My career in technology began during my junior year in electrical engineering at Florida Atlantic University, Boca Raton, Fl. I was hired by a small company which sold a Cobol operating system and compiler for the IBM Series/1. This was around the time of the IBM PC development. IBM had other Intel based products for the office. The company's current mission was to migrate the COBOL environment to the PC environment. My first assignment has to reverse engineer the file system for the DIsplay Writer word processor which was an IBM PC with only word processing function. Understanding the file system was necessary for the migration.
Once the COBOL environment was migrated the emphasis was placed on migration to the PC. At this time I was tasked with analyzing the current version of Virtual COBOL compiler for version 2.0. In the end the product was sold to Exxon-Mobile and the owner closed the company, bought a corvette, and retired. As for me, I accepted an intership with IBM in the Series/1 RD department.
At IBM I had a wide variety of assignments. The beginning was assembly language programming for digital signal processing chip, defining an input/output bus and designing the control chip for the circuit boards. Then came reliability engineering which included onboard diagnostics and manufacturing test software as well as Problem Determination Procedure for field.
Systems testing of network management hardware and software was next. Some other assignments included compatibiltiy testing, performance testing, and developing VLSI simulation for use in chip design testing prior to sending out for a run. To sum up IBM it was from concept to reality. Following the closure of the Boca Raton campus I made my way to Motorola.
The time at Motorola was spent working in manufacturing. Initially, working in test systems engineering. A good portion of that time was spent writing software for various functions such as radio programming during assembly. The factory was a radio communication facility making radios for police, fire, military, and commercial organizations.
From test systems went to computer aided manufacturing which controlled computers providing the necessary functionality for factory control, order convertion, and quality aassurence. Couple years into that a little argument with the manager regarding career advancement pissed me off. As a result, a change to factory line supervisor which mangement couldnt understand leaving engineering. It turned out to be a good decision. Eigthteen months in the entire engineering team in CAM quit. Guess who was asked to rebuild and manage the department. The line experience turned out to help build a rapor between CAM and the line.
After Motorola I did time as an independent and some years teaching at college level. From there I retired.
Otto L. Lecuona