Job at Hewlett-Packard Roseville - 1989

During fall semester 1988 at CSU Sacramento I wanted to take the next semester off to do a "co-op" job, and when I learned that a baby was on the way, it became more urgent in order to get medical insurance. I recall I had gone to a morning class then came back to the apartment and to my suit on, ready to leave at 11am. Well it was foggy and I had left the lights on so I had to find someone to give me a jump. I met Dan at the restaurant at Sunrise and Douglas for lunch then followed him to HP for the rest of the interview:

I later learned that I had barely edged out Damon Schaefer, but a month later another student position opened and Damon joined us.

Certainly a highlight was March 21, 1989 when Bill Hewlett visited out team. While we were doing PCs, much of the division was developing dumb terminals. (The division's name had recently changed from RTD "Roseville Terminals Division" to "RPCD".) Bill asked "Why are you still doing R&D for monochrome terminals? With Windows the future will be color." No one had a good answer.

I worked with the team I interviewed with developing the BIOS for the Vectra-replacement 286/386 PCs. The HP Vectra had compatibility problems so I was tasked with "black box" comparing the new machine against competition, such as Compaq, at a low-level functional level.

I developed some software that I would not want to have to develop even today - and it was harder then because you could not Google for information - you had to find books and magazine articles:

The Controller PC sends keyboard scan codes out the parallel ports to the test and reference PCs. (I used an oscilloscope to get the timing right.) At some point the Controller requests the state from the test and reference PCs, and compares video memory and other locations.

Here's the rest of the info:

I got the above working as well as some other tools for validating BIOS compatibility. But then in late June the project was cancelled. The SEEDs (student employees) were told not to worry, they would finish their term. But the rest of the employees were busy finding other positions.  I don't have much recollection of what I did during the summer.

The lab had build about 100 prototype PCs. They said everyone, including the students could have one. That was ok, except I couldn't afford a VGA monitor for it. They decided to give the students VGA monitors too! I couldn't believe the day I was walking out the door with a "top of the line" (at the time) PC that I had helped develop.

I used it through the 1990s to sequence music with Cakewalk. I never upgraded the DOS 4.0. Here's photo when I finally threw it away 19 years later in August 2007. (I don't know if I should have saved it for an HP museum "the last PC designed in the USA"):

Stephen was born in May while I was busy creating the above.

Although my last day was August 25th, I was placed on "would re-hire" status and invited to the HP 50th anniversary celebration. Both Stephanie and Stephen had a great time:

Here's the kids in their HP shirts - but it must be some time after the 1989 celebration.

My co-op sponsor was pleased with my co-op report. Damon and I became lab partners that fall in Dr. John Clevenger's infamous Operation System course.