When I was in the seventh grade in the 1970’s I took an aptitude test that said I could become a computer engineer. I kept focusing on English as a way to balance my heavy math, science, and programming load. I started taking English courses at UMass that taught me to analyze science fiction novels. Truth be told, I got a higher score in my English SATs than my Math SATs, so I had chosen a degree that didn’t really match my aptitude. You have a Bachelor of Science in Computers Systems Engineering with a minor in English. That was the positive reinforcement I needed to simulate every design from then on. I remember that I simulated even that small design and I found a bug in the design software that caused my state machine to head into the weeds. The 900, in EP900 stood for 900 equivalent gates! This was a programmable logic device that could be erased by putting it under UV light. I designed my first hardware using a precursor to today’s FPGAs–the Altera EP900 EPLD. My first job was to write microcode for a machine that was intended to compete with the MicroVax. This was a big deal for me because Tracy Kidder had just written THE SOUL OF THE NEW MACHINE, a book that told the story of a CPU development team. I got my first job in engineering right out of college when I joined the CPU Group at Prime Computer in 1985. How did you get into electronics/ engineering and when did you start?
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