google buys Motorola

Moto spun off their semi and CPU business to sell cell phones, and got crushed.

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HP spun off their instrument, medical, and semi units to build computers. That will be interesting to watch.

Reply to
John Larkin
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Motorola produced some real trash products...

Reply to
bloggs.fredbloggs.fred

Their ICs and CPUs were excellent. They still are, but Freescale and Onsemi own them now.

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John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc
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Reply to
John Larkin

Those horribly unreliable TVs with "the works in a drawer" were pretty amusing. Talk about turning a bug into a feature.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Reply to
Phil Hobbs

On paper that is... The big question was always: are these products going to be made? And if so, for how long? I never designed in something from Motorola.

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Reply to
Nico Coesel

.highlandtechnology.com=A0 jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Freescale is a horribly mismanaged company. I'm surprised they've lasted this long.

Reply to
mpm

Incwww.highlandtechnology.com  jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

It's looking like they may survive. When we went looking for a new generation of CPUs, we considered Coldfire, but didn't go that way because of Freescale's financial situation. We wound up with NXP ARM, which has problems of its own.

Moto/Freescale always provided excellent CPU support. I can't say as much for NXP.

Onsemi looks good. Their ECL continues to be great.

Reply to
John Larkin

Motorola's MOBILITY division. Hardly a crush to the entire firm. And they didn't "spin off" things either. They BOUGHT General Instrument's uplink encoder division, so you can't even watch TV without Motorola any more. That was half a decade ago.

That is not what HP did. HP DIVIDED up their divisions. "Spun off" would hardly be an appropriate term.

Reply to
Chieftain of the Carpet Crawlers

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It says there...

"Agilent Technologies, a spin-off of Hewlett-Packard Company, broke records on Nov. 18, 1999 as the largest initial public offering (IPO) in Silicon Valley history."

THEY think they are a spin-off.

So does Avago.

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John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc
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Reply to
John Larkin

I was there. It was/is a spin-off.

Reply to
Bill Martin

Ahh, that was at least 40 years ago, and used vacuum tubes! I'm not sure how relevant that is today.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

There words are "part of a corporate realignment".

Reply to
Chieftain of the Carpet Crawlers

"corporate realignment" Their words, then and now.

Reply to
Chieftain of the Carpet Crawlers

You snipped their direct statement that it was a spinoff. HP and Agilent are now completely separate corporations.

You must enjoy being Always Wrong.

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John Larkin                  Highland Technology Inc
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Reply to
John Larkin

Not many, if any, I think. I think the HV rectifier and horizontal output stages were still served by tubes fairly late, but those sets were mostly "transistorized", I think. Cross-posted to sci.electronics.repair- I'm sure someone remembers the whole range, if MT here doesn't.

Goes to show how bad reputation can follow you around, even after the responsible designers and managers are long dead or retired. There's some justification for it too, as corporate culture has momentum.

Quasar was sold to Matsushita (which most people in the world know from their brands such as Panasonic and National) in 1974!

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Quasar was in the US in '74. Panasonic was virtually non-existent in the US at that time.

They entered the US market with cheap, plastic knock-offs of the bigger "stereo receiver" makers of the era, like Pioneer and Sony. They became really big from that underselling of their offerings. A 20W/Ch Panasonic, EL Cheapo stereo was cheaper than the 20W/Ch Pioneer, and since it was also the beginning of the "dopey clueless f*ck" era, folks bought the shit.

That is also how a company like "Coby" has risen.

I cannot complain, however, because that is also how a great firm like EVGA came to be, and their stuff was not that great to start with, when Asus was king of the Nvidia based graphics card realm.

Now, EVGA makes the hottest vid cards and motherboards and other things too.

They are a screamin' PC component maker. One of the best.

Panasonic makes good stuff now too. I am sure they were a big company in Japan and some other locales back then too. Didn't make it 'big' (as it were) in the US until the '80s tho.

Reply to
Chieftain of the Carpet Crawlers

The "Quasar" models were transistor sets (circa 1964, I believe). I remember a trade journal remarking that Motorola had gotten all-transistor color TV to market two years before it was anticipated.

The "works in a drawer" were intended to simplify service. The technician simply swapped boards (assuming the problem wasn't something not on the boards). Motorola's goal was to keep track of what failed, and gradually improve the boards' reliability.

Of course, a system of individual boards is inherently more-expensive than "works on A board", not to mention the need to standardize signal levels and power voltages. It was economically doomed from the start. But it was a good idea.

The proof of this is that we now repair equipment the same way -- we simply replace "everything", either by tossing out the single over-populated circuit board, or the product altogether.

Reply to
William Sommerwerck

Most industrial products (and automotive, and computer, and appliance) are still repaired like the Quasar sets- replacement at the module level, followed by rebuilding (maybe) or discarding (often) the bad module.

We don't generally replace the whole product except on low end and on TVs- we swap out a power supply, an LCD screen or keyboard, a dying lithium battery or a refrigerator thermostat.

With transistorized (and especially IC) TVs, they became so reliable that adding money to simplify repairs became a liability. Most of us have dumped perfectly working 20+ year old Sony etc. TVs who's only offense was to be become out of fashion and unattractive compared to their newer bretherin.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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"it's the network..."                          "The Journey is the reward"
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Reply to
Spehro Pefhany

Phil lives in the past ;-) ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
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Reply to
Jim Thompson

I still have the one my parents bought, when it first came out. In all that time I have replaced the CRT, a resistor and a couple electrolytics. Lightning took ot the RF preamp in the twuner, while it was under warranty. It was used daily for over 20 years with those few problems. It needed the tuner cleaned when I fired it up, a couple years ago. It was over 40 years old, at the time.

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Reply to
Michael A. Terrell

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