In the mid-1980s, a Twin Cities startup company developed an
automated system for inspecting printed circuit boards. Early in the
product development phase, the company experienced a very unexpected
and disturbing shock; the man who was designing a significant part
of the electronics suddenly died. Besides mourning the loss of their
friend, these folks were in a bind; they needed someone who could
come in and immediately produce a design. Two of the remaining
engineers, who were professional acquaintances of mine, called me
for help.
They were in a hurry. They needed a schematic design of a large
VME board with interrupt, bus master, and DMA capabilities, very
quickly. I delivered. After they had a prototype of the board, they
hired me to debug it.
Later they hired me to design a relatively simple VME board with
some basic digital I/O capability, and to work on a test fixture for
a gate array.
