General > General Technical Chat

Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?

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kd4ttc:

--- Quote from: JPortici on November 09, 2018, 04:26:43 pm ---
--- Quote from: alpher on November 08, 2018, 03:50:37 am ---It's really hard to grasp for the younger folks, how much world changed in the last 20 years.

--- End quote ---

more like 10 years. When i started thinkering in high school here was NOTHING compared to what hobbyist can get today. 5 years if we want to remember the dark times before cheap-ass pcbs from china became mainstream
I'm amused by the fact that i studied power electronics in a book from the seventies and a couple years later i would have studied from a book from 2010s :)

--- End quote ---

Now we can run LTSpice on our PCs, design circuits on a computer, then send files out and get a circuit board in a few days, perhaps even populate the the parts. Sooooo much better than hand drawn circuits, making state diagrams of the digital signal sequencing, making trace diagrams, coating boards, exposing, etching away the copper, drilling, and finally building. Just amazing now. Or the rub on transfers to make circuits. Oh my, those were the days ... that we are so happy we have surpassed!

Non-Abelian:

--- Quote from: In Vacuo Veritas on November 06, 2018, 08:01:15 pm ---And what's his obsession with PostScript?

--- End quote ---
Not sure what his obsession with postscript is, but postscript is a great language.

Zero999:
I don't want to reignite the debate about anthropogenic climate change, but some myths have been posted, other than the usual ones I can't be bothered to debunk. I feel compelled to post this because these myths are widely believed to be fact.


--- Quote from: rhb on February 18, 2019, 04:20:05 am ---This is nonsensical.  I'd have expected a more intelligent statement from you.  Without CO2 & H20 plants die.  Without water people die.  Since we produce CO2 we are able to tolerate it to some degree, but our bodies are very sensitive to excessive levels.
--- End quote ---
CO2 is toxic. Not hugely so, but it is true that if a human is placed in a sealed chamber, they would die from CO2 poisoning, before oxygen levels drop dangerously low. High serum CO2 levels cause the pH of the blood to fall to dangerously low levels.


--- Quote ---The Gulf stream brought a great deal of heat energy to Europe and making it especially hospitable.
--- End quote ---
No it doesn't. The main reason why Europe has milder winters, for its latitude is because it's downwind of a large expanse of ocean.  The Atlantic absorbs heat during the summer, which is released in the winter as the wind blows over it. A similar pattern is seen in North America, with the Pacific Northwest having similar mild winter temperatures to Europe. On the eastern side of large landmasses, winters are much colder, as the wind has travelled over the freezing continent.

As long as the prevailing wind direction is westerly and Europe is to the east of the Atlantic, it will remain much milder, than Eastern Canada.

In cold winters, blocking highs cut-off the mild wind over the ocean, occasionally turning the wind into the east, giving Europe a taste of real winter. When this happens, other areas become abnormally mild. These weather patterns are unusual and normally don't last longer than a week. There's a grain of truth in some of the scare stories about Europe freezing, in that a changes to the global aptmospheric circulation pattern and weakening of the jetstreem, might make winter blocking highs more common, but it simply isn't true we'll be plunged into the freezer.

Simon:
did you post that in the right thread?

DrG:
I came across this thread late. I think that within the first 10 posts, the OP’s question/issue was answered/rebutted unequivocally. I just want to relate an anecdote and make a small point or two. I am talking about the original topic.

Back in the late 70s early 80s, I had absolutely no hardware experience and only a smattering of software experience. I had a TRS-80 Model 1 (which I still have). As purchased, there are no lower-case descenders on the video. Adding a single RAM chip could give you lower-case descenders.

Lancaster wrote an article about how you could do that (either Kilobaud or one of the first issues of 80-Micro, as I recall). The prospect of doing that scratched me where I itched. I got the RAM chip and some wire-wrap, but I could not understand where the chip was going to get power from. I was able to solder the chip as a piggy back as per instruction, but couldn’t figure out where to connect Vcc and GND. I had never been inside the machine before, it was a huge expenditure for me and, quite frankly, I was as insecure as a puppy dog.

I actually called him up on the phone. We spoke for maybe five minutes. Him basically saying, “take them from anywhere” and me saying “huh?”.  I figured it out and it worked and it was amazing.

From then on, I paid particular attention to whatever I found that he wrote. I bought a hardcopy of the TTL cookbook (which I still have). I came to admire him and I still do.

The “guru” label was probably a bit of an unfortunate marketing choice, but as I recall, it was not used until much later. Tinja quests and the like were stylistic and a testimony to his openness.

For me, from my perspective, he was quite influential. He took electronics out of the realm of a subset of engineers and into a realm that I could feed on – it was simple as that. Sure, I guess I could have taken engineering classes, but I was knee-deep in other things that I preferred and were, to me, more important and therefore, more demanding.

I put him alongside Forest Mims (the HS or Undergrad teacher that I longed for) and Steve Ciarcia (the time I spent reading and trying to understand his circuits, was always rewarding even though I didn’t always realize that). Not for content similarities or expertise per se, but for the impact of feeding me at the right time. The right time was when I was ready and able to eat what they were serving.

No claim here as far as data concluding importance, just anecdotal. You may certainly feel that I don’t count because I am just a hobbyist (or whatever). I don’t necessarily expect people to fully understand or appreciate his impact if they were not there because it is too difficult to communicate how little information was easily available.

I often wonder if that same excitement is still out there…those same “first time” adventures…and of course the answer is a definite yes and I search for them all the time.

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