Our 3+ hour interview with free_electron

[ChrisGammell]

So...what'd you think?

http://www.theamphour.com/169-an-interview-with-vincent-himpe-escaped-electron-elocution/

[george graves]

Holy cow - haven't listened to it yet.....but, why did it end up so long?  Must have been a good talk!

[ChrisGammell]

Vincent has a LOT of stories. We hardly got through any of them.

[george graves]

Will be sure to listen!  Love the show BTW!

[Kempy]

Holy cow - haven't listened to it yet.....but, why did it end up so long?  Must have been a good talk!

I've only got about 1/4 of the way through it listening in the car on the way to work - it is great - I can't wait to drive home to listen to more 

Favourite story so far is where Vincent talks about how he saved the chip fab from days of shut down by throwing a leaking canister of highly toxic gas out through a door and into the adjacent farmers field. 

[cosmos]

This was fun to listen to.

I have actually been to a Alcatel Mietec FAB, possibly the one in Oudenaarde some time around 1993.
I also got the FAB tour, emergency showers and poison/corrosive warning signs everywhere.
We did at least one mixed signal circuit with with them (in 0.8u if memory serves).

The Kalma and PDP11 system were just discontinued when I started (late 80s), we where on a pair of Apollo (DN300?) and maybe one or two DN550s work stations with mentor graphics IC tools (these where 68K machines with 8-12Mhz CPU clocks).

Lots of other familiar items in this interview ...
1980s layout tools including trying Autotrax around 1990,  hand routed First generation Xilinx 2000 (released around 1986 or so), had access to very early Bluetooth radios used with custom protocols, and being a general purpose problem solving resource.   
Thanks for bringing back the good old times.

[jancumps]

He stole my accent

[Bored@Work]

He stole my accent

Don't worry, there is more of it where it came from.

[jucole]

Superb!!!    the graduate course story was my favourite!  - it sounded like the H.N.D level courses here in the UK.

[Kjelt]

3 hours? I downloaded it so I can listen to it going from home to work and back 

[free_electron]

Favourite story so far is where Vincent talks about how he saved the chip fab from days of shut down by throwing a leaking canister of highly toxic gas out through a door and into the adjacent farmers field. 

by the way : maybe it was not clear but that wasn't me .It was a collegue of mine that did that. i was off that shift. But it is a true story that has happened... i got plenty of others .like a collegue sticking his hand in the high voltage tank of an implanter ( charged at 100 kilovolt and full of PCB oil ) and getting a good jolt of a still charged capacitor dousing the entire ceiling , floor , himself and all bystanders in high voltage oil ...  the door falling of the implanter in the nightshift ( i was the first responder to that one.. it completely crushed the feeder robot that sat underneath ... ) going through multiple gas and fluid alarms. seeing plant and facilities accidentally trip the main breaker of a fully loaded implanter under high vacum , turning and around and re-rengaging it... with catastrophic results .....

it'd have to be a 10 hour show just for the waferfab antics alone ...

[Kempy]

Favourite story so far is where Vincent talks about how he saved the chip fab from days of shut down by throwing a leaking canister of highly toxic gas out through a door and into the adjacent farmers field. 

by the way : maybe it was not clear but that wasn't me .It was a collegue of mine that did that. i was off that shift. But it is a true story that has happened... i got plenty of others .like a collegue sticking his hand in the high voltage tank of an implanter ( charged at 100 kilovolt and full of PCB oil ) and getting a good jolt of a still charged capacitor dousing the entire ceiling , floor , himself and all bystanders in high voltage oil ...  the door falling of the implanter in the nightshift ( i was the first responder to that one.. it completely crushed the feeder robot that sat underneath ... ) going through multiple gas and fluid alarms. seeing plant and facilities accidentally trip the main breaker of a fully loaded implanter under high vacum , turning and around and re-rengaging it... with catastrophic results .....

it'd have to be a 10 hour show just for the waferfab antics alone ...

You can be sure that I'll be listening to this show again - with any luck I'll get it right next time. 

A 10 hour show will do just fine - about a weeks worth of driving to and from work - roll it on. 

[ChrisGammell]

Maybe we can just convince Vincent to start a second podcast? It ain't hard to do, if me and Dave can do it, anyone can!

[free_electron]

quick, somebody build a new datacenter to store podcasts ...

[snikrepmada]

I just joined the EEVBlog forum to say what a great episode this was.  I did not even realize it was that long till the end and I could have listened to more stories.  Great job!

-Adam

[orion242]

Maybe we can just convince Vincent to start a second podcast? It ain't hard to do, if me and Dave can do it, anyone can!

I would listen.  Great show.

[miceuz]

It's probably THE most industry anecdote-loaded amphour I've ever listened to. Thanks Vincent, it was very interesting and entertaining.

[Nermash]

Great show guys, 3+ hours of very interesting stuff! Looking forward to episode no. 2

[BravoV]

Another vote, +1 for episode II. 

[george graves]

Great show - the 3 hours flew by - please have him on again. 

Ah man - I had no clue free_electron had such a great back ground.  I'll pay more attention to his posts from how on - for sure.  Unlike Board@work - I usually do the opposite of what that dude says!     

So you started the show with some assumptions I think the audience wasn't privy to.  Did he never graduate college? 

[c4757p]

This was fun to listen to. Thanks for taking the time to do it! I'd also love another one... though Dave and Chris's server might not agree Some people seem to have an endless repository of good stories to tell.

[peter.mitchell]

Was a great listen, made the work day go very quickly, a very fun show. Also, thanks for commenting on the 8051/6502.

[deephaven]

Just want to add my thanks to Vincent for giving 3 hours + of his time to make this excellent and entertaining show. Also thanks to Dave and Chris too for making it possible 

[SeanB]

Vince was definitely an enjoyable and entertaining talk. You could see the commonality with Chris in the fab work as well, though it was definitely way past Chris's regular bedtime.......... I would also add a +1 for a part 2 and a part 3-25 as well. Just give Vincent a few Gb of storage and a weekend to talk to a microphone and it will be interesting as a monologue anyway.

[timb]

quick, somebody build a new datacenter to store podcasts ...

I could seriously have sat there all day (and the next, and the next and all weekend) listening, what a great show!

Though, I do have a few questions about the issues you raised with Bluetooth:

I am curious, what's your source on Apple not allowing A2DP (stereo audio) streaming from the iPhone? Because if I remember correctly, that's been available since at least iOS 2.0/iPhone 3G debuted in 2008. The original iPhone came out in June of 2007, however Apple had already gone DRM free on all their music in April of that year so I can't really see them being concerned with somebody ripping a stream when the music is already available DRM free in 256Kbps AAC.

(Not to mention the fact that Bluetooth supports SCMT for the streaming of DRM secured audio.)

Stereo audio quality over Bluetooth can be quite good, as AVDTP is just a transport protocol and can encapsulate everything from MP3 to AAC and beyond. If you use something like APT-X it's basically impossible to tell the difference between a wired connection and for most OEM car audio systems the default SBC codec is actually quite good!

As for battery life, I have a BT (2.1) keyboard here that's at least 5 years old. I get about a year on a set of two AA batteries. Maybe 3 months on the mouse. Considering I don't have a tiny dongle to use that also takes up a USB port, I feel like I can live with dropping a set of rechargeable batteries in every now and then. (That figure will also drastically increase for newer BT4 devices!)

Bluetooth is alive and well and not dying out anytime soon. Headset + Stereo Audio streaming is here to stay and BT4 (Bluetooth Low Energy) is the future of low-speed device interconnects mainly because of the traction they already have with Wireless Human Interface Devices like mice and keyboards.

That little fruit company in Cupertino is pushing it as *the* way to connect third-party gizmos and gadgets to iOS devices (without having to go through their certification process like you would using a Lightning Cable). They've even recently released an API (as part of iOS 7) and protocol to allow actual BT4 gamepads with real analog sticks and lots of buttons to work in iOS games, which is pretty rad.

Speaking of gamepads, all the last generation consoles (Wii, PS3 and 360) all used BT controllers; the current generation Wii U uses a combination of WiFi, BT4 and NFC while the upcoming PS4 will only have BT2.1. Curiously, the Xbox One seems to lack BT altogether in favor of WiFi Direct, which seems like an odd choice, but this is Microsoft we're talking about so...

Anyway, I didn't mean to write an essay on Bluetooth! Just my take.