Test with camera and digital timing. NTSC video waveform is displayed on oscilloscope and the computer screen shows a portion of the digital logic on the FPGA.

Shows three CPLD devices with a microcontroller on the bottom board. The three CPLD devices are mounted on TaborCo "Type2" prototype boards, and all three of these are mounted on a TaborCo "Type 1" prototype card. The top card is a signal driver card, stuffed with power transistors and resistors. This style of resistors was deemed to be unsafe for the product, and bolt-in power resistors, mounted on metal plates were used instead.

Shows partial lab setup for the evaluation of a very small but high density PC board, largely covered by wiring on the lower right. The PCB communicates with serial channels to other boards. The binary display with the red and white lights indicates DC logic states on the PCB, transmitted by a serial bit stream.

Shows other portion of custom PC board being evaluated. The PCB is covered with wires, and is communicating with PIC microcontroller boards which are mimicking other devices. This setup is capable of programming any of the processors or the FPGA using programming tools installed on the computer to the right.

This is an early control panel with switches and LED indicators to turn on/turn off high energy devices.

This is an early reconfigurable control circuit for an ion beam controller.

This is a reconfigurable PCB with UL rated material, wired to control an ion beam controller.

This is a PCB for generating a high energy pulse.

This is an evaluation setup for checking, optimizing and characterizing a special purpose power supply. Both SMT and DIP parts are mounted on the PCB. To help with prototype building, NPN transistors have been painted red on the top surface, PNP transistors are green, and N-Channel MOSFET transistors are orange.

This is an evaluation setup for a PCB receiving serial input and generating a large number of pulsed outputs for controlling room lighting. The logic design is all FPGA based.

This is a characterization setup for measuring the time delays, bandwidth, and DC performance of an ASIC now in use. After designing the ASIC, I offered the service of evaluating the device. Without too much difficulty, measurements with better than 20pSec were achieved. Note the sampling head devices, variable delay lines, a metal panel with numerous potentiometer shafts to set DC bias values, and five 8-Channel Digital Voltmeters (TaborCo products, LMVM1)to measure DC parameters.

This is a custom built box (first build) that went into a customer's product, and the cicuitry inside the box is a passive network. Other portions of the circuitry were interconnected by the 3/8 thick high voltage wires. The components shown were carefully immersed in an epoxy potting compound to prevent high voltage arcing.

This setup shows intense debugging and characterization of a special purpose FPGA. Diagnostic tools were a bit stream receiver (shift register), monitoring data which leaves the FPGA, and displaying this data with 64 lights colored red and white, in the upper left. Control signals and parameter settings were sent into the FPGA using a bit stream generated by another rack mounted control -- note the multi-colored illuminated buttons just under the red and white lights. The FPGA is a special assembly that plugs into a solderless breadboard, just left of the computer. The computer shows a partial RTL schematic of the digital logic in the FPGA. An oscilloscope and time interval meter on the rack are used to make timing measurements.

This is the first practical implementation of the FPGA device illustrated in another picture, "special_fpga1.JPG." Here the FPGA is mounted into a plastic box, using a TaborCo Type 1 prototype card, with Surface Mount to DIP adaptors also made by TaborCo. The FPGA device is made by Custom Circuit Solutions (Rathdrum, Idaho).

On this test setup, a high density PCB is being tested for operation at 85 degrees C using the oven shown to the right. The device inside the oven is connected to custom patch panels sitting on top of the oven, and the power supplies, meters, at the top. At the bottom, near the oven is a custom linear voltage to current converter (scaled for 1 volt control input = 1 amp output). The oscilloscope was used in other timing test setups, not shown here.

This is a demonstration tool for explaining how a binary adder works. I produced a cable access television show, and this was one of the numerous props I used to both teach how binary numbers are added, and how computers add binary numbers. I also have used this for successful demonstrations in three eigth grade classes and one fourth grade class.