Everything Old is New Again

Date: November 18, 2008

Several years ago (who's counting) I was amazed to get a call offering me a job doing contract technical writing with a company using the Am2910 sequencer as a basis for wireless products. Nine different controllers - all a slight variation on the Am2910. We are talking 20+ year-old technology - updated. Who better to document it than the author of the Bit-Slice Design book (the Am2910 is part of that family of parts) that rests on so many engineer's shelves. Who better indeed. I actually sat on design discussions and supplied verification code for the test bench. (See at the Left)
 
It was the start of my life as a Technical Writer on Contract. Make that Lead or Senior Technical Writer. More usually Manager of Technical Writing for whatever department hires me.
 
I am currently trying to get dacafe.com to update their HTML pages for that book. And a new expanded one (PDF - eBook) is in the wings. These beloved parts - are now IP.
 
I was recently further amazed that a number of companies are reverse-engineering the 20+ year old Q20000 bipolar array series and they contacted me, of course, because who better to document it than the author of the Logic Design for Array-Based Circuits book. We are again talking 20+ year-old technology - updated. (I am not an expert on the base die process - but I am the expert on what the design rules were and how we told customers to build their designs.) I wrote the specifications for the first ERC/DRC checking software for ASIC arrays. Took me two weeks one Christmas, 800 pages. It was expanded and still in use 10 years later. The book documents all the rules. (See at the Left)
 
I am currently trying to get dacafe.com to update their HTML pages for that book. (These books were first put up in HTML 1.0 - we have progressed forward just a little!)
 
How nice that my previous endeavors are so highly valued! How awful to realize that anything you write, good, bad or downright ugly, can come back to get you a few decades later! A reminder that we should always strive for the best we can do at the time.
 
I am currently trying to use a 18 yr old copy of Adobe Persuasion to open old seminar notes. Fortunately, I have an 18 yr old computer on a back shelf that still runs and still reads 18 yr old Syquest Cartridges! It is a MAC computer, of course.