At about 2 a.m., I was called by police to the original ARM barn. I was the nearest keyholder to the building, the alarm had been ‘locked-out’ - ringing - and the intruder was being held on the phone - in conversation - with the police control centre.
When I arrived, there were some burly police in their Rangerover, who suggested I went in. I did.
David was sitting at his desk on the phone. His bike was propped against the building outside.
He’d mentioned he was off on a 2 week holiday. To celebrate, he’d gone to the Black Horse pub, had a few beers, and attempted to ride his bike back home.
This had not gone well, so - reasonably - he had aborted, and stopped in at the ARM building to sort a taxi.
He needed to press a 4 digit code into the ARM alarm to ‘unset’ it. He had, successfully, entered the code; but had not pressed the ENTER button hard enough, so the alarm did not unset.
So he entered the code again, and pressed ENTER firmly.
This ‘locked out’ the alarm as an ‘attack’ feature, and automatically called the police.
Turned out, if you added a 9 to the usual alarm code, it did exactly this.
The first digit of the ARM alarm code was a 9.
I explained the situation to the police, and they departed.
***
I had an old Targa Porsche at the time. I took the roof out, put David’s bike behind the front seats. It stuck out the top of the car some way. With David apologising profusely, I ran him and his bike home, and sorted him out, there.
***
After his 2-week holiday, he sent me a sincere apology in an email.
***
David was absolutely straightforward, and immensely kind. On the rare occasions I needed his help at ARM, he would consider my question for a couple of days. You’d think he had forgotten about it. But then, a carefully thought-through and detailed reply would arrive, with a relevant solution.
I once asked him about a floating-point multiplier design he’d done. He took the time to explain it to me, carefully, and I remember that to this day. It had an accurate part, and - his genius - a rough-calculation part. The approximate part worked far faster than the accurate part (it had less to do) and it gave it’s answer to the accurate part. The accurate part made use of the early rough answer, to determine how it could best arrange its answer.
I remember him with huge respect, and it’s very sad news to here he’s passed so suddenly.
With very fond memories
Matt Lee
Matt
7th January 2022