We have been overwhelmed by the good wishes and wonderful stories so many of you have shared with us. For us, Doug was a great brother and son, along with being a meticulous pilot, a pioneering engineer, and a giver of time and talent.

Most importantly, thank you for your friendship and generosity at this difficult time. Doug would have wanted all of us to celebrate and embrace the life he lived – he lived it well.

The Bourn Family


Monday, February 22, 2010

Captain Zilog.

posted on behalf of George S.


Doug and I first met in EE classes at Stanford. Then years later, we
reconnected when he did some consulting at Multivision and Bell
Associates. Many years after that, he turned up again as the mentor
for my daughter’s robotics team at Castilleja, and Doug helped make
the team's first year a great success. Last summer, Doug flew my son
over to Byron and took him parachuting. Because of all the fun and
interesting things he was always up to, including Tesla, Doug was
always one of the people I looked for first at Beer Friday.

I invited him to our neighborhood's annual Summer Solstice Sunrise
Waffle Breakfast and he actually showed up, even though sunrise that
day was at 5:40AM! And you can see in the picture that he is having a
good time.

His engineering skills were legendary. I was told he designed one of
the first chips for Zilog, back when chip design required advanced
skills in not only digital design, but also semiconductor physics,
analog design, physically manipulating large sheets of plastic
(“Rubylith”) and extremely careful use of X-Acto knives. Does anyone
know which Zilog chip was Doug’s? (PIO, SIO, DMA???)

Anyway, now whenever I look at the picture of Captain Zilog on the
wall in my son’s room, I’ll think of Doug and what a truly great
person he was. And every time I hoist a pint at Beer Friday, I'll tell
him how much I miss him.

4 comments:

  1. I recall in a conversation that he built the circuits that handled the input and the output, not sure how that fits into your acronyms.

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  2. I believe that Doug worked on the Z8O PIO. He gave me one of those chips when we were seeing each other back in 1993 because I collected knick knacks.

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  3. Doug was in charge of the hardware design at Telebit, a modem startup in Cupertino in 1983. We moved to a different building on Bubb Road and Doug moved back into the office he had used when he was with Zilog. Not just the same building but the same room.

    He told me that he laid out part of the Z80PIO on mylar.

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  4. Yes, it was indeed the PIO. I had heard this long ago from his co-workers Dave Raaum and Courtenay Heater. I remember their copies of that Captain Zilog poster, which originated from the Captain Zilog comic book. Dave Raaum told me that he remembers Doug's h/w design skills being "the stuff of legends" when he first joined Zilog in 1977. Brian Berg

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