Beloved electronics Guru Don Lancaster has passed away.

[usonian]

Last edited Sat Jul 1, 2023, 09:10 PM - Edit history (1)

There's no electronics group at DU (that I can find) but those of us who grew up marveling at newly-invented logic chips and the magic they could work will miss Don Lancaster.

There really are electronic gadgets other than computers! You can build them yourself (recommended)!
Check out some of the designs Don published over the years (Internet Archive link below)

His website is still up, with lots of interesting info, though some is dated. Chips still work the same as they did in the day.
https://www.tinaja.com

Bio: from Wikipedia: (and very brief)

Donald E. Lancaster was an American author, inventor, and microcomputer pioneer

Background
Don graduated from North Allegheny High School in Wexford, Pennsylvania.He has received a BSEE degree from Lafayette College in 1961, and a MSEE from Arizona State University in 1967.

Lancaster was a writer and engineer, who wrote multiple articles for computer and electronics magazines of the 1970s, including Popular Electronics, Radio Electronics, Dr. Dobb's Journal, 73 Magazine, and Byte. He has written books on electronics, computers, and entrepreneurship, both commercially published and self-published.

One of his early projects was "TV Typewriter" serial terminal. The design was accepted by early microcomputer users as it used an ordinary television set for the display and could be built for around USD$200 in parts, at a time when commercial terminals were selling for over $1,000.

Lancaster was an early advocate and developer of what is now known as print-on-demand technology. Lancaster produced his self-published books by re-purposing the game port of an Apple II to transfer PostScript code directly to a laser printer, rather than using a Macintosh running PageMaker. This enabled continuous book production using an inexpensive Apple II, rather than tying up an expensive Macintosh until the print run was complete.

He formerly held a ham radio license (K3BYG).

I bought a bunch of his books to learn digital technology, but was especially fascinated by his "TV Typewriter" design and "Cheap Video" and Son of Cheap Video books,

But the piece de resistance was his "Incredible Secret Money Machine" masterpiece of a book describing all the pitfalls of a home business, and how to overcome them. It's available as free PDF here:
https://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/ismm.pdf
It's the same as the printed book less a copyrighted cartoon. (Kliban)
Spoiler Alert: the cartoon is titled "Wasted and Useful Lives"

Edit: copyright or not, it's up on the internet.

Maybe he couldn't get permission to republish electronically.

Don's articles are up at the Internet Archive here:
https://archive.org/details/don_lancaster?sort=-publicdate

You can also download ebooks from his site:
https://www.tinaja.com/ebksamp1.shtml
but one I tried is an improperly formatted pdf, go figure.
" %!PS"
(the % should be at the beginning of the line, IIRC) So who's perfect?

His autobiography is here (PDF, of course)
https://www.tinaja.com/glib/waywere.pdf

One of many tributes to Don Lancaster:
https://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2023/07/In-Praise-of-Don-Lancaster.html

[Effete Snob]

1. Wow

Now there’s someone I haven’t thought about in decades.

His TTL cookbook was a gateway drug for me.

[ThoughtCriminal]

2. Kick started my career

I started reading his articles when I was in college - decided that programming looked a lot more interesting and promising than public administration.

[retread]

3. CMOS Cookbook was and still is a must have classic!