[Collins] Fwd: Collins at Newport Beach

[WHITEHEADG at aol.com]

I found a Website on IC history that says "SUHL" stands for Sylvania  
Universal High-level Logic, not
Sylvania Ultra High-speed Logic as I previously suggested.
 
Work at the Newport Beach facility was largely oriented to digital  
technology. By 1970, Collins had a
highly advanced "planar" (read printed circuit board) design and  
manufacturing capability. Designs were
documented in a computer-based "net list" which was processed daily by  
wireline data communication
to Dallas or Cedar Rapids, processed at the IBM 7090 mainframe computer  
center and then redistributed
to all the facilities. Planar fabrication was driven by the net list data  
directly. Newport Beach had a facility
that designed and built thin-film, "hybrid" integrated circuit packages,  
an 1 1/2 in. square or so, on which
SUHL chips and other components were mounted and hermetically sealed inside 
 the surface mountable
packages.
 
In 1968, Collins began to build the state-of-the-art MOS integrated circuit 
 manufacturing
facility (Bldg. 503) along with the computer automated design tools based  
on the standard cell approach.
The focus was on designing and building custom MOS ICs for military and  
other customers. By 1972 or
so, Newport Beach designed and built a tactical data modem for the joint  
services in a 1 ATR package
that was totally digital using custom MOS chips. Bill Melvin was the  
technical guru for this. It had an
A to D Converter on the input and a D to A converter at the output to the  
tactical radios, and all the
internal processing was DSP, including auto-equalization among all the  
other normal modem functions.
 
This engineering technology was merged with some modem-oriented DSP work  
being done at the Rockwell
Autonetics (previously North American-Rockwell, previously North American  
Aviation) plant in Anaheim
and became the basis for Rockwell's dominance in the commercial wireline  
modem chip business.
 
George, W1BOF
 
 
In a message dated 4/28/2010 8:44:39 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
kirklandb at sympatico.ca writes:

Gees.  I was close. I was going with Super Ultra High Speed Logic

> From:  WHITEHEADG at aol.com
> Date: Tue, 27 Apr 2010 23:24:16 -0400
> To:  jefferis at antelecom.net
> CC: collins at mailman.qth.net
> Subject:  Re: [Collins] Interesting snippet on today's Collins
> 
> 
>  SUHL was Sylvania's trade name for their TTL family, which I believe, If 
I  
> remember correctly, stood for
> "Sylvania Ultra Highspeed  Logic". Collins used the surface mount flat 
pack 
> form factor. All  Collins digital
> gear including the computer family were built with it.  I'll bet you can 
> find reference to it via a Google search
> but  I haven't done that yet.
> 
> George, W1BOF
> 
>  
> In a message dated 4/27/2010 11:18:41 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,  
> jefferis at antelecom.net writes:
> 
> George, et  al:
> 
> OK, I give up. What was SUHL? I worked with many logic  families through 
> those years, including HTL (Motorola), but I will  admit to ignorance 
here. I 
> never ran across SUHL.
> 
>  Signed, curious.
> Bob, KF6BC
> 
> On Apr 27, 2010, at 4:55  PM, WHITEHEADG at aol.com wrote:
> 
> > 
> > Interesting!  Working for Collins at Newport Beach, CA from 1967 to 
1977, 
> I  
> > recall that in about 1970, Collins
> > was the largest  single customer for Sylvania SUHL, TTL integrated 
> circuits 
>  > - a bit of historical trivia.
> > 
> > George,  W1BOF
> > 
> >