Small correction: Karen Cambria, the HP-35 dream-girl, worked for AMD, not HP. I found a relevant detail in an old HP publication: "Peter Nelson of Corporate Public Relations and photographer Norton Pearl work with Karen Cambria of AMD" I'd link the doc here, but don't want to anger the comments-screener gods.
@@rogervanbommel1086 well I'm so glad that Marc does everything here on YT, not like Paul's version of showing first minute and then forwarding you to fund his patreon posts :D
I absolutely looooove getting to see the people behind the machines. Ever since I saw that done with the Apollo program, it really is amazing to get this information archived. Too long, the engineers behind it all weren't seen as important.
I can confirm the story about models not being used. In about 1988 I appeared in a brochure for an HP support service. Despite this, the service sold quite well :) No fancy pants though.
I have no idea how the algorithm knew to point me here, but this is great. Man, HP used to make THE BEST test equipment. And their customer support was absolutely unparalleled. It's been over a decade since I was touching that stuff, but consistently, the HP equipment was intuitive and worked great even if it was a couple decades old, and the other companies hardware would be a headache, with interfaces that constantly felt like an afterthought. We had a protocol analyzer that retailed for something like $200k, and the fan broke on it, and the company refused to give us support. We had a desk-fan pointed at it with a post-it note saying "if you turn off this fan, it will cost us more than your house." We could drop a piece of HP equipment down a flight of stairs, call them up, and they'd overnight us a brand new replacement and we could just ship them back the broken one whenever.
HP was first-rate in many ways. Back around 1981 we asked if we could run some benchmark programs on their silicon-on-sapphire workstations (about $44,000 or so I think). They invited us to their showroom and gave us unlimited time to play with their equipment. I have since then glommed onto a few dozen pieces of vintage HP equipment. It usually just works right off, even if it's 60 years old. If it's broken, the service manuals are public domain and comprehensive and comprehensible. I've seen other expensive test gear from Fluke, like the 6071A signal generator, where even though the service manual is like six inch-thick volumes, they still don't document the more complex bits like the delay-line signal purifier and the phase-locker, making that $12,000 signal generator totally useless.
@@georgegonzalez2476 As someone who spent a couple weeks bringing a Fluke 6071A back to life, you're not wrong. And there are actually four manuals for this thing - Operators manual, service manual, schematics manual, and calibration manual. And I had to pay for them. An op amp in the PLL circuit in the heterodyne oscillator was actually where the problem was in mine, though the op amp had not failed completely, it had gone leaky, which was causing the center frequency to wander all over the place. Thankfully it was just a jellybean TL084. Spent some time pulling my hair out from that, Fluke documentation definitely needs some work as I spent way more time on that repair than I think I would have otherwise. HP and Tektronix gear is far more enjoyable to work on, their documentation is amazing.
What an absolute treat this was! Kudos to Bob for being not only a great sport but a truly talented engineer. The change in my perception was fun too -- from an old photo "before my time" into a snapshot of a very contemporary & accomplished man who is *far* from being "old"! Marc, you hit it out of the park on every single episode! Fantastic channel. Thinking back on the topics you've covered, it's just astounding.
Its funny because when I was watching the last video I thought to myself "I wonder if Mr Fancy Pants has seen himself on these videos" and what he thought. As expected he turned out to be a great guy and a good sport. So glad he agreed to be interviewed.
@curiousmarc So glad you two were able to finally get together for the interview. As long as I had worked with Bob he’d always thrown himself into his work wholeheartedly. Maybe someday if you get your hands on an MMS system, he can help you with that. Great video!
Curious Marc deserves an award for on-the-fly documentary film making. The depth of interest and story telling that that happens in relation to these relics is astounding. I used HPIB instruments to test devices in wind tunnels in the late 1980s, although by that time we were talking to the interface using QuickBASIC running on DOS PCs.
He's sure right about the HP-IB simplifying measurements. Back in 1972 Burroughs had a pair of board testers for their Medium Systems line of mainframe computers. These for some reason were known as "Birds". Each board tester had a boatload of HP and Tektronix equipment, plus a boatload of custom switching, to be able to apply stimuli to the boards and check results. The pair of testers were driven by a mainframe computer dedicated to the task, and each tester looked like a combination of a paper tape punch and paper tape reader to the computer, since those were the simplest outboard interfaces that were available at the time to push serial data at faster-than-datacomm speeds.
What a wonderful interview with that software engineer Mr. Bob Stern and talking about the old golden days on electronics and the challenges to perform the job ... Please do more of these ...Thanks Marc ...
When I started working for Nortel back in the mid-90s they had many HP 300 series machines used for test automation. I can still remember writing/editing huge BASIC (Rocky Mountain BASIC I think?) programs on the 80 character green screen displays. It was really handy to be able to execute arbitrary HPIB commands direct from the basic prompt.
When i was at Volvo (truck engine plant in Skövde in Sweden) in 1988-1989 they invested in a measuring machine for the engine's gears (i ran the grinder there the crankshaft gear got its final dimension.) That machine had a 300 series machine with HD etc. I believe the machine was used until the late 90s
When I started at Collins, in 1979, we used 9825 calculator based automated test sets for aviation navigation radios. I worked night shift and often wore "OP" shorts, sleeveless tee shirts and rainbow slaps. Straight from the beach.
Now I know who I have to be thankful to for the most enjoyable project in my career. Back in the early 80s I was a newly minted analogue card test engineer for big blue and I developed a general purpose card tester using GPIB. The only thing that I still have with me from my career is a pair of logic boards that I layed out for that tester - the 6800 processor board and the 68488 interface board. Happy Days. Keep up the good work
Wonderful interview, thank you so much Marc & Bob. I graduated BSEE 1978 from Santa Clara University and joined GTE Lenkurt in San Carlos, CA that June. I was assigned to the Instrumentation Department for my first rotation. My first project was to modify the HP Basic code on one of the HP9825 machines used on the production lines to test Lenkurt's 82A subscriber line carrier equipment. It was frightening, daunting and challenging for this 22 year old green enginerd, but oh so rewarding when I got the mods to work in production. This series has been truly wonderful for me to watch, thank you so much!
WOW, brings back memories. In the mid to late 70s, I programmed a large HP test system using HPIB. It had multiple instruments of many different types and was built around a HP 21MX mini-computer. We called it the DC to Light tester since we tested everything from DC power supplies to fiber optics (yep, the military was using fiber) and everything in between including RF up to 26Ghz. Fun times.
Bob Stern! I worked with Bob at Keysight for years and did not recognize him as Mr. Fancy Pants. Bob was my go to guy as I supported the Navy's Measurement Science Branches at their NSWC Corona base here in southern California for Keysight. I started at HP in 1978 and had a similar start. One of my first tasks was to debug a HP2100 FORTRAN test program. Also developed many HP3060A board test programs on the 9825. The 3060 is an HP system you probably would not have in your lab, but it was a pretty cool piece of gear. I still have a picture of me during a late night 9872 plotter test debug session -- and yes I am wearing bell bottom pants in the picture. Those were the days. Keep producing the great videos, I am sure there are many of us HP-Agilent-Keysight veterans who appreciate it! ( I retired this year after only 42 years )
Brings back memories for sure! Early 1980's Boulder CO 2 week HP Basic class, then programming automation test equipment. Thank you so much for digging into this! Anytime i talk with an Engineer 20 years older than me (and yes, Im old now) I feel like a poser. He has probably forgotten more than I ever knew.
This was awsome! I'd used my HP200LX palm top from 1996 all the way thru to 2008 and it only got replaced by an iPhone 2G. It was fantastic. Customer support was First Class. You pay 200$ for referbished one they send you, you put old one in box. Done. Must have done that 3 times. The unit got hard daily use. It was palmtop organiser but also used to program and debug motorolla microcontrollers.
As a retired pro photographer, those two photos of those gals are pure works of art, very well done! As a test gear addict...I now must replicate that setup! :) The 8660's are nice, I own two of the "C" series and wouldn't mind adding the "A" & "D" to my collection. ~Jack, VEG
I feel like you could compare how computer technology has evolved to the way automobiles evolved in the early days. Early cars were only for enthusiasts. You had to know how everything worked and get your hands dirty, like computers of the early 1970s. Nothing was standardized and people made and adapted their own accessories. There were also dozens of manufacturers each with some claim of how theirs were best. Most of these companies died out within 10 years. Then there was innovation that crushed many of the smaller companies. Marc's HP would be kind of like an REO or Stanley Steamer, or maybe a Diamler--way ahead of its time for the day. You could maybe compare the Model-T to the Apple II or Commodore 64. They were cheap, flexible, mass-produced, and ubiquitous. "You can have any color you like, as long as it's beige." When the IBM PC came out, that's where things diverge a bit. I think if IBM's marketing wasn't quite as good, or Commodore's management was better, we'd all be using "Amiga format" computers, as IMO it was that far ahead of everyone else, and Motorola's chips were more powerful and friendlier to program. Of course you could liken even modern computers to early automobiles. Sometimes you're just dead on the road until you can restart, or install that tire or software patch, or get someone to assist you with recovery when you're in that ditch..
It is a pleasure working with instrumentation from HP. I support many labs using HPIB controlled Gas Chromatographs and Mass Spectrometers. Since they used HPIB, I can connect them to a virtual machine running old software on a Windows 2000 guest on a Windows 10 host computer using an HPIB to USB interface. No other instrument manufacturer has maintained such a legacy of compatibility.
Cool video. You can still recognize Bob from the old ad, though he looks like the epitome of the 1970s in it. My dad had pants like that.. And what an irreplaceable wealth of knowledge he has. Early Commodore machines, such as the "PET" computers used a slightly modified version of IEEE-488 to interface with disk drives and printers. It was fast and reliable, and educators liked it because you could daisy chain multiple computers to an expensive disk unit or printer, and as long as two people didn't try to access the bus simultaneously, it worked fine. You could have multiple daisy chained downstream devices too. I still have a working system. Also encountered Blodgett conveyor ovens (such as used in pizzerias) that talk between the controller and the oven with IEEE-488----the cable is unmistakable. HPIB or GPIB is still alive and well where I work for data acquisition too..
I was disappointed in the previous episode that Marc didn’t ask the engineers if they knew Mr. Fancy Pants. Little did I know this gem was lurking! Fabulous!
So cool, and by 1990 when I was a FOB electrical engineer, everything I did was HP-IB controlled. I have such respect for those people at HP, the stuff they made is legendary.
Thanks! A user of HP test equipment since the mid 1970s and had an HP-IL for my HP 41CX and HP 71B calculators to control test equipment we used for our satellite communications equipment. To me it will always be HP. Have a few different pieces of HP gear at home with the HP 8563E being my pride and joy having used one for years at the office.
Oh no, poor HP-IB cable, I hope it was saved from the bin!! Vintage HP lab equipment is still very relevant and no matter how many cables you have, there always seems to be too few of them :D
PR photos : it was the same with PR1ME: everyone on the front of manuals is either emplyee or customer's employee - if the picture is taken in a prop room, that is another thing...
2:16 ah the old days... when you could get a job by just answering "sure !" to the interviewer. Nowadays if you just answer "sure !" to "Can you program ?" the next line won't be "See you on Monday at 8am then" but "We will call you".
Maybe, or you go through data structures and algorithms first and fail hard on them for like the first 20 interviews. Interviews and IT jobs these days are a bit out of touch with reality, no focus on quality programming. Don't get me wrong though, algorithms are fun and good to know about, but it's not what makes you a good programmer on its own.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 how are they supposed to assess the candidate then? By how relaxed they seem when answering or some bs, instead of evaluating the technical merit of their answers?
Fascinating he’s able to still rattle off model numbers, math facts, automation specifics, everything about the picture and everything around it. Wonder if he has as complete a collection as yours!
Back in the day, I wrote a CAM system for the 9825. It used the cassettes for storage and an HP plotter for showing geometry and tool paths. It was quite successful for a while here in the UK. As you said in the video - hpl was unique and intuitive.
The first Automated Test Equipment (ATE) I built was with an HP 9825. HP was just a great company back in the day! And I've been told to dress nice for the company brochure too!
Hi Marc that is so fantastic to see and talk to the ENGINEER in the picture from all that time ago and all that he did and the description of the test setup! Interesting too to know the 1979 picture is not him. Yet another video scoop! Cant wait for the next one!
In the late 1970's I was using a HP9825 to drive a test train on the London Underground. I can't remember the details but we had an HPIB counter measuring the train speed and a number of parallel outputs that enabled the 4 sets of traction equipment on the train in 3 modes so we must have had around 12 outputs. The control algorithm was intended to investigate how close we could maintain the desired speed by selecting different combinations of number and mode of the traction equipment. The speed and selected traction equipment were logged. One problem we had was that when the HP9825 wrote to the tape drive the main program stopped running sometimes resulting in the train overspeeding. We had arrange it so if the train driver selected the brake the output of the HP9825 would be disabled so that we slow down. On other occasions the train coasted to a halt while the data was being written. The end results were inconclusive and were in due course superseded by modern traction control electronics.
Wow, finding out Mr fancy pants, is a real feat. Letting your equipement in focus, instead of yourself, is just an added bonus ;) Thanks Marc for all the quality content!
Today I learned that HP liked to hire really physically attractive geniuses. Finally, my urge to stand up and flex during job interviews can actually be put to good use!
Oh I'm old enough to remember the 'Mr Fancy-Pants' HP adverts. Awesome video. I used 9810's, 9830's and stuff from that time. Told you I'm old! I also used PDP11s.
Thanks to Bob for the stories! It is amazing how this channel is able to contact the people and interview them or even have them work on equipment they helped design.
Great interview! HPIB is/was magic. In 1980/1981 I supported test systems for 7920/7925 “disc” media production in Boise. The production HP1000 computers that ran a dedicated assembly language program for disc error rate testing were a pain to boot so I wrote a boot loader (64 words Max) that used HPIB to interrupt and boot the assembly program from a HP1000 computer running RTE1000. It was much easier and faster than inserting and booting from a disc pack. It was my own little HPIB computer network. The operators loved it as did this green behind the years 20 year old computer programmer/software technician who developed it. Those were the days.
@@CuriousMarc That was a long time ago but maybe I might remember a few things. 🙂 My first project at HP in 1979 was fixing a crop of failed HPIB interface boards for the 7906/7920/7925 disc drives. The “integrated disc controller” was in development at the time and there was a growing pile of bad boards. That was my introduction to HPIB at HP. The boards used what was called a PHI interface chip made with the proprietary HP silicon on sapphire process. I remember trying to figure out the extreme noodle logic for the CRC circuit in the controller. It would be awesome if you could come up with one of those for your 7925.
@@77leelg Mine is a regular one without HPIB (in other words, not an H model). It hooks up to an external controller (can’t remember the number). I’d love to upgrade it to an H, it would be so much easier to use!
@@CuriousMarc the test system for the “H” model drives was a HP250 desk console computer. A real space age design. The amazing thing about HPIB is how it interfaced slow instruments as easily as disc drives with DMA transfers, even on the same bus.
It is almost like a curse. I used to work at a Chrysler auto dealership in the 70s and when I see or talk about certain parts from engines or cars, the seven digit part number just pops into my head.
Excellent meeting....so, you created another 'connection' for any HP help and questions you might come across in your repair projects..... very nice...
As someone who was (briefly - for 11 months after leaving uni) an HP employee in the late 1990s, it was not what it used to be (I worked at South Queensferry) but it was still an awesome place to work at. Such an engineer-focused company. We shall never see its like again ... I worked in IT. I wasn't an engineer ... but still, the culture was so focused on engineers and encouraging their creative mindset. I suppose the only close equivalent is Google, if you get into the inner sanctum where you're allowed to devote time to your own projects - IF they still do that ...
Marc is moving up and getting to talk to all of the engineering rock stars This is good thing. - On a side note, I'm starting to put together a CD Pipeline for testing 5G cellular gear... it's amazing to think that test automation for RF gear was started back in the 70's; it's hardly a new technology... So there is no new tech, we simply recycle the old tech and call it something else (kof kof... "cloud" computing) Cheers,
A very surprising and pleasant video. A really nice addition to all the repair work. That was really interesting. I used to work for HP myself, large printing. Support was a little bit like how you doing. But fast. Not how it is now. Shame. Great video.
This was great! Love to hear these stories from old times in HP or other manufacturing.. Cool, that someone find him. Never thought about fact, that I already seen him when watching Keysight channel.. 👍😂
Hehehe. Yeah superb info. Thanks to you both. Also. I had my own birds outside the window - so when you said you are hearing birds on the speakers it was super confusing and made us laugh. thanks :)
Small correction: Karen Cambria, the HP-35 dream-girl, worked for AMD, not HP. I found a relevant detail in an old HP publication: "Peter Nelson of Corporate Public Relations and photographer Norton Pearl work with Karen Cambria of AMD" I'd link the doc here, but don't want to anger the comments-screener gods.
Thanks! Just reply with a link to the publication, I'll look for it and let it go through.
www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/publications/measure/pdf/1972_01.pdf
Straight to the point - first question is about the fancy pants.
Hey I wanted to know too!
@@CuriousMarc Living up to your channel name!
Yes, but does he still have them? 😜
“Told to dress nice” so Mr Fancy Pants is a very apt title.
As Marc said, he nailed it.
Great interview Marc and Bob. Thanks for taking the time to put this together.
Oh hi, love your work as well
@@rogervanbommel1086 well I'm so glad that Marc does everything here on YT, not like Paul's version of showing first minute and then forwarding you to fund his patreon posts :D
another genius here! lol... i am revisiting my favorites contents...
I absolutely looooove getting to see the people behind the machines. Ever since I saw that done with the Apollo program, it really is amazing to get this information archived. Too long, the engineers behind it all weren't seen as important.
Les Pantalons Fancie are the star of the show. I wont' believe they will work until I see Marc wearing them.
Mr fancy pants himself. This was a great addition to the history of the pants. A very interesting man indeed.
I can confirm the story about models not being used. In about 1988 I appeared in a brochure for an HP support service. Despite this, the service sold quite well :) No fancy pants though.
And all this time I just assumed Mr Fancy Pants was a model... HP engineer, what a pleasant surprise! Mind blown, like a TTL chip!
It's 10 times more awesome because NOBODY is a model in their ads!
I have no idea how the algorithm knew to point me here, but this is great. Man, HP used to make THE BEST test equipment. And their customer support was absolutely unparalleled. It's been over a decade since I was touching that stuff, but consistently, the HP equipment was intuitive and worked great even if it was a couple decades old, and the other companies hardware would be a headache, with interfaces that constantly felt like an afterthought. We had a protocol analyzer that retailed for something like $200k, and the fan broke on it, and the company refused to give us support. We had a desk-fan pointed at it with a post-it note saying "if you turn off this fan, it will cost us more than your house." We could drop a piece of HP equipment down a flight of stairs, call them up, and they'd overnight us a brand new replacement and we could just ship them back the broken one whenever.
HP was first-rate in many ways. Back around 1981 we asked if we could run some benchmark programs on their silicon-on-sapphire workstations (about $44,000 or so I think). They invited us to their showroom and gave us unlimited time to play with their equipment.
I have since then glommed onto a few dozen pieces of vintage HP equipment. It usually just works right off, even if it's 60 years old. If it's broken, the service manuals are public domain and comprehensive and comprehensible. I've seen other expensive test gear from Fluke, like the 6071A signal generator, where even though the service manual is like six inch-thick volumes, they still don't document the more complex bits like the delay-line signal purifier and the phase-locker, making that $12,000 signal generator totally useless.
@@georgegonzalez2476 As someone who spent a couple weeks bringing a Fluke 6071A back to life, you're not wrong. And there are actually four manuals for this thing - Operators manual, service manual, schematics manual, and calibration manual. And I had to pay for them. An op amp in the PLL circuit in the heterodyne oscillator was actually where the problem was in mine, though the op amp had not failed completely, it had gone leaky, which was causing the center frequency to wander all over the place. Thankfully it was just a jellybean TL084. Spent some time pulling my hair out from that, Fluke documentation definitely needs some work as I spent way more time on that repair than I think I would have otherwise. HP and Tektronix gear is far more enjoyable to work on, their documentation is amazing.
The man, the myth the legend.
Mr Fancy Pants.
I worked for Tektronix and we were NEVER allowed to call it HPIB. It was GPIB lol Same thing but not with a competitors name in it! lol
What an absolute treat this was! Kudos to Bob for being not only a great sport but a truly talented engineer. The change in my perception was fun too -- from an old photo "before my time" into a snapshot of a very contemporary & accomplished man who is *far* from being "old"!
Marc, you hit it out of the park on every single episode! Fantastic channel. Thinking back on the topics you've covered, it's just astounding.
BTW: Didn't know about model policy but not surprised at all. It is just how HP rolled at the time. Totally engineer focused and engineer managed.
Its funny because when I was watching the last video I thought to myself "I wonder if Mr Fancy Pants has seen himself on these videos" and what he thought. As expected he turned out to be a great guy and a good sport. So glad he agreed to be interviewed.
It's cool how he's not baffled or frustrated by the latest tech as if the olden days were always better, but just appreciates how far things have come
Standing on the shoulders of giants, well this is one of the giants. Fun interview Marc!
@curiousmarc So glad you two were able to finally get together for the interview. As long as I had worked with Bob he’d always thrown himself into his work wholeheartedly. Maybe someday if you get your hands on an MMS system, he can help you with that. Great video!
John, many thanks for being an assiduous viewer of the channel, recognizing your friend Bob, and putting me in touch with him!
Curious Marc deserves an award for on-the-fly documentary film making. The depth of interest and story telling that that happens in relation to these relics is astounding. I used HPIB instruments to test devices in wind tunnels in the late 1980s, although by that time we were talking to the interface using QuickBASIC running on DOS PCs.
Now I feel like mr.FP’s HP test stack needs to to be recreated!
How many pieces did marc say he has?
I love that Marc already has like 75% of the modules for the stack in his collection. lol
@@EvilSandwich He is a passionate collector. Though I am kind of similar with old JBL gear.
@@wishusknight3009 I'm kind of the same way with Texas Instruments stuff LOL
@@EvilSandwich I think I have my TI83 from high school still.
He's sure right about the HP-IB simplifying measurements. Back in 1972 Burroughs had a pair of board testers for their Medium Systems line of mainframe computers. These for some reason were known as "Birds". Each board tester had a boatload of HP and Tektronix equipment, plus a boatload of custom switching, to be able to apply stimuli to the boards and check results. The pair of testers were driven by a mainframe computer dedicated to the task, and each tester looked like a combination of a paper tape punch and paper tape reader to the computer, since those were the simplest outboard interfaces that were available at the time to push serial data at faster-than-datacomm speeds.
What a wonderful interview with that software engineer Mr. Bob Stern and talking about the old golden days on electronics and the challenges to perform the job ... Please do more of these ...Thanks Marc ...
When I started working for Nortel back in the mid-90s they had many HP 300 series machines used for test automation. I can still remember writing/editing huge BASIC (Rocky Mountain BASIC I think?) programs on the 80 character green screen displays. It was really handy to be able to execute arbitrary HPIB commands direct from the basic prompt.
When i was at Volvo (truck engine plant in Skövde in Sweden) in 1988-1989 they invested in a measuring machine for the engine's gears (i ran the grinder there the crankshaft gear got its final dimension.) That machine had a 300 series machine with HD etc. I believe the machine was used until the late 90s
When I started at Collins, in 1979, we used 9825 calculator based automated test sets for aviation navigation radios.
I worked night shift and often wore "OP" shorts, sleeveless tee shirts and rainbow slaps. Straight from the beach.
Now I know who I have to be thankful to for the most enjoyable project in my career. Back in the early 80s I was a newly minted analogue card test engineer for big blue and I developed a general purpose card tester using GPIB. The only thing that I still have with me from my career is a pair of logic boards that I layed out for that tester - the 6800 processor board and the 68488 interface board. Happy Days. Keep up the good work
And now the challenge: Replicate the whole setup, rack including.
Pants including.
@@johnbevelagua And he does have the pants.
But can he find the radio that's being tested?
Fancy pants included!!
Looks like we'll need a nationwide search of Goodwill stores for the radio and the pants... lol
Wonderful interview, thank you so much Marc & Bob. I graduated BSEE 1978 from Santa Clara University and joined GTE Lenkurt in San Carlos, CA that June. I was assigned to the Instrumentation Department for my first rotation. My first project was to modify the HP Basic code on one of the HP9825 machines used on the production lines to test Lenkurt's 82A subscriber line carrier equipment. It was frightening, daunting and challenging for this 22 year old green enginerd, but oh so rewarding when I got the mods to work in production. This series has been truly wonderful for me to watch, thank you so much!
WOW, brings back memories. In the mid to late 70s, I programmed a large HP test system using HPIB. It had multiple instruments of many different types and was built around a HP 21MX mini-computer. We called it the DC to Light tester since we tested everything from DC power supplies to fiber optics (yep, the military was using fiber) and everything in between including RF up to 26Ghz. Fun times.
Bob Stern! I worked with Bob at Keysight for years and did not recognize him as Mr. Fancy Pants. Bob was my go to guy as I supported the Navy's Measurement Science Branches at their NSWC Corona base here in southern California for Keysight. I started at HP in 1978 and had a similar start. One of my first tasks was to debug a HP2100 FORTRAN test program. Also developed many HP3060A board test programs on the 9825. The 3060 is an HP system you probably would not have in your lab, but it was a pretty cool piece of gear. I still have a picture of me during a late night 9872 plotter test debug session -- and yes I am wearing bell bottom pants in the picture. Those were the days. Keep producing the great videos, I am sure there are many of us HP-Agilent-Keysight veterans who appreciate it! ( I retired this year after only 42 years )
This is what you call "saving history". Pioneers talking about the roots of their labors. Fascinating! Keep it coming Marc! :D
Brings back memories for sure! Early 1980's Boulder CO 2 week HP Basic class, then programming automation test equipment. Thank you so much for digging into this! Anytime i talk with an Engineer 20 years older than me (and yes, Im old now) I feel like a poser. He has probably forgotten more than I ever knew.
This was awsome! I'd used my HP200LX palm top from 1996 all the way thru to 2008 and it only got replaced by an iPhone 2G. It was fantastic. Customer support was First Class. You pay 200$ for referbished one they send you, you put old one in box. Done. Must have done that 3 times. The unit got hard daily use. It was palmtop organiser but also used to program and debug motorolla microcontrollers.
Wow. Two of the most elegant practitioners from my generations in the same video. Bravo to you both. Many thanks.
As a retired pro photographer, those two photos of those gals are pure works of art, very well done! As a test gear addict...I now must replicate that setup! :) The 8660's are nice, I own two of the "C" series and wouldn't mind adding the "A" & "D" to my collection. ~Jack, VEG
it´s mindblowing how electronic technology has moved forward in 40 year...
I feel like you could compare how computer technology has evolved to the way automobiles evolved in the early days. Early cars were only for enthusiasts. You had to know how everything worked and get your hands dirty, like computers of the early 1970s. Nothing was standardized and people made and adapted their own accessories. There were also dozens of manufacturers each with some claim of how theirs were best. Most of these companies died out within 10 years. Then there was innovation that crushed many of the smaller companies. Marc's HP would be kind of like an REO or Stanley Steamer, or maybe a Diamler--way ahead of its time for the day. You could maybe compare the Model-T to the Apple II or Commodore 64. They were cheap, flexible, mass-produced, and ubiquitous. "You can have any color you like, as long as it's beige." When the IBM PC came out, that's where things diverge a bit. I think if IBM's marketing wasn't quite as good, or Commodore's management was better, we'd all be using "Amiga format" computers, as IMO it was that far ahead of everyone else, and Motorola's chips were more powerful and friendlier to program. Of course you could liken even modern computers to early automobiles. Sometimes you're just dead on the road until you can restart, or install that tire or software patch, or get someone to assist you with recovery when you're in that ditch..
It is a pleasure working with instrumentation from HP. I support many labs using HPIB controlled Gas Chromatographs and Mass Spectrometers. Since they used HPIB, I can connect them to a virtual machine running old software on a Windows 2000 guest on a Windows 10 host computer using an HPIB to USB interface.
No other instrument manufacturer has maintained such a legacy of compatibility.
The one and only!!! Bob has been found!
Cool video. You can still recognize Bob from the old ad, though he looks like the epitome of the 1970s in it. My dad had pants like that.. And what an irreplaceable wealth of knowledge he has. Early Commodore machines, such as the "PET" computers used a slightly modified version of IEEE-488 to interface with disk drives and printers. It was fast and reliable, and educators liked it because you could daisy chain multiple computers to an expensive disk unit or printer, and as long as two people didn't try to access the bus simultaneously, it worked fine. You could have multiple daisy chained downstream devices too. I still have a working system. Also encountered Blodgett conveyor ovens (such as used in pizzerias) that talk between the controller and the oven with IEEE-488----the cable is unmistakable. HPIB or GPIB is still alive and well where I work for data acquisition too..
I was disappointed in the previous episode that Marc didn’t ask the engineers if they knew Mr. Fancy Pants. Little did I know this gem was lurking! Fabulous!
So cool, and by 1990 when I was a FOB electrical engineer, everything I did was HP-IB controlled. I have such respect for those people at HP, the stuff they made is legendary.
Thanks! A user of HP test equipment since the mid 1970s and had an HP-IL for my HP 41CX and HP 71B calculators to control test equipment we used for our satellite communications equipment. To me it will always be HP. Have a few different pieces of HP gear at home with the HP 8563E being my pride and joy having used one for years at the office.
Oh no, poor HP-IB cable, I hope it was saved from the bin!! Vintage HP lab equipment is still very relevant and no matter how many cables you have,
there always seems to be too few of them :D
PR photos : it was the same with PR1ME: everyone on the front of manuals is either emplyee or customer's employee - if the picture is taken in a prop room, that is another thing...
we need more 'Bob Stern' style interviews. These people helped develop the future and they have stories to tell.
I wonder if Marc will send him some merch, specifically the pants.
2:16 ah the old days... when you could get a job by just answering "sure !" to the interviewer. Nowadays if you just answer "sure !" to "Can you program ?" the next line won't be "See you on Monday at 8am then" but "We will call you".
Maybe, or you go through data structures and algorithms first and fail hard on them for like the first 20 interviews. Interviews and IT jobs these days are a bit out of touch with reality, no focus on quality programming. Don't get me wrong though, algorithms are fun and good to know about, but it's not what makes you a good programmer on its own.
@Lassi Kinnunen 81 how are they supposed to assess the candidate then? By how relaxed they seem when answering or some bs, instead of evaluating the technical merit of their answers?
Brilliant Marc! Bob is a very humble person who has achieved great things....love seeing things of my own vintage.
now I am waiting for them to invite Bob over to the cave to re-create that picture with Marc's collection of HP equipment :-)
Who knew that a couple of blown power supply transistors would lead to a whole series of videos in a new direction?
Great video Mark, thanks for introducing us to Bob.
Fascinating he’s able to still rattle off model numbers, math facts, automation specifics, everything about the picture and everything around it. Wonder if he has as complete a collection as yours!
Back in the day, I wrote a CAM system for the 9825. It used the cassettes for storage and an HP plotter for showing geometry and tool paths.
It was quite successful for a while here in the UK.
As you said in the video - hpl was unique and intuitive.
How great to be able to talk to the man at the start of most of it. Great video Marc!
was anyone else smiling from ear to ear watching this?
I love that Marc has stuff going on the instruments behind him, great stuff!
The first Automated Test Equipment (ATE) I built was with an HP 9825. HP was just a great company back in the day! And I've been told to dress nice for the company brochure too!
What a great discussion! I so enjoyed my time in HP and the guys in the labs were such a delight to be with.
Hi Marc that is so fantastic to see and talk to the ENGINEER in the picture from all that time ago and all that he did and the description of the test setup! Interesting too to know the 1979 picture is not him. Yet another video scoop! Cant wait for the next one!
In the late 1970's I was using a HP9825 to drive a test train on the London Underground. I can't remember the details but we had an HPIB counter measuring the train speed and a number of parallel outputs that enabled the 4 sets of traction equipment on the train in 3 modes so we must have had around 12 outputs. The control algorithm was intended to investigate how close we could maintain the desired speed by selecting different combinations of number and mode of the traction equipment. The speed and selected traction equipment were logged. One problem we had was that when the HP9825 wrote to the tape drive the main program stopped running sometimes resulting in the train overspeeding. We had arrange it so if the train driver selected the brake the output of the HP9825 would be disabled so that we slow down. On other occasions the train coasted to a halt while the data was being written. The end results were inconclusive and were in due course superseded by modern traction control electronics.
Wow, finding out Mr fancy pants, is a real feat.
Letting your equipement in focus, instead of yourself, is just an added bonus ;)
Thanks Marc for all the quality content!
Nice talk! I really like when any devices have some good story to share about.
Today I learned that HP liked to hire really physically attractive geniuses.
Finally, my urge to stand up and flex during job interviews can actually be put to good use!
You should rebuild the stack, you have most of the parts, a cosplay or prop build of types
Marc:
We can rebuild it, we have the HP tech...
and the pants.
That's amazing that you managed to find him
Well boys we did it
Oh I'm old enough to remember the 'Mr Fancy-Pants' HP adverts. Awesome video. I used 9810's, 9830's and stuff from that time. Told you I'm old! I also used PDP11s.
A pioneer of pioneers. Your typical college student could only dream of having 10% the career this guy has had.
You just made my day, so happy to know this guy is still around and apparently has found great success in his life. And now, he's a hero to we nerds.
Thanks to Bob for the stories! It is amazing how this channel is able to contact the people and interview them or even have them work on equipment they helped design.
You have blown my mind. Mr. Fancy Pants is found after all these years.
Thank you for doing this interview! I love hearing about the early years of computing. These people's stories need to be heard.
Thanks Marc, great interview. I have watched many of Bob’s metrology videos but I had no idea he was a key person in the development of HPIB. 👍🏻
wow!!! nice to meet mr fancy pants, it would be great to recreate that iconic picture
Amazing video. With computers overtaking every aspect of life, this stories of the early days are priceless
You guys have gone a long way with this series.
Polished two-tone saddle shoes too!? Wow, I wish I had a 10th of this guy's style.
Very interesting interview with Mr FP.
It's amazing how many people you met during this repair☺
Great interview! HPIB is/was magic. In 1980/1981 I supported test systems for 7920/7925 “disc” media production in Boise. The production HP1000 computers that ran a dedicated assembly language program for disc error rate testing were a pain to boot so I wrote a boot loader (64 words Max) that used HPIB to interrupt and boot the assembly program from a HP1000 computer running RTE1000. It was much easier and faster than inserting and booting from a disc pack. It was my own little HPIB computer network. The operators loved it as did this green behind the years 20 year old computer programmer/software technician who developed it. Those were the days.
Oh I have a 7925 in the restore cue! Maybe we’ll need to ask you a few questions when we get there!
@@CuriousMarc That was a long time ago but maybe I might remember a few things. 🙂 My first project at HP in 1979 was fixing a crop of failed HPIB interface boards for the 7906/7920/7925 disc drives. The “integrated disc controller” was in development at the time and there was a growing pile of bad boards. That was my introduction to HPIB at HP. The boards used what was called a PHI interface chip made with the proprietary HP silicon on sapphire process. I remember trying to figure out the extreme noodle logic for the CRC circuit in the controller. It would be awesome if you could come up with one of those for your 7925.
@@77leelg Mine is a regular one without HPIB (in other words, not an H model). It hooks up to an external controller (can’t remember the number). I’d love to upgrade it to an H, it would be so much easier to use!
@@CuriousMarc 13037A/B controller.
@@CuriousMarc the test system for the “H” model drives was a HP250 desk console computer. A real space age design. The amazing thing about HPIB is how it interfaced slow instruments as easily as disc drives with DMA transfers, even on the same bus.
Morning fellow fancy pants lovers :)
I really love this series! So great to see & hear from some of the invisible people from behind the scenes that helped get us to where we are today.
what’s probably more surprising is that the algorithm didn’t find him and suggest your video to him
The YT algorithm is too busy stealth deleting peoples comments.
True. It channel dependend though. There is probably an API for that and content providers do it too
Much respect for Mr. Fancy Pants! This was a great interview with Bob Stern.
He has such a remarkable memory for details
It is almost like a curse. I used to work at a Chrysler auto dealership in the 70s and when I see or talk about certain parts from engines or cars, the seven digit part number just pops into my head.
Excellent meeting....so, you created another 'connection' for any HP help and questions you might come across in your repair projects..... very nice...
What a great interview. The phrase "...shoulders of giants" springs to mind.
As someone who was (briefly - for 11 months after leaving uni) an HP employee in the late 1990s, it was not what it used to be (I worked at South Queensferry) but it was still an awesome place to work at. Such an engineer-focused company. We shall never see its like again ...
I worked in IT. I wasn't an engineer ... but still, the culture was so focused on engineers and encouraging their creative mindset.
I suppose the only close equivalent is Google, if you get into the inner sanctum where you're allowed to devote time to your own projects - IF they still do that ...
Now find... THE PANTS
I just love events/vlogs like this.
Marc is moving up and getting to talk to all of the engineering rock stars
This is good thing.
-
On a side note, I'm starting to put together a CD Pipeline for testing 5G cellular gear... it's amazing to think that test automation for RF gear was started back in the 70's; it's hardly a new technology...
So there is no new tech, we simply recycle the old tech and call it something else (kof kof... "cloud" computing)
Cheers,
In the old days using the cloud was called using a computer bureau.
With much the same risk factors.
A very surprising and pleasant video. A really nice addition to all the repair work. That was really interesting. I used to work for HP myself, large printing. Support was a little bit like how you doing. But fast. Not how it is now. Shame. Great video.
This is an awesome vid...thanks for tracking this down and sharing!
This was great! Love to hear these stories from old times in HP or other manufacturing..
Cool, that someone find him. Never thought about fact, that I already seen him when watching Keysight channel.. 👍😂
WOW! This is getting more and more interesting!
Great job Marc, tracking him down. Great to hear from Bob and his stories.
Great story, really enjoyed this video. Seems like every old HP engineer always has interesting stories to tell about back in the day.
How cool, He sure has some serious knowledge. Nice interview Marc
I hate to say it, Mark, but i am sure glad your 9825 blew up
Hehehe. Yeah superb info. Thanks to you both. Also. I had my own birds outside the window - so when you said you are hearing birds on the speakers it was super confusing and made us laugh. thanks :)
Great stuff, this is why I love your channel. Connecting the tech to the people.