Transistors

[Crackle]

"in early radio, batteries were the prime source of power - The A battery provided the filament voltage, the B-battery furnished the B+ or the Voltage to the plates of the tubes, and the C battery provided the grid-bias voltage for the tubes."

Dear NWM
With respect please do stop reading American books and repeating what you read on here, its not clever or impressive. Read the books by all means if you want to continue to confuse yourself. Or you could join an American forum where they may understand you better and you can discuss what you find with them.
Much of the terminology you quote from these books is not relevant in the UK and only serves to confuse the people, who come to this forum for USEFUL information, who may end up reading your posts.

Thanks
Mike

[pwdrive]

The B battery, USA only to denote HT, I don't think so, the letter "b" is relevant over here to denote HT or supply voltage in UK and European valve data manuals/sheets including the hallowed Mullard and Philips valve data......Vb...... Va(b)max:

http://www.r-type.org/pdfs/ech35.pdf

What's more B+ is or was very commonly used to denote the DC supply voltage in lots of transistor stuff like 9 volt or 20 volt rails etc

Plate.....Shown as the letter "P" on many early British valve holders.......!

Lawrence.

[Murphyv310]

Hi.
That's a bit of a debate Lawrence & Mike. You both have points but the real issue is NWM' insistence in using U.S. books and their terminology on a U.K. site.
I personally no longer reply on some threads as I feel that the OP should think about how other people read these threads, it actually is not any real help to any novice as the threads just go round in circles. That and using unfamiliar terminology is pointless.

[pwdrive]

Can't see the problem personally, Plate/Anode etc....Who cares....We all know what's meant in context, surely.

Better not do LOPTX/LOPTY or FROPTX/FROPTY then.

Should I abandon my use of the word "Schematic" for a gob full called "Circuit Diagram"......?

Lawrence.

[Terry]

Times change and so does nomenclature.

I'd never noticed references to Vb in any Mullard data sheet I've ever studied but then, I always used the typeset Mullard data books, which may well post date the typed versions by a decade or two.

However, taking a typed data sheet for a much more modern valve shows a complete absence of Vb http://www.r-type.org/pdfs/eabc80.pdf

I note also that Philips sheets always refer to Vf for indirectly heated valves whereas Mullard always used Vh, so there can be variations between different arms of the same company.

Lawrence refers to B+ being used in schematics for many transistor radios. I don't find that surprising because large numbers of devices sold here were actually designed in the Far East, particularly Japan, initially for the US market and the schematics followed US practice.

As I say, times change. When was the last time you heard anybody refer to a capacitor as a condenser* or discussing NWM's beloved holes?

* Because the motor industry lagged behind in this respect, RS were still selling capacitors labelled as 'Suppressor Condensers' some years after the term 'capacitor' took over in the radio/electronics field!

[pwdrive]

"However, taking a typed data sheet for a much more modern valve shows a complete absence of Vb http://www.r-type.org/pdfs/eabc80.pdf"

Ist enclosed table, left hand column....

Lawrence.

[Terry]

Can't see the problem personally, Plate/Anode etc....Who cares....We all know what's meant in context, surely.

You do, Lawrence, and so do I but it can be very confusing to a novice coming to this forum who is still struggling to grasp the basic fundamentals.

Other expressions are not universal. I'd never heard of a LOPTY until I started college, where it was widely used, but in the 9 years I worked in the retail trade and in a later job where I came into contact with TV engineers from a variety of companies spread over a large geographical area, I never heard that term used once!

As for PJs - you wear them in bed, don't you? 

[Nowhere-Man]

I don't see the problem either. However, I figure it's only polite to change something if more than one person finds stuff confusing. I'll have to think that over. I think though the hard reality is USA and Soviet Union were well ahead of us in technology - USSR retained its military radio research and still has pure radio science universities. There is still one in Siberia. As to the USA, the amateur radio scene was second to none, populated by NASA engineers and encouraging amateurs to actively get involved.
This side point about grids may one day help someone who encounters it. Two circles with "C" + - doesn't mean cathode or capacitor. It had me puzzled. It means simply grid bias battery. Some valves listed have none but a new term I just encountered was plate to plate impedance used in push pull. Not that I plan to build a transmitter but some of this actually helped me by application.
We have a Russian guy on the other forum who published lots of detailed information on those P type transistors. I don't tend to limit myself by drawing a line between foreign or domestic experience. I prefer not to argue about methods or systems because I prefer variety. I did years of courses and exams in various subjects with set books. The reason some of this seems to jump about is I change for variety as it keeps me interested. If I stay in one area I get bored. I am doing ancient languages too and use the same approach. I would make the unusual argument you don't need systems. I just strive to learn something new every day and above all understand the processes.

[Terry]

"However, taking a typed data sheet for a much more modern valve shows a complete absence of Vb http://www.r-type.org/pdfs/eabc80.pdf"

Ist enclosed table, left hand column....

I see what you mean! I can't find the Mullard version on-line - although I suspect that it is identical to this http://frank.yueksel.org/sheets/010/e/EABC80.pdf  but what dominates the line is the initial 'Supply Voltage' and the later Vb is not so dominant as the bolder American B+ so, many (like me), I guess, would never notice it.

However, would a novice think that Vb and V+ are the same thing, especially as, unlike B+, I don't think I've ever seen the HT line marked as Vb on a circuit diagram?

[Nowhere-Man]

There is an important lesson as well. The engineer who got a lot of very negative feedback on Amazon had been misunderstood due to American terminology. This thing about grids never having positive bias stuck in my mind months ago. The American writer and self taught radio engineer was challenged by a uni student and called plain wrong. Yet once you look at all the class A, AB, AB1, 2 and C circuits it becomes clear we don't always add or subtract from a fixed DC bias. So for me there was too much boxing in of definitions. In short, watts can go beyond 4 times the signal and a grid can drive into positive in some power circuits. Even taking that aside, surely "positive" is sometimes relative. - 5 is more negative than -3 but one value is more positive?