That is so neat that your Father worked for Semi. He sure raised a bright and hard working son. I'm sure he is very proud of you. Thanks for all your work. One of the very BEST youtube channels!
The monolithic op amp: a tutorial study 1974 James E Soloman That was the foundation of my career and propelled me to technical director of an RF test equipment manufacturer at 30 years old. Never underestimate a kid with a databook full of app notes! Funny how that works... 240 young men went to school paid for by that one app note, thank God.
@@jim9930 I had the good fortune to start studying at age 10. Never went to school. App notes, engineering reports and magazine articles - I wrote some. Became an aerospace engineer at age 42. Worked my way up from bench technician. School - as you point out - is over rated. Interest will get you a better than adequate education.
In the 1970's, after a career in electronics repair, I became a new electronics product design engineer. An engineer needs data books and application guides on chips. The major chip companies then were Motorola, Texas, Fairchild, and National Semiconductor. Texas delivery times were way too long. Philips was trying to nibble away at the edges. So I asked the local reps for Motorola, Fairchild, and Nat Semi for data books and application guides. The Motorola guy refused to give me anything, saying he had supplied the company Head Office library. Fat lot of good that is - an engineer needs everything to hand at all times. The Fairchild guy gave me a TTL data book and a TTL app guide. The Nat Semi guy gave me a truck load of data books and manuals. Extensive literature on each chip showing how to use it and get the beast out of it. And quoted lower prices and faster delivery than Fairchild. Guess which brand of chips got used the most in the products I designed .....
Pretty wild, small world. I now work at a national fab that was purchased by Texas instruments and worked with some guys in salt lake that left Fairchild when it shut down. Great job on these videos man, I feel like I learn more from you about my work than from working there myself
The essays "Pease Porridge" on analog circuit design written by Bob Pease of National Semiconductor in "Electronic Design" monthly magazine were fantastic teaching and revelation which led me to the electronics industry. I have spent many hours while reading the thick NS product data book to learn and to get new ideas on analog circuits. I own a lot to wonderful engineers of National Semiconductor.
In those articles, Pease often wandered off the track to discuss non-electric topics. One of them was the VW Bug. He loved the damned things due to their simplicity, despising the technology that was being applied to today's automobiles. He was a carburetor kind of guy, not fuel injection. Small wonder that he died driving his 1969 bug with its very crappy brakes, losing control and killing him. Perhaps poetic....
Robert Pease also worked there in their heyday. He was recruited from Philbrick, which introduced the first operational amplifier modules (vacuum tube), and was quite the personality and application engineer.
I don't remember anyone calling the company by its full name - it was always just Nat Semi. And Bob Widdler was the Hunter S Thompson of analogue - widdlerising failed components with a large hammer has been a standard technique at a couple of places I worked. I've met a few of the heroes from the Valley's golden era, but I'd swap any five for an evening in a bar with him.
I don't know why no one ever thought about making a "QuestionPedia/AnswerPedia/FactoPedia" introducing current or relevant topics, starting with a question or affirmation! Because that's how I ended up watching most videos on this channel: they posed a question for which I too was interested knowing about. Such a concept sure beats having to read several isolated Wikipedia or non Wikipedia articles in their entirety, for which I'm just interested in knowing about a more succinct description of why one specific event/fact took place. E.g, a FactoPedia article titled "How ASML Won Lithography (& Why Japan Lost)" sure beats having to read through: Semiconductors; Lithography; ASML; Nikon and other Wikipedia articles!...
THANK, YOU SO MUCH FOR BRINGING LOTS OF GOOD MEMORIES BACK. I WORKED AT NS IN THE SINGAPORE PLANT. SPOCK VISITED US MANY TIMES. HE IS REALLY REVERED IN NATIONAL. NS PROVIDED MANY SINGAPORE ANS ON THE FIESTY, JOB EDUCATION THAT ARMED US FOR LIFE AFTER NATIONAL. I CAN SPEAK FOR MOST OF US...WE ARE REALLY GRATEFUL FOR NATIONAL. WE HAD EX - NS GET TOGETHERS OFTEN AND JUST RECENTLY IN OCT 2022 WE HAD ONE WITH ABOUT 150 OLD EX NS FOLKS REMINICING THE GOOD OLD ANIMALS OF SILICON VALLEY DAYS!!! GOOD JOB ON THE VIDEO. WHATS YOU FATHERS NAME INCIDENTLY?.... OLD TIMERS LIKE ME MAY KNOW HIM!!!
I was a test engineer at National Semi in 1972. Bob Widlar's original tester for the LM-105 regulator was a metal box that would only work if it was tipped on its right side. We never figured out why. The techs used to open bottles of nitrogen on hot summer days to cool off the test floor and we used a PDP-8 minicomputer to drive the testers. It had a RIM memory that had to be sequentially programmed by toggle switches from the front panel. It was a perfect drunk test. Miss one command and start over. So we trained a line girl to do it se we could enjoy multiple beers for lunch. Those were wild days!
5:26 That's the Plymouth Plessey Semiconductors factory, which is still very much in business. I used to work there, I can just see myself walking up that side entrance to the Test Area which used to be there.
Hi Buddy, yes I remember having a tour of the site during it's build. I went back in 2019-2022 leading MOCVD & then setting up a new Wafer Coring' operation dept. in the old Test area, where I worked on the mixed signal mainframes, back in the 90's. A good 3 years but busy as hell, the partnership with Meta for developing the micro-LED's. Over $250 million was invested and still going...
I worked as a maintenance tech at the Danbury, CT plant from summer of 1984 until they closed it in 1990. Good people, fun place to work, and while there added to my electronics knowledge learning a lot about vacuum systems, compressed gasses and plenty of other things that have served me well ever since.
@@filanfyretracker East end of Danbury - exit 8 off of I-84 in Commerce Park. The main building was up at the top of Commerce Drive, second from the end on the left side; Building Two was on Eagle Rd. at the base of and immediately before Commerce Dr. if coming in from Newtown Rd., and Building Three was on the right side of Finance Dr. somewhere (only went there a time or three initially as that was where personnel was; it was closed not too long after I joined the company and they moved the folks there to the office area of Building One). If memory serves, it became something like ATMI after National closed in 1990; not sure what it is now.
NS will always hold a special place in my heart. As a student hobbyist, NS was incredible since they offered free samples from pretty much every part they offered. Many of my hobby projects used NS parts simply because of that program. To this day I will still gravitate to an NS part as first instinct.
My parents met eachother while working for National Semiconductor!!! I miss my Dad very much - he was a brilliant, wonderful person who worked there in the early 80s - Robert/Bob Preston - we lived in San Jose until he got recruited to work for Kellogg in BC Michigan sometime around 1986. This was a great documentary - thank you so much for the experience 🙏 Outstanding work ❤️
I worked at National Santa Clara as a Product Engineer from 1983-1986, then worked in South Portland Maine until they were bought by TI in 2011. I worked with Charlie Sporck's son in Santa Clara. Halla killed off the company by raising chip prices so high that the biggest customers got so mad they redesigned their systems to eliminate all NSC chips. Revenue tanked, factories became underutilized, and we became a sitting duck for a takeover by TI.
Absolutely. National owned and created the Ethernet IC market. It was a cash cow initially with 3Com business. But when 3Com asked for price reductions National refused…3Com hired an IC design team and did it themselves, booting National out. That story was repeated several times in other markets.
@@robfrizzell570 I worked at another legendary company whose name I will not reveal, and we had a lot of very expensive Linear Technology silicon designed in our systems. When we asked for price reductions from LT, Swanson's reply was "we have our business models..." which was his way to say "piss off." Consequently, we designed out the LT parts. Gotta make your margins to stay alive, but in time those high margins end up killing a company.
@Asianometry - I lost my dad a year ago... He was 85 and worked in aviation. His company is also gone, but the things that he taught me about tech, covering your ass, and common sense are invaluable. His greatest legacy is me taking the time to teach it to my kids, but also the young men I work with who do not have a competent father or have no father at all in the home. Thank you to your dad and to mine for their time, wisdom, and vigorous efforts toward excellence. Love your channel and videos.
National, before the end, did release a solid lineup of new audio opamps and power opamps. TI maintained the low signal lineup, but the power chips were all replaced by TI's digital power amp lineup.
Ah, NS. When I began my career in electronics [in the early 80s] I also started collecting semiconductor data books, and by 1985 I amassed the entirety of National Semiconductor's library 😁
Bob Widler (Wide-ler) produced miracle chips. Bob Pease explained how to use them to the engineers trying to use them. One without the other would have left NSC a toothless tiger or a tigerless tooth. Those days were really fun for engineers who used NSC chips. {^_^}
I joined Sequent Computer Systems when they were transitioning from NS 32000 (their "Balance" line of SMP systems) to Intel i386 CPUs (their "Symmetry" line). I hadn't worked with the NS 32000 CPU before then but at the time thought its architecture (like the Motorola 68K) was superior to that of the Intel i386.Sadly, superiority on paper is often less important than other considerations.
I loved National Semiconductor in the 70’s and 80’s. As a kid their data books and papers authored by Lidler taught me more about electronics and engineering than anything else. Beautiful texts - thank you to your Dad.
There are a lot of companies that depend on a founder (or in National Semi, a re-founder) who is quite successful at first and then fails to move with the times. National Semi seems to be one of these. AMD managed to have a life after Jerry Sanders, for instance. Apple is a unicorn in that one of its founders returned to restore the company not only to success, but to domination. Sporck was too dominant for too long, it appears.
But he was a character! I remember him and Charlie Sprague visiting NSC Danbury arriving in a little Dodge Horizon (for you younger folks, a very small car for the time!) rental!
I've always had a soft spot for National. I pretty much learned digital design from my father's copy of the Nat Semi TTL Databook. Was genuinely sorry when I heard that they had been swallowed up by TI.
Thanks for putting this together. Was there from 99 till it was sold. Lots of memory of the awesome folks that had worked there, some are already gone.
In defence of Plessey, it looks like Plessey was well ahead of NS, and they actually wanted to know what NS knew about semi-conductors ! - 'Plessey produced an early integrated circuit model in 1957, before the patents of Jack St. Clair Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild' (from Wiki)
Really enjoyed this. I worked at Signetics as a die attach inspector on second shift during my senior year of high school in Orem Utah. After moving to California to live w my sister and brother in law while he attended Stanford, I worked at Fairchild as a dishwasher after graduating. I hoped to get a tech position but that didn’t happen. I did wash a lot of dishes and got to know people as I worked in the cafeteria. Some of them may be same as discussed in the video. After my first year of college I worked at National Semiconductor as a step and repeat operator at their plant in West Jordan Utah. I then went to college to get my EE degree. During summers I interned at Varian Associates in Palo Alto as a radar tube tech.
Just to say that Sprague is pronounced "Spray-ge" and they used to run ads in the magazines "Don't be vague-- Specify Sprague!" Also note the 1600 microprocessor wasn't really an NS product, it was second-sourced by NS from General Instrument. They did that only after NS introduced their SC/MP "Scamp" microprocessor in '76 or so and had it fail completely on the market.
I’m sure your Father is very proud of your prodigious output of incredibly professional mini documentaries with what I am assuming is a very small production staff ie. 1 🏆
I am there as IT system engineer from 92-95. At Melaka, Malaysia factory. It was great, I got to play with Sun Microsystems workstation, managed lines of servers that collect data for the testing equipment (LTX, Teradyne), get to involve in projects to monitor and control baking, wafer dicing process, introduce some automation. good time. Thanks for the video.
Loved this video - the stories about Bob Widlar got me to buy Charlie Sporck's "Spinoff" book and it was very interesting reading. Keep up the great work man!
Great video. In 1973 after a year at TI I started at National where I worked in the digital TTL (5400/7400) area as a design engineer and then a product engineer until I transferred to West Jordan (what's known as the Salt Lake plant) in 1980. I was in charge of the test area in West Jordan until I quit and moved back to Florida in 1983. I have often wondered what happened to National after I left. The West Jordan plant was on a downhill slide and Santa Clara didn't seem to be going anywhere so I wasn't happy so I left. It seemed I would be able to ski my behind off when I moved to West Jordan but the weather was awful often closing the roads to the ski areas all weekend. Moving turned out good for me as I got a job as an electronics engineer at the Space Center and worked there until I retired in 1999. Thanks again for the video.
2:34 Why didn't they give the finished chips to the company who won the lawsuit so they could decide themselves if they wanted to destroy or sell them?
I worked in National Semi Singapore from 1969 till 1990, and was responsible for supporting, at one time, in 1982 a total of 8 plants in Singapore, Melaka, Penang, Bangkok, Manila, Seremban, Bandung and Hong Kong. All the guys you mentioned - Sporck, Bialek, Spraque, Wilder, Talbot were great guys but not forgetting Valentine, Kvamme, Pausa, Swanson, Lamond and many more I worked with and admired. The best thing about National was the spirit, teamwork, aggressiveness and attitude. Best company I ever worked with and for.
My friend got his first job at National Semiconductor in 1992. The going pay for a fresh out of college Masters in EE was about $40K. He said Gil Amileo made a point to have lunch with every single employee.
I worked during my uni summers at Nat Semi in Gourock, Scotland in the 4 inch analog fab as a process engineer. It was still all manual handling with no implanters. They then built the 6 inch fab with implanters, robotic furnaces. I had a guaranteed job on Graduation but then the bastards had a hiring freeze so none of us got picked up.
Had a computer system with the NS32016 CPU in 1988 (by Acorn, UK). I have fond memories of that. Even did some assembly programming on it, just for the fun of it. That CPU was every bit as nice as the Motorola 68000, both so much nicer than contemporary Intel CPUs.
Hi, John. I’m working in a utility company and came across a very old piece of equipment. The manual says “National Semiconductor LF155 amplifier and buffers”. I don’t think your father happened to design it, but it worth checking. lol How coincidental that I watched the video and then bumped into this in my project.
I thought that National’s focus was Mil-Spec components? I moved to Silicon Valley in 1980. It was such an exciting place. The want ads on Sunday required two folios, each of which consisted of six sheets. A rocket ride.
My dad worked at National Semiconductor's Santa Clara office as well, from 1989 until 1999. I remember the park well, but wish I could find old photos of it.
I was in college when National was at its height. I actually encouraged some friends to get a job there, once they completed their BSEE degrees. I already had a job lined up elsewhere. If not, I probably would have sent some resumes there, too. Bad timing, that ended with me giving bad advice, since shortly thereafter, National started their long term slide, finally getting swallowed up by TI, a couple of decades later. Always looked at them as an analog parts company. Yes, I used a lot of TTL (and TTL compatible 74HC CMOS), but programmable logic from PALs to CPLDs to FPGAs where coming in vogue, at the high end. At the low end microcontrollers where finding their ways into everything. So boards with 30 or more TTL chips were going away. I wire-wrapped dozens of prototypes, filled with TTL parts, gluing together a half dozen, or so, large NMOS ICs, such as the processor, various controllers (DMA, Interrupt, timers, ...), along with memory chips (RAM [SRAM & DRAM] & ROM [EPROM & EEPROM]), when I was still a tech, working my way thru school. National only made half hearted attempts in programmable logic & uC areas.
I remember National very well indeed, Did contract work in a couple of their older fabs and also in their Fairchild Research Center in Santa Clara. I was a staff process engineer, starting up, dialing in and doing process development on many of their plasma etch tools. They weren't easy people to work with, to say the least. I worked with some of the Cyrix engineers as well, and they too were very difficult people. Never satisfied, always complaining, changing the rules every other day, the list goes on and on. One morning I came in to start another day, expecting another stressful time in paradise. Instead of jumping on me as usual, they all had glazed looks of shock on their faces. The Cyrix thing had just been closed down and they were all about to lose their jobs. A bad day for them but a huge relief for me, I'm sad to say. Quite a memory. I worked in all the major fabs in the Valley: Intel ... AMD ... National ...Signetics ... Synertek ... LSI Logic ... VLSI Technology ... Synergy ... HP ... Paradigm ... Silicon Systems ... Orbit ... at least those are the ones I can remember. There were more that have just slipped my mind. I worked in semiconductors from 1978 to 2004.
[in a tone of astonishment] Wow! *This is remarkable!* This is something I can personally relate to, as I worked at NS back in the early 1980s in the mail room and did courier work several times a month to the executive work area that Charlie Sporck occupied . . . and I do mean *_work area,_* as it was an open air floorspace, larger than a basketball court or two, with cubicles . . . _there were no individual offices [to my knowledge] to be had on the premises!_ Sporck did not lavish himself with an office, but rather, it was an open-air cubicle at the top floor of a massive building in Santa Clara. From the appearance of the interior workspace setting, you would have thought that Sporck was nothing more than a department supervisor, possibly a small department manager, from the austere open cubicle layout, with a non-descript desk, and an off-the-shelf swivel office chair [of what looked like a 1950s style], with arms, that would have looked at home in the environs of a warehouse office or police station dating back decades earlier. Any employee with an NS ID badge could have easily walked right up to Sporck's desk! The exterior of that NS building Sporck occupied . . . now, mind you, it's been 40 years, but the "number two" building designation resonates in my brain. Well, that massive gray multi-storied building had an ominous look to it, something George Lucas could have used as exterior shots for the HQ of "The Empire" in a Star Wars movie. I appreciated the narrative in this video of informing the viewers of NS being [ahem!] 'frugal,' as that was a lasting impression the company left with me. Myself and others that worked there lamented about the cheapness of NS, especially when it came to the quality of the manufactured chips. A legend that spread in the social circles I was in about NS's efforts when it came to manufacturing quality: _Instead of NS putting in the efforts to manufacture 1K of high quality chips that would meet stringent specs; it would produce multiple-thousands of cheap chips, then toss out those thousands that didn't meet the specs, until they got the 1K quantity that met the specs. The logic behind that was with the cost and resources it took to strive for high-quality manufacturing; as, in the minds of the NS execs, it was more profitable to mass-produce cheap chips with some waste than to produce high-quality chips with no-waste._ Mind you, the above about chip quality was just chatter around NS, as I have no way to substantiate it. But, it does hint of the underlying morale issues there were in some sectors in NS.
Even though you’ve made quite a few videos piecing together the history of Fairchild, I’m surprised you’ve never made a dedicated video about such a pivotal company!
My cousin also worked for NS in Santa Clara office. I remember NS gave free entrance tickets for Great America in Santa Clara to their employees including their family for either Christmas or the company's anniversary.
My grandfather, Jack Mills, worked at the plant in Arlington Texas. My mother also worked there for quite some time so national definitely holds a special place in my heart as well! I remember hearing tales of John Conn. (Funny enough my grandfather started at Fairchild and left to join NSC!)
Very well written and presented. I hope many viewers realize that all these people were the lions and founders of today’s modern computing world. Their collective work and products fundamentally changed humanity and the world.
I began working at National Semiconductor (“National”) in Santa Clara, immediately after receiving my Engineering degree, almost 40 years ago. IIRC, the company employed more than 24,000 people worldwide at the time.(My badge number was North of 57,000!) That was back when Silicon Valley actually made chips. My desk was in building 16 (amazingly, it still stands), just down the hall from Charlie’s cubicle. I worked side by side with Charlie’s youngest son. The Japanese semi makers overtook the US companies the next year. Charlie spent a lot of time complaining about the unfair capital and protectionist advantages the Japanese companies wielded. Most of those companies are gone now, too. It’s been one hell of a ride. BTW, I’ve always heard Sprague pronounced the American way: “Sprage.”
NS 16550 was a UART which was buggy - it would forget to issue a transmit complete interrupt so the software had to implement a backup which polled the chip. This was due to the architecture of how interrupts were generated.
It took me 4 hours to get from the Delta to San Jose, and every other car was roofless with a beautiful looking person in it. I wasn't there a week and at some awesome patio bar there was a fundraiser. My young smart ass bid $5 for a haircut. Everyone knew I was a newcomer and let me get it😊 took me 50 bucks in gas to find the place in Sunnyvale. God I miss hair I've got dozens of stories of San Jose even better but I ended up leaving with a hangover after 10 months.
Charles Sporck had an intriguing combination of two of the most popular eating utensils named after him that are found in many places that sell quick food. What a legacy this man has 🌮
That's an understatement! I started there in '84, not too long after the sulfuric tank in the DI pad blew up. Kinda glad I missed that one, the stories about it more than sufficed.
I joined National at the Arlington facility in the mid 90s, moving to Maine to start up their (then) new 200mm fab. Would love to know what your dad did, wondering if our paths ever crossed.
Hello, good historical job ! Although as a National Employee in Europe in the early 2000's before TI bought NS, I somewaht disagree on the statement on that period. We had a hell of time selling to the biggest customers, increasing prices and profits. Winning more new designs in numerous applications. But good job ! Thank you for this walk through the history of a company that made me "make business with fun". After leaving National, I had a very bad experience with another semiconductor company, simply because the human wasn't part of the equation. I then left to run my own small business...
That is so neat that your Father worked for Semi. He sure raised a bright and hard working son. I'm sure he is very proud of you. Thanks for all your work. One of the very BEST youtube channels!
After whatching this channel I can't help but laugh at how uninformative most tech channels are about this stuffs.
Used to love National Semiconductor products. They had great app notes and data books. And Bob Pease was a legend.
Quite a few companies did. Should have gotten into the reinforced shelving business.
Pease Porridge
The monolithic op amp: a tutorial study 1974 James E Soloman
That was the foundation of my career and propelled me to technical director of an RF test equipment manufacturer at 30 years old.
Never underestimate a kid with a databook full of app notes!
Funny how that works... 240 young men went to school paid for by that one app note, thank God.
@@jim9930 I had the good fortune to start studying at age 10. Never went to school.
App notes, engineering reports and magazine articles - I wrote some.
Became an aerospace engineer at age 42. Worked my way up from bench technician.
School - as you point out - is over rated. Interest will get you a better than adequate education.
National Semi & Linear Tech were gods in the Analog market. Then TI bought National & ADI bought Linear. Both of them are now just memories…
In the 1970's, after a career in electronics repair, I became a new electronics product design engineer. An engineer needs data books and application guides on chips. The major chip companies then were Motorola, Texas, Fairchild, and National Semiconductor. Texas delivery times were way too long. Philips was trying to nibble away at the edges. So I asked the local reps for Motorola, Fairchild, and Nat Semi for data books and application guides. The Motorola guy refused to give me anything, saying he had supplied the company Head Office library. Fat lot of good that is - an engineer needs everything to hand at all times. The Fairchild guy gave me a TTL data book and a TTL app guide. The Nat Semi guy gave me a truck load of data books and manuals. Extensive literature on each chip showing how to use it and get the beast out of it. And quoted lower prices and faster delivery than Fairchild.
Guess which brand of chips got used the most in the products I designed .....
I’m sure it was a typo but getting “the beast out of it” is very apt. They were amazing beasts of chips
National data books and app notes were great. I still have lots of them.
Pretty wild, small world. I now work at a national fab that was purchased by Texas instruments and worked with some guys in salt lake that left Fairchild when it shut down. Great job on these videos man, I feel like I learn more from you about my work than from working there myself
The essays "Pease Porridge" on analog circuit design written by Bob Pease of National Semiconductor in "Electronic Design" monthly magazine were fantastic teaching and revelation which led me to the electronics industry. I have spent many hours while reading the thick NS product data book to learn and to get new ideas on analog circuits. I own a lot to wonderful engineers of National Semiconductor.
❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤❤ i loved BOB PEASE
In those articles, Pease often wandered off the track to discuss non-electric topics. One of them was the VW Bug. He loved the damned things due to their simplicity, despising the technology that was being applied to today's automobiles. He was a carburetor kind of guy, not fuel injection. Small wonder that he died driving his 1969 bug with its very crappy brakes, losing control and killing him. Perhaps poetic....
Robert Pease also worked there in their heyday. He was recruited from Philbrick, which introduced the first operational amplifier modules (vacuum tube), and was quite the personality and application engineer.
If I were your dad I'd be proud. Nice job.
Two months ago what ☠️
@@lukemarohn9049 channel members maybe,
@@lukemarohn9049Patreon probably
Like father like son
So we will get SMIC 7nm video after 2 months?
I don't remember anyone calling the company by its full name - it was always just Nat Semi. And Bob Widdler was the Hunter S Thompson of analogue - widdlerising failed components with a large hammer has been a standard technique at a couple of places I worked. I've met a few of the heroes from the Valley's golden era, but I'd swap any five for an evening in a bar with him.
Thanks for all the work you put into creating these videos. There aren’t many channels that tell these stories in such depth.
I don't know why no one ever thought about making a "QuestionPedia/AnswerPedia/FactoPedia" introducing current or relevant topics, starting with a question or affirmation!
Because that's how I ended up watching most videos on this channel: they posed a question for which I too was interested knowing about.
Such a concept sure beats having to read several isolated Wikipedia or non Wikipedia articles in their entirety, for which I'm just interested in knowing about a more succinct description of why one specific event/fact took place.
E.g, a FactoPedia article titled "How ASML Won Lithography (& Why Japan Lost)" sure beats having to read through: Semiconductors; Lithography; ASML; Nikon and other Wikipedia articles!...
THANK, YOU SO MUCH FOR BRINGING LOTS OF GOOD MEMORIES BACK. I WORKED AT NS IN THE SINGAPORE PLANT. SPOCK VISITED US MANY TIMES. HE IS REALLY REVERED IN NATIONAL. NS PROVIDED MANY SINGAPORE ANS ON THE FIESTY, JOB EDUCATION THAT ARMED US FOR LIFE AFTER NATIONAL. I CAN SPEAK FOR MOST OF US...WE ARE REALLY GRATEFUL FOR NATIONAL. WE HAD EX - NS GET TOGETHERS OFTEN AND JUST RECENTLY IN OCT 2022 WE HAD ONE WITH ABOUT 150 OLD EX NS FOLKS REMINICING THE GOOD OLD ANIMALS OF SILICON VALLEY DAYS!!!
GOOD JOB ON THE VIDEO. WHATS YOU FATHERS NAME INCIDENTLY?.... OLD TIMERS LIKE ME MAY KNOW HIM!!!
I was a test engineer at National Semi in 1972. Bob Widlar's original tester for the LM-105 regulator was a metal box that would only work if it was tipped on its right side. We never figured out why. The techs used to open bottles of nitrogen on hot summer days to cool off the test floor and we used a PDP-8 minicomputer to drive the testers. It had a RIM memory that had to be sequentially programmed by toggle switches from the front panel. It was a perfect drunk test. Miss one command and start over. So we trained a line girl to do it se we could enjoy multiple beers for lunch. Those were wild days!
I remember those days, too. Particularly how driving drunk was still legal....
5:26 That's the Plymouth Plessey Semiconductors factory, which is still very much in business. I used to work there, I can just see myself walking up that side entrance to the Test Area which used to be there.
Hi Buddy, yes I remember having a tour of the site during it's build. I went back in 2019-2022 leading MOCVD & then setting up a new Wafer Coring' operation dept. in the old Test area, where I worked on the mixed signal mainframes, back in the 90's. A good 3 years but busy as hell, the partnership with Meta for developing the micro-LED's. Over $250 million was invested and still going...
I worked as a maintenance tech at the Danbury, CT plant from summer of 1984 until they closed it in 1990. Good people, fun place to work, and while there added to my electronics knowledge learning a lot about vacuum systems, compressed gasses and plenty of other things that have served me well ever since.
Curious where where they in Danbury, I grew up there but I do not ever remember seeing a building for them. of course I was only 10 by 1990.
@@filanfyretracker East end of Danbury - exit 8 off of I-84 in Commerce Park. The main building was up at the top of Commerce Drive, second from the end on the left side; Building Two was on Eagle Rd. at the base of and immediately before Commerce Dr. if coming in from Newtown Rd., and Building Three was on the right side of Finance Dr. somewhere (only went there a time or three initially as that was where personnel was; it was closed not too long after I joined the company and they moved the folks there to the office area of Building One). If memory serves, it became something like ATMI after National closed in 1990; not sure what it is now.
NS will always hold a special place in my heart. As a student hobbyist, NS was incredible since they offered free samples from pretty much every part they offered. Many of my hobby projects used NS parts simply because of that program. To this day I will still gravitate to an NS part as first instinct.
Nice work. Widlar and Pease were characters.
Sounds like potential for a Documentary like pirates of Silicon Valley
NS ic data books and applications are top notch.
Your dad raised you right.
The dedication to your dad is a nice touch ❤
My parents met eachother while working for National Semiconductor!!! I miss my Dad very much - he was a brilliant, wonderful person who worked there in the early 80s - Robert/Bob Preston - we lived in San Jose until he got recruited to work for Kellogg in BC Michigan sometime around 1986. This was a great documentary - thank you so much for the experience 🙏
Outstanding work ❤️
By the way, could you do an episode on the economic expectations of the 2022 chip act? Thatnk and your father is a good man.
This company was my goto for analog circuits. Their application notes were legendary.
I do miss national semi
I worked at National Santa Clara as a Product Engineer from 1983-1986, then worked in South Portland Maine until they were bought by TI in 2011. I worked with Charlie Sporck's son in Santa Clara. Halla killed off the company by raising chip prices so high that the biggest customers got so mad they redesigned their systems to eliminate all NSC chips. Revenue tanked, factories became underutilized, and we became a sitting duck for a takeover by TI.
Absolutely. National owned and created the Ethernet IC market. It was a cash cow initially with 3Com business. But when 3Com asked for price reductions National refused…3Com hired an IC design team and did it themselves, booting National out. That story was repeated several times in other markets.
@@robfrizzell570 I worked at another legendary company whose name I will not reveal, and we had a lot of very expensive Linear Technology silicon designed in our systems. When we asked for price reductions from LT, Swanson's reply was "we have our business models..." which was his way to say "piss off." Consequently, we designed out the LT parts. Gotta make your margins to stay alive, but in time those high margins end up killing a company.
@Asianometry - I lost my dad a year ago... He was 85 and worked in aviation. His company is also gone, but the things that he taught me about tech, covering your ass, and common sense are invaluable. His greatest legacy is me taking the time to teach it to my kids, but also the young men I work with who do not have a competent father or have no father at all in the home. Thank you to your dad and to mine for their time, wisdom, and vigorous efforts toward excellence. Love your channel and videos.
National, before the end, did release a solid lineup of new audio opamps and power opamps. TI maintained the low signal lineup, but the power chips were all replaced by TI's digital power amp lineup.
Ah, NS. When I began my career in electronics [in the early 80s] I also started collecting semiconductor data books, and by 1985 I amassed the entirety of National Semiconductor's library 😁
Bob Widler (Wide-ler) produced miracle chips. Bob Pease explained how to use them to the engineers trying to use them. One without the other would have left NSC a toothless tiger or a tigerless tooth. Those days were really fun for engineers who used NSC chips.
{^_^}
I joined Sequent Computer Systems when they were transitioning from NS 32000 (their "Balance" line of SMP systems) to Intel i386 CPUs (their "Symmetry" line). I hadn't worked with the NS 32000 CPU before then but at the time thought its architecture (like the Motorola 68K) was superior to that of the Intel i386.Sadly, superiority on paper is often less important than other considerations.
I loved National Semiconductor in the 70’s and 80’s. As a kid their data books and papers authored by Lidler taught me more about electronics and engineering than anything else. Beautiful texts - thank you to your Dad.
There are a lot of companies that depend on a founder (or in National Semi, a re-founder) who is quite successful at first and then fails to move with the times. National Semi seems to be one of these. AMD managed to have a life after Jerry Sanders, for instance. Apple is a unicorn in that one of its founders returned to restore the company not only to success, but to domination.
Sporck was too dominant for too long, it appears.
Doing some of the same things like slimming down the product line.
I think Jobs being kicked out was necessary for both him and the company. It may have been a difficult time but it was an experience on both sides.
@@BobHannent Job's time in the desert certainly did him well, except for his continued hatred of cooling fans
But he was a character! I remember him and Charlie Sprague visiting NSC Danbury arriving in a little Dodge Horizon (for you younger folks, a very small car for the time!) rental!
@@johnforguites4800Not only a small car, but, because it was a Chrysler product, a sh*tty small car. That's taking one for the team...
I've always had a soft spot for National. I pretty much learned digital design from my father's copy of the Nat Semi TTL Databook. Was genuinely sorry when I heard that they had been swallowed up by TI.
We picked a lot of NS/TI/ Fairchild TTL ICs that we used for our Logic Circuits Lab subject during my colleges days.
Thanks for putting this together. Was there from 99 till it was sold. Lots of memory of the awesome folks that had worked there, some are already gone.
In defence of Plessey, it looks like Plessey was well ahead of NS, and they actually wanted to know what NS knew about semi-conductors ! - 'Plessey produced an early integrated circuit model in 1957, before the patents of Jack St. Clair Kilby of Texas Instruments and Robert Noyce of Fairchild' (from Wiki)
Wonderful telling of a great Silicon Valley story, thanks.
Really enjoyed this. I worked at Signetics as a die attach inspector on second shift during my senior year of high school in Orem Utah. After moving to California to live w my sister and brother in law while he attended Stanford, I worked at Fairchild as a dishwasher after graduating. I hoped to get a tech position but that didn’t happen. I did wash a lot of dishes and got to know people as I worked in the cafeteria. Some of them may be same as discussed in the video. After my first year of college I worked at National Semiconductor as a step and repeat operator at their plant in West Jordan Utah. I then went to college to get my EE degree. During summers I interned at Varian Associates in Palo Alto as a radar tube tech.
Just to say that Sprague is pronounced "Spray-ge" and they used to run ads in the magazines "Don't be vague-- Specify Sprague!" Also note the 1600 microprocessor wasn't really an NS product, it was second-sourced by NS from General Instrument. They did that only after NS introduced their SC/MP "Scamp" microprocessor in '76 or so and had it fail completely on the market.
And I have always heard it was pronounced WIDE-ler.
I’m sure your Father is very proud of your prodigious output of incredibly professional mini documentaries with what I am assuming is a very small production staff ie. 1 🏆
Are you ready to share your thought on Huawei’s Mate 60 Pro, and Kirin 9000s?
As a retired EE thanks for the trip down memory lane. I remember the picture of Widlar at 13:12.
I am there as IT system engineer from 92-95. At Melaka, Malaysia factory. It was great, I got to play with Sun Microsystems workstation, managed lines of servers that collect data for the testing equipment (LTX, Teradyne), get to involve in projects to monitor and control baking, wafer dicing process, introduce some automation.
good time. Thanks for the video.
The dedication to your dad is a nice touch . Wonderful telling of a great Silicon Valley story, thanks..
My dad worked for national semi conductor for 25 years. Thank you for this video!
I've been hoping for this episode for so long now. I love NatSemi. Back when there were so many different companies in the market.
Loved this video - the stories about Bob Widlar got me to buy Charlie Sporck's "Spinoff" book and it was very interesting reading. Keep up the great work man!
Another awesome video!! 13:15 is the best photo I’ve ever seen.
Great video. In 1973 after a year at TI I started at National where I worked in the digital TTL (5400/7400) area as a design engineer and then a product engineer until I transferred to West Jordan (what's known as the Salt Lake plant) in 1980. I was in charge of the test area in West Jordan until I quit and moved back to Florida in 1983. I have often wondered what happened to National after I left. The West Jordan plant was on a downhill slide and Santa Clara didn't seem to be going anywhere so I wasn't happy so I left. It seemed I would be able to ski my behind off when I moved to West Jordan but the weather was awful often closing the roads to the ski areas all weekend. Moving turned out good for me as I got a job as an electronics engineer at the Space Center and worked there until I retired in 1999.
Thanks again for the video.
2:34 Why didn't they give the finished chips to the company who won the lawsuit so they could decide themselves if they wanted to destroy or sell them?
NS assembly plants were not just in Singapore before. They do have one in Cebu, Philippines and still have in Penang, Malaysia.
I worked in National Semi Singapore from 1969 till 1990, and was responsible for supporting, at one time, in 1982 a total of 8 plants in Singapore, Melaka, Penang, Bangkok, Manila, Seremban, Bandung and Hong Kong. All the guys you mentioned - Sporck, Bialek, Spraque, Wilder, Talbot were great guys but not forgetting Valentine, Kvamme, Pausa, Swanson, Lamond and many more I worked with and admired. The best thing about National was the spirit, teamwork, aggressiveness and attitude. Best company I ever worked with and for.
My friend got his first job at National Semiconductor in 1992. The going pay for a fresh out of college Masters in EE was about $40K. He said Gil Amileo made a point to have lunch with every single employee.
I worked during my uni summers at Nat Semi in Gourock, Scotland in the 4 inch analog fab as a process engineer. It was still all manual handling with no implanters. They then built the 6 inch fab with implanters, robotic furnaces. I had a guaranteed job on Graduation but then the bastards had a hiring freeze so none of us got picked up.
Had a computer system with the NS32016 CPU in 1988 (by Acorn, UK). I have fond memories of that. Even did some assembly programming on it, just for the fun of it. That CPU was every bit as nice as the Motorola 68000, both so much nicer than contemporary Intel CPUs.
Hi, John. I’m working in a utility company and came across a very old piece of equipment. The manual says “National Semiconductor LF155 amplifier and buffers”. I don’t think your father happened to design it, but it worth checking. lol
How coincidental that I watched the video and then bumped into this in my project.
JFET input that suffered from phase reversal if the input fell below the negative supply rail. Its most notable feature was pA input bias current.
I thought that National’s focus was Mil-Spec components?
I moved to Silicon Valley in 1980. It was such an exciting place. The want ads on Sunday required two folios, each of which consisted of six sheets.
A rocket ride.
My dad worked at National Semiconductor's Santa Clara office as well, from 1989 until 1999. I remember the park well, but wish I could find old photos of it.
I remember seeing National Semiconductor's talking cash registers as a kid in Texas. HEB was their biggest customer there.
@13:29 I see what you did there, and I approve! They have so many things on their menu, I'm sure the chips are on there somewhere.
I was in college when National was at its height. I actually encouraged some friends to get a job there, once they completed their BSEE degrees. I already had a job lined up elsewhere. If not, I probably would have sent some resumes there, too. Bad timing, that ended with me giving bad advice, since shortly thereafter, National started their long term slide, finally getting swallowed up by TI, a couple of decades later.
Always looked at them as an analog parts company. Yes, I used a lot of TTL (and TTL compatible 74HC CMOS), but programmable logic from PALs to CPLDs to FPGAs where coming in vogue, at the high end. At the low end microcontrollers where finding their ways into everything. So boards with 30 or more TTL chips were going away. I wire-wrapped dozens of prototypes, filled with TTL parts, gluing together a half dozen, or so, large NMOS ICs, such as the processor, various controllers (DMA, Interrupt, timers, ...), along with memory chips (RAM [SRAM & DRAM] & ROM [EPROM & EEPROM]), when I was still a tech, working my way thru school. National only made half hearted attempts in programmable logic & uC areas.
Thanks for all the great vids
I remember National very well indeed, Did contract work in a couple of their older fabs and also in their Fairchild Research Center in Santa Clara. I was a staff process engineer, starting up, dialing in and doing process development on many of their plasma etch tools. They weren't easy people to work with, to say the least.
I worked with some of the Cyrix engineers as well, and they too were very difficult people. Never satisfied, always complaining, changing the rules every other day, the list goes on and on. One morning I came in to start another day, expecting another stressful time in paradise. Instead of jumping on me as usual, they all had glazed looks of shock on their faces. The Cyrix thing had just been closed down and they were all about to lose their jobs. A bad day for them but a huge relief for me, I'm sad to say.
Quite a memory. I worked in all the major fabs in the Valley: Intel ... AMD ... National ...Signetics ... Synertek ... LSI Logic ... VLSI Technology ... Synergy ... HP ... Paradigm ... Silicon Systems ... Orbit ... at least those are the ones I can remember. There were more that have just slipped my mind.
I worked in semiconductors from 1978 to 2004.
Great story... and special dedication at the end.. well done...
Speaking of dads- mine worked as a chip designer at apple around the time of the original Mac. You want me to see if you can interview him?
[in a tone of astonishment] Wow! *This is remarkable!*
This is something I can personally relate to, as I worked at NS back in the early 1980s in the mail room and did courier work several times a month to the executive work area that Charlie Sporck occupied . . . and I do mean *_work area,_* as it was an open air floorspace, larger than a basketball court or two, with cubicles . . . _there were no individual offices [to my knowledge] to be had on the premises!_
Sporck did not lavish himself with an office, but rather, it was an open-air cubicle at the top floor of a massive building in Santa Clara. From the appearance of the interior workspace setting, you would have thought that Sporck was nothing more than a department supervisor, possibly a small department manager, from the austere open cubicle layout, with a non-descript desk, and an off-the-shelf swivel office chair [of what looked like a 1950s style], with arms, that would have looked at home in the environs of a warehouse office or police station dating back decades earlier.
Any employee with an NS ID badge could have easily walked right up to Sporck's desk!
The exterior of that NS building Sporck occupied . . . now, mind you, it's been 40 years, but the "number two" building designation resonates in my brain. Well, that massive gray multi-storied building had an ominous look to it, something George Lucas could have used as exterior shots for the HQ of "The Empire" in a Star Wars movie.
I appreciated the narrative in this video of informing the viewers of NS being [ahem!] 'frugal,' as that was a lasting impression the company left with me.
Myself and others that worked there lamented about the cheapness of NS, especially when it came to the quality of the manufactured chips. A legend that spread in the social circles I was in about NS's efforts when it came to manufacturing quality:
_Instead of NS putting in the efforts to manufacture 1K of high quality chips that would meet stringent specs; it would produce multiple-thousands of cheap chips, then toss out those thousands that didn't meet the specs, until they got the 1K quantity that met the specs. The logic behind that was with the cost and resources it took to strive for high-quality manufacturing; as, in the minds of the NS execs, it was more profitable to mass-produce cheap chips with some waste than to produce high-quality chips with no-waste._
Mind you, the above about chip quality was just chatter around NS, as I have no way to substantiate it. But, it does hint of the underlying morale issues there were in some sectors in NS.
I almost cried in the video. It was a nice performance! Congratulations!
Your dad had an amazing son. Bravo! 😊
Even though you’ve made quite a few videos piecing together the history of Fairchild, I’m surprised you’ve never made a dedicated video about such a pivotal company!
My cousin also worked for NS in Santa Clara office. I remember NS gave free entrance tickets for Great America in Santa Clara to their employees including their family for either Christmas or the company's anniversary.
All your topics are always interesting. I wonder if a slant towards thin films for data storage technologies might someday fit into your topics.
Very nice for you to dedicate this video to your father!
13:05 I love that picture. I often use that saying. Mostly because my love of electronics is old tube gear.
Fascinating information.
Keep it coming. Be well.
My grandfather, Jack Mills, worked at the plant in Arlington Texas. My mother also worked there for quite some time so national definitely holds a special place in my heart as well! I remember hearing tales of John Conn. (Funny enough my grandfather started at Fairchild and left to join NSC!)
15:08 That ad! It has big John Romero Daikatana/Genesis Does energy.
Exactly!!!
Thanks for the awesome video! Please do. A video about the failure of the 16000 and de 32000 microprocessor lines.
Very well written and presented. I hope many viewers realize that all these people were the lions and founders of today’s modern computing world. Their collective work and products fundamentally changed humanity and the world.
I began working at National Semiconductor (“National”) in Santa Clara, immediately after receiving my Engineering degree, almost 40 years ago. IIRC, the company employed more than 24,000 people worldwide at the time.(My badge number was North of 57,000!) That was back when Silicon Valley actually made chips. My desk was in building 16 (amazingly, it still stands), just down the hall from Charlie’s cubicle. I worked side by side with Charlie’s youngest son. The Japanese semi makers overtook the US companies the next year. Charlie spent a lot of time complaining about the unfair capital and protectionist advantages the Japanese companies wielded. Most of those companies are gone now, too. It’s been one hell of a ride.
BTW, I’ve always heard Sprague pronounced the American way: “Sprage.”
Great video! 😊
One of my work colleagues worked at National in the Malaysia plant. He told me some interesting stories when he was working in the fab.
Widlar and his antics are probably enough material for a video on its own. He really was a character unlike any other, and he got things forward.
Another excellent video.
Thank you Asianometry guys dad! :)
For Your Dad. Since more than a year maybe even two years, i'm watching every opisode. Good Job
NS 16550 was a UART which was buggy - it would forget to issue a transmit complete interrupt so the software had to implement a backup which polled the chip. This was due to the architecture of how interrupts were generated.
Ah the old row of blue databooks on the bookshelf...
Always the best research and the most interesting subject
It was nice to credit your father for his work, good video!
Excellent. Even more than usual.
Their data sheets were awesome!
It took me 4 hours to get from the Delta to San Jose, and every other car was roofless with a beautiful looking person in it. I wasn't there a week and at some awesome patio bar there was a fundraiser. My young smart ass bid $5 for a haircut. Everyone knew I was a newcomer and let me get it😊 took me 50 bucks in gas to find the place in Sunnyvale. God I miss hair
I've got dozens of stories of San Jose even better but I ended up leaving with a hangover after 10 months.
Charles Sporck had an intriguing combination of two of the most popular eating utensils named after him that are found in many places that sell quick food.
What a legacy this man has 🌮
Your dad had an amazing son. Bravo! . Wonderful telling of a great Silicon Valley story, thanks..
Yep had one in Arlington, tx
Shout out to the creater of the creater, thanks Asianometry's dad!
The ultimate engineering. 😀
NSC Danbury, not a job but an adventure!
That's an understatement! I started there in '84, not too long after the sulfuric tank in the DI pad blew up. Kinda glad I missed that one, the stories about it more than sufficed.
that was a great retro look into the industry..!! Kudos to "Dad"
I joined National at the Arlington facility in the mid 90s, moving to Maine to start up their (then) new 200mm fab. Would love to know what your dad did, wondering if our paths ever crossed.
I hope you are able to visit the old office some day.
Hello, good historical job ! Although as a National Employee in Europe in the early 2000's before TI bought NS, I somewaht disagree on the statement on that period. We had a hell of time selling to the biggest customers, increasing prices and profits. Winning more new designs in numerous applications. But good job !
Thank you for this walk through the history of a company that made me "make business with fun".
After leaving National, I had a very bad experience with another semiconductor company, simply because the human wasn't part of the equation. I then left to run my own small business...
I worked for National Semiconductor, started in 1981 left in 2009
Aww such a sweet video premise