And now you can buy one of those cheap Rigol scopes for a few hundred and it has features that a rack of equipment didn't have back in 1990.
Unthinkable functionality 40 years ago.
I built a test system for Fairchild, at the time (pre-1984) MFG Test still had to set up manual bench equipment to replicate sequential device test conditions that could not be performed by existing ATE. I used an HP controller, IEEE488 bussed programmable oscilloscope, a few programmable power supplies, programmable waveform generator, homemade counter. Wrote the tester OS in HP Basic, ran that through an Infoteck Compiler (converting interpretive HP Basic to much faster executing machine code) and did it all on a 1M extended memory board. We ended up making 6 of these systems that performed sequential tests like tset, thold, fmax, minPW, edge rates, differential outputs, etc. on all of our 24 pin or less sequential digital mil/aero devices . 3 of these rack-and-stack systems were shipped to our satellite mfg site in Singapore. I had average full test time down to just under 1sec for most all devices that used to take hours between bench setups and LTPD sample testing. It eliminated so much potential human error, increased throughput so we could test complete lots instead of samples. That was one of the most enjoyable and satisfying projects of my career. I did a lot of automation work in the 1980s. There seemed to be low hanging fruit wherever I looked. I really enjoyed those years.
I'm actually kind of sorry I missed those years. The 1990s saw an amazing leap in technologies as computer-aided equipment came into it's own. Got a little taste of it at some companies I worked for, but by 2000 it was all gone.
My hat's off to ya, that was some cool shit back in the day.
In 1997 I shifted gears, National Semiconductor had purchased Cyrix, so I started working on microprocessors, MediaGX system on a chip, some M2 (back in the days of bleeding edge processors hitting 200mHz - 400mHz). Talk about an all consuming workload. The MediaGX family was all mine, compiled test solution + patterns were over 2G in size. Huge die. The 12hr days got old after a few years, AMD and Intel eventually left us in the dust. NatSemi eventually sold the cyrix IP to some Chinese company ... then I was thrust into supporting SST Flash Memory. That was very interesting for a short while, I'd never supported Flash devices before. Learned a lot. But overall, automation was the best part of my career, you could make real, visible and permanent improvements to quality and throughput ... I saved the company many many millions. Far more satisfying than laboring over device test characterization and mfg test solutions in an endless line of new, increasingly complex products, always ultra urgent and usually well behind schedule on the project plan by the time I had what I needed. That became a thankless sweatshop job in the end, not for me anymore, so I quit.
(post is archived)