Remembering Robin

I don't know where Robin is now, not even what he is doing. It is a long thirty years since we last met---long, long before the beginning of this hyper-communicating age.

Robin was a techie, a self-taught one, a man born with the gift of advent up with innovative solutions with high periodicity.

I first met Robin in a enterprise in the early Eighties. This enterprise was mental of putting in a micro processor inside color Tv set so you can have On Screen displays, remote operation, timer, small games and other keen and addictive features.

We were doing the basic On-Screen display,which can show the channel no being shown on the screen.To do do that even a decade back was a ten minuets job as the dedicated chip was available, no so, in the 80's.

Mind you, I said micro processors, micro controllers ( a very close cousin) was not yet in the shop and there were only two microprocessor making companies Intel and advent up - Zilog.

To put something on the screen, first you need regular syncing pulses from the the Horizontal sync. We required also samples of the Vertical sync. Pulses. Taking these pulses the microprocessor keyed from a Character Generator Prom, which had a binary map of the characters.

We found that to put in a microprocessor based theory inside the Tv set you need an additional one board which was two third the size of the Tv board itself and times more complicated. The Tv itself generated enough heat and electrical noise to disrupt the working of the board.

Robin instantly put our board face the Tv cabinet. The antenna association and power entered into this external box, of procedure we had to put a multi-pin connector from the box to the Tv.

Lesson no 1: If you want to test things-think out -of -the box.

So Robin created a set Set top box thirty years ago. We had a model with this box inside a larger Tv cabinet.

In those days to get a microprocessor chip (in this case the 8085) to work, you needed hosts of other smaller chips, an external Eeprom (actually Uvprom, a device which needed external programmer to write and had a window straight through which you had to put in ultra violet light to erase the whole thing) and a Random access Memory (Ram).We had to write in hexadecimal amount the code and data into the Ram, run the program, if it worked we relocated the addresses of the agenda to work from the Eprom, the display of the amount was shown in a calculator type display called seven segment Led display.

We had a very rudimentary monitor agenda burnt into an Eprom, but we needed a Ascii keyboard and we had no alphanumeric display to enter codes and data in a good way. Of procedure you could buy a whole improvement system, but at a cost of 00/- it was even unthinkable to think of suggesting such a purchase to the department head.

One day I noticed Robin staring at a box full of Ldrs, this is Cadmium Sulfide (CdS) material whose electrical resistance decreased with the increment of intensity of light falling on it.

We had an auto bathroom light control tool where these things were used. By lunch time Robin got a primitive typewriter. For weeks Robin constructed opto-interrupters in such a way that when a particular key was pressed the lower mechanical part obstructed light to a particular Ldr, a mass of wire and transistors went out of the typewriter to a board where the thing was converted to 5V logic signal, it seemed to me the wires are much less than they should be. Instead of going for decoder Robin used an Eprom to decode whatsoever code he got from his Gizmo to Ascii signal. Each type press created an Ascii code which was changed again to binary and kept in a Ram.

"Now we need a mnemonic to binary converter program", he grinned, his first one liner after a long gap, indicating he needs added man power.

Later on I found he had divided the mechanical key levers into 12 vertical and 3 horizontal matrices. Thus the amount of wires were less. But he had to use two Eeprom chips for decoder as the maximum address line ready at that time had 13 address pins. He had isolate signals for carriage return, space-bar and back-space. Since we did not have a printer the typewriter itself was working as real time printer.

Mnemonics are easy to understand, study set that are created by the microprocessor maker to illustrate the performance code, if you write Mvi, 02 the translator should convert it to numbers which in hexadecimal theory for this micro was 3E 02, that is a 8 bit study code followed by data, it commands the micro to load the collector register with the value 2.

All this- because we did not have an Assembler.

Around this time Robin was trying to find out a location in the Tv circuitry where he could blank and inject his own signal, since the Tv itself was imported, our knowledge of the particular Chroma-Processor was limited, so Robin decided to inject our bit- stream on the Green channel transistor's base drive. He calculated the amount of lines required, the delay from Horizontal sync, the delay from Vertical sync, the amount of bit clock required to form three characters on the left hand upper angle of the screen.

I was taken away to an additional one originate for about two months, when I returned, Robin was transformed physically. Also other co-worker's perspective of him had changed. He has put on weight, gone balder. Relativistically two months of my time was two years to him.

At the angle of our video R&D room was the Tv, on the Left upper angle there was three characters-C08,it was not sharp, the edges were simmering but you could read it clearly from a wholesome length and there was no doubt it meant channel 8 of the Vhs band.

But it was just the garnish, it was when the set was turned off and on again the cause of Robin's universal appreciation became clear, for the dark screen first showed the Company's name for three second in deep green and then the photograph of the premium channel.

Robin also had the born-innovator's sense of fidelity, he commented anywhere that putting the enterprise name on the screen was my idea, (That I had no idea how to do it, was not mentioned).

Lesson No 2: No amount of lack of equipment, support, can easily deter a true innovator, this we read in history, to perceive in real life is a Davine opportunity.

Today my son was showing me how to use the involved remote of the Av theory newly installed. Before my son could show me how to get it working I could only get the company's name on the screen --- I was mental of the giants who are dominating the commerce and the stat-up trying to pull up something from a tiny budget, I could help but remembering Robin.

Remembering Robin

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