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Electronics Career Game Changers

dougw
  • When the hand-held electronic calculator became available, it was a game changer in reducing design time. 
  • When the PC hit the streets it was an even bigger game changer, with word processing, spreadsheets and CAD.
  • When the Internet took off, it was an even bigger game changer, with search engines and massive information repositories.
  • The advent of affordable low-cost electronics (pioneered by the TI MSP430 for $4.30) made made it feasible for individuals to participate.
  • The Arduino IDE forced the era of low-cost IDEs.
  • The Raspberry Pi maintained the pressure to make electronics affordable, now carried on by Risk V.
  • Element14 changed the game for me, providing much of the instrumentation in my lab, lots of project material and lots of interaction with interesting technical people.
  • When the price of custom PCBs dropped below $1 it totally changed how I do prototyping.
  • The next big game changer is AI. I'm not sure I want to embrace it, but it is a reality.
  • Beyond this, AI and technology will morph into human augmentation. (the cell phone is just a precursor to the "Internet of People")
  • I am not thrilled with cell phones (they were not a game changer in my career) and I am not thrilled about the prospect of human augmentation, even though one vector is longer lifespans.

What events, products and technologies were game changers for you?

Did video games influence your career?

Did Napster blow you away?

Was the open source movement life changing? GitHub?

Parents

  • An early game changer for me was switching power supplies.  Back in the late 70's it allowed us to build a COW (computer on wheels).  It was based on a proprietary rack mounted computer with PMOS memory boards and added a CRT display, keyboard, and a couple of 1/4" tape cartridge drives.  An earlier attempt had failed because we weren't able to get the required power density with linear supplies.  Switching power supplies later played an important part of the digital subsystems of our ATE.

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  • An early game changer for me was switching power supplies.  Back in the late 70's it allowed us to build a COW (computer on wheels).  It was based on a proprietary rack mounted computer with PMOS memory boards and added a CRT display, keyboard, and a couple of 1/4" tape cartridge drives.  An earlier attempt had failed because we weren't able to get the required power density with linear supplies.  Switching power supplies later played an important part of the digital subsystems of our ATE.

Children
  • in reply to ralphjy

    Thanks for sharing that.  I bet a lot of us take switching power supplies for granted.  It's good to hear about earlier challenges.  It reminds us that the tools and technologies we access to today weren't always around.

  • in reply to ralphjy

    I had a similar experience - a mobile computer running off vehicle power in the late 70's. The power supplies were a non-trivial design exercise.

  • in reply to ralphjy

    In my collection of oscilloscopes, the Tek 7704 is my favorite. I looked for all the documentation I could when I bought it. I found it very interesting that in 1971, Tek released a TekScope scope that discusses this new "high-efficiency [switching] power supply design." (pdf page 13) Also, it is only 70% efficient. It's still better than a linear, though.

    I'm not sure if it was that article or the service manual that had a comment that caught my attention. It explained that the supply had a long enough power cable to remove the supply from the mainframe for testing... because switch mode supplies were such a new thing.

    For me, it was a strange context to see switch mode supplies get so much care and attention. (I'm young enough that they weren't remotely new by the time I was in school.)