Category: Technology History

Controlled Obsolescence

One of the promises of the new electronic age was that reliability and product life would be improved.  While a transistor can live longer than an electromechanical relay for the purposes of switching or controlling, it may not meet the promise of reliability purported years ago.

The enemies of all electronic devices are heat and uncontrolled currents and voltages.  Modern electronics run on five and twelve volts.  All devices used in the home and business desktop tend to use this by way of power supplies which convert the power from the outlets in the wall to something usable by the electronics of the device.

Troubleshooting those devices requires a complete set of documents that detail the schematic design as well as the expected outputs from large scale integrated devices used within the device.  In some instances test points are available and documented well by the manufacturer so technicians can service the device once it is in use.

Because the actual cost to manufacture these devices is so incredibly cheap compared to the old methods, things like the radio, phone, television, and home appliance are only made today using this new technology.

Unfortunately the economies in manufacture are not always passed along. While it is true that a modern smart phone can run circles around the supercomputers of yore, they burn up on the dash of your car in Arizona and cannot survive a short fall unless somehow “armored” with an accessory surround.

To make matters worse manufacturers and marketeers have prevented the distribution of complete manuals for owners as a nuisance and unnecessary cost for the products.  Citing that users are not concerned with such minutia, the obfuscation of operation, care, and maintenance information is lost and or unavailable.  The Internet forums are testament to how rampant that is.

What is really unsettling is the engineered death of the device.  An example I love to cite is how the microcontroller on your self-cleaning oven, which approaches one thousand degrees Fahrenheit, is located immediately above the oven and in the exhaust stream from the oven.  It stands little chance of survival in the long run.

Then there is the abuse of the customer by way of grossly overpricing the replacement parts and service technician costs.   Electronic controls on that same oven cost half of the price of a new oven for an electronic controller that was manufactured for a few dollars.

Early unexpected device death is easily taken care of by replacing the device.  That is why people buy new products. They want a warranty to cover defects in materials and workmanship.  The entire package is replaced.  The defective device is then often returned to the manufacturer and shredded for recycling or refurbished for discounted resale.

So what the oven example shows is that twenty dollars of decorated sheet metal with exotic features provided by a microcontroller and a few switches plus a few fans and heating elements will sell new for six hundred to several thousand dollars and become unusable or unreliable within a designed period of time.

To further the need to replace the oven, the cost of problem diagnostics and replacement of the parts becomes prohibitively expensive.  A fresh customer is born.

What do you think about the “Kleenex” age of modern technology?

BearTracks RCPM

In the last of the seventies and first part of the eighties bulletin boards were the means for file sharing and messaging.  In searching the Internet today I have found that I was a pioneer.

In 1980, after building a few S100 bus systems and microprocessor based machine controls, I put an Osborne computer online for dial-up access.  I stored files useful to CPM (Control Program for Microcomputer) users.

At the time Gary Kildahl’s CP/M from his Digital Research company was the going thing.  While programs were being packaged with and for the TRS-80, Apple II, and Osborne, there were many more to come by way of BBS sharing and contributions from the early users and developers.

Famous works like Ward Christensen’s Xmodem made file transfers on analog telephone line feasible.  In the very early days we used “glass teletypes” to copy texts of assembly language files which we could in turn compile on our own systems.  Ward’s work made that much easier. Read about him here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ward_Christensen

The first BearTracks RCPM (Remote Control Program for Microcomputer) used an assembly code version of a program called BYE.  It ran in the 48 kilobyte transient program area of the early machines while delivering, directory services, file transfer services, and messaging services.   At a point in the mid eighties I switched to a Pascal program called ROS by Steve Fox.

Xmodem and subsequent versions with variable length transmission packet sizing allowed a user to move a considerable amount of data reliably over poor quality POTS analog lines.

Remember that an analog phone line had a limited usable bandwidth. Poor transmission quality could easily reduce data transfer rates.  First systems used acoustically coupled modem devices and use 110 baud and 300 baud as the maximum speed.  Advances in modems made progress in steps of 1200, 2400, 9600,19,200, 28,800, and 33,600 baud.  Compression and noise cancellation advances over that same time made realized data rates of as high as 115,000 kilobits per second.  You can read more about this here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modem

The BearTracks RCPM used Hayes and US Robotics modems throughout the operating years 1981 through 1990.  The computers were Osborne I, Kaypro II, and Kaypro 10.

IBM did not come into the market with the IBM Personal Computer until 1981.  Around that time Digital Research’s CP/M had an installed base of some three hundred thousand systems worldwide.  The early offerings from IBM were meager and because IBM chose not to pursue litigation against copying of the BIOS design of the systems a clone industry was born.  IBM PC Compatibles outsold their offerings and usually were much less expensive.

With the growth of the PCDOS and MSDOS operating system user base the BearTracks RCPM began offering CPM and DOS files.  The CPM users were generally more technical, sought code, and were very helpful in debugging and extending code offerings.  The DOS users were much less willing to perform in that manner and contributed little to the software offerings.  The BBS days of free and open exchange were over by the end of the eighties.

While most efforts on the part of BBS users were a balance of uploading and downloading with freely offered assistance to those seeking help, the benevolent and altruistic mood of the new DOS users and developers approached mercenary in their nature.  Over the decade intellectual property theft, copyright infringement, and blatant disregard for the original contributors to a software or code page caused me to ultimately shut down the BearTracks RCPM as it became a thankless pursuit.

In retrospect I would not have done anything differently.  I learned at a fantastic rate and made good money doing BBS work.  I marketed my software electronically before there was any such thing as Internet ecommerce.  The BBS activity prepared me for the next step of Internet based services offerings that I would make.  That Internet experience feeds me well today.

In the early seventies I stood in the Palo Alto Research Center looking at Alto and listened to Bob Metcalfe talk about this new thing called Ethernet.  I never imagined how much change I would then see in my lifetime.

– Bernard Lambert February 15, 2017 (forty plus years later)

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