here’s some of the new machines I have had a hand in building:
TIADD – an electron beam recorder system that could etch images in film with a resolution of 2048×2048 @ 1mil in about a second. I did all the control software, including a controller simulator on a TI 990 minicomputer before the controller and firmware were ready. The TIADD was mainly used to visualize gamma ray spectroscopy and seismic images for geophysical exploration.
CSU-F – a near real-time data acquisition system for well logging. I developed the initial data management components and some of the user interface and visualization components. I hold the distinction of being the possessor of the first well log ever made by CSU-F. I know it is the first, because I made it myself. Later versions of CSU-F were rebranded CyberFlex by Schlumberger. You can look it up. They made tons of money on it.
AIX – I went into contracting, and mainly worked on the 3D graphics components for IBM’s ill-fated version of Unix. AIX and the RS6000 hardware it primarily ran on had some very innovative concepts that are mainstream today: specialized dedicated embedded graphics processors, hardware and kernel assist for increasing bandwidth to and from those processors, dedicated control of 3D graphics windows in the X display system, and lots of other cool stuff like that. Remember, this is back in the 80’s. We were way out there on the bleeding edge, let me tell you. We made a bunch of money, but got beat out on the specialized high end by Silicon Graphics, and on the low end by Sun and then Intel and Microsoft. If I knew then what I know now.
Windows NT – I worked for a consulting company up in Bellevue Wa, when Windows NT was initially released. We were doing device drivers for laptops that supported power management and crap like that. I took this job after I listened to myself tell my manager at IBM that Microsoft was going to eat our lunch. This was way back in the day. Doh! I saw it, but who knew? I was way ahead of the curve again, but kind of peripheral to the actual hot spot. I do know some folks who participated in that initial Windows NT release, and that baby was a real ball-buster getting born, let me tell you. Our little pieces involved some long nights too. I have lots of stories from my contracting days during the dot-com boom, but nothing really to show for any of it.
ServiceNet – this was a pretty significant SOA system in Java that interacted with specialized Windows components for managing and diagnosing the numerous problems with DSL and Cable Modems during the early days of consumer broadband deployment. I actually did work on both sides of the pipe. But not too much of value. The whole thing was kind of a bag of shit, anyway. The business model was: download some stuff from apache.com, stitch it together best you can, brand it, and sell the company before anybody figures out its a bag of snipes. Again I was out ahead of another megatrend, present and accounted for, but in the end couldn’t claim too much of the cash.