Welcome you have found my home page. I am Andy Patterson. I live in Ludlow Mo. a small town of 200 in mid America. I live with my wife Deborah and son Tom. We have two other children Tracey and Shannon who also live here in Ludlow. Tracey our oldest has ADHD.
I have been a systems level programmer for 30 years. I am currently working for Walsworth Publishing as a Prepress programmer. We write plugins for Adobe PageMaker, Adobe Indesign and Quark. My previous job was with DST were I worked on the development of Here & There remote control software for DOS and Windows. Before that I was with Symbol Technologies (TrueData) in Irvine Calif. where I developed real-time data collection software and hardware. Over the last 30 years I have worked for Kontron (Genrad) FutureData, Storage Technology, Compugraphic Corp., Digital Equipment Corp, Ramada Inns, and Cerritos Collage.
When I first started out at Cerritos Collage as a computer operator on a HoneyWell H200 computer the computer was shared between administration and education. The H200 had 24K of 2 micro second core memory, 300K on removable disk packs, four 800 bpi tape drives, a card reader, a line printer and a card punch. The micro computer I am writing this on is about 400 times as fast, has 20 meg 1000 times the memory and 2 gig 66000 times the hard disk space.
While at Cerritos Collage I rewrote the operating system and developed the compiler compiler language SLIC. SLIC was developed from CWIC by E. Book and V. Shore at SDC corp. CWIC was a compiler compiler for implementing compilers that run on the IBM 360 370 machines. SLIC is an extension that generates code for any machine with features that enhance machine independent code optimizations. SLIC was used to write a COBOL cross compiler that was used to write reservation programs at Ramada Inns. The COBOL compiler ran on the DEC SYSTEM 10 and produced code for the TI 990 mini computer used for reservation terminals. The operating system I wrote was device independent, allowing programs to be run from disk, tape or cards. It also had a JCL that made it very simple to run student jobs. We where able to run 2500 student jobs a day. That was more then twice what the 360 at Long Beach State could do. Honey well supplied a tape operating system and a disk operating system.
We replaced the H200 with a DEC SYSTEM 10. The whole time I was employed by Cerritos Collage I was classified as a Computer Operator, but the job I performed was that of a systems programmer. The collage did not have a systems programmer position at that time. Glen Bond my supervisor tried but only got the position approved after I left to work for Ramada Inns at over three times my operator salary. Good luck Glen where ever you are.
At Ramada I worked on the Ramada, later Micor, reservation system. I was instrumental in development of the COBOL cross compiler mentioned earlier and also worked on communications. The reservation system was the first of it kind, implemented on a DEC 1077 system in Phoenix Ariz. which was linked to the reservation center in Omaha through leased lines. At the reservation center where two mini computers a message concentrator and a terminal controller. The local terminal operators took reservations through in WATTS (800 number) voice lines. The concentrators took calls from mini computers located in the hotels/motels. This was the first computer dial up reservation system. When we were first bringing the system on line we had an interesting failure. The concentrators in Omaha both crashed. The reservation was implemented using mini computers in each hotel or motel. These computers where programmed to call the reservation center everyday at midnight to get any messages for that inn and on connect failure would retry after a short wait of 15 seconds. We initially had 600 inns on-line. So with the minis in Omaha down we had 600 computers in the field call the same 800 number in Omaha at the same time ever 15 seconds. This shut down all long distance lines in the U.S. Ma Bell was knocking at our door. We solved the problem. Another interesting outcome of our dial up message system was the WATS line rate changes that took place. This was back in 1970. At that time WATS lines were charged only on time used based on connect time. There was also a min connect time of three seconds before the call was even counted. Our modems were 1200 baud and didn't have the initial hand shake time that the modems have to day. Our reservation terminals in the inns where programmed to collect and verify the operator entered data, call the reservation center WATS number, send the reservation request, receive a response to that request and an arrival message if any and hang up. This usually occurred in less then the 3 seconds minimum connect time. So now, due to an act of congress, WATS lines are charged on connect time and/or number of calls which ever favors the Phone Company. Also modems have to have a min handshake time before data can be transmitted.
From there I went to work for DEC as a systems specialist at Hunter Leggett army base in central Calif. There I worked on real-time data collection, tracking, monitoring systems used in military experiments. I remained at Hunter Leggett with BDM ZAPEX corp. after a year with DEC.
After Hunter Leggett I moved to Mo. and took a job in Kansas City to be near my hometown. The company was a service provider for blood banks around the country. They were also branching out into data collection. That company went belly up and I found a job with CompuGraphic. There I worked on various subsystems of the AdVantage add layout system. While there, an interesting event occurred. I call it the cactus upraising. I initially got the blame for it. Just before the release of the AdVantage we put on a show for some vary important customers. The president of CompuGraphic was there with several other VPs. Well, as luck would have it, with all these dignitaries present, some text was entered and selected. At this point a new font was selected. Wak !!?? the cactus appeared, the finger, you know the royal finger... full screen largest point size. As I had did the font library subsystem this looked very bad for me. Actually what had occurred is that a test character set EPROM had been duped by mistake, which had character 0xFF as the famous cactus sign, and combined with a memory failure produce the embarrassing results.
After a year in Mass we decided it was just to cliquish. And I found another job in Denver with STC. There I maintained the DEC SYSTEM 10 that had STC disks on them. These timesharing machines were used to run batch inventory, accounting and business applications, while the IBM machines were used for engineering applications under TSO. After 3 months my supervisor, the one who hired me, quit. I followed shortly there after, taking a position with CADO in Torrance Calif. This turned out to be a mistake as I was put to writing application programs in CADO basic. This would not do. I moved on, to Future Data. Where I write PASCAL and C cross compilers to the Intel 80x86, Zialog Z8000, Motorola 68000, and the 6809 micro computers. Future Data manufactured InCircutEmulators. While I was with future data the company was sold to GENRAD and then again to KONTRON. With KONTRON I became the manager of the language development department.
KONTRON moved to northern California. I stayed in southern California and became an independent consultant. I contracted with KONTRON, FirstByte where I developed a graphics library for the Apple 2E that was used to develop educational products, and with TrueData where I developed a working relationship the people of DST. As a consultant with TrueData I developed the first data collection terminals. Software, Circuit boards, communications protocol, and input validation language for the terminal. Mr. Breck Auten of DST developed the PC communications software, report writer, Mengen menu system and control system. The first terminals used a 6502 processor and all code was in EPROM, written in assembler. Later Symbol Technology acquired the Collection division of TrueData. TrueData also manufactured mark sense scanners that were used in lottery terminals and school test scoring. I also write vastly improved scanner algorithms for them. The scanner division was sold to another Scanner Company. I stayed with the data collection team. Under SYMBOL a new "PC compatible" terminal was developed. They hired a "real" engineer who designed the processor board. I had to debug his board. How do these people get degrees? I dought they could solve a multiple chose problem with five chooses given five tries. Another time at TrueData Jim McKey, the president of the company, and I where working on an inkjet printer interface. Jim had just hired an engineer who had designed the circuit. He had goon home it 5:00 the previous day. Jim and I had worked on the interface all night. The polarities were reversed and the time constants were wrong. Any way Jim and I after working all night had the board working, we needed one more patch to be soldered and it would be ready to demo. About this time the new engineer walked in, fresh and alert. We gave him the board. Told him to discharge the capacitor, as it still had a charge from testing, and make the last patch needed. He went over to the bench picked up a soldering iron, examined it (Must have been trying to figure which end to use), and proceeded. Before we could stop him, he discharged the cap into the circuit, smoking the board. We got the board working about 6 hours later. We got along without an engineer after that.
It was during this time that ROSA was developed. ROSA is the forerunner of Here & There. ROSA was developed by Breck and Murli of DST. Later I came up with a good way to implement sched level and APEXEC was born. Breck and I worked on APEXEC for about a year before we had a reliable kernel. APEXEC is an 80x86 real mode real-time multi-tasking kernel. APEXEC was licensed to SYMBOL and used in the new data collection terminals. APEXEC was used to rewrite the terminal polling software on the PCs and later Breck and I designed a multi-threaded point to point protocol and ROSA was ported over to use the new kernel. With the new ROSA technology based on the multi-tasking kernel and multi-threaded protocol we had a viable product. John joined DST and with his contacts we sold ROSA to Fifth Generation Systems. ROSA was reamed to HERE & THERE. I became an employee of DST and under contract to Fifth Generation began the implementation of the HERE & THERE for Windows 3.1 and DOS. Breck implemented the network driver for Here & There. We also implemented a remote drive module. This took a year and Fifth Generation was acquired by SYMANTEC the publisher of pcANYWHERE. We got Here & There back along with a nice chunk of pocket change. I released my rights to the product to the newly formed company DSTechnology. I am now an independent consultant. My specialties are computer languages, operating systems, and communications. I can also design and trouble shoot digital logic.