Please 'Boom' Responsibly As most of you have noticed, the noise ordinances have become much tougher lately. Most of this is due to idiots, yes IDIOTS, who drive through residential areas with their windows down while their system is playing at full power. To make things worse, the music they listen to has all sorts of foul language that's not suitable for small children, (who may be playing outside). There are even a few people, who are even beyond idiot status, that play their systems at full power through residential areas after 10:00 PM (when many people go to bed). I don't believe that this type of behavior is good for the industry. If the fines get too stiff, people will stop buying large systems. If this happens, more people will get out of car audio (who wants a mediocre system). People get interested in things because they're exciting. A deck and four 6.5" speakers are not going to interest many of the younger car audio enthusiasts. If car audio enthusiasts keep annoying more and more people, the fines will keep getting tougher. All of this will only reduce interest in the equipment that fuels the industry. If you want to listen to your system at full volume, get out on the highway where there's little chance of bothering anyone. When you get to a red light, turn it down. If the only thing attractive about you is your 'system', you have some work to do. Bottom line... Think about what you're doing. Think about other people. It's not the end of the world if you have to turn the volume down for a little while.


Printed Circuit Board Paths:
A printed circuit board is a fiberglass board (better quality boards, anyway) which is typically 1/16" thick. It is plated with copper on 1 or more sides (sometimes multi-layer boards are used). To print the circuits onto the board, the copper plating is coated with a protective material on all areas which is to remain on the fiberglass substrate. The board is then 'bathed' in a corrosive solution which dissolves all of the UNprotected copper areas. This leaves only the copper traces needed to complete the connections between the electronic components of the device. In the circuit board below, the lighter colored areas show you where the copper was protected. The copper areas are used instead of wires. If components had to be connected with wire, the reliability would be poor and the equipment would be much more expensive due to the labor involved in its assembly. The dark green ares are the bare fiberglass where the copper has been removed. There are no components mounted in this board yet. The shiny 'pads' are where the component's leads will be soldered into place. You can see the hole in the center of the pad where the component's electrical leads will pass through the board. The green coating is a 'solder mask' which prevents solder from bridging between traces and pads and also prevents the copper from oxidizing.
boardtrc.jpg
Markings:
The white paint/ink shows the mounting position/orientation of some of the components. It also indicates the part numbers of the electrical components.
Prefix:
  • R = Resistor
  • C = Capacitor
  • D = Diode
  • ZD = Zener diode
  • Th = Thermistor
This is the same board with the parts installed.


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