  - DiggyJohnson 2y ago
    Not every day these days do I encounter a new word: proleptic. 1 the anticipation and answering of possible objections in rhetorical speech. 2 the representation of a thing as existing before it actually does or did so, as in he was a dead man when he entered. Compare with analepsis: the destruction of the Vendôme Column and his part in it are foreshadowed in moments of haunting prolepsis.
tommiegannert 2y ago
> Components often still use 0.1 inch pin spacing. This changed with IC SMD packages. It's now mostly even 100-micrometers. SMD passives seem to be in a state of limbo, but mostly still using inches. Mouser lists resistor size codes as both inch and mm. It's a bit confusing.
- rcxdude 2y ago
  yeah, PCBs are a muddled mix. I've seen footprint drawings which use metric for some dimensions and imperial for others!
pjc50 2y ago
> this year most PCB fabrication houses have gained support for putting Chinese characters onto a circuit board I've yet to see one of these in the wild, but it sounds cool to me and I would like to see it. There's something of a problem the CJK languages have in not being able to do abbreviations or acronyms, so in Japanese you will occasionally see a couple of Latin letters standing out because that's much shorter than an inconveniently translated word.
- TeMPOraL 2y ago
  > in Japanese you will occasionally see a couple of Latin letters standing out I mostly encounter this watching anime, and I feel it stands out more than it should. It's not just the sudden shift to an entirely different family of glyphs - the overall typography feels off. There's room for improvement here.
  - DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
    > the overall typography feels off It’s that ugly vertically-stretched serif typeface - the one used on those little gold-coloured “QA” stickers that used to be everywhere on/in consumer goods.

Twirrim 2y ago

> Not everything changes though - gold plating thickness is measured by the micro-inch Considering how much manufacturing and science etc. has fully migrated to metric, even in the US, this seems bizarre to me.

tadfisher 2y ago
Like in machining, there's a long history of measuring everything in "thou" (micro-inch sounds proleptic to me, and you'll see "mil" used in the EDA space). All the tooling uses it, standardized components use it (I can drop a 74-series TTL chip from the 1970s in a modern board), and everyone learns it when they start using EDA. Recently there has been a shift to metric in EDA software, so you'll see often see multiples of 2.54mm, and packages are switching to metric for the fine-pitch stuff. Often you'll have spacing in both units in the same design.
- DiggyJohnson 2y ago
  Not every day these days do I encounter a new word: proleptic. 1 the anticipation and answering of possible objections in rhetorical speech. 2 the representation of a thing as existing before it actually does or did so, as in he was a dead man when he entered. Compare with analepsis: the destruction of the Vendôme Column and his part in it are foreshadowed in moments of haunting prolepsis.

tommiegannert 2y ago

> Components often still use 0.1 inch pin spacing. This changed with IC SMD packages. It's now mostly even 100-micrometers. SMD passives seem to be in a state of limbo, but mostly still using inches. Mouser lists resistor size codes as both inch and mm. It's a bit confusing.

rcxdude 2y ago
yeah, PCBs are a muddled mix. I've seen footprint drawings which use metric for some dimensions and imperial for others!

pjc50 2y ago

> this year most PCB fabrication houses have gained support for putting Chinese characters onto a circuit board I've yet to see one of these in the wild, but it sounds cool to me and I would like to see it. There's something of a problem the CJK languages have in not being able to do abbreviations or acronyms, so in Japanese you will occasionally see a couple of Latin letters standing out because that's much shorter than an inconveniently translated word.

TeMPOraL 2y ago
> in Japanese you will occasionally see a couple of Latin letters standing out I mostly encounter this watching anime, and I feel it stands out more than it should. It's not just the sudden shift to an entirely different family of glyphs - the overall typography feels off. There's room for improvement here.
- DaiPlusPlus 2y ago
  > the overall typography feels off It’s that ugly vertically-stretched serif typeface - the one used on those little gold-coloured “QA” stickers that used to be everywhere on/in consumer goods.