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| 5th August 2001 | ON THE WAY TO CMD... |
Maurice Randall |
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Date: Thu, 12 Jul 2001 Hello everyone, It's just about 1:00PM here on Thursday in Charlotte, Michigan. I'm all packed up. The truck and trailer are sitting out front ready to go. I'm sitting here eating a couple of hot dogs and drinking a Coke as I type this message. My wife came to meet me for lunch. We went down to the hardware store to get some extra keys made for my shop so she could check on it each day. It took so long at the hardware store we had to stop and grab the hot dogs on the way back. Then she had to hurry up and get back to where she works at the local Chrysler dealership. We kissed and hugged and I'll give her a call when I get there. As soon as I log off here, I'll finish up my lunch and then I'm on the road to Massachusetts. I'm not exactly sure when I'll get the next chance to leave a message. It might be Friday night or maybe I can log on from CMD. Friday, July 13, 2001 It was a long trip in my truck pulling a big trailer, but I arrived safe and sound at about 10:00 AM on Friday morning. Aside from about 4 stops for fuel, I managed to stay awake the whole time except for about 1 hour when I pulled into a rest area at about 5AM to take a little nap. I was quite cautious driving my truck on this trip since it had been sitting for about 5 years since the last time I had used it. It needed a lot of attention to get it ready for this trip but it did a pretty good job getting me here with just a couple of minor problems. An oil leak had developed which wasn't a big problem. I simply had to make sure to keep an eye on the oil level and to add a quart or two when needed. The leak caused me to add a total of 6 quarts of oil to get here. That's minor compared to the amount of gasoline I went through at 6.4 miles per gallon! It didn't matter how I drove. It got either 6.4 or 6.5 on every fuel stop. But that's always the way it's been. After all, even when empty, the truck and trailer together weigh about 14,000 pounds. It's the cost per gallon of gas that's killing me on this 800 mile trip. The only other problem I had was that the truck got a bit louder about halfway into the trip. Both mufflers went bad and got noisy on me. I'll put up with the noise until I get home. About ten years ago at a World Of Commodore show in Toronto I met the guys at CMD and had a chance to talk to them for a short time there. This was the first time I had seen them since then, other than talking on the phone or through email. It was nice to see them once again. It's a busy place at CMD. Everyone's working. The phones are ringing. Mark and Charlie are in and out tending to business. Doug is doing his thing, taking care of various clients. Charlie's mother, Ruth, (and the wife of Charles Christiansen, Sr.), is there for the day to do some secretarial work, answer phones, greet the walk-in customers and many other duties. In the main work area a young man named Noah is working on PCs for customers. Back in the production room a gentleman named Angel is busy soldering up some SuperCPU circuit boards. For the past couple of years Angel has done most of the soldering work on the CMD products. The main thing I did today was get familiar with some of the operation and check out some of the special modifications that need to be done to the various circuit boards before being assembled into a product. Angel showed me most of the stuff he has to do to each circuit board, including special modifications that are done prior to assembly. Mark showed me the equipment used for programming the custom GAL and PLD chips used in most of the products and then turned me loose to create a batch of GAL chips that we would later install into some SuperCPUs and RamLinks during assembly time. CMD has eliminated some warehouse space to cut back on expenses, but, aside from that, most of the Commodore related stuff is still set up and intact. (But not for long!) At lunch time Doug invited me to go with him to get a bite to eat. We ate at a busy little Deli and it sure was good. I had a very well packed sliced Kielbasa sandwich and Ginger Ale. At the end of the day Doug once again bought dinner for me and we ate at Bickford's restaurant. This time it was a T-bone steak and scrambled eggs with pancakes. I was all set for the evening. Doug headed on home and I scouted around for a motel room. They were either filled up or were much more expensive than I was used to paying, but I was tired after the long drive and the first day at CMD. I paid $75 for a dumpy room and fell asleep. Saturday, July 14, 2001 On this day I was scheduled to meet Mark at CMD for some hands on training. They are normally closed on Saturday so it would be a good time to get some work done. However, our day wasn't going to start until the middle of the afternoon, since Mark was entered in a golf tournament that morning. At about 3:15, we got started. It was time to assemble some SuperCPUs, but first we needed more chips. This time it was the custom PLD chips that are the main key to making these units do what they do. We programmed up the chips that we needed and then went on into the production room to assemble the units. We popped in the GALs and PLDs in the boards that Angel had soldered up the previous day and did a quick visual inspection to make sure everything looked right. Now we plug the first unit into a test machine. This is a slightly altered 128D with the internal drive removed, an HD connected, a RamLink and a bunch of testing software. Once the SuperCPU passed all the tests on this machine the top cover is quickly installed, while the unit is still hot, and then it's plugged into the next test machine for further testing. Now the SuperCPU goes through some of the same tests, but this particular 128 is running with a power supply that runs at a minimum voltage level and the SuperCPU is all warmed up after its initial 15-minute test run on the first 128. If it gets past the testing on this machine chances are good it will run on most any machine. A couple of the SuperCPUs came through without any problems at all, but a few of them needed further work. One was found to have a PLD that just wasn't up to par. It would work good on the first test machine but not on the second one. That PLD went into the trash and a different one installed. It then passed the test. To certify it completely the unit had to go back and start the tests on the first 128 and finish up on the second one without failing. Doug showed up on this day also and got caught up on some work in his office. I think he may have also been sorting through some files on one of the Macs that I would be needing to take with me. These would be the original files used for creating the CMD manuals. Creating and editing the manuals was always Doug's job. It was getting close to 8PM now and time to quit for the day. I drove to an area where there was a shopping mall and several other shopping centers. I bought a pre-paid phone calling card and gave my wife a call from a payphone. I figured this would be cheaper than calling her collect. The night before, in that motel room, the phone would only work with calling cards, but could take incoming calls. So, I called my wife collect from a nearby payphone and gave her the number for the motel. She could then call me direct. Tonight, I could call her direct. I then went to a nearby Burger King and got a Double-Whopper and the free fries. I had cold Coke in the cooler and waited until getting back to my truck for something to drink. It was a quiet parking lot in one of the shopping centers, so I just parked there for the night. Inside the back of my truck is a workbench that also doubles as a bed. Sleeping was a cheap deal tonight. Sunday, July 15, 2001 It's Sunday. Mark and I got started at about 1:30PM. We finished up a couple of SuperCPUs and got them ready for troubleshooting. These were two units that failed to work properly the day before. Actually, the problem with one of them was only in the ramcard. I also brought along a V1 SuperCPU that quit working on me one night when I took it to a user group meeting. We found it to have a GAL chip that had gone bad for some reason. After finding the bad chip and replacing it, Mark also installed an updated ROM. It was a short session today, but I have a feeling I'm going to have a few very busy days coming up. I also tried leaving email messages today from CMD, but for some reason it kept failing. I think it was a DNS problem. I'll try to figure it out Monday during the day. Mark was letting me use a test account that they have on their ISP. I think I'll sleep in my truck again tonight. It's comfortable and cheap. I can't take a shower in it, but I can still brush my teeth, shave, and wash my face. I'm not getting as dirty as I would if I were working in my auto repair shop, so getting cleaned up is fairly easy. Unfortunately, the other important facilities are missing, if you know what I mean. Tuesday, July 17, 2001 Today was RamLink day. I started off by testing a unit that someone had sent in for repair. It involved replacing the ribbon cable and connectors to the LED board plus a new socket on the main board. After the standard RamLink test that is given to all new units, this was ready to send back to the customer. Now it was time to work on some new units. Angel already had some main boards and some ramcard boards soldered up, so getting these units finished wasn't going to be too difficult. I had to install some of the chips, put the boards into the cases and fit the ramcards. Some of the RamLinks were ordered with RTC chips, so those had to go in also. Then, with the covers removed, each RamLink was put through a test session on a 128 test machine. The testing took about 15 minutes for each unit. Sometimes a RamLink wouldn't start up properly. When this happened I'd have to troubleshoot it. A couple of them had bad chips right from the start. Generally, a bad chip will show up immediately. If the unit gets through the initial testing session chances are good it will run for many years to come. Altogether, I got 4 new RamLinks put together today. These were the last RamLinks to ever be built by CMD and I had a hand in doing them. All future RamLinks will now come out of my shop in Michigan. At the end of the day I went to a grocery store and bought another pre-paid phone card. The one I bought for $5 on Saturday lasted pretty good. I had used it to call my wife for 3 days and also to send and receive email from the motel room a couple of times on Monday night. I picked up a $10 card this time. It should last me until I get home. I'm saving some money again tonight. I'm sleeping in the truck. I think I'll get a motel room again tomorrow night. Wednesday, July 18, 2001 Today was kind of historic. Two of the RamLinks that I assembled yesterday were getting packaged up to ship out. These were officially the last two RamLinks to be built at CMD's shop. For this I just had to get a picture. Charlie Jr wanted to take my picture with them, so he got my camera and took the shot. Angel just got to work, so I took the camera and got a picture of Angel holding one RamLink and Charlie holding the other one. Don't be alarmed. I'll still produce the RamLink at my shop...but I couldn't resist this moment! I did some finish work on 3 T232 circuit boards today and fully tested them with the special test equipment that Mark has built. After testing, I installed the boards into their cases, put the decals on and bagged them. There will be 3 more happy high-speed customers soon. These are also the last T232's coming from CMD. I also worked on three more FD-2000's today. I got the boards finished and ready to install. I also learned the little tricks needed to get the FD mechanisms ready. Then I tested the units and assembled them. After applying the front and rear decals, I put the rubber feet on the bottom and bagged the units up. Those will be the last FD drives from CMD. At the end of the day, Mark and his wife invited me over for dinner. That was the first 'real' meal I've had all week. That was nice of them. After dinner, Mark took me downstairs to show me some "cool" stuff. He's also letting me borrow this stuff to show at the Chicago EXPO with the promise that I send it all back to him afterwards. This includes the original wire-wrapped prototype RamLink. This unit didn't work, but there is also the second prototype which is still a wired up unit that actually DID work. Then there is the third prototype that is very close in appearance to what the production unit would look like. Other wire-wrapped prototypes include the SuperRAM card and the MMU adapter. There is also a very early prototype of the SCSI adapter which found its way onto the HD main board. There is an unpainted RamLink prototype case. There is a prototype of the JiffyDOS board that is used with many of the JiffyDOS chips that have switches. There is also the very first 1541 JiffyDOS chip and there is an EPROM programmer, that Mark designed and built, used to create the very first JiffyDOS chip with back in 1985. Mark couldn't find the wire-wrapped SuperCPU prototype. He thinks he may have thrown it out!! We're going to look around the shop tomorrow to see if it might be sitting there somewhere. He thinks the FD prototype might be there also. I can't imagine losing stuff like this!
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