TTL - Time To Live or Transistor Transistor Logic?

Kermit2

Joined Feb 5, 2010
4,162
I think he is taking 'artistic license' with the TTL acronym. Assigning it a different meaning for the purpose of enlivening his diatribe on the topic at hand.
 

AlexR

Joined Jan 16, 2008
732
TTL is an acronym with several meanings.
In the TCP/IP world TTL is a mechanism that prevents infinite routing loops and it does indeed mean Time To Live (for the IP packet).
In the world of logic gates and devices TTL means Transistor Transistor Logic and has nothing whatsoever to do with time to live. If the author does not realise this basic fact I would have grave doubts about the accuracy of anything else he writes.
 

someonesdad

Joined Jul 7, 2009
1,583
My guess is the author of knew what it was, but some uneducated editor made the change in the manuscript. Or, even better, it was done by some computer program under the supervision of a high school student working weekends. :p

OTOH, TAB books in the past have been a bit notorious for poor editing and occasionally weird technical quality, especially before McGraw-Hill bought them.
 

atferrari

Joined Jan 6, 2004
4,763
Spanish Elektor magazine used to come with something even worst: the system in charge of grammar / spelling checker mostly when messing with verbs, offered two options which were both printed with no correction (selection) at all.

A local editor offered the seven tomes of "In search of the lost time" by Marcel Proust where the spelling checker replaced the same words with the same wrong version along the whole text. Moreover it included punctuation marks in the middle of sentences. Had to stop reading it.

The worst was the extremely high price.

BTW from all what I've read from J. Iovine I do not recall that kind of poetic license. But if you go to the columns by Don Lancaster that is another story (more if you are not native as in my case).
 
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Bernard

Joined Aug 7, 2008
5,784
He just did not grow up in the TTL time period. I remember TTL & its predissor RTL, and before that we made our FFs with 2N404's, which was a big advance over the CK 722's. OK so I'm over the hill at 84.
 

atferrari

Joined Jan 6, 2004
4,763
Isn't he an old man, whatever that means? I recall reading his column in Radio Electronics and his farewell when leaving to work in something related to AI.

I should say he's 60 or older bu I might be wrong.

I liked his explanations in that column. Clear and to the point.

My first book on digital techniques, BTW, was Don Lancaster's "TTL Cookbook".

Still have a box full of TTL ICs that served for me to start.
 

Audioguru

Joined Dec 20, 2007
11,248
I didn't use TTL ICs for many years since I discovered Cmos logic so I left my worn out TTL Cookbook at a job I left. They bought me a Cmos cookbook that I still have.

I never got but maybe I should have got an Active Filters Cookbook and an Opamps Cookbook.
 

Audioguru

Joined Dec 20, 2007
11,248
I've got a first edition of The 741 OpAMP for Audio Professionals that I would be glad to send you. ;)
Thanks, but a lousy old 741 opamp was never used by audio professionals. If it worked at a low supply voltage then it might be used in a speakerphone.
 
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