[Coco] Sodering Iron

[Andrew]

On 11/26/23 11:18 PM, coco-request at maltedmedia.com wrote:

> Message: 1
> Date: Mon, 27 Nov 2023 02:53:58 +0000
> From: tfadden <t.fadden at cox.net>
> To: "CoCoList for Color Computer Enthusiasts" <coco at maltedmedia.com>
> Subject: Re: [Coco] Sodering Iron
> Message-ID: <em42a4d4b6-d2e0-48b3-8b47-08c6a378cb77 at 3a18940e.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"; Format="flowed"
> 
> Hey, Andrew,
> 
> That wasn't UEI was it?  I moved here in 1970 to  go to DeVry.  Some
> guys I roomed with went to UEI United Electronics Institute.

Nope...I moved here to Phoenix, from California, in June 1991, about a 
week or so after I graduated high school. The school I went to was 
called "High Tech Institute" (yep) - the instructors I had were 
fantastic, but if I knew then what I know now - things would be far 
different for me, most likely.

But then again, I'd have never had both the wonderful and 
not-so-wonderful experiences with my wife of almost 30 years now, nor 
the friends I have met along the way. I'd be posting something different 
here, too, no doubt (I believe I still would've been a part of this group).

The school was a "practical hands-on" kind of place, where we had 
minimal homework (dumba** me as a teen...), but still had to know our 
books and do labs and stuff. The course was for "computer electronics", 
basically the idea was how to diagnose and repair computer faults, down 
to the component level - but by then (and our instructors were honest 
about this) things were at the "swap around boards" kind of thing.

However, I picked up more than enough to learn how to read and design my 
own digital circuits - I was never really that good with the analog side 
of things; they taught that first, with the culmination being to build 
this kit AM radio, first on a "breadboard" (with brass nails! though 
only into a cardboard-type "substrate"), then you were suppose to 
transfer it, once working, to an actual PCB - but they didn't require 
that part; I left mine "as-is" - and still have it. I assume it works. 
Along the way, you learned the various RF stages for amplification and 
demodulation, then the audio amp side, etc. Had to tune the various RF 
cans using a frequency counter and signal generator; there was also some 
o-scope time (which we had learned prior to that).

After that, things switched over to digital training; thru-hole ICs and 
such on breadboards at first (built something that was basically a 
manual RAM system with a counter to step thru and show the contents one 
byte at a time - at that point, I finally started to grok what a CPU 
really did - it was just basically a very fast player piano!), then 
moved on to interfacing to the ISA bus in IBM PS/2 machines, then 
finally doing a course on "industrial control", with the Amiga computer 
(the class had a bunch of Amiga 500s) standing in for the Motorola 68k, 
using Lattice C and 68k assembler, with I/O via the parallel port - 
built a crude form of "computer vision" using an 8x8 array of 
phototransistors and such...

The idea being that you would gain such experience with that as the 
starting point for such things in industrial and embedded automation, 
because the 68k was the "workhorse" of that stuff at the time.

We built a couple of other things from kits (one was the Radio Shack 
analog VOM early on - I still have it - but I fell in love with the 
Simpsons we were using in-class, and only recently have been able to 
find a decent and affordable one for my collection - heh). As a "final 
project", I chose to build and write a report on a simple robot and 
controller I designed, that could be controlled via the parallel port of 
a laptop my parents had gotten me before I left (Tandy ??00HD - I forget 
the full model - but I still have it - in fact, I have all of my "first 
computers" - including the CoCo 2 and 3 I whet my appetite on as a kid).

I recall that the place had one of the few (I didn't know at the time 
that so few were sold) Hero 2000 robots; they also had a Terrapin 
turtle. One student, with help of the instructor (mainly due to the size 
of the thing) built a laser rangefinder for his final - used a HeNe 
laser, bouncing off a far mirror (as the "target"), and the returning 
beam, because of parallax, would land on a linear line array of LEDs, 
that were reverse biased to act as photosensors (it was something new I 
had never know prior to that!). I can't remember the number exactly, but 
some power of 2 (32 probably). Then whatever one was "lit up" by the 
laser, a counter and some other parts would "isolate it" and then via a 
decoder and such, show the "distance" as a number (1-32?) on a pair of 
7-segment displays. There was thoughts of hooking it to the Amiga and 
writing code to show the same, but that never panned out.

Anyhow - this school, in a slightly different incarnation (known as 
"Anthem College" IIRC) was a part of that whole "for profit school" 
scandal that happened with Phoenix University, and the place closed down 
(the building was over off of Indian School and 16th Street, just a bit 
west of 16th on the south side, near the then - because I don't know if 
it is still there - VW custom shop that was there at the time, next to 
the canal). Left more than a few students in the lurch; just before I 
had graduated, they had added an avionics program, and there was a 
separate "dental technician" program at a completely different building 
under a different name - all of it shut down, afaik - and I have no idea 
what happened to those poor students.

I never ended up using my "degree" (Associates for whatever that's 
worth) other than as a "foot in the door" for gaining employment. My 
first real job outta high school was working as a cashier for an Osco 
Drug store, then after they busted me down to 2 hours a week during the 
holidays, I jumped from them to the start of my current career, and went 
to work for a small mom-n-pop software development company. I never 
expected to stay - but I did, and from there I continued working and 
honing my "programmer" chops (and today we're given this lofty but just 
as useless title of "software engineer").

I'm now 50, currently unemployed (again - in 2020, just before the 
pandemic started, I became unemployed from a different employer for 
about 21 months before I found another position - this one lasted about 
as long, then they bumped me not long after a restructuring of the 
small, but "virtual" company - they did give me a decent severance, and 
I also got to keep the hardware they bought me, which was nothing to 
sneeze at, if you know anything about System76 laptops). I'm hoping to 
get back started "on the hunt" after the holidays, but I seriously 
thought I had more time (3 years being the average at most places I've 
worked over the last decade or so). I knew it was going to happen, just 
didn't think it'd be so soon.

I'm just worried now that at 50 nobody will hire me as a "software 
engineer" - there's a bias out there (overt or not) about the game being 
for young people only, and I should be in management or something (to 
also be fair, I've never been a team lead - not sure why, but it must be 
me, I guess). I'm not sure where things are going to go on that, but 
something will hopefully eventually turn up, or maybe (big if...) I can 
figure out how/what to do with what I have in order to make some money 
with it (when I was recently working and was "flush with cash" I spent 
some of it on both a small 3D printer and a small router, both of which 
I have yet to put together because of other reasons - at any rate, the 
router can do not just regular routing, but I also have a 10w LED laser 
for it to "engrave and cut" with).

But no use worrying about stuff until I have a reason to worry; right 
now, it's nothing but speculation - I just either have to be able to 
find "the right employer" (again...) - or figure out some way to make 
money in some other fashion.

---

Andrew L. Ayers
Glendale, Arizona
phoenixgarage.org
github.com/andrew-ayers