Author Topic: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?  (Read 35402 times)

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Online SiliconWizard

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #75 on: November 09, 2018, 12:06:09 am »
 :-DD
 

Offline rhb

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #76 on: November 09, 2018, 12:34:46 am »
We need to copy some of this to the audiophool thread.  Don discusses the relative merits of barbed wire for speakers, pointing out that some listeners recommend 2 point for Barry Manilow and 4 point for Metallica. But the points are a little sharp so you have to flatten them.

It will be fun to see if the OP posts again or just slinks away.
 
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Offline Simon

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #77 on: November 09, 2018, 07:45:13 am »
I am glad i did not close this thread :)
 
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Offline tpowell1830

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #78 on: November 09, 2018, 03:38:43 pm »
We need to copy some of this to the audiophool thread.  Don discusses the relative merits of barbed wire for speakers, pointing out that some listeners recommend 2 point for Barry Manilow and 4 point for Metallica. But the points are a little sharp so you have to flatten them.

It will be fun to see if the OP posts again or just slinks away.

Just make sure that it is oxygen impregnated barbed wire.  :popcorn:
PEACE===>T
 

Offline RandallMcRee

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #79 on: November 09, 2018, 04:25:04 pm »
My apologies to Don, he *is* a guru.

Good stuff. The OP actually created something fun in the world--he is probably thinking hard how to undo it, right now.

 :popcorn:
 
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Offline JPortici

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #80 on: November 09, 2018, 04:26:43 pm »
It's really hard to grasp for the younger folks, how much world changed in the last 20 years.

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 :)
« Last Edit: November 09, 2018, 04:35:49 pm by JPortici »
 

Online SiliconWizard

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #81 on: November 09, 2018, 04:27:26 pm »
Good stuff. The OP actually created something fun in the world--he is probably thinking hard how to undo it, right now.

Maybe In Vacuo Veritas is actually Don Lancaster in disguise  :-DD
 
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Offline Tomorokoshi

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #82 on: November 09, 2018, 04:37:26 pm »
Dave: EE Video Blog
Don: EE Paper Book

To some extent they occupy the same space and provide the same need, separated only by the media through which their content is distributed, with minor variations due to the technologies available at the time. There is an appealing fractal nature to this.
 

Offline Simon

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #83 on: November 09, 2018, 04:57:35 pm »
I grew up in italy so understand how it was because although i am only 35 things in italy are 10-25 years behind. I was over the moon when a friendly TV repairer gave me old RS catalogues and transistor databooks.

The RS catalogue went with me on every car journey and i would pour over each page in a quest to find out what parts could be found in the wild.
 
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Online rsjsouza

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #84 on: November 09, 2018, 05:59:21 pm »
Don Lancaster's website, is well worth a visit, if you are interested in that type of thing. Since this thread started, I've probably spent too long, going through the website and some of the resources on it.
Bad publicity is better than no publicity at all! :-DD

Due to the language barrier as a kid, I did not get to experience firsthand Don Lancaster's writings but we certainly had our share of local writers that, in retrospect, seem a bit exaggerated and puerile (may have even been disciples of Don Lancaster's style). However, as others have mentioned, they were certainly catering to the audience and the style that grasped our attention as kids/teenagers and kept us going despite the usual hardships and troubles that are part of this electronics journey. After all, what they presented was the absolute source of information from the unreachable manufacturers.
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Oh, the "whys" of the datasheets... The information is there not to be an axiomatic truth, but instead each speck of data must be slowly inhaled while carefully performing a deep search inside oneself to find the true metaphysical sense...
 
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Offline JPortici

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #85 on: November 09, 2018, 07:53:09 pm »
I grew up in italy so understand how it was because although i am only 35 things in italy are 10-25 years behind. I was over the moon when a friendly TV repairer gave me old RS catalogues and transistor databooks.

The RS catalogue went with me on every car journey and i would pour over each page in a quest to find out what parts could be found in the wild.

Nope, that's not what i meant, at all. Even though i had simillar experiences (only it was my teacher who gave me his old RS catalogues.. and to this days i still use paper catalogues for certain distributors because of their godafwul websites. Namely RS and TME)

What i meant was that we are still learning from books from the 70s, but in the last 10 years i saw power converters design becoming so much more affordable and reliable that it could be taught in high school!
I don't remember if you ever told from which part of italy you came but i can assure you the north east was and still is on par with the rest of the world :)
 

Online MK14

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #86 on: November 09, 2018, 08:46:21 pm »
Don Lancaster's website, is well worth a visit, if you are interested in that type of thing. Since this thread started, I've probably spent too long, going through the website and some of the resources on it.
Bad publicity is better than no publicity at all! :-DD

Due to the language barrier as a kid, I did not get to experience firsthand Don Lancaster's writings but we certainly had our share of local writers that, in retrospect, seem a bit exaggerated and puerile (may have even been disciples of Don Lancaster's style). However, as others have mentioned, they were certainly catering to the audience and the style that grasped our attention as kids/teenagers and kept us going despite the usual hardships and troubles that are part of this electronics journey. After all, what they presented was the absolute source of information from the unreachable manufacturers.

I agree. Good or bad publicity, can be good for business, either way.

As others have said in this thread (or similar), the accessibility of electronics, has changed, massively, over the last 50 years (and longer).
Computers, perhaps 50 or more years ago, cost perhaps £100,000 or even £1,000,000+ in today's money, needed a massive room, huge amounts of electricity and a big team of long white lab coat wearing engineers/mathematicians/scientists/etc, to keep it ticking along.

Whereas, they start at $0.03, now.   :-DD

The internet potentially replaces the old paper books, datasheets, needing to ask 'gurus' in person, etc.

I'm glad that the OP's thread, has apparently/probably gone spectacularly wrong for them!   :-DD
 

Offline In Vacuo VeritasTopic starter

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #87 on: November 09, 2018, 08:51:54 pm »
I still don't think he's a guru. A shameless self-promoter, sure. All I'm saying is no one ever said "Do it like Lancaster did it".

Notice no one is using PostScript as a general purpose language and solar power and electric cars seem to be doing just fine, no matter what this windbag said decades ago...


I'm glad that the OP's thread, has apparently/probably gone spectacularly wrong for them!   :-DD

How do you figure? I still have seen no evidence of "guru" status, just that he wrote a lot of stuff. Even one person agreed with me on my main point.

So great, he wrote a lot of stuff that people read... because there was nothing else to read!
 

Online MK14

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #88 on: November 09, 2018, 09:00:40 pm »
I still don't think he's a guru.

That's fine. You are welcome to have your own opinion.

But if I ever bumped in to him (unlikely), and he/we had time and wanted to have a great long chat about electronics. Both now and in the past.
I would thoroughly enjoy the experience.

The electronics industry has created a lot of heroes and gurus, over the years.
 

Offline EEVblog

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #89 on: November 09, 2018, 09:51:20 pm »
I still don't think he's a guru. A shameless self-promoter, sure. All I'm saying is no one ever said "Do it like Lancaster did it".

Why do you care what he calls his website?
Why keep digging your hole further?
You're no doubt now embarrassed to find out he's one of the industries pioneers in education, oops.
What have you done for engineering education that makes you even remotely qualified to criticise someone like this?
All I see is some anonymous shit poster who is jealous of someone else's hard work, prove me wrong.

Quote
How do you figure? I still have seen no evidence of "guru" status, just that he wrote a lot of stuff. Even one person agreed with me on my main point.
So great, he wrote a lot of stuff that people read... because there was nothing else to read!

He wrote a lot of stuff that helped educate, entertain, and inspire hobbyists and engineers.
Wow, one person agrees with your main point, congratulations, you win the internet.
« Last Edit: November 09, 2018, 09:53:21 pm by EEVblog »
 
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Online rsjsouza

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #90 on: November 09, 2018, 09:53:29 pm »
I still don't think he's a guru.
The Guru's and Swami's Union Hulapai County local #357 begs to differ... :-DD

According to Merriam Webster, guru is a teacher and especially intellectual guide in matters of fundamental concern, which in the distant 1970's he fulfilled this definition in respect to digital designs according to your fellow eevbloggers. Therefore it is not a matter of opinion.

If he still is a guru, that may be up for debate - I really don't know if you can revoke these titles.
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Oh, the "whys" of the datasheets... The information is there not to be an axiomatic truth, but instead each speck of data must be slowly inhaled while carefully performing a deep search inside oneself to find the true metaphysical sense...
 

Offline Richard Crowley

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #91 on: November 09, 2018, 10:01:53 pm »
You're no doubt now embarrassed to find out he's one of the industries pioneers in education, oops. 

That is not clear.  Some people are too clueless and/or stubborn to be embarrassed.

Isn't there a "ignore this user" feature around here somewhere?
 
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Offline Simon

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #92 on: November 09, 2018, 10:10:13 pm »

I don't remember if you ever told from which part of italy you came but i can assure you the north east was and still is on par with the rest of the world :)

I was in the south puglia, Alberobello to be exact, As far as i know I could not order from RS unless i was a business, internet was something i got very late on and to this day the village probably still does not have it when it was a decent sized place not far from a town that had it. It was dialup only and I eventually managed it on my 3G mobile that i had to put on a special cradle bolted to the balcony with a bag over it in the rain and a 5V regulator running off an old car battery to relay the internet connection to my computer over blue tooth. Schools internet was 56Kb/s for the entire site so actual speeds of 0.5Kbps were quite normal. Getting information was very hard,

Without the internet and until i got a prepaid debit card i could not buy anything online and did not know where to get books, there were magazines but the italian practical electronics was a joke and i was a mug paying money for a magazine that was of no better standard than those so called indutry standard magazines we get at work full of waffle. Oventually practical electronics changed it's name twice becoming a computer magazine with an electrical bent. Circuits in it were often wrong and how i would of etched a board I don't know and the school lab technician was most unhelpful (an ignorant idiot that did not even know how to etch boards properly).
 

Offline rhb

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #93 on: November 10, 2018, 12:58:19 am »
I still don't think he's a guru.
The Guru's and Swami's Union Hulapai County local #357 begs to differ... :-DD

According to Merriam Webster, guru is a teacher and especially intellectual guide in matters of fundamental concern, which in the distant 1970's he fulfilled this definition in respect to digital designs according to your fellow eevbloggers. Therefore it is not a matter of opinion.

If he still is a guru, that may be up for debate - I really don't know if you can revoke these titles.

tl;dr ;-)

I was a bit surprised he didn't post a photo of his union card.  After all, he could make one in 5 minutes or less.  It would take longer to "age"  it than make it. Doubtless due to having had a few hundred thousand idiots like our vacuuos friend here make similar stupid comments.  Hence the Marcia Swampfelder piece.

The simple truth of the matter is that *really* smart and capable  people don't care at all what other people think of their abilities.  What other people think of their personal conduct matters.  One does not wish to offend.

Rest assured that *other* people imposed the "guru" label.  So Don has fun with it.  If you are actually good enough to achieve "walks on water" status, you get *very* tired of it *very* quickly.  While you can't remove the notion from people's minds, you can poke pins in it.  Been there, done that and wore out several T shirts.

There is an old proverb that the best answer to a fool is silence.  It's the princile of conservation of energy.  Fools respond to *all* answers in the same way.  The *only* reason I got involved in this thread was the OPs use of the past tense.  Fortunately it was merely  because  In Vacuo Veritas hasn't mastered the English  language sufficiently to write grammatically.  I was quite concerned that Don might have passed away.

Very few people achieve the level of success as a professional tech writer that Don and Forrest have. Even though I greatly prefer Don's work over Forrest's, I have to acknowledge Forrest's accomplishment.  In part it may be simply age related.  I was reading Don and others before Forrest started writing.  So I'd already learned all the stuff the he presented.  And quite a lot of that really was just data sheet examples redrawn by hand. Forrest did do pioneering work on the use of photovoltaic cells as emitters and got into a big clash with AT&T in which AT&T behaved *very* badly.  The settlement was never disclosed, but I am quite certain Mims got quite a bit of money in compensation.

Many of my close personal friends and colleagues from work have PhDs from the very best schools in the world and were supervised by the very best scientists in the world.  They are all very modest and unpretentious.  Except for those who must do business with national oil companies, none of them has "PhD" on their business card.  "Badges?  We don't need no stinking badges!"

I'm an ABD (All But Dissertation).  I never refer to it that way.  I always say, " I'm a failed PhD candidate, and beware of anyone who advertises it."  At professional society meetings I hang out with a bunch  I refer to as the "heckling section".  Not because any of us are in any way disruptive.  We're very polite.  But we ask hard questions.  And if one of us closes our comment at the end of the talk with "Food for thought."  it has  just been very publicly and politely announced that despite being given a very explicit hint, you are clueless and the audience should ignore your conclusions.

I had wanted this thread locked, but I share Simon's sentiment that leaving it going was far better.  I have not  laughed so hard in ages when I read Don's  8 November post.

A note to Dave and the other moderators:  If a user starts a thread in the manner that this one was started:

disparagement of a public figure
obvious lack of even basic research into that person's work

I should like to suggest that the person be advised that if they continue posting in such vein they will be banned.  There was never *any* justification for the original post.  The OP did not actually seek information, but merely wanted to attract  personal attention by making inflammatory remarks.  That this is true is demonstrated by the OP's refusal to accept that those of us who were there hold Don in high regard and recognize the "The Guru's Lair" is a '70's joke.  And even though Don himself has pointed this out, the OP has persisted in insisting that *his* opinion is more important than the opinion of those of us who learned so much from Don.

 
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Offline Alex Eisenhut

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #94 on: November 10, 2018, 01:02:08 am »
LOL kinda random subject... But back in the '90s I found the TTL Cookbook in my college's library as they were clearing out older titles, I picked it up for 1$. I still have it!
Actually reminds me I always wanted the RTL cookbook because of all the RTL chips in my vintage Tek junk... Off to eBay!

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Offline rhb

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #95 on: November 10, 2018, 01:05:54 am »
I have two copies of the TTL Cookbook.  The one I bought back in the day and a scavenged copy.  I've also got a scavenged copy of the RTL Cookbook.  Talk about primitive logic implementations.  I hope I never have to fix any of that stuff.
 

Offline rstofer

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #96 on: November 10, 2018, 01:13:01 am »
Many of Don Lancaster's books are available at Alibris:
https://www.alibris.com/booksearch?keyword=don+lancaster

I have 'repurchased' several.  Darned if I could turn up my original volumes - I have moved several times over the years and everybody knows how that works out.
 
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Offline rhb

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #97 on: November 10, 2018, 01:23:31 am »
With cheap, high performance MCUs, it's rare to need to use gate level logic, but sometimes you really can't use clocked logic.  When you must implement asynchronous logic, Don's books suddenly become very relevant again.
 

Offline Alex Eisenhut

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #98 on: November 10, 2018, 01:34:46 am »
I have two copies of the TTL Cookbook.  The one I bought back in the day and a scavenged copy.  I've also got a scavenged copy of the RTL Cookbook.  Talk about primitive logic implementations.  I hope I never have to fix any of that stuff.

Eh? Primitive? Check out the innards of the 6R1 digital plugin. You'll be thrilled with RTL chips instead of discrete transistors at 20V...

http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/6R1

Many of Don Lancaster's books are available at Alibris:
https://www.alibris.com/booksearch?keyword=don+lancaster

Thanks. The Montreal used book scene is very limited these days, all the places I used to haunt are now restaurants, or convenience stores... :(

USPS shipping to Canada is pretty high these days too, 20$ USPS for a 10$ book. :(
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Offline james_s

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Re: Was Don Lancaster really a "guru"?
« Reply #99 on: November 10, 2018, 01:36:13 am »
I've used his TTL Cookbook quite a lot when doing FPGA development. It may not be dealing with individual TTL ICs but the logic is roughly the same. Sometimes too it's just fun to build something the old way, and at times a couple of gates can solve something easily that would be a pain or unnecessary to do in software.
 


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