I started in shake and bake, was certified for manned space flight, safe & arm, and airplane part certification, then went on a trip to California to learn a new test system they bought. And...the California guys hired me.

After my stay in static memories, CCD arrays, and microprocessors (I used to have the original F8 processor in wire wrap), I did some work at the Palo Alto R&D facility, then moved to hybrid parts for a break. There I just had to maintain the equimpent including the big cutting lasers.

From there I went off to help start the computer sound business where I became really friendly with the MMI programmable logic...no software, just draw a bunch of x's on a drawing of the chip where you wanted fuses blown. I would program spare pins to make somewhat random signals and have those go off to other chips.

At a later company we were showing our latest voice boards at a trade show. We later received a law suit claiming we'd stolen the design from another company. Their engineers had closely examined the board we had on dispaly and verified it was their design. Our lawyer couldn't wait to get to court with the board, I'd had my technician make it up special for the show...not a single IC on the board was the right one. I had him match pin count but that's it, he had some Z80s on there, and assorted TTL, CMOS, and analog chips. If it fit he soldered it on.

We won the case.

I still chuckle about that at times.