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High School Dropout, Self-Taught Chip Designer
circletimessquare writes "The QVC television shopping network has recently found a hit in its product the C64, which emulates the classic Commodore 64 in a small form factor, a joystick. But the story of the designer of the product is more interesting than the product. Meet Jeri Ellsworth [NYTimes. You know what that means], whose life story emulates the golden age of garage-based computer design. She is proof that the passion of the homebrew electronic hobbyist is still a viable force in an age when well-funded and well-staffed corporate design teams dominate chip design."
The soul-saver strikes again (Karma Free, for your pleasure):
Reg Free Link
is she HOT?
Enjoy:
YAMHILL, Ore. - There is a story behind every electronic gadget sold on the QVC shopping channel. This one leads to a ramshackle farmhouse in rural Oregon, which is the home and circuit design lab of Jeri Ellsworth, a 30-year-old high school dropout and self-taught computer chip designer.
Ms. Ellsworth has squeezed the entire circuitry of a two-decade-old Commodore 64 home computer onto a single chip, which she has tucked neatly into a joystick that connects by a cable to a TV set. Called the Commodore 64 - the same as the computer system - her device can run 30 video games, mostly sports, racing and puzzles games from the early 1980's, all without the hassle of changing game cartridges.
She has also included five hidden games and other features - not found on the original Commodore computer - that only a fellow hobbyist would be likely to appreciate. For instance, someone who wanted to turn the device into an improved version of the original machine could modify it to add a keyboard, monitor and disk drive.
Sold by Mammoth Toys, based in New York, for $30, the Commodore 64 joystick has been a hot item on QVC this Christmas season, selling 70,000 units in one day when it was introduced on the shopping channel last month; since then it has been sold through QVC's Web site. Frank Landi, president of Mammoth, said he expected the joystick would be distributed next year by bigger toy and electronics retailers like Radio Shack, Best Buy, Sears and Toys "R" Us. "To me, any toy that sells 70,000 in a day on QVC is a good indication of the kind of reception we can expect," he said.
Ms. Ellworth's first venture into toy making has not yet brought her great wealth - she said she is paid on a consulting basis at a rate that is competitive for her industry - "but I'm having fun," she said, and she continues with other projects in circuit design as a consultant.
Her efforts in reverse-engineering old computers and giving them new life inside modern custom chips has already earned her a cult following among small groups of "retro" personal computer enthusiasts, as well as broad respect among the insular world of the original computer hackers who created the first personal computers three decades ago. (The term "hacker" first referred to people who liked to design and create machines, and only later began to be applied to people who broke into them.)
More significant, perhaps, is that in an era of immensely complicated computer systems, huge factories and design teams that stretch across continents, Ms. Ellsworth is demonstrating that the spirit that once led from Silicon Valley garages to companies like Hewlett-Packard and Apple Computer can still thrive.
"She's a pure example of following your interests and someone who won't accept that you can't do it," said Lee Felsenstein, the designer of the first portable PC and an original member of the Homebrew Computer Club. "She is someone who can do it and do it brilliantly."
Ms. Ellsworth said that chip design was an opportunity to search for elegance in simplicity. She takes her greatest pleasure in examining a complex computer circuit and reducing it in cost and size by cleverly reusing basic electronic building blocks.
It is a skill that is as much art as science, but one that Ms. Ellsworth has perfected, painstakingly refining her talent by plunging deeply into the minutiae of computer circuit design.
Recently she interrupted a conversation with a visitor in her home to hunt in between the scattered circuit boards and components in her living room for a 1971 volume, "MOS Integrated Circuits," which she frequently consults. The book concerns an earlier chip technology based on fewer transistors than are used today. "I look for older texts," she said. "A real good designer needs to know how the old stuff works."
Several years ago Ms. Ellsworth cornered Stephen Wozniak, co-founder of Apple Computer, at a festival for vintage Apple computers and badgered him for the secrets of his Apple I
Maybe in 20 years she can design a P75. That will show those corparte giants who is boss.
You forgot well-lawyered, for when an uppity innovator dares challenge the corporate status quo. Sadly, all it would take is one lawsuit (ore even the threat thereof) to shut her down.
There's a Mercedes gap too. I want one and can't afford one, but it's not government's job to do anything about it.
Heres the article w/o registration. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/20/technology/20joy stick.html?ex=1261198800&en=0e285af90f620c58&ei=50 90&partner=rssuserland
It seems as though nostalgia always sells. I went to a local mall recently and there was a stand that was selling something similar to these-it was an N64 shaped controller with a decent collection of SNES games right in the controller. I know if I had money I'd buy it for a young relative to experience the joys of my own childhood. Wouldn't you?
keep your pants on boys ... she's kind of cute
vodka, straight up, thank you!
damnit - i really did mean to post as AC ...
She is NOT a self-taught CHIP DESIGNER. She is a self-taught FPGA programmer. There is a world of difference, the former is impossible, the latter is trivial.
The good thing from this story is that I hope employers will open their ears and eyes to the fact that university is USELESS to form engineers when the drive is not there, and that university is just a replacement for forced military service.
Start rolling out the "She is hot" and "I'd like her to play with my joystick" comments.
One more thing, can Slashdot's editors please stop whining about NYT's registration? To read their news for free just for filling in some info seems like a generous trade.
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
and see what all of the fuss was about.
I hate stupid rules... Rules that make sense I don't mind... But the stupid ones just really bug me!
When will someone create a 'joystick' with 30 different kinds of porn, instead of having to use that old 'internet' thing.
She?? did this? That is great! I believe this is the first woman I've heard of who has dropped out of school and started a garage-computer company. I'm not being sexist, but it really is the first time I've heard of it.
http://github.com/gbook/nidb
I was just telling my wife about this last night.
Even when you think that any industry is too hard to break into because there are big companies dominating it, one can still create something that is better or worthwhile to people. Even for the sake that some people want to shop somewhere else, or buy a different brand.
I mean, think about it, for 50 years cars were being made and the corporations that made them became big 800lb gorillas. But then look, here comes Toyota, Honda, Nissan, Geo, Saturn, Lexus, Kia and now Scion.
So there is room, just take a look at the history of open source software.
Is starting to have an effect! From the article:
Her efforts in reverse-engineering old computers and giving them new life inside modern custom chips has already earned her a cult following among small groups of "retro" personal computer enthusiasts, as well as broad respect among the insular world of the original computer hackers who created the first personal computers three decades ago. (The term "hacker" first referred to people who liked to design and create machines, and only later began to be applied to people who broke into them.)
This column actually notes the distinction between hackers and crackers, well, sort-of... Anyway it sure is refreshing!
Now if only we could come up with different words for good lawyers and bad lawyers. How about Clawyers?
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Let us hope there are many more people just like her here in America. If there are, the future will be very interesting. If there aren't, we'll find ourselves a nation of passive consumers without any initiative.
Yes, I know it's a tiny bit off topic, but I wanted to reinforce something that seemed to be overlooked. In a previous Slashdot article, everyone was wondering how to get kids into tech, and how important it is to push extra (and internal) curricular activities at school. I said that that wasn't necessary, and this story goes to prove it. I gotta say, this is a really interesting read... what I wonder is how much more she could have done if she had gone to college and been an electrical engineering major...
- dshaw
The C64 was based on the 6502 processor. So was the Apple ][. Maybe someone will come out with an Apple ][ in a joystick. If Apple was really smart, they would put an Apple ][ inside an IPod.
:P
The problem with the IPod, you can't claim that your joystick is bigger than anyone else's joystick.
Oh, wrong site.. Sorry.
Bel, the mostly sane.. "Of course I can't see anything! I'm standing on the shoulders of idiots." -- Me
She looks like a conniving elf in the picture. So in Slashdot terms, yes she's hot.
School is only a method of pointing you in the right direction to become educated and if you learned enough they give you a piece of paper that says you have learned stuff. If it weren't for regulations in such areas almost every job could possibly be done by a person who never graduated from high school or college. A person who is motivated enough will learn without the need of school. They can go the the library them self and learn information. They can read stories about how other people did things, they can educate themselves without the need for school.
I would like to think school is more a Map to show you were you can go for success. But just like driving on the road you don't always need a Map common since and some exploring will help you get to your location as well, sometimes (usually) a little longer then normal but sometimes a lot quicker. As well with schooling like driving with a Map if you don't know where you are or where you are going the Map is useless.
That said dropping out of school is still often a bad idea, because while you may get there by chance if you had a better education it will give you at least basic directions to start out on, training people with good research skills and the ability to learn for themselves.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
"She is NOT a self-taught CHIP DESIGNER. She is a self-taught FPGA programmer. There is a world of difference, the former is impossible, the latter is trivial."
Impossible? What about the guys who invented the first chips? Did they go to some class that taught how to build chips which will be invented in the future?
You can buy the same books that they have at schools. You can learn the same things on your own that you'd learn in schools. Some people (such as myself) are tinkerers, and we learn better by experimenting on our own than we do sitting in a classroom.
I find it funny that I've also heard people saying you need to go to school to be a programmer or work in the computer industry. Most of us geeks know that's also false.
What I found interesting about it was that the article hints that you could hook up a keyboard to the device and a drive and have a computer. They keep getting better and better games in these things. Pretty soon PS one in a gamepad.
.. cough..cough)
Slashdot covered the release of the device here.
slashdot coverage of the device commodore game device
I discovered..
(when I submitted the story 12 hours ago
I'm tiured of people saying to need to pass high school. I didn't and I am making 60k a year. Ok, mainly because I'm a fricken genius with this shit, but still.
[NYTimes. You know what that means]
That they're just making shit up?
"Just think what Ms. Ellsworth could have achieved with a proper education. "
How do you know she doesn't have a proper education? Who says that learning on your own isn't proper?
Maybe Bill Gates should have stayed in school and got a degree. He could have been rich, I tell you!
She's turning up a ton of hits on Google
s worth.txt
Here she is at the XGamestation booth: http://www.xgamestation.com/view_media.php?id=109
Here's another article on her:
http://home.att.net/~rmestel/articles/on_road_ell
Just think what Ms. Ellsworth could have achieved with a proper education.
Maybe not as much... she might have ended up as the employee of some big computer company designing games or the like.
Maybe it was the *lack* of education that put her in the difficult situations that made her give the best from herself. It was her efforts to go against the tides that made her outstand from the average geeks like us. Maybe that was the pressure needed to turn her into a full-fledged diamond.
I wish i had her courage to go against the tides and established principles. *Sighs*
Intel hired knitters for wiring the first set of chips back in the day.
Cobol was designed by a Grace Murray Hopper.
Frances Elizabeth Snyder Holberton was involved in Fortran's development.
Ada Lovelace wrote first program to calculate Bernouli numbers.
If you're going to troll, learn how to troll right.
III.IIVIVIXIIVIVIIIVVIIIIXVIIIXIIIIIIIIVIIIIVVIII
It really makes you question your role in society...especially when it seems that women are portrayed like idiots or dumb blondes in the media. Or that all I should care about is makeup, clothes, and hair (trust me I'm not that obsessed - just ask my husband). Sometimes even today I ask myself "what they hell am I doing?" "Why didn't I do elementary ed like every girl I know?" It is still something I struggle with even today.
I always wished I could have had another woman to look up and admire for their technical achievements. I almost never thought it would happen in my lifetime. Congratulations to her on her long list of achievements, and hopefully she can encourage another generation of woman to get into tech....especially engineering!!
from the lack of the ring... i believe she is...
but you missed the more important question first:
is she straight?
(of course, i assumed the question to the question that comes before that: are you a male?
I really think that it's worth mentioning Jeri's other much more interesting and complicated project, the C-One. If you think the C64 joystick/computer is amazing, take a look at the C-One and you should be substantially more impressed:
http://c64upgra.de/c-one/
Just think what Ms. Ellsworth could have achieved with a proper education.
MUCH LESS
For the really creative problem solver types like her, school is a dangerous reconditioning of one's mind and social outlook. If you're not suited for it, excessive schooling/socialization can kill both your entrepreneurial spirit and your creative talent.
It is NOT ironic in the slightest that so many great innovators were drop-outs.
Sadly, all it would take is one lawsuit (ore even the threat thereof) to shut her down.
-- Just like it happened to this poor sap [tinyurl.com].
Beware the sig in the parent post. The link is not work-safe, and the context makes it look like it's relevant to the discussion:
Just think what Ms. Ellsworth could have achieved with a proper education.
A four to six year delay (depending on if she wanted to pursue a MA/MS) in doing what she really wanted to do, only to work as a code monkey in a cubicle? $100k in debt? If she went to school this likely wouldn't have happened for her.
She's done something pretty practical, that exemplifies she has some skills most people don't. That's worth way more than some printed scraps of paper with her name on it. This is coming from an overeducated bastard, by the way.
The important question, is she single?
Important how? Do you suppose she's attracted to horny, undersexed, drooling morons who post on slashdot?
With all the girl-geek comments going around, has anyone checked to see if Stroker is on the C64 joystick?
Not only that, but even with an engineering degree from a recognized school, you won't create anything worth having while you're slaving away at your mind-numbing cubicle drone job. You'll just attend meetings, work on some tiny part of a huge project that ultimately gets cancelled before it's ever released, and then finally get canned.
Sorry, but a silly joystick running 20-year-old video games is a far greater achievement than most individual engineers will ever achieve working for large companies.
One only need to have been part of one of these mythical "well-funded and well-staffed" corporate teams (or to know someone who has been part of one) to know that the garage-based tech hobbyist is nowhere near extinction. High-power staffing and funds are nothing--NOTHING--next to the power of a real vision. A single person with a great idea and a little know-how can lay waste to any corporate team. Don't get so caught up with the corporate facade that you start to doubt it. Watch how many little companies with great ideas that corporations buy up. They do it so regularly that it hardly makes the news anymore. The real ideas aren't coming out of boardroom discussions.
And remember that IBM was once the indomitable corporate force and Apple and Microsoft were the little start-ups. That's why people who talk about how Linux won't change anything make me laugh. I don't even use Linux, not even a big fan of it, and I know it has yet to make its biggest impact. That's how this stuff works. Give it time. History repeats itself.
--Rick "If it isn't broken, take it apart and find out why."
I love this story, but I have to wonder something here... Didn't the C64 come with schematics? I don't remember for sure, but I know that computers of that era commonly came with them or had them available. If that is the case, did she really reverse engineer it or was it most of a... "hmm.. I have schematics, I can understand them, how about I just translate them to an FPGA and see if I can make it go?"
Even if that was the case, she still deserves props for thinking of doing it in the first place and then making it happen. I don't mean to make light of her accomplishments or anything.
Consults Google... Yep, there were schematics available. here is one place to see them.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
Looks or no looks, she just made sexiest geek alive for 2004 in my book.
Stephanie Kwolek is probably one of the better known female engineers, though she's materials not electrical. She is one of the two people directly responsible for the creation of Kevlar. Got on the order of 28 patents before retiring,a nd these are all real patents for innovative products, not software BS.
While women are still fighting the stereotypes of the past, there are examples of women excelling in almost every field, even traditonal male only roles such as CEO (eg Carol Bartz, CEO and president of Autodesk).
I've already posted this, but since you seem to not know much about the C-One, feel free to see the homepage for the C-One which has, among other things, schematics, pictures, and ordering information for the beta boards currently available to any interested parties (for about US$400). The C-One is an entire ATX form-factor motherboard.
http://www.c64upgra.de/c-one
no her boy friend is also a geek.Joe Torre if you know of him.An Amiga person.I first met Jeri 6 years ago at AmiWest-and no that girl in some of the old pics links to her is a "friend"
Amigian and proud of it!
It appears that it's properly licensed.
Commodore isn't exactly the big juggernaut it was 20 years ago...I'd venture to say that the owner of the brand is not exactly "well lawyered". Rather than aim to shut her down, I think they gladly paid her for the idea in hopes of finally making money off the brand for the first time in ages.
Of all the big names of the past I'd say Commodore is the safest bet on the emulation scene. The other big players 20 years ago? Apple, Atari, IBM, perhaps you could include Tandy and TI in there as well. There are still big companies behind all those brands, and in some cases they have demonstrated a willingness to defend their rights to those brands even if they no longer support those old products.
Jeri's a sharp cookie, she has gotten in on the leading edge of a craze. Those retro joysticks (a lot of them pirate NES knockoffs) are all over the malls this Christmas...it's quite possible they will be a real craze next year. Whether they'll remain popular in the long haul I'm not sure. In any case, the original NY Times article is right, Jeri has all the hallmarks of becoming another Woz or Burell or Dr. Roberts. I'd ventrue to say there'll be more neat stuff to come from here in the future.
was a woman
ada lovelace
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I wish it were different.
Clever kids get bored out of their minds doing "busy-work", but that's what you're graded on.
Welcome to socialized education.
I have had a couple of conversations on geek subjects with Jeri. She is a brilliant person. Her education in the subject matter has little to do with it. She naturally has the curious mindset and the self-developed tools to achieve. What formally recognized union card (or as they say in the military: ticket punched) you get may mean something to the middle managers, but it means diddly in the reality of life. The truly brilliant shine no matter what their background, what their training. I personally majored in history yet work in IT and as a hobby I am one of those retro computer nerds the article speaks of. Jeri has done wonders with limited resources in areas the majors developers would not find worth looking into or commercially viable. We of the Retro world salute Jeri Ellsworth for her accomplishments! :)
oh and PS: speaking to a post above: in person, Yes, she IS Hot!
- Minutus cantorum, minutus balorum, minutus carborata descendum pantorum.
I'm halfway through the responses and haven't yet encountered a single comment about the greatness of this project!
/. disappoints once again.
I think that this inllustrates the fact that schools are not for everyone, and also speaks volumes about the support her father gave her in raising and educating her and giving her the confidence to achieve her goals.
See my art -> http://herbevore.deviantart.com
Here is a moderately comprehensive index of women scientists throughout history. Some names are linked to biographies.
The woman who commands most of my respect, geek-wise, was Mary Annings. She discovered her first new species of dinosaur at age 12, and a second at age 20. She made a living collecting
(and extracting as necessary) fossils, which she sorted and indexed. It is said that she inspired the tounge-twister "she sells sea-shells by the sea shore". Anyone who can run their own business at age 12, AND make enough to feed herself and her siblings, AND have enough time to recognise a new discovery, is deserving of enormous respect.
There are two women in history I respect as leaders. Margret Thatcher, although I despised her policies, has few equals when it comes to getting things done.
However, Britain has had one female ruler who was stonger still. Bodicca (also known as Queen Bodaccea) was betrayed, abused, molested and torured and her father (the King at the time) was savagely murdered in front of her. The tribe she belonged to (the Icini) were scattered and - if caught - butchered. She managed to gather the survivors up, get herself accepted as ruler, turn them into a near-invincible fighting force, and kicked the Imperial Roman army very nearly out of Britain entirely. Most British currancy today bears the figure of a woman in iron-age battle-dress. This figure is derived from the historical Bodicca. Even the legend of "Robin Hood" hasn't had that kind of a grasp on society.
To me, it seems obvious that women have been significant in many disciplines, throughout history. It begs the question of how much further along society could have been if more had been encouraged. Given the sheer number of names on the list, it also begs the question of why feminists are NOT pointing to such an established, proven history to push for greater equality. The future isn't known, but the past is.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Hacking your C64 'retroconsole' joystick
How can she design chips without a frabrication plant?
Sure you can fiddle around with autocad and many other cad electronic design tools but that does not make someone an electrical engineer or chip designer.
It makes me wonder how she got started and how she got hired and who invested in her idea's and got her work to the fabrication plants that built her products.
http://saveie6.com/
Obviously, I don't know squat about the desgin of THIS unit, but I *am* familiar with the C64's design!
:)
Why in God's name would you emulate the tape drive as a means to load software?
It would be one hell of a lot easier to just have the program loader (you know, the piece that lets you pick what game in the joystick you want to play) swap in the right bank of ROM (for a cartridge game), or RAM image, point the virtual 6502's program pointer at the right place (or just twiddle the magic address up there in page $FF and "hit" the "reset" line) and boom! Software running, no extra crap in the way. And you can use the tape buffer.
The "live image" for disk-based, copy-protected games could be scooped easily from a running C64, using.. oh what the hell was it called.. there was some cartridge, possibly by Epyx, where you hit the reset button and BOOM! It dumped RAM to disk, including the position of the program counter, so you could restore saved games in games which didn't save.
Damn, why can't I remember the name of that cart?
Anyhow. You'd think it would be more worthwhile making save-to-disk games work (whoever heard of save to tape??!) by backing up data to RAM... you could probably get away with just writing some custom code and point the kernel jump table at it.. I'd be willing to bet that most games (even heavily copy-protected ones) didn't bother doing anything fancy when *writing* to disk. The "proper" kernel API for disk I/O would be trivial to emulate.
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
My question is which one of us is gonna be nerdy enough to collect all the pics of her and make a fan site?