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| Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"? |
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| duak:
To bring the thread back to Don, his articles in Poptronics on digital test equipment and later on microcomputers allowed me to actually understand and build up such things even before graduating high school. As a senior in '76, some friends & I managed to convince the school to buy an Altair 8800 kit with Mits 4K basic. I wanted a home computer but there was no way I could afford one and go to college. I got a Motorola 6800 chipset evaluation kit from a local consulting business that was folding. Using Motorola's app manual and Don's schematics from his articles I built a computer very much like the SWTP 6800. I wirewrapped the processor and 8K of static memory. I kludged a SWTP terminal to accept a serial TTL input and scroll the display data (ordinarily, it started on the top line, went to the bottom then started at the top again). I built it into an old desktop calculator case with a ASCII keyboard in place of the original. SWTP 8K BASIC cost like $10 and was loaded in thru Don's cassette tape interface. Star Wars had just come out so I wrote a Star Wars game. The BASIC was so slow that you could get up to get some beer between moves. I recall writing a Mastermind program that was somewhat real time. As an aside, about the same time I read an article in Byte magazine by Wozniak about the Apple II. That fall, a classmate had bought an Apple II board back when Apple sold them without a case. 4K of memory stock, a built in color display interface and the BASIC was fast enough to play an interactive video game. My 6800 was definitely outclassed but that's tech advancement for you. I did use the boards as examples of my work to get a job that led to much bigger and better things. Cheers, |
| Simon:
--- Quote from: Dubbie on November 08, 2018, 07:34:00 pm --- --- Quote from: Simon on November 07, 2018, 06:59:56 pm ---why is it your threads are always controversial? you are a right pain in the ass on this forum. One day you will push me to get my hammer out! --- End quote --- I don’t know. I’ve found this thread quite useful. As a relative newcomer to electronics, it’s nice to learn a bit of history and lore on the topic from a hobbiest POV --- End quote --- i am talking about the general trend of this user. I tire of the reports about him. |
| tpowell1830:
To explain more about Don and just a handful of other writers in the sparse magazines and books of the time in the '70s, people don't seem to realize that this was the only window for hobbyists at the time. The devices were extremely crude in comparison to what is available now, but for us hobbyists, they were gold. I was an adult in the '70s, but I would still try to learn through the magazines what I could. There was no internet at the time and the only other alternative was the library and technical books which were too far over my head as a beginner hobbyist to fathom. That is why when we could find 2 or 3 quarters that we could rub together, we bought the latest Popular Science or Popular Electronics magazines. It was the ONLY venue available. Plus, there was the board layouts that you could transfer to copper and then etch for some of the circuits. :-+ However, as a hobbyist, Forest Mims was my favorite because he would walk through the theory and the circuit and explained as much as possible. It is unfathomable to young people nowadays how much of a knowledge desert it was back in the day without the internet. |
| rhb:
I think the OP is trying to prove that holes do exist as there seems to be a perfect vacuum between his ears. He's demanding 40 years later that someone who spent his working career as a successful writer of mass market technical books and magazine articles should also be famous for designing an amplifier topology or any of the other things that Don did not do. As for what he has been doing since then, if you are that successful you do what *you* want to do, not what some snot nosed ignorant punk thinks you should do. No one has used a Lancaster computer, but there were a lot of Don Lancaster inspired TV typewriters built. And a lot of guys like @duak who took what Don wrote and extrapolated it to do something completely different from what Don presented. But the OP's real problem is not getting the attention that he craved when he started the thread. It's turned into a bunch of old guys chatting about their personal adventures when they were young. So he's trying to become the center of attention again. I really wish it were possible to get together and have a few beers with most of this crowd. The neighbor I hung out with while playing with electronics in grad school is long dead. And except for one friend who is an active embedded systems designer, no one I know outside of the internet does anything with electronics at all. I've got one friend who is an unemployed Mines PhD who is trying to teach himself electronics from AoE, but he's still struggling to get a workspace set up. He lives near Houston and their spare bedrooms have been filled with stuff belonging to friends who were flooded by Harvey. Sadly I know someone who was similar to the OP in high school. And at 60 something he's no different. "Hi, how are you?" "I'm doing fine." OK, that's enough about you, let's talk about me." After which you get an OCD rant about Stratocaster variants or whatever imaginary fault he sees with the world around him. If allowed, he will tell you the same half hour stories of events from 40 years ago that he told you the last time he talked to you. It's important to consider that Don was writing at a time when we were all, no matter our age, starved for information about digital logic. As Einstein noted, if you can't explain it to a child you don't understand it yourself. And a very large proportion of the subscribers to Popular Electronics and Radio-Electronics were adolescents and 20 somethings. The hallmark of a good writer is understanding the target audience and writing to them. Don did a beautiful job of that which is why he was wildly successful. Most of the devices Don wrote about are now museum pieces. And those of us who avidly studied what he wrote have since gone on to more modern and complex devices. So reading his books today is rather like reading Popular Mechanics from 100 years ago. Most of it is not very interesting, but here and there are the occasional gem. I'm sure Dave's videos will feel the same way 100 years from now. Except in very odd circumstances no one would do things now as they were done 40 years ago. However, the larger issue is that we have a generation or so that thinks that all they need is "just in time" knowledge. "if I need to know that I'll look it up on the internet." They fail to grasp that knowledge is cumulative. And it is the framework provided by accumulated knowledge that makes further learning possible. You are *not* going to be able to program an FPGA if you don't understand logic design which Don presented in a low cost, hands on manner using the chips of that day. Just as you are not going to understand digital signal processing unless you have first learned calculus and the rudiments of integral transforms and linear systems. I think @duak's narrative is right on the mark. I didn't have the money to do all that and I graduated high school in '71 when it was *much* harder to get anything. Later in college, I had other priorities like graduating. I finished my first degree in English lit in the fall of '76 just as the rocket took off. It wasn't until I started work on my MS that I was able to play with electronics. And as I was paying for it all, funds were very tight. I was thrilled when I found a Heathkit IO-18 at a yard sale for $75. An historical aside as it came up earlier, Heathkit was started in 1926 to sell airplane kits. The Heath Parasol. http://www.museumofflight.org/aircraft/heath-parasol |
| Simon:
--- Quote from: rhb on November 08, 2018, 08:48:04 pm --- However, the larger issue is that we have a generation or so that thinks that all they need is "just in time" knowledge. "if I need to know that I'll look it up on the internet." They fail to grasp that knowledge is cumulative. And it is the framework provided by accumulated knowledge that makes further learning possible. You are *not* going to be able to program an FPGA if you don't understand logic design which Don presented in a low cost, hands on manner using the chips of that day. Just as you are not going to understand digital signal processing unless you have first learned calculus and the rudiments of integral transforms and linear systems. --- End quote --- and some of them like my boss are 50 somethings..... Yes it's great that I am not expected to have qualifications but with that attitude erm.... yea! |
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