Nickey C. Shin

Major -- Electrical and Computer Engineering
Minor -- Computer Science
Other Studies -- Business Administration and Pre-Med

Graduation Date:
May 1998

http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/~nshin/
nshin@midwaygames.com
-- Please contact me via e-mail.
You will have a better chance of
reaching me and then setting up
a day and time for a phone call.
Home Address:
2240 Castilian Circle
Northbrook, IL 60062
(847) 632-4627

Employment Objective

To obtain a position that would challenge my analytical, creative, and organizational skills in the electrical engineering architecture and computer science field as well as in business applications.

Work Experience

If you want to know more about the places I have worked, then click here.

Midway Games Inc.

Touchmaster - Infinity

January 2001 to Present - Software and Hardware Engineer (full time position)
- Side Project:
  Currently developing a new architecture design that will allow game programmers to write the core code once and just use compiler options to build the binaries for the multiple target platforms. Support for the multi-architecture design will include Linux, Windows and possibly Macintosh.
- Hardware:
  Other assignments include supporting the current platform which includes maintaining device drivers for the ATI's video and Creative Lab's sound chipsets. These assignment will hopefully be eliminated by using existing drivers from the vendors or through open source repositories.
  - But propietary hardware will always be supported. Midway's Touchmaster product uses a custom built I/O card called the Dolphin board. Current version include an ISA version and the new version is a PCI device.
- Software:
  In addition to the hardware responsibilities, work has been done to provide tools and utilities for the game programmers and artists. These applications are to help make the platform usable and to provide the ability to quickly add new features into the product with out getting tangled with the complex design and procedures.

Motorola

Common Platform Development

May 1998 to December 2000 - Software Engineer (full time position)
- Assignments included developing the new generation of network and communication systems for the telephony industry.
  - Writing device drivers on new proprietary hardware with real time operating systems (RTOS) on Motorola's PowerPC boards running WindRiver's VxWorks. Previous operating systems that were under consideration for the platform included the Lynx's LynxOS and Sun's ChorusOS.
- Other assignments involved creating new a developement environment for our developers (over 200 people locally and another 100 nationwide) to use. The developement environment will then be deployed to our (internal) customers for developing/providing new commerical products.
  - Designed the network infrastructure for the developer's environment (which included providing a secure method of holding third party licensed source codes).
  - Provided solutions to help create a training session for teaching the developers about the RTOS in use.
  - Provided solutions in the developers environment for integrating 6 different groups.
  - Designed and held training session for the developers by presenting and teaching new procedures and technologies.
  - Working on developing new applications for the Sun Solaris workstation and servers that will access and control the new common platform product.

Digital Equipment Corporation

Text-To-Speech Research and Development

January 1997 to December 1997 - Software Engineer (45+ hours per week - internship)
- Assigned to the development of the DECtalk product lines.
- Assisted in final release production quality control, build processes, and implementation of new features, tool development for automation in tuning and regression testing for both of the hardware and software products.
- Was responsible as the primary product trouble shooter (debugging) engineer.
- Wrote new programs that featured the abilities of the product (Windows applications in C/C++).

University of Illinois, Computing Services Office

Engineering Workstation System Labs

Spring 1996 to Fall 1996 - Site Manager (30+ hours per week - part time position)
- In addition to the Lab Assistant's responsibility, site managers are also responsible for the maintainance of the labs themselves and responsible for checking on attendance and the performance of the lab assistants working in the lab.
- Held performance reviews and provided suggestions and reports on improving the lab's ability and usabiliy for the engineer's needs.
Fall 1994 to Spring 1996 - Lab Assistant (20+ hours per week - part time position)
- Assisting users with the software and hardware supported by the College of Engineering Workstation computer systems.
- Responsible for maintaining and trouble-shooting these systems which covered six labs and about 200 networked UNIX workstations, incluing Sun SPARCstation 2/10/20, IBM RS6000, and HP/Apollo HP-UX models 700 and 715.i

Jaleco USA

Product Development, Research and Design

August 1990 to May 1994 - Consultant (10 - 35+ hours per week)
- Assisted in product development and end product quality assurance by providing feedback and testing the programs before releasing it for marketing.
- Consumer and commercial sector products were produced in the industry of electronic gaming entertainment. Specifically, gaming cartridges for the Nintendo machines for the consumer market and full size uprights and sit-in arcade machine for the coin-op market.
- Also assisted in electronic shows and exhibits (Consumer Electronic Show) as a public relations liaison by showing product demonstraions and providing technical information to interested parties.
Summer 1994 - Warehouse Manager (10 - 35+ hours per week)
August 1990 to May 1992 - Warehouse Assistant (10 - 35+ hours per week)
- Ran full warehouse shipping and recieving operations for Jaleco consumer and commercial products. Also assisted the coin-op technician in trouble shooting and rebuilding coin-op products.

Computer Experience

Operating Systems: AIX(IBM), HPUX(HP), SOLARIS(SUN), DIGITAL UNIX, and LINUX; OS/2; PC-DOS; Windows NT4.0; SystemX-Macintosh; VxWorks(WindRiverSystem), LynxOS(Lynx), ChorusOS(SUN).
Graphical User Interfaces: X-Windows; Microsoft Windows3.11, Windows9x, NT; Apple Macintosh.
Languages:
- High Level Language: C, C++, FORTRAN, Perl, JAVA.
- Low Level Language: Scheme, 80x86 (asm), i960 (asm), M68HC11 (asm).
- Other Languages/APIs: HTML, VRML, Open-GL, VHDL.
Software:
- Engineering applications: Mentor Graphics, MatLab, SPICE, Mathematica and others.
- Digital graphics applications: Povray, Photoshop, TrueSpace, LiteWave, Bryce3D and others.
- Understand many popular graphic file formats: BMP, PCX, TGA, GIF, MPEG, JPEG and others.
- Understand many popular sound file formats: WAVE, AU, MODS, MP3 and others.
- Understand many popular network protocols: TCP, UDP, ATM, IP and others.
- Familiar with many home personal computer software applications and utilities for Dos, Windows, Macintosh and LINUX.
  - Network applications such as web browsers, news readers, mail clients, ftp clients, icq and others.
  - Software Integrated Development Environments such as Developer's Studio, CodeWright and CodeFusion. Experienced in Windows application Programming.
  - Utilities such as memory and device managers.
  - And others.
Hardware:
- Very knowledgeable of the PC in/output ports; including printer and mouse devices; interupts and address setups; and slot/peripheral configurations, including video, sound, hard drive controllers, SCSI systems contollers and telephony/network communications cards.
- Very knowlegable of the Apple Macintosh system setup including; SCSI, audio-video; and communication systems.
- Also knowledgeable of different types of UNIX workstations such as the Sun SPARC, HP Apollos, IBM Risc, and DIGITAL Alpha Machines. As well as the LINUX OS.

Education

University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Computer Science

Relevant Coursework

Electrical and Computer Engineering (Major)
Computer Science (Minor)
Business Administration (Extracurricular)
Pre-Med (Former Major)

Extracurricular Activities

Clubs and Organizations attended and served

If you want to know more about the organizations I have been in, then click here.

ACM Association for Computer Machinery
- Spring 1994 to Spring 1998 - SigGraph : Special Interest Group computer Graphics
- Spring 1993 to Fall 1996 - SigArch : Special Interest Group computer Architecture
- Fall 1992 to Fall 1993 - SigSoft : Special Interest Group computer Software
Theta Chi Fraternity
- 1994 to 1996 - Risk Manager
- 1995 Year - Minor Events Coordinator
- 1994 Year - Recycling Chair
- 1993 Year - Floor Manager
JAC Japanese Animation Club
- 1993 Year - Vice President

Personal Projects

(currently active)

If you want to know more about the projects, then click here.

(Completed)

(1999)A PlamPilot unitiliy I wrote for the PC - PilotPC Alarm.
(1998)Robotics and MicroControllers from my Senior Design Course.
(1997)Was gone for a CO-OP assignment.
(1996)Audio/Video Transmitter from my Advanced Digital Projects Laboratory Class.
(1996)Fabrication of Integrated Circuits from my Theory and Fabrication of Integrated Circuits.
(1996)The Laser Snooper from my Advanced Digital Projects Laboratory Class.
(1995)LEGOBOT Project from my Computer Engineering/Artchitecture II Class.
(1995)Elevator Controller from my Digial System Laboratory Class.
(1992)Built my very own working arcade test box.