Author Topic: Why do companies try to take patents out on standard schematics?  (Read 10571 times)

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Offline Jester

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #50 on: November 07, 2021, 09:27:42 pm »
I guess it depends on what you are designing…..

1) At the better companies that I worked for in the past we had a rigorous design review process. You can’t catch everything but if you design with quality engineers in the first place and then lean on the experienced staff to review we found it saved a lot of time and it was not uncommon to go to production with R1 boards. I don’t think there would be much to gain by having every Tom, Dick and Harry looking at our schematics.

2) Before we put the first resistor down on the schematic, the design specifications were thoroughly thought out and reviewed initially with the sales and marketing group based on feedback from the actual users as to what they wanted or needed and then to the engineering support and then to the engineering design group to figure out the best way to implement. This was a circular process until everyone agreed on all the important aspects, then signed off on the specifications. Then the actual design would begin with a focus on proving the aspects that were new to us, especially if we were not sure we could actually do it.  The firm specification was important to prevent having the "isolated" engineers go off on a tangent designing some feature creep aspect during the design phase that they might perceive as important.

3) Again at the good companies I worked at the official engineering drawings including schematics were 100% accurate, if you pulled an official red binder it was correct, all revisions clearly identified.

We did not share our design documents with anyone unless it was a requirement of the sale and then the copies distributed were identified so it would be obvious where they originated from with a nasty NDA. I think those companies that did get our schematics kept them under lock and key, at least that’s what they agreed to.

Those good companies were really successful, made tons of money and were great to work for.


At the companies that sucked that I spent little time at, they did none of the above and they all went broke floundered or got sold off eventually.

« Last Edit: November 08, 2021, 01:13:58 am by Jester »
 
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Offline vk6zgo

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #51 on: November 08, 2021, 01:05:27 am »
I guess it depends on what you are designing…..

1) At the better companies that I worked for in the past we had a rigorous design review process. You can’t catch everything but if you design with quality engineers in the first place and then lean on the experienced staff to review we found it saved a lot of time and it was not uncommon to go to production with R1 boards. I don’t think there would be much to gain by having every Tom, Dick and Harry looking at our schematics.

2) Before we put the first resistor down on the schematic, the design specifications were thoroughly thought out and reviewed starting with the sales and marketing group.

3) Again at the good companies I worked at the official engineering drawings including schematics were 100% accurate, if you pulled an official red binder it was correct, all revisions clearly identified.

We did not share our design documents with anyone unless it was a requirement of the sale and then the copies distributed were identified so it would be obvious where they originated from with a nasty NDA. I think those companies that did get our schematics kept them under lock and key, at least that’s what they agreed to.

Those good companies were really successful, made tons of money and were great to work for.


At the companies that sucked that I spent little time at they did none of the above, all went broke or got sold off.

The problem is that, if you really had a "ground-breaking" new way of doing things in hardware, which is unlikely in the extreme, there is nothing stopping a competitor from buying the product through an intermediary, & "reverse-engineering" it.
In a lot of cases they don't even need to do the latter, as the important thing is more in knowing "What the product does", & its specs, so they can produce an equivalent device, even if it does things totally differently.

I would suggest that hardware devices should be at the very bottom of the list for secrecy----the important stuff is usually software, & financial records.

As for customers "keeping schematics under lock & key"------- tell that to a harassed Tech tasked with getting the bloody thing going "in the middle of the bush" on the other side of the world.

"Sorry Boss, I have to wait till you or the security bloke can open the secure cupboard.
Enjoy your 4 hour drive!"



 
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Offline Jester

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #52 on: November 08, 2021, 01:20:51 am »
I guess it depends on what you are designing…..

1) At the better companies that I worked for in the past we had a rigorous design review process. You can’t catch everything but if you design with quality engineers in the first place and then lean on the experienced staff to review we found it saved a lot of time and it was not uncommon to go to production with R1 boards. I don’t think there would be much to gain by having every Tom, Dick and Harry looking at our schematics.

2) Before we put the first resistor down on the schematic, the design specifications were thoroughly thought out and reviewed starting with the sales and marketing group.

3) Again at the good companies I worked at the official engineering drawings including schematics were 100% accurate, if you pulled an official red binder it was correct, all revisions clearly identified.

We did not share our design documents with anyone unless it was a requirement of the sale and then the copies distributed were identified so it would be obvious where they originated from with a nasty NDA. I think those companies that did get our schematics kept them under lock and key, at least that’s what they agreed to.

Those good companies were really successful, made tons of money and were great to work for.


At the companies that sucked that I spent little time at they did none of the above, all went broke or got sold off.

The problem is that, if you really had a "ground-breaking" new way of doing things in hardware, which is unlikely in the extreme, there is nothing stopping a competitor from buying the product through an intermediary, & "reverse-engineering" it.
In a lot of cases they don't even need to do the latter, as the important thing is more in knowing "What the product does", & its specs, so they can produce an equivalent device, even if it does things totally differently.

I would suggest that hardware devices should be at the very bottom of the list for secrecy----the important stuff is usually software, & financial records.

As for customers "keeping schematics under lock & key"------- tell that to a harassed Tech tasked with getting the bloody thing going "in the middle of the bush" on the other side of the world.

"Sorry Boss, I have to wait till you or the security bloke can open the secure cupboard.
Enjoy your 4 hour drive!"


Well the equipment we were selling was portable, and expensive and was not going to be fixed in the bush, everything came back for service if it was required.   Like I said I guess it depends on what the system or device is your designing, sure if it's a video monitor or battery charger give them the schematic.

The equipment we were producing was quite specialized (low volume) so the sales people were really plugged into their customers. We heard that there were attempts to purchase by unknown 3rd parties and as far as I know they were never successful.  Our main competitor eventually simply purchased our company outright, transferred the technology and then shut down the Canadian operation.
« Last Edit: November 08, 2021, 01:36:36 am by Jester »
 
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Offline vk6zgo

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #53 on: November 08, 2021, 01:34:56 am »
I guess it depends on what you are designing…..

1) At the better companies that I worked for in the past we had a rigorous design review process. You can’t catch everything but if you design with quality engineers in the first place and then lean on the experienced staff to review we found it saved a lot of time and it was not uncommon to go to production with R1 boards. I don’t think there would be much to gain by having every Tom, Dick and Harry looking at our schematics.

2) Before we put the first resistor down on the schematic, the design specifications were thoroughly thought out and reviewed starting with the sales and marketing group.

3) Again at the good companies I worked at the official engineering drawings including schematics were 100% accurate, if you pulled an official red binder it was correct, all revisions clearly identified.

We did not share our design documents with anyone unless it was a requirement of the sale and then the copies distributed were identified so it would be obvious where they originated from with a nasty NDA. I think those companies that did get our schematics kept them under lock and key, at least that’s what they agreed to.

Those good companies were really successful, made tons of money and were great to work for.


At the companies that sucked that I spent little time at they did none of the above, all went broke or got sold off.

The problem is that, if you really had a "ground-breaking" new way of doing things in hardware, which is unlikely in the extreme, there is nothing stopping a competitor from buying the product through an intermediary, & "reverse-engineering" it.
In a lot of cases they don't even need to do the latter, as the important thing is more in knowing "What the product does", & its specs, so they can produce an equivalent device, even if it does things totally differently.

I would suggest that hardware devices should be at the very bottom of the list for secrecy----the important stuff is usually software, & financial records.

As for customers "keeping schematics under lock & key"------- tell that to a harassed Tech tasked with getting the bloody thing going "in the middle of the bush" on the other side of the world.

"Sorry Boss, I have to wait till you or the security bloke can open the secure cupboard.
Enjoy your 4 hour drive!"


Well the equipment we were selling was portable, and expensive and was not going to be fixed in the bush, everything came back for service if it was required.   Like I said I guess it depends on what the system or device is your designing, sure if it's a video monitor or battery charger give them the schematic.

The stuff I was thinking about were quite some levels of complexity above "monitors or battery chargers", were large & immobile, & cost around the same as a decent sized house, so would they fit your criteria?
 
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Offline Jester

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #54 on: November 08, 2021, 01:37:59 am »
Portable as in carry in your hand and the cost of a modest bungalow. We were doing a show and tell in San Jose with our best client, and we brought quite a few units and they were helping us carry them into the conference hall and the guy that had just placed a large order said to his guy careful that costs more than a Ferarri!
« Last Edit: November 08, 2021, 01:55:48 am by Jester »
 
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #55 on: November 08, 2021, 02:23:31 am »
Portable as in carry in your hand and the cost of a modest bungalow. We were doing a show and tell in San Jose with our best client, and we brought quite a few units and they were helping us carry them into the conference hall and the guy that had just placed a large order said to his guy careful that costs more than a Ferarri!

I once increased the value of my [almost new] Honda Prelude 4WS roughly twelvefold by putting 3 off 3U boxes into the back of it. :) (3 fully loaded Max4000s, the then industry standard termination device for trunks in the dial-up ISP days.)
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Offline AaronD

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #56 on: November 08, 2021, 03:29:29 am »
Just to add a relatively minor point about letting loads of engineers see stuff:

I spent a year with an equipment supplier that had a revolving door of engineers.  You might say that that was awesome for getting fresh eyes on things, but it was actually a massive liability.  Each engineer, myself included, would build up some knowledge of how this company and these machines worked...and then take it all with them when they left.

Combined with the "previous project with changes" mentality, this created an absolute mess of technical debt to the point that one of my major assignments during the year that I put up with, was to create an entirely new template from scratch that could be copied for each project *instead of* copying the previous one.  The idea was to throw away the unusably brittle pile of band-aids that all of these transient engineers ended up with, in favor of this all-new thing that I did.  I have my doubts that that actually happened though, despite it working perfectly as far as I could test on the bench and on one customer's site.

The guy that they just happened to hire as my eventual boss, a handful of months before he hired me, turned out to be really good!  They told him to "fix engineering", so he went into it with that mentality, and quickly figured out that it was really a management problem.  Engineering was simply being ignored and then blamed for not delivering the moon that the salesmen promised.  When I left, he decided to stand up to them...and they eliminated his position.
 
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Online Zero999

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #57 on: November 08, 2021, 02:23:23 pm »
I don't think it is a question of paranoia, it is about efficiency and accountability.  If two engineers are assigned to build a bog-simple circuit, the company doesn't need "loads of engineers" putting eyes on it. The two engineers should be given remedial training, and mentoring if they have trouble with "bog simple" circuits. The cost of putting a circuit on copper is dropping so low that a fast failure is cheaper than an an endless review and error check.

Finally, when "loads of engineers" review a circuit, blame is diluted, root causes (or substandard employees) cannot be identified and the wasted time becomes a culture of mediocracy. 

If you are the one asking to see someone else's circuit, you need more projects of your own.
If you want "loads of other engineers" to review your circuit, you may be the root cause of sub-par performance.
I agree that a simple circuits shouldn't require peer review, but is it worth trying to keep basic designs secret?

And even reasonably experienced people do occasionally make silly mistakes.  The classic is using the wrong footprint, because the CAD library or data sheet contained an error, they missed.

I disagree with you about diluting the blame. Ultimately the person who signs off a design bares the ultimate responsibility, but playing the blame game all the time, is counterproductive.
 
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Offline fourfathom

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #58 on: November 08, 2021, 04:41:57 pm »
I shudder at the idea of having my products constantly under "design review" whenever a random fresh engineer walked in the door.  We put together skilled engineering teams who designed complicated products.  The projects had formal and informal reviews all throughout the design and prototype process, and feature feedback from the field after release.  It would be a full-time job for a new-hire to review even a fraction of the designs in our products, not to mention the time required for the responsible design team to explain it all to the new-hire.  And then the new-hires wouldn't have time to work on the project we needed them on.

And what about the firmware, software, and the ASICs?  These designs are probably more error-prone than the board and schematic-level design.
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Online Zero999

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #59 on: November 08, 2021, 05:54:52 pm »
I shudder at the idea of having my products constantly under "design review" whenever a random fresh engineer walked in the door.  We put together skilled engineering teams who designed complicated products.  The projects had formal and informal reviews all throughout the design and prototype process, and feature feedback from the field after release.  It would be a full-time job for a new-hire to review even a fraction of the designs in our products, not to mention the time required for the responsible design team to explain it all to the new-hire.  And then the new-hires wouldn't have time to work on the project we needed them on.

And what about the firmware, software, and the ASICs?  These designs are probably more error-prone than the board and schematic-level design.
I don't think anyone is talking about getting every engineer in the company, including graduates, to review every design. I just don't see the point in only allowing a small group of engineers to access the drawings/source code. Fair enough if it has a security classification such as restricted, or secret, but it's otherwise pointless. I see new engineers being able to access existing designs, as a good thing. If they do spot potential bugs and have suggestions about how something can be improved, then all the better.
 
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Offline Bassman59

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #60 on: November 09, 2021, 08:16:16 pm »
I shudder at the idea of having my products constantly under "design review" whenever a random fresh engineer walked in the door.  We put together skilled engineering teams who designed complicated products.  The projects had formal and informal reviews all throughout the design and prototype process, and feature feedback from the field after release.  It would be a full-time job for a new-hire to review even a fraction of the designs in our products, not to mention the time required for the responsible design team to explain it all to the new-hire.  And then the new-hires wouldn't have time to work on the project we needed them on.

And what about the firmware, software, and the ASICs?  These designs are probably more error-prone than the board and schematic-level design.
I don't think anyone is talking about getting every engineer in the company, including graduates, to review every design. I just don't see the point in only allowing a small group of engineers to access the drawings/source code. Fair enough if it has a security classification such as restricted, or secret, but it's otherwise pointless. I see new engineers being able to access existing designs, as a good thing. If they do spot potential bugs and have suggestions about how something can be improved, then all the better.

Making the designs available to the new hires is always a good idea. Most things in any company are not completely-new products, so it is worth seeing what was done before. Then the new person can look at the previous work and even ask the engineers who designed it to explain why things are done the way they are done.

Why would a company not want to take advantage of this?
 
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #61 on: November 09, 2021, 08:36:18 pm »
Reviewing other people's, hopefully accomplished, designs is one of the best ways of educating yourself. Doing so with the expectation that one, as a fresh hire, is likely to find and fix faults with existing designs (as has been suggested as a benefit by some [OK, by one person]) is at best unrealistic, at worst driven by a huge overestimate of the skills one is bringing to the table.
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Offline fourfathom

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #62 on: November 09, 2021, 08:38:07 pm »
Making the designs available to the new hires is always a good idea. Most things in any company are not completely-new products, so it is worth seeing what was done before. Then the new person can look at the previous work and even ask the engineers who designed it to explain why things are done the way they are done.

Why would a company not want to take advantage of this?

I agree with this, and as a green engineer I certainly learned much by doing just that. 

In my experience, we didn't hide the design materials from anyone in the company.  I was just uncomfortable with the thought of new-hires spending too much time on ad-hoc design review (and insisting that a stable design be "improved") and not enough time on doing what we hired them to do.
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Offline AaronD

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #63 on: November 09, 2021, 09:12:14 pm »
Making the designs available to the new hires is always a good idea. Most things in any company are not completely-new products, so it is worth seeing what was done before. Then the new person can look at the previous work and even ask the engineers who designed it to explain why things are done the way they are done.

Why would a company not want to take advantage of this?

I agree with this, and as a green engineer I certainly learned much by doing just that. 

In my experience, we didn't hide the design materials from anyone in the company.  I was just uncomfortable with the thought of new-hires spending too much time on ad-hoc design review (and insisting that a stable design be "improved") and not enough time on doing what we hired them to do.

Maybe I was too aggressive, but I had a more experienced engineer take offense at my attempts to try and get him to explain why he did something the way that he did.  I knew he must have had a good reason, so I wanted him to bridge the gap between my inexperienced solution and his.  ("Why not do it like 'this'?" with the emphasis on "why" instead of "do it", which I guess is how most people interpret that?)  Did he think I was trying to make him change a working design to do it my way instead???  That was never my intent.
 
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Offline fourfathom

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #64 on: November 09, 2021, 10:54:51 pm »
Maybe I was too aggressive, but I had a more experienced engineer take offense at my attempts to try and get him to explain why he did something the way that he did.

In spite of my concerns here, I actually enjoyed explaining a design to a new hire.  And on occasion they would make an observation that did lead to an improvement.  But attitude is important, and in this thread I got the impression that some self-proclaimed hotshot engineer was planning to show the old guys how it's really done these days.  That is a recipe for a huge waste of time and misspent energy.

So ask smart questions, make reasonable suggestions, and don't be a jerk.  I heartily endorse that policy.  With that attitude I will open up the design files and gladly spend time with you.  But don't forget, we've still got a job to do.
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Offline coppercone2

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #65 on: November 10, 2021, 02:24:08 am »
Another set of eyes can find a bug and that helps if its concrete like a component rating, impedance problem, etc. Easy to get a reliability increase or performance increase if you find some obvious easy to rectify flaw.

but often there are so many minor compromises made and so many limitations put on a design by cost/logistics/culture problems/considerations that explaining what it is might require quite a bit of history, politics, etc.

and offices are often understaffed or under high load so someone just knows its not whats going to get them ahead with bosses or evolve in the company. The person you are talking to about a design might have had to do the office equivalent of breaking through a brick wall with their bare hands to get whatever it is.
« Last Edit: November 10, 2021, 02:28:32 am by coppercone2 »
 
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Offline bson

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #66 on: November 11, 2021, 08:48:04 pm »
Maybe it's due to an overzealous legal department that thinks their IP rights are forfeited if they don't restrict access to need-to-know.
 
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Offline floobydust

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #67 on: November 11, 2021, 09:25:33 pm »
It's a big problem for regulatory like UL/CSA/Intertek etc. where certifiers see and review schematics everyday. Because of the IP you are looking at, the employment contract forbids you from building, well anything. You cannot build anything on the side. For this reason, no hobbyist or enthusiast would work in that kind of job, that completely owns your brain.
The fear is you'll take the IP, the way some company did it, and go off and make your own product or aid a company towards doing that.

I know I can glance at a schematic and see the IP if there's something unique in the design that distinguishes it.

Once I toured a PC assembly house, and they had certain customers that forbid outsiders from looking at the stuffed circuit boards.
 

Offline VK3DRB

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #68 on: November 13, 2021, 06:39:48 am »
IBM made a monumental miscalculation by publishing the entire schematic, the BIOS listing and other technical documentation to the personal computer, thinking manufacturers would use this to make peripheral cards to support the PC. Instead, a number of companies used this information to make PC clones.

The rest, as they say, is history.
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #69 on: November 13, 2021, 08:48:59 am »
IBM made a monumental miscalculation by publishing the entire schematic, the BIOS listing and other technical documentation to the personal computer, thinking manufacturers would use this to make peripheral cards to support the PC. Instead, a number of companies used this information to make PC clones.

The rest, as they say, is history.
Maybe, but would everyone have a PC now, if they hadn't done that?

IBM clones only took off because they were cheap. At the time and for a good 10 or so years, they were well behind most other platforms and were generally poor value for money.
 

Offline VK3DRB

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #70 on: November 13, 2021, 12:37:43 pm »
IBM made a monumental miscalculation by publishing the entire schematic, the BIOS listing and other technical documentation to the personal computer, thinking manufacturers would use this to make peripheral cards to support the PC. Instead, a number of companies used this information to make PC clones.

The rest, as they say, is history.
Maybe, but would everyone have a PC now, if they hadn't done that?

IBM clones only took off because they were cheap. At the time and for a good 10 or so years, they were well behind most other platforms and were generally poor value for money.

The clones had a lots of issues. One being the ISA bus timing specs which they could not really meet because the limits were not properly defined. All users could hope for was "100% IBM Compatible" in the clone advertisements, and even then there were sometimes problems.

Most of the early clone motherboards Hong Kong and Taiwan lacked signal quality testing in design, ICT, safe ESD practices and used poor quality components. So IBM did very well for quality until around the mid 90's when Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers in particular had improved greatly to the point where IBM  started sourcing their Aptiva motherboards from these vendors. Also, Dell, HP, Compaq and Gateway were looming as strong competitors.

I actually developed and implemented the electronics testing hardware and software for the first PC plant in China, as part of an IBM-China joint venture in Tianjin in 1989 through to 1991. At this time, I felt it was the beginning of the end for PC's being manufactured in the West.

FOOTNOTE: I had to give the US ambassador James Lilley a tour of the Tianjin production line but the GPIB driven hipot tester had failed about two hours before his visit. I quickly put a jump in my code written in 8086 assembly language to ignore the error and act as if it were passing. As he did the tour, I told him the machine is designed to put 1760 VDC between active/neutral tied together and earth, to test for earth leakage. As I was "testing" it, he asked me "Is that what this is doing now?" Sweating like a pig, I answered, "That is what it is designed to do." As I said this, he was looking at the needle on the hipot tester meter that had not moved. I suspect he knew. :phew:
 

Online Zero999

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #71 on: November 15, 2021, 01:32:29 pm »
IBM made a monumental miscalculation by publishing the entire schematic, the BIOS listing and other technical documentation to the personal computer, thinking manufacturers would use this to make peripheral cards to support the PC. Instead, a number of companies used this information to make PC clones.

The rest, as they say, is history.
Maybe, but would everyone have a PC now, if they hadn't done that?

IBM clones only took off because they were cheap. At the time and for a good 10 or so years, they were well behind most other platforms and were generally poor value for money.

The clones had a lots of issues. One being the ISA bus timing specs which they could not really meet because the limits were not properly defined. All users could hope for was "100% IBM Compatible" in the clone advertisements, and even then there were sometimes problems.

Most of the early clone motherboards Hong Kong and Taiwan lacked signal quality testing in design, ICT, safe ESD practices and used poor quality components. So IBM did very well for quality until around the mid 90's when Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers in particular had improved greatly to the point where IBM  started sourcing their Aptiva motherboards from these vendors. Also, Dell, HP, Compaq and Gateway were looming as strong competitors.

I actually developed and implemented the electronics testing hardware and software for the first PC plant in China, as part of an IBM-China joint venture in Tianjin in 1989 through to 1991. At this time, I felt it was the beginning of the end for PC's being manufactured in the West.

FOOTNOTE: I had to give the US ambassador James Lilley a tour of the Tianjin production line but the GPIB driven hipot tester had failed about two hours before his visit. I quickly put a jump in my code written in 8086 assembly language to ignore the error and act as if it were passing. As he did the tour, I told him the machine is designed to put 1760 VDC between active/neutral tied together and earth, to test for earth leakage. As I was "testing" it, he asked me "Is that what this is doing now?" Sweating like a pig, I answered, "That is what it is designed to do." As I said this, he was looking at the needle on the hipot tester meter that had not moved. I suspect he knew. :phew:
There there were far superior computers to the IBM, in the late 80s and early 90s. Amiga, Atari, Acorn and Mac all had better graphics and sound. If the average user had the money to buy a real IBM, they would normally something superior, for that price. If it wasn't for cheap clones, it wouldn't have caught on.


I didn't understand why IBM insisted on crappy graphics. They didn't even use all of the 256kiB on the VGA card properly. The highest resolution mode of 640x480 4-bit only used 150kiB. Fair enough, non-standard mode X could go up to 360x480 8-bit, but it didn't match the 4:3 aspect ratio of screens back then. It wouldn't have taken much to make a 600x400 8-bit mode, or use up some of the remaining 100kiB in the 640x480 mode for some sprites, to speed certain applications up. It would have made implementing a mouse cursor much easier. The lack of simple sprite support, meant it all had to be done in software, so the mouse cursor would often flicker, when placed over an area of the screen which was changing, or go jerky, when the processor was busy. It wasn't until the mid-90s when IBM clones overtook the other platforms in terms of bang for buck, with regards to graphics and sound.
 

Offline coppercone2

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #72 on: November 15, 2021, 10:25:12 pm »
why? + ibm = normal
 

Offline TimFox

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #73 on: November 15, 2021, 10:26:11 pm »
From the men's room wall at my university's computation center, ca. 1975:
IBM
UBM
We all BM
4 IBM
 

Offline coppercone2

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Re: Why be so paranoid about engineers seeing schematics?
« Reply #74 on: November 15, 2021, 11:03:45 pm »
Quote
I agree that a simple circuits shouldn't require peer review, but is it worth trying to keep basic designs secret?

And even reasonably experienced people do occasionally make silly mistakes.  The classic is using the wrong footprint, because the CAD library or data sheet contained an error, they missed.

I disagree with you about diluting the blame. Ultimately the person who signs off a design bares the ultimate responsibility, but playing the blame game all the time, is counterproductive.

The mistakes that are the worst and most overlooked are the simple ones. Double checking someones power dissipation, loads, etc.. often finds problems when something 'easy' was pushed out the door that is running a part hot or bad. Those are the best bugs to find because the explanations are concrete, the correction is simpler, and the re-cert process is easier/cheaper... and such a change is usually regarded as a solid win, even from nontechnical managers since its easy to understand and is the engineering equivalent of leaving your fly unzipped. So they just say 'thanks for noticing that', make a board revision and you are on your way without debating voodoo.

The simple mistakes are made by advanced people because either
1) too many rules of thumb
2) rush job
3) too boring/simple to verify and you are sure of yourself
4) overconfidence (LED are easy!!)

and they often have the most catastrophic consequences because thats how you take out a power rail to a control system, have a 'dead' light, explode MOV and so forth.


Would you rather
1) explain to some board why you want a better power factor correction circuit for the 2nd stage boost circuit because "its a good idea based on industry trends" despite "expectations to substantially increase cost"
2) tell the board "we need to replace a 0.04$ resistor with a 0.04$ resistor of a different size so we can get the temperature down from deep fryer to toasty, and it will slow down the telephone calls"
« Last Edit: November 15, 2021, 11:15:25 pm by coppercone2 »
 


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