An Independent Journal Dedicated to the Advancement of Chip - Scale Electronics March - April 2000 Email the editor

Shortly after Y2K passed without incident, I decided it was time for a turn-of-the-century house cleaning. I have been doing this sort of thing a long time-and don't tell anyone-since 1971, I have amassed boxes and filing cabinets of old photos, rare and useless trivia and backgrounders on some of Silicon Valley's most famous and infamous companies. As I sorted through this treasure trove, I came upon page after page of interesting, but no longer relevant product announcements from the past. Circular file? Or should I return them to their now-decades-old resting place.

By Ron Iscoff Editor

Sad to say, I tossed most of them. A couple caught my eye, however, and I decided to let everyone reminisce with me.

Let's go back in time to the golden days of MicroAutomation.

With some difficulty I can still remember touring MA's vast Fremont, Calif., campus-not far from where Fry's Electronics' flagship store now stands.

Founded in 1976, MicroAutomation was the company to beat for wafer dicing saws in the late '70s, early '80s-especially when it came to automation.

Several wannabees, including the Japanese, could only snap at MA's huge and invincible heels that occupied a frontage road site in Fremont, "The World Center for Wafer Dicing," as its headquarters were proclaimed in parchment and gilt by the City of Fremont.

The meteoric rise and lethal fall of MicroAutomation was dazzling, and it was swift. As I remember, the beginning of the end for MA came within a year or two after it moved to its elegant new surroundings in Fremont from its modest Sunnyvale home.

The downward spiral took place, as I recall, after MA's acquisition by the "suits" from the East, when MA became a unit of General Signal, and after the departure of its founder, Don Pedrotti.

Thanks to Mike Droeger of SEMI's PR department, I can report that MA's final home was on Coronado Drive in Santa Clara-only a few miles, in fact, from this magazine's executive offices. As Mike noted in his fax to me, "MicroAutomation didn't survive to make the 1991-1992 edition."

Looking at the exec roster for MA in 1990 turns up some industry veterans among them Garron Perrotti, then worldwide sales manager, now sales director for AMT in Pleasanton, Calif.

Oops Again!

We love to get e-mail from readers, even if they're only to correct or chastise us. Hector Fonacier, an old Asia hand, now at Motorola, Phoenix, posted us to clarify some points in last year's assembly industry trivia test.

Hector reports that I forgot to include Scotland as a former site of an offshore Indy factory. "Kindly add Lawrence Pickup as one of the pioneer executives of Deltron," Hector adds. "He was former vice president for operations at Deltron Automation."

We also goofed on Deltron President Tyler's name. It's Arthur, not Robert. "Deltron's parent was the defunct Delta Motors Corp." "The reason I know some of this is because I am one of the pioneer employees of Deltron and an ex-INDY/OLIN/Alphatec employee, but no longer working with IC packaging since 1997 . . . Looking forward to more trivia quizzes," hfonacier@aol.com. Thanks, Hector.

On the heels of Hector's correction, we received a second. The writer asked that his name be withheld, but noted the following: Add "Accurel" to contract assemblers beginning with the letter "A." "I think Accurel took over the old Data General facility in Sunnyvale and still offers quickturn IC subcontract assembly." Our loyal reader is correct. In fact we've visited Accurel and its president, Dr. Ghafghaichi, several times in the past. However, we only aimed to include production assemblers.

Our reader also pointed out that we switched the answers to items 10 and 11. Casablanca was in North Africa and Fairchild Semiconductor operated the plant at Shiprock, N.M. Look for our next trivia quiz in a decade or so.