22 Years in Silicon Valley of

 

FEATURED STORY THIS MONTH
Ron Smith (company founder) has a unique landing in his T210. The above is a roll over image and will show the actual no nose gear landing when your mouse is placed over the above image.

The plan is to talk about the stories, events and proven management techniques described at the right. New stories will appear every other month or so. The PAST PROJECTS button will answer some of the questions.

OBJECTIVE

To make contact with potential customers that have a challenging project where a successful outcome would be cost effective for the customer and RAS.

and
PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT
for
EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES

Welcome to the RAS Web Site HOME PAGE

The purpose of this Web site is to inform those interested in RAS project management and engineering capabilities and try to make this a little more interesting than the average Web site. We will tell you our most precious secrets of engineering success that have worked the day we started and continue to work just as effectively today. We will cover subjects like technology risk assessment, technology implementation strategy, project management, task definition, task assignment, task tracking, design reviews, techniques in hiring (they work better today than 20 years ago), management of CAD and many, many more that I cannot think of right now. The evolution of CAD and the internet make NO difference and we will tell you why. The size of a project makes almost no difference (up to a point) however there are limitiations, but not as many as you might think.

The plan is to relate some interesting stories (all true as RAS was directly involved) about companines, products and events in Silicon Valley from the 1970's to present day. We're talking before Apple, before the PC, etc., etc. We are also talking a little Silicon Valley history.

So what company built the first programmable video game with cartridges and hand controllers (joy sticks)? (HINT: it was not Atari) Who actually designed the Apple IIC? What project caused the price of a hard disk drive suspension to go from $2.10 to $0.70 world wide and Seagate was using 100,000 PER DAY at the time? Who really started Pizza Time Theatre? Who said, "It may not work, but we're sure as hell going to find out?"and in the process destroyed (in my opinion since I was actually there) one of the early consumer product rocket ships in the Valley.