"Ian Molton" wrote in message

Arny Krueger wrote:
"Ian Molton" wrote in message


that said, the quality of the engineering in a good mechanical watch
is going to be LIGHT years ahead of a 1.99 digital watch, and I'll
bet it'll last a damn sight longer before disintegrating.


Depends how you define quality engineering. No doubt the chip in the
digital watch is produced to finer mechanical tolerances.

I dont know about that. how big is the typical mask for a relatively
coarse chip making process such as in a watch?

Watch chips aren't necessarily coarse. The finer the lines, the more chips
per slab of silicon.

I guess its possible its bigger than some of the smaller components
in a classical watch. (thats a guess though).

Not at all.

the chip is produced by shrinking the mask optically onto the silicon
wafer...

Yes, which means that the detail is very fine - tolerances on the order of
wavelengths of light and even X-rays.

As far as watches disintegrating goes, its been decades since I
replaced a digital watch because it stopped working and couldn't be
resucistated with a cheap battery.

I dunno about you, but the 1.99ukp cheapies dont seem to last more
than a year, maybe three before the strap goes...

I go with *quality* product - Timex ;-)

I usually end up replacing my watches for reasons of appearance, a
problem that extends to cheap mechnaical watches as well.

True.

Note that there are very few truely mechanical cheap watches - most
of them have a chip oscillator or some kind of battery-powered gizmo
near their heart.

Having repaired a few cheapies Im aware of that :-)