Author: Radar

While I was deep into firmware based microprocessor projects Microsoft and IBM released the Personal Computer based on a similar Microprocessor.  From then until now I’ve built many projects that are a simple hardware circuit driven by software. (One of the first solutions was a software thermostat for the house in the late 80’s.)  I have maybe a dozen Raspberry Pi’s that have proven to be extremely reliable considering their low cost.

In the 80’s microprocessors had become mainstream and my curiosity moved from analog hardware solutions to digital ones.  There were several local stores that I could buy 7400 series Integrated Circuits in DIP packages for pennies.  I was fascinated with the ease of building an If/Then digital circuit and tie that to a discrete component to power the action desired.  Darlington transistors, especially PNP ones were terribly easy to interface with an open collector Integrated circuit.  When the Zilog Z80 Microprocessor came out, I moved onto writing machine code into EEPROMS to get the desired results into my If/Then digital circuits I already knew. (I built a firmware based recipe box and a homemade Inverter/Charger that is commonly called a UPS today.)

As a young child of the 1960’s I was fascinated with batteries and electricity.  To feed my curiosity I had an Allied Radio catalog that (much like Amazon today) I could order about anything I could afford and have it delivered to our door.  I spent the next 10 years building small circuits to fit a wide array of purposes.  (I almost always had a solar powered radio in some form.) When I finally went to Junior College I already had a basic understanding of how most things around the house worked.