The Long and Winding Road

From Maxim's RS-232 to WeMos ESP32: So Much to Do, So Little Time

- Jeff Bachiochi

Circa 1988, Steve Ciarcia, long time featured columnist for BYTE magazine, broke away to roll out his own magazine, Circuit Cellar INK(CCI), focusing on embedded computer applications. As Editorial Director, Steve's first editorial, "Inside the Box Still Counts," prompted us to ponder the "premise that we needed to further the education of those individuals intelligent enough to recognize that sometimes it is very important to know EXACTLY what's in the box and how it works."[1] A close circle of friends was invited to assist him in presenting interesting fodder to those individuals who shared like views and were looking for sources of further education.

Editors for that first bimonthly issue included Harv Weiner, Kenneth Davidson, Jeff Bachiochi, Thomas Cantrell and Edward Nisley. Feature articles were authored by Steve, Ed, and Mark Voorhees.

By the end of that first year, I was asked to contribute a new column, "From the Bench," to be run for the first time in issue 5. Its objective was to offer breaking information on new technologies that help make designs cost effective, reliable, and easier to implement.

My first column, "RS-232 Economic Tradeoffs: Board Space vs. Parts Count vs. Parts Co$t," [2] introduced Maxim's MAX232. At the time, we had separate RS232 transmitters and receivers that required additional +12V power supplies. The Maxim device incorporated transmitters, receivers, and power supply doubler/inverter, allowing a single device to handle TTL to RS-232 signallevel conversion with only a 5V supply.

Over the next 4 years, while CCI remained a bimonthly magazine (six issues a year), it wasn't a big challenge to continue my column.

At this time, a programmable microcontroller was only a glimmer in the eyes of many.