[KenWittlief]

taking a step back from this discussion, Dr Schmidt taught the senior level Digital Design class

the focus of my career has been digital design and programming

and the 555 timer and other one-shot chips are analog devices

so this is really a discussion of the merits of digital systems vs analog systems - and the merits of hybrid digital/analog systems

so from Dr Schmidts persepective, he was correct. Analog timers have no place in a digital design class, and they have no place in a digital system (ie, you would never plop down a 555 timer to generate the CAS and RAS signals to an SDRAM bank on a pentium motherboard, you would use digital counters and state machines

I concede that if you are designing an analog system, then things like one shot timers are acceptable

and Im certain that analog designers have their own set of golden rules

but back to the original question of this thread, I think the debate that has been raging here is really a question of which approach is better, a digital or an analog solution?

BTW, part of the problem is that the PWM control of the victors is a carry over of the PWM of radio control model servos. Originally all RC systems were analog, but now here we are with these digital FIRST controllers interfaced to Victor speed controllers, with a legacy-analog PWM signal format. :^)