Michael T. Nelson: The Embedded Systems Specialist

1983 to Present: Software Engineer

In my work as an electronics engineer I designed and built programmable hardware. I used microprocessors, bit slice processors, and microcoded finite state machines. Usually, there were not enough programmers to go around, so I wrote my own design verification, diagnostic, and device driver software to run on my programmable hardware.

After a few years of working in industry, I realized the limitations of my knowledge and went back to school at Santa Clara University and University of California at Santa Cruz Extension to learn more about software engineering. Since then, applications of microprocessors and demand for code to run on them grew rapidly, and I spent progressively more time creating software and less time designing hardware.

Now, I work almost entirely in the software domain, but I depend heavily on my background in hardware design to program embedded systems.

1978 to 1983: Electronics Engineer

When I re-entered civilian life, "Silicon Valley" was the place to work in electronics, and still is today. My first employer was Intel and one of my first jobs was supporting microprocessor development systems and in-circuit emulators. By that experience I was convinced that my future was in microprocessor based design. When microprocessors were not fast enough for an application, I used programmable logic to build finite state machines and bit-slice processors.

1972 to 1978: Electronics Technician in the U.S. Navy

In the Navy, I diagnosed and repaired radio, navigation, radar, and digital cryptographic equipment on P3 Orion anti-submarine patrol aircraft and the USS Reasoner (FF-1063). When everything was running well, I studied electronic design by correspondence.

1968 to 1972: High School

At McDowell High School in Millcreek, Pennsylvania, I took every Industrial Electricity and Electronics course available, and built my own test equipment and audio gear from kits. One summer at the Erie County Technical School, I learned to write COBOL programs on a mainframe computer. I spent hours laboriously hand coding on paper forms, keying in the code on punch cards, rewiring the plug boards of various card sorters and calculators. However, what really captivated me was the repair work when the field service engineer came to fix our Honeywell 200. He plugged in a portable oscilloscope, opened a briefcase full of tools, and paged through a huge stack of schematics and computer printouts as he probed the guts of the machines.

1953 to 1967: Childhood

As a boy, I was fascinated by electronics. I was more interested in the circuits inside of the television set than the images displayed on the front. My father stimulated my interest by building a shortwave radio receiver to entertain the family on those long winter nights in the mountains of far northeast corner of California. Also, he bought me a book on electricity which had a number of simple projects with battery, wire, and flashlight lamp. I kept myself awake past my bedtime sending Morse code with flashes of light across the room to my brother.

I knew then I wanted to work in electronics. I had plenty of other interests, but I always knew the answer to the question: "What do you want to do for a living when you grow up?"