Apologies for not having introduced myself earlier, it must be the recessive engineer gene.
I'm Joe Stockton, an electrical engineer in the US (Atlanta GA). I got my BEE and Computer Engineering Certificate training at Georgia Tech in the mid 70's to early 80's (class of '81). What is now referred to as embedded we used to call microprocessor control (microcontrol for short).
I started at a small automatic test company where, among other things, I designed a controller for an in-circuit tester. You can now buy a faster, cheaper single chip to replace the 2 MHz Motorola 6809 (6800 successor) and the dozen or so chips required.
In the mid to late 80's I was the senior hardware engineer for a dispatch radio startup. I designed two ASICs (we called them gate arrays) with hand drawn schematics, converted the schematics to RTL and simulated them on a 4.5 MIP Amdahl mainframe ($170,000 CPU bill
). The gate arrays were used in mobile radios and the multiprocessor system that managed trunking, channel control, telephone interface and billing. CMOS was starting to replace bipolar and NMOS in mainstream electronics and we were one of the first companies in Atlanta to use surface mount technology.
After little consulting in the late 80’s and a few years working for a Macintosh peripheral manufacturer, I took a break from the electronics industry. In the mid 90’s thru 2001 I did IT, database design and operations at a small education company. For the last 10 years I did everything from operations management to embedded design for a tiny company that makes control panels for industrial diesel engines.
I left the control panel company in June and restarted consulting, goofing off, trying to invent the next big thing and/or winning the lottery.
I could have done a lot of good with that half-billion dollar Powerball jackpot!
I’ve done logic design, audio frequency analog, high precision analog, embedded system design, programming (C, assembly, Fortran, Pascal, VBA, Perl, scripting, etc.), database development (Access, SQL Server), network design/implementation (servers, Ethernet, routers, ISDN, DSL, T1, etc.) and harness design. I’ve use CAD software (P-CAD, Altium, AutoCAD, Inventor, etc.), various processors (Motorola, Intel, National, NXP, TI), computer systems (Data General, NCR, DEC, PCs and clones, 68xxx and PowerPC Macintosh) and lots of operating systems (mainframe, OS9, Unix, MS-DOS, every Windows desktop/server release, pre-BSD Macintosh System, Linux, RTOSes). I’ve also done a lot of operations stuff including manufacturing engineering, contract management and operations management. Throw in supervising a building remodeling, a couple of business relocations, a couple of PBX installations and a few MRP implementations.
For myself, I do a little woodworking and virtually every home improvement project possible (appliance repair, patching, painting, wallpaper, tile, carpet, plumbing, house wiring, sheetrock, decks, porches, landscaping, gardening). I even enjoyed
most a lot some of those!
I ran across Dave’s video blog while searching for information to update my aging equipment for my consulting at a reasonable cost. I have thoroughly enjoyed Dave’s teardowns, rants and ideas. I’m glad to ‘meet’ everyone in the forum and have enjoyed the helpful discussions, debates and pointers.
I hope my experience and information is useful. I’m likely to share even if it’s not!
-Joe
p.s. This sounds like a weird cross between a resume, job interview, Facebook and a dating site profile.
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