I had this from page 5 of the Fairchild thread titled "Rein Narma - The Fairchild 670 King"
I am not sure if there is more.
Here's what I have:
cj - So now you were back over here, are you still tied in with any of these companies?
"As far as General Instruments is concerned, now I headed all the component business, which included CPR (?) relays, targeting systems, primary radar surveillance systems, and targeting systems for missiles, which was maybe the first passively targeted device. The Navy had put Harpoons on the P-3's, and while there were weapons up there, they also have a very powerful radar system. But they are defenseless, you know, and an anti aircraft missile could find them in a nanosecond."
(note: the P-3 Orion, as many of you know, Lockheed built (MD?) Navy sub finder with a big "stinger coming out the tail, where the antenna sits. They used to circle around here constantly, after a low and slow flight over the pacific, usually Hawaii and back, during the cold war years, making noise (turbo-prop), disrupting AM radio broadcasts, and killing golfers next to 101. - cj)
"So it was our job to....we created our own re-con monopoly. We developed a purely active way, by looking at enemy radar signals, to target the Harpoons. By only missiles. By identifying the track points. And by targeting, so that the Harpoons can go flying up, up until they can take over its own final targeting. That was just one of the things, anyway,.....so I did that...quite a few years, and then, I sort of became an overall guy, and the Executive Vice President of the corporation, and the adviser to the chairman."
"They had some rules. Above a certain age, above sixty five, you couldn't serve in certain capacities. For the last couple of years, I was overall V.P. Anyway, so I did this until the company was sold. Or bought, which was in December of 99. And then, all the top shelf was retired."
"So I was retired. End of December of 99. And then, Frank(?) and I, we founded a company called Manhattan Partners. And went out looking for things to buy."
cj - Turned into a venture capitalist?
"Well, we found that Westinghouse was selling one of their electronics entities, called Contec International.
cj - That is where you are working now?
"No, I was, until December of this year."
cj - Was that broadband stuff?
"Yeah, it was a very small company, roughly a ten million dollar company. Westinghouse had lost thirty million dollars. It provided technical services, the main part of it was repair, and the servicing of cable and satellite receivers, and cable system power supplies, and satellite system components. And technical advice.
Well, I took over as the CEO.
In debt, losing money...
cj - Did they do any satellite internet connection broadband?
The principle business was fundamentally repairing cable setup parts
cj - There are some talented people in that field...
"Very good people. It was just mis directed. You don't realize how complex those setup boxes are. Overall, they are more complex than a P.C. You have to have several Simultaneous communication systems at different frequencies, and at different modulator speeds, as well as the picture system, as well as everything. They purposely built those to be difficult to find out how it works."
cj - Sanding off the part numbers of the I.C's? Software?
"Yup, but including some hardware, too. Fundamentally, we acquired two additional companies, related to the large one from Motorola. And we sold the company this January for fifty to seventy times of where.....
cj - Miracle worker! Now did you have to learn a lot of legal stuff to make the transition from engineer, to CEO of all these companies?
"Well, I had a good partner, Frank and I, would report every so often, we would work well together most of the time. And I had good people, including legal talent, so its all a question of having the right people, and getting the capital to get the job done."
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Last edited by CJ on Tue Mar 20, 2007 10:41 am; edited 2 times in total
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CJ
Joined: 03 Jun 2004
Posts: 7503
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Posted: Mon Mar 19, 2007 2:23 am Post subject:
(cont)
"Then,... kind of funny, after I was sort of retired from General Instruments in December, 99, Alan Partrikoff(?), who is a venture capitalist, called me. He might have heard....."Um, now that you have some time on your hands, maybe you want to look at something. We have been considering an instrument in a small company in Westchester County. Some ex IBM Ph D's dreamed up some pretty good ideas, and if you could take a look and see if we ought to make an investment..."
"So I went out, spent a couple of days with the Ph.D's, from IBM at that time, and they had some very good ideas. Fundamentally, they had made some inventions of their own, and they had assured me that these were all done after they had switched jobs from IBM, they had cleared this from IBM...anyway, I made a few phone calls, to the rest of the ...(?)and ended up by recommending to Alan that they go ahead and invest."
"Now, it so happens, that in January of 1999, it takes time for the venture guys to get their money together, after their money, they had to get people to put in. They needed a lot of money, and they couldn't meet their payroll for the people at this little company. Well, I asked them how much they need to pay the payroll. They said $10,000. I gave them $10,000. It was just an outright investment. And they also invited me to join the board. And the company, Business Week, out of thousands of small companies in the country, found us to be number two, of excellent small companies. Called Pes..a..???"
cj - How do you do this!
"Good luck!"
cj - Being at the right place, at the right time?
"I found myself at the right place, at the right time."
cj - Well, you paid your dues early on there, thats for sure...
"I also worked hard, I mean, a combination of luck and hard work."
cj - So how many things do you have going on now?
"I still do a little bit of consulting."
cj - So you are completely out of General Instruments..
"They were bought from that buyout firm, by Motorola. They are part of Motorola now.
.
.
Oh, I forgot something. I also headed the Broadband Division of G.I., that part of the company as well."
cj - "It would be nice to show my friends some footage of the 670 invent.....(cj reaching for camcorder, the interview is essentially over..)
"People are still using it?" (Rein is referring to the 670)
"Is there something else that is replacing it?"
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Last edited by CJ on Tue Mar 20, 2007 10:42 am; edited 1 time in total
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CJ
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Posts: 7503
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Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 2:38 am Post subject:
OK, Tape 2 Side B
Just dingin round, forgot what we have...
Rein:
"People are still using it? (670) Is there something else that is replacing it?"
cj - They have software plug ins, but they don't duplicate the 670.
(cj hands Rein a slide rule)
"I haven't used one of these in ages."
cj - Remember they used to make them out of ivory? You used the slide rule on the 670?
"Yes, I did. I did.
cj - Did you use the tube data sheets on the 670?
"I used tube data sheets. It used to be....RCA published a book of loose leaf service of all of the data sheets. Unfortunately, there were so many moves. I lost a lot of my old stuff. Computers have completely spoiled me.
I have been using a computer instead of this for the past twenty years, or so, its amazing how one gets spoiled.
cj - I see the heaters are biased up on the this B+ supply to avoid cathode stripping...
"Thats the idea..that is right.
cj - You don't recall what kind of capacitors you were using ...
"Most of them, I think, were Spragues. These pots were Allen Bradeley, and those are Davens...."
cj - I notice you have some grounding lugs on these pots...
"As much as noise was always a problem back then....
cj - Were you in contact with Fairchild when they were doing all that new stuff?
"Yes. As a matter of fact, I met the founders. You see, Sherman actually financed the first group of people, who were the founders of Fairchild Semiconductor, out of his own pocket. Long before the various financial guys came in. I met them at Sherman's apartment. He introduced me to the group at the time."
(note from cj - this "group" than Rein so nonchalantly refers to is probably the "Traitorous Eight", dropouts from the Shockley Regime. Two of the eight, Moore and Noyce, went on to found Intel)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traitorous_Eight
cj - There was a big battle going on over who actually came up with the I.C.
Fairchild, or T.I.
"I don't think theres any question that both T.I and Fairchild played a role in bipolar integrated circuit development."
cj - Is it fun being a Genius?
"I'm not....."
cj - Did you have time to enjoy music?
"Yeah, I did."
cj - You went through the Swing era...
"I've always liked various types, but I like solo music, good piano concerts come to mind....
cj - New York is a good place for entertainment...
"Yes it is. I also found that to this date, nobody has done a decent recording of a symphony orchestra. I almost don't like listening to recordings of a live symphony orchestra, because it is so poor compared to the live performance. To this date, our recording path is really miserable. Recordings and reproduction of it. First, when you have so many continuous....(?)...differences......and all the .....so much is lost. It is no longer fresh. I'm so critical, that I don't like to listen to it. There is still to be a truly high quality of a large symphony orchestra. We are still trying so hard...to be developed. If you think about it, in 2005, and we have not accomplished this, even though lots of people claim .....when you go and listen to the professional recording, and go and listen to the symphony orchestra, you don't want to listen to the recording."
cj - Irv Saul..(?)
"Yes, he interviewed me a few years ago.
cj - Did you design the faceplate for the 670?
"Yes. Including the original drawings of the chassis. and used Greenlee punches to punch holes in the chassis!
cj - You need a heavy chassis, this thing weighs 64 pounds!
"Today, it would be done with one quarter the weight. Throw away the power supply, you throw away the power amplifier for the control voltage...
cj - But it wouldn't sound the same. People buy these darn things, you have all that classic iron.....
"matter of fact, you can make a better power supply..."
cj - What happens to the dynamic range during compression. Do you tend to lose a little high end?
"You don't have to. Maybe you reduce the overall dynamic range by approximately ten to twelve db, this was never intended to be much more than that. Then you creating such distortions..."
cj - If your a good engineer, you don't need all that compression anyway...
"If you actually sat on the recording console, it is still very difficult to follow the music, you see a cymbal crash coming but you're never fast enough. '
cj - How many hours does it take to build a 670?
"The ones that I manufacture by hand myself, oh, it takes....probably took me about three or four days....
cj - wow, thats pretty fast!
"...after the initial chassis. I had probably manufactured the chassis before then....I only made it with two Greenlee punches."
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Last edited by CJ on Wed Mar 21, 2007 7:05 am; edited 6 times in total
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CJ
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Location: California
Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 4:46 am Post subject:
(cont)
cj - Now did you start off with a block diagram of what you want, or just start drawing the schematic from the git go?
"Well, I had the block diagram pretty much in my head. The block diagram for this is extremely simple. Audio amp, control voltage generator, and the power supply. Very simple block."
cj - Did you do any radio design? Or did you go straight into audio?
"As a matter of fact, when I worked for the U.S. Military, and at the War Trials, as part of my income, I did build radios. I actually built some radios and I sold them..... from scratch, you know, anyway, to make money, because we were starving."
cj - Now this control amp does not have a regulated voltage on it, is there a reason that you don't need to have......
"You don't have to have it regulated, simply because it's gain is controlled by the feedback. So any changes in voltage will not change it's gain. So it doesn't require regulation."
cj - Now did these sell pretty well after you started putting them on the market?
"I don't think they sold very well."
cj - They probably sold for a lot of money back then, maybe five or six thousand?
"No, no, those sold for around five hundred dollars."
cj - And you know these sell for thirty thousand dollars, remember, I told you that?
"Thats what you told me. Hard to believe."
cj - So Les Paul never worked on this?
"No, he had nothing to do with it. Anyway, he bought one of them."
cj - Did you ever go to Van Gelder's studio and hang out?
"Sure. As a matter of fact, my first involvement, really, with equipment and industry, was....I......people started to use the Telefunken microphone, the Neumann U47 microphone, and I noticed that they were doing........at Gotham....the distortion products were just too high. I was a little bit surprised, because those microphones were never intended to be used the way they are used here in the United States. It was always used as a single, or two microphones, far away from the source, so the sound pressure levels were actually very low. U.S. applications, people used it relatively close to an instrument, or a performer. And in overload conditions. And so, one of my early moneymakers was I re-designed the circuits inside. Originally, it was set up as a pentode amplifier, and I changed it to a triode, cathode follower. Because the gain was not required in the U.S studios. So it was now an essentially a zero gain impedance converter. Now the distortion products, for all practical purposes, disappears. It was now useful."
So for a while, while at Gotham, we modified U-47's for twenty bucks a piece, or something like that. I personally took em apart, and adjusted the gain, and so on, and later, I think, "..?..).., my partners, and others, showed them how to do it. I personally must have modified several dozen of U-47's. So it's possible that they thought it would be ..?.. change those circuits."
cj - So you wired the screen to the plate...
"That is right. And I changed the circuit from being plate loaded, to cathode loaded."
cj - People were putting those right over the piano...
"Oh, and sometimes they would put it right in front of a fairly loud instrument. Or a loud singer. Also, because of some of the distortion products of the transformer, so the pentode, being a high impedance source, really didn't do much to deal with some of the iron distortion products of the transformer. so a cathode follower, having a lower impedance, improved that as well."
(back to some 670 stuff)
cj - Did you ever talk to any of the transformer engineers...
"Never did. These are stock transformers..., so I never talked to anyone about modifying them, I just looked for components that could do the job."
cj - This 670 can probably drive a pretty long transmission line, with this output here....
"If you had to run a line down the hill, you shouldn't have any trouble at all. Its well balanced."
cj - You didn't have a way to measure the rise time of your control voltage...
"Within the limits of the oscilloscope. I could not measure it precisely, but I could get a pretty good idea. I calculated it, then I listened to the effects on a particular recording."
cj - You could calculate the amplification factor of this whole voltage amp...
"Easy enough to know what the source impedance was, at the various frequencies, so thats easy to measure them. The scopes didn't have the bandwidth that they have today, but they still had a couple of megahertz, which was adequate response.
As a matter of fact, I didn't even have that, what I had is....the test equipment I had at the time was tube equipment that I put together myself."
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CJ
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Posted: Tue Mar 20, 2007 7:49 am Post subject:
(cont) last installment-Rein was getting a bit antsy, later, I found out that his silent cell alarm had gone off. His ride was on the way to pick him up, and he needed to take care of things. Never the less, he did not cut me off...
cj - These are nice big VU meters...
"Those are Westons. Very specific dynamics."
cj - Nice grounding, plenty of big buss wires...
"One of technicians that worked with me at the time, Alexandrovich?
(note: George Alexandrovich, His name is seen on the cover page of a 670 manual that is floating around the web. George and Irv might be two great leads for further info, if so inclined...)
"He may have been the guy who did some of the detailed layout, with Irving Saul. Irving Saul was the engineer......"
cj - Did you have any problems with audio hum, having that big power transformer in the proximity....
"No. First of all, everything is balanced. The two guys who have something to do with the detailed layout are Irving Saul and Alexandrovich. I think he was of Russian orientation. Have you heard of Dave McNight?
cj - Was he on the 670?
"No, no, not 670, but he was part of my team at Ampex, but he was quite an activist at AES for awhile."
cj - Here is an Altec compressor, and......
"That was one of the units that didn't do the job......
cj - But this Langevin Leveline......
Thats right, these are the ones that kind of prompted me to design this one because the distortions that they caused."
cj - It looks like you pulled out all the stops when you designed this thing, it was quality from the git go....
"The point was that the recording art needed to be improved. You don't go in with a hammer and chisel, you know, when you need a surgical knife!"
cj - Thank You very much!
cj - You know the Beatles, right?
"Yeah........
cj - They used the Fairchild on a lot of their stuff...
"They did! How about that! Ha ha! Kind of funny, using something that I did."
