Well stranger things has finished now. There’s nothing else to do apart from stab each other.
Anyway on topic, I spent the last 2 hours filling up LTspice with bits of Farnell TM6 and comparing to measurements. It appears unfortunately that the chopper is likely to be faulty. It dumps a hell of a lot of current into the two LEDs and I think they have got dim and it’s not shuffling enough electrons through. Going to attempt to work out a way of proving this one way or another…. TBC…
Edit: also due to the stupid high impedance I need to make a bob pease FET probe…
I need to reacquaint myself with LT-Spice, I did start it a while ago and gave up because I found it had a steep learning curve and couldn't be arsed at the time, to much going on, but maybe the time is coming that I could get started again.
Yeah I don't blame you.
LTspice is quite frankly fucking horrible. It's written by engineers with absolutely no clue whatsoever about consistency or design or usability. The documentation is crap and it craps all over your filesystem like a rabid pigeon showing absolutely no respect or acknowledgement for anyone. Every part of it adheres to "not invented here".
And then they made a Mac version which is basically the same but completely entirely misses the entire Mac UI guidelines leaving you with twisted mutilated hands trying desperately to use the PC oriented keyboard shortcuts which barely even make sense on a PC. And it's buggy. So so so fucking buggy. Eventually you learn where all the bugs are but you have to hop around the software like someone trying to navigate through a cow dung filled field at night.
But there's nothing even remotely as good as it out there. Which is SO FUCKING DEPRESSING it makes me want to cry. So I will begrudgingly suffer.
Honestly if AD wanted to hire me I'd gladly rewrite both versions so they aren't absolutely cancerous and cage the engineers in the simulation engine dungeon where they belong, provided minimal sustenance and a black coffee drip directly into the stomach.
Hope that puts you off some more because it's actually painful using it. You just have to be that special kind of obtuse and stubborn to use it ![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif.pagespeed.ce._hfWAz_QHO.gif)
That was what I kept finding, you learn a rule for this or that and then you discover there is a different set of rules for doing much the same thing but because its in another part of the program, i.e., different module, the rules changed eh whats that all about
![WTF? :wtf:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/wtf2.gif.pagespeed.ce.pxLiY5pjs4.gif)
Last time I played with it, I entered the audio amplifier circuit for a Hacker Sovereign radio and played around with transistor substitution, as the Ge ones were almost completely unobtainable. Ran the simulation and it predicted it would run OK and gave excellent frequency response in the simulation, in fact the results looked brilliant, but the harsh reality was just pure gut wrenchingly crap. It wasn't even upto the standard of the very early Japanese pocket transistor radios. All the parts tested good on their own but put them together, nar-nar not having it, made you feel ill. Hackers are supposed to have a nice rich tone to them, they even carried the "By Appoint to H.M. The Queen" crest
![Face Palm :palm:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/xfacepalm.gif.pagespeed.ic.EBDwh1hCfo.png)
, at that point I gave up on it and deleted it from my system.
I have just downloaded it again and will later when I get time, install it and I'll do the same with micro-cap following Kosmic's advice and Christian has also very kindly offered to do a special Discord training session on LT Spice, which I might take him up on, later when things get less hairy round here.