Bogus Schematics on the net.......?

[markm]

Hi fellas,
In my travels surfing the internet, I have been looking for and, at more "obscure" circuits to test my layout skills at and it also has been helping me to learn more about, and get better at reading schems. I've been looking for lesser known circuits that if sound good, to bring them home to the board here so-to-speak.
Anyway, I am beginning to think that some of the more "obscure" circuits that are in the outer realms of the internet may not actually be on the level or even accurate.
To some of you, this is not anything new I'm sure but, I seem to have complete failure when doing a layout from the more unknown schems. The schematics I've found from reliable sources, that I have done layouts from and that are quote "verified", always seem to fire right up! I'm beginning to think there are more "uncertain" schems kicking around the net than actual real working ones.
Don't get me wrong, I'm by no means a pro at layouts and some of the problems may be my lack of knowledge but, I thought I'd just see if some of you have run into some of the same issues?
  MarkM

[puretube]

never trust a schematic on the web...

[Johan]

...net= not entirely true

[RDV]

...however, making a bogus schem work through study and logic is priceless learning IMO.

RDV

[MartyMart]

...however, making a bogus schem work through study and logic is priceless learning IMO.

RDV

Oh yeah , done that a couple of times

MM

[Cliff Schecht]

You want a good layout challenge? The Insanity pedal on this page is a great one. I designed it to fit into about a third of a Hammond 1590BB, which left a lot of extra room for mods and extra switches. I think my layout could actually fit a 1590B if one was to omit the battery.

[R.G.]

Anyway, I am beginning to think that some of the more "obscure" circuits that are in the outer realms of the internet may not actually be on the level or even accurate.

I'm sorry, but this is nonsense.

Of course there are mistakes in some schematics. They are not necessarily all traced out by people who have enough electronics background to do the tracing correctly. People make mistakes. But are they done deliberately? I only know of one case where that is verifiably true. It was a manufacturer's schematic that could never have worked as shown. Other real hoaxes are, I think, few and far between. I'm sure they exist, but not many. You imply that malice is more common than inaccuracy.

As Napoleon said "Never assign to malice what can be explained by incompetence."

The outer realms of the internet are a fringe and you get what you can expect from fringes. Worse yet this comment ...

never trust a schematic on the web...

tars an incredibly rich source of information with the taint of what we in the computer industry used to refer to as "FUD", standing for Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. One of the best ways to keep your competitors from making a sale was to plant ugly little hints of Bad Things in the competitor's equipment. Of course you don't want people to trust schematics on the net, Ton. You have a longstanding position that your schemos must remain secret. Since there will inevitably be some leaks, it's better if people don't trust them at all. The more distrust the better.

Finally, trust is not a binary quantity. It's a continuum. Do you trust your neighbor enough to let your kid sleep over with his kid? How about to return the lawn mower? Now how about trusting them with your life? There are different levels of trust that we, as humans can and must distinguish.

You can trust any schematic on the net - to the full extent that you can understand and verify it yourself, or get someone else to tell you it's OK. No more, no less. Any expectation that everything on the internet is completely accurate and benign is just as deluded as expecting that everything on the internet is wrong or malevolent. You're dealing with humans here. What do you expect?

[puretube]

there was a (short) time, when I accepted (and even took over) the expression you mentioned a while ago, R.G., ("never blindly trust..."),

but since then, again I`ve been witnessing so much misleading/wrong "information" on the web  (and elsewhere),
that I just wanna warn people (that don`t have enough background to detect mistakes themselves...) to not take everything for granted, that is written "black on white" on the web.

I`m not referring to "my" stuff here!

I refer to the mis-information that is spreading nowadays,
because of everything that is noted believed "somewhere in a reliable place" is being spread without limits, and picked up and further being spread as being "the truth".

Even printed books nowadays contain heaps of plain mistakes
(e.g. D.L.`s "Filter C**kb**k, authorized german edition),
that wanna make me run away crying out loud...).

[R.G.]

OK, I'm with you there. I think we are actually in violent agreement.

[markm]

Anyway, I am beginning to think that some of the more "obscure" circuits that are in the outer realms of the internet may not actually be on the level or even accurate.

I'm sorry, but this is nonsense.

Sorry RG, I didn't mean to mislead you or anyone else here that I thought any errors were deliberate.
Poor choice of words on my part.
I guess I meant that some of the schems were poorly done or didn't work or aren't verified.
I do agree that there is a considerable amount of dis-information concerning just about everything in our day-to-day lives available
to us on the net and it is usually presented to us as fact.
Sad but true.
Like I said, I meant no offense or insult and I was not accusing anyone of deliberate errors.
Poor wording fellas!!
I'm sure some of the schems kicking around also contain some guess-work on the part of the writer....educated guesses or otherwise not.
Maybe I should stick to some more well known sites huh??

[R.G.]

And I'm sorry I misread your meaning.

Yes, unless someone has verified that the schem works, it's best to assume that it was put there with the best intentions of being correct - however good or bad the skills of the provider were. Some of those are good, some are guesses.

I just didn't want people giving up on what is the most astounding collection of free - and mostly correct 8-) information available.

Trust but verify.

[cakeworks]

don't mesa boogie put out 'official' schematics which arent at all accurate?

[StephenGiles]

.......and it's very easy to change a circuit in Paint!!

[gez]

As Napoleon said "Never assign to malice what can be explained by incompetence."

I was in an art gallery in Edinburgh a few years ago and whilst waiting for my partner to get her act together my eyes were continuously drawn to a portrait on the wall.  It featured an elderly lady and there was something about her that I took an immediate dislike to: she really irritated me, though I couldn't quite say why.  Intrigued by my reaction, I walked up to it only to discover it was Napoleon's mother...figures!  

I have quite a few text books with errors in.  Not intentional I'm sure, just an oversight by the author or, more likely, the printers.  Came a cropper a few weeks ago, but thank heavens for data sheets (and their availability via the net)!!

[Mark Hammer]

I work in government, and I can tell you that the audit function is one of the costlier functions.  Sometimes even more costly than the program-delivery function, or at least costly enough that it sucks big dollars away from program delivery.  As a result, the audit function is underutilized and even then only superficially or half-heartedly utilized.  When it gets seriously utilized, it results in organizational upheaval because it is THAT foreign to the way people are used to doing things.  That's not an apology for government but a recognition that simply checking over stuff costs money.

Now, I'm not trying to equate government and pedal afficionados, but I can't see either small to mid-size manufacturers or 2-man garage operations, or individuals, going way out of their way to verify every stinking tie point and component value.  And sometimes even when they do, if you've been staring at the same drawing for too long, you simply don't see the glaring omissions or errors, despite your best efforts or intentions.  Occasionally, I imagine some "factory schems" are a bit like those old "big fake books" that would show you most of the chords to a song, but deliberately change one or two just to get around copyright law and having to pay for publishing rights.  But this is likely to be the exception more than the rule.

On a side note, comedian and former Conan O'Brian sidekick Andy Richter had a short-lived sitcom series called "Andy Richter Controls the Universe" in which he played one of the two people at a large technology firm of some kind, whose job was to proof-read and error-check technical drawings.  As a sitcom, it is safe to assume their goal was not the error-free depiction of reality, but if that show had even the remotest shred of real-world vibe to it, you can sort of see how and why a great many technical drawings and schematics can come out with errors.  All it takes is one person walking into your office with a joke or sports-related story. You look up from the drafting board for an instant just to say you're busy and voila!

Also, consider how many times you've looked at the component side and then the copper side of a board while trying to troubleshoot, and you'll realize how easy it is to lose track.  Folks have generously put in hundreds of hours deciphering and reverse engineering things they like, but that doesn't make them any more immune to such flip-over errors than the rest of us.

[Paul Perry (Frostwave)]

Incorrect circuits in electronic magazines have probably done more to discourage newbie DIYers than any other factor. I'd make it a hanging offence.

[gez]

In next month's issue of EPE a PIC controlled electric chair!

[Mark Hammer]

Incorrect circuits in electronic magazines have probably done more to discourage newbie DIYers than any other factor. I'd make it a hanging offence.

Did you ever get the feeling that those errors were intended to encourage subscribing, just to make sure you wouldn't miss an issue with the printed correction?

[StephenGiles]

EPE.......Everyday Practical Electronics???

[phaeton]

Oh c'mon you guys!  If it's on the Internet, it has to be true....

I tell you what though.... when you first start out building and reading stuff, and you know nothing about nothing, it seems that you think a high number of schematics are wrong.  99% of the time the schematic is right, and you just messed something up yourself and don't know enough debugging skills to find it.

After you do this for a year, you learn to look for your assembly/soldering mistakes instead of looking for mistakes in schematics.  But then when you *do* have a schematic that DOES have an error in it, this whole thing works against you, because you're looking over your build again and again when the problem is elsewhere.


It *is* a golden day when you can methodically trace through a schematic that is wrong, know what's wrong, why it's wrong, and then proceed to make corrections and get it to work as advertised.  That's only happened to me a couple of times, but i was glowing the rest of the day from it.