
Jeri Ellsworth, self-taught engineer, talks about her career (2011) [video] - jacquesm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLy0mVkoLio
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gluelogic
Jeri Ellsworth is a wizard! A huge inspiration to me.

I always loved this floppy drive reverb she made:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr7B-7BFP4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xpr7B-7BFP4)

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andrewstuart
I wish Jeri would build the J64 - the definitive rebuild of the C64.

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tdicola
The C64 DTV is pretty close. You can hack them to add a keyboard and disk port
without too much trouble.

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andrewstuart
Altavista was pretty close to Google.

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radoslawc
I didn't know her story. Amazing person.

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fit2rule
She really is an amazing person - I met her once, and became instantly a fan
when she pulled out a "transistor I made".

I mean, really .. make your own transistor? From scratch?

Simply one of the most inspiring people I've ever met.

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kropotkinlives
Indeed. I tried to make a transistor with the reverse side of a pile of 74LS
IC dies I extracted with solvents, household chemicals and a blow torch. I
managed to make an acceptable diode that lasted about 2 minutes at a mere
200uA of current. I gave up then and decided that the transistor was the base
abstraction layer I could be bothered with.

For ref diode recipe:

1\. 74LS die. Turn it over.

2\. Small pile of borax on one half. Small pile of sulphur on other side.

3\. Apply torch until everything is baked nicely.

4\. Scrape off surface with a razor.

5\. Poke two pins connected to your circuit until you find a bit that works
like a diode (can take a few minutes). I used a simple home made curve tracer
out of a twin-t oscillator, buffer and an oscilloscope. Don't hit it with much
current or it'll kill it instantly.

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jacquesm
You can do this with a lead crystal as well (that's how in the old days the
diodes for crystal receivers were made).

Even a dirty razor blade and a pencil will work as a diode!

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kropotkinlives
Yeah that was where I started with the idea and then decided to see if I could
dope some silicon to make a diode then move up to transistor level, then a
simple IC.

You could knock up a point contact diode or even transistor without too much
pain but that's not as much fun :)

There's info on how to make point contact devices in here:
[http://www.qrparci.org/wa0itp/csts_book.pdf](http://www.qrparci.org/wa0itp/csts_book.pdf)

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makeset
C64 Bass Guitar:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kDhpFaf4EY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_kDhpFaf4EY)

I first thought this was just someone slapping on an empty C64 case for a
guitar body. It's... a bit more than that.

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moron4hire
She's been a major inspiration for my own work for years.

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jacquesm
I like your 'burning zombie'!

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moron4hire
Heh, thanks. That was sort of the start, my first major project outside of
programming, outside of anything I had actually been trained in.

I'd always had hobbies of a wide variety, and people always like to parrot
that tired "jack of all trades, master of none" line. Seeing Ellsworth's work,
it made it feel normal to not only be interested in and doing a bunch of
different things, but to try to be good at it all, too.

She's always seemed extremely brilliant, yet ultimately accessible. She's
always not only created awesome things, but tried to explain them as well. To
try to bring other people along into the fold. We could all use more of that.

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jacquesm
Fun story: Back in the early days of hobby computing a friend-of-a-friend, a
guy called Jim ran a robotics gig in Amsterdam. He asked me to control a head
on a stalk with the face of a politician on it lip-synched to some audio. Jaw
movement, eyes rolling side to side, some facial animation. Very funny job.
Anyway, one night I was working on the 'head' with the latex part off, you
have to imagine a very scary looking appliance with teeth and two eyes painted
(very realistically) on ping-pong balls behind a skull like frame of
fibreglass.

I was writing some code deeply concentrated when my refrigerator decided to
generate some really ugly spark causing the servos on the head to become
activated, the jaw opened really wide and the eyes rotated to face me, which
totally scared the shit out of me.

So much for me being level headed and cool under pressure ;)

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moron4hire
Hah! Yeah, that would freak me out, too.

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unclesaamm
The caption of her as "Force of Nature" made me laugh. Very inspiring.

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616c
jacquesm, thank you for doing my homework for me. You went far beyond what I
teased about.

For background:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9576219](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9576219)

Thanks again.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
See also: [http://www.windytan.com/](http://www.windytan.com/) and
[https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea](https://twitter.com/0xabad1dea)

~~~
616c
windytan is sick. I have read the stuff every time it is posted here, and I am
saddened with all my interest in SIGINT as a kid I never took it seriously,
because her non-mil, non-intel signals analysis makes it seem so much cooler
than what I read about as a kid! And it is so approachable.

