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On Friday, March 17, 2017 at 9:51:23 AM UTC-4, Peter Wieck wrote:
p.s.: Every device in the inventory that once used 3055s is now
using 3772s with the 'proper' bias adjustments. Much better, thank you!

Yeah, well not really.

Way, WAY back, when my father was getting his PhD in Physical Chemistry
at Columbia, he filed and was granted a patent having to do with
epitaxial deposition of compounds on silicon substrates.

A year or so after the patent expired, the world decided THE way
to make a lot of semiconducting devices was via the epitaxial
method. Had he the foresight to wait a few years or to renew the
patent with some appropriate variation, and had managed to get
people like TI to give him a piddling royalty of something like
$0.001 per device*, I'd be a quadrabazillionaire. I'd have the
likes of Bill Gates cleaning my toilets. I'd be able to hire and
fire Trump twice a day just for the fun of it.

* Perhaps the better way, back in the '60's, would have been to
charge $0.00001 per junction, not $0.001 per device. Back then,
the licensees would have jumped at the opportunity, but by
the late '70's royalties would have amounted to a buck a chip,
only to increase exponentially, according to Moore's law, from
that point forward.

Sigh, missed opportunities...

Dick Pierce.