Personal astable multivibrator teardown

Jack Ganssle

February 12, 2013

Jack Ganssle

Valentines Day special: Ever wonder what makes a personal astable multivibrator tick? Here's a teardown.

This site has hosted teardowns of a number of consumer devices such as tablets, TVs, and mobile phones. But plenty of other products in common use rely on a bit of programmability to gain extra features and functionality.

The personal astable multivibrator is one popular product with a long pedigree, and it too has been enhanced by the addition of a CPU. The datasheets for these devices are notoriously incomplete. It's rare to find technical specifications such as translation in thousands of an inch, frequency settings, and current consumption. A suitable unit was procured and brought into the lab for analysis.

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