Hi welcome to the Eev blog an Electronics Engineering Video blog of interest to anyone involved in electronics design. I'm your host Dave Jones Hi This morning on the Air Power Radio show I mentioned that you could do an FM transmitter circuit with a single transistor and they've got me thinking wow I'd love to have a look at my old talking Electronics FM bug books I had when I was a kid or not books magazines are produced by an Australian company talking Electronics back in the 80s I think it was the 1980s for you kids out there and I thought I've got them up in the roof somewhere so I thought I'd climb up in the roof in the stinking hot heat here in Sydney in the middle of summer and I found the box what's inside? Let's check it out. I Know the Magazine's got to be in there because I've looked through every other bloody World Box up there and of course it's the last one in the back and I know I packed it in a green colored box like this. so this has got to be it.

So I thought we'd crack it open and have a look what's in there bit of a time capsule I don't know what else is packed in that? I'm pretty darn sure the Magazine's in there so let's find out. Come on. foreign here. it is straight from the roof.

It's got all the dust on it I Tried to seal it with some tape here, but it's all just crusty old garbage really. And let's open it up and see. Oh look at that dust. Oh man, the dust on this thing is terrible.

Should be clean inside though. Let's crack it open. No spiders, no ta-da hidden yeah some hidden magazines. Check them out and haha oh look is this first one first one I recognize the color there it is Colin Mitchell and staff the original FM Bugs Mega Urban FM Bugs Magazine.

that's what I was looking for 295 back then. doesn't even have a date, but it's probably inside. Let's crack it open. Ah, it's so much fun with these as a kid.

There you go. 1986 Vintage Copyright: Colin Mitchell is still going I believe talking Electronics is still there but there it is the ant and there's Colin There he is. Hey Colin and let's check out what other stuff in here. We'll go through these later.

but I Want to see what other gems are in here? Here we go. What do we got here? Silicon Chip? There you go. Silicon Chip Magazines from 1999 onwards. that's pretty recent 10 years ago.

11. yeah, January 94. there you go. Uh, what else we got June goes all the way back to March 88 that's is that one on the first I Don't know when Silicon Chip actually started, but it wouldn't be too far off the mark there.

So there you go. There's an old collection of Silicon Chip magazines. Ah, today Silicon Chip Computer. Omnibus Oh and uh yeah, more Silicon Chip magazines.

yeah, those okay. Oh, now we're talking. Electronics Australia There you go. Fantastic stuff, huh? August 1997 with the 32-page 75th Anniversary supplement.

Fantastic stuff, man. my electronics Australia collection um I actually had them in the proper Electronics Australia Folders like, uh, like binders. you used to be able to buy the binder with electronics Australia down the side I had the whole set. They're still up there in a separate box so these might be additional copies or something like that.

Or maybe after I stopped buying the binders because I think I only bought about the binders for about 10 years or something like that. Oops, all the other te books have fallen over and let's look at this last one here. Oh, this is the gem. I'll have to go through these one by one and first cab off the rake.

We've got top projects Volume 2 from Electronics today International Two bucks at the time. What an absolute bargain or it might have been really expensive I don't know. um I cannot find a date in this thing I cannot find a year but check this out. Uh oh, check out some of the names we've got.

Uh, who have we got down here? we've got uh Colin Rivers is the editorial director Which ones do I recognize Brian Chapman I recognize? um I've got uh Howard Jenkins Grant Evans and Lewis chalice and Associates who is a very famous name in the Australian audio field and check out the number. It's a six digit telephone number I Can't remember having six digit telephone numbers when I was a kid. My telephone number here in Sydney was seven digits and then we moved to eight digits in I. Don't know the 90s or something like that, but that's how old it must be.

Unbelievable. There it is 100 watt guitar amplifier with the old pattern like that you used to photo. You used to go to a photocopy machine and patent it and actually copy it over and put it on the transparency and lay out your own boards. Mix a preamp.

Ah, classic stuff. Love it. and the old full page ads they used to have. look GE moves Beautiful Baristas Awesome! This is where you used to find out about information before the internet came along because this is the only time you you know this might be the first time you ever heard of moths for example would be in an ad like that and it was just.

ah, great. Fantastic look. somebody's obviously traced over that. it's probably me.

Um, I'm not sure why I've gone around that with some red pen. I'm not sure why on Earth I've done that, but uh, it's classic. There's another one look and I've got volume three as well. There it is.

Price increase 2.50 for volume three and we have a date 1976 There it is. four years after I was born. There you go I love it. And those those C is six digit telephone numbers.

Fantastic. And that's not all number three I've got here, it is volume Five as well. Check it out. Price: Three dollars.

It keeps creeping up every year. Can't believe it got a date here yet! 1978. There we go 1978 and look at all the projects. They're all audio.

A lot of audio stuff. Graphic equalizers Bucket Brigade audio delay line oh how round stabilizer CB Power supply CB radio stuff Oh it's just beautiful I Love it and of course nothing was complete back then without a tricky there he is tricky Dick Smith himself back when he actually owned the store. There you go Dick Smith Electronics ad love it. This one's rather interesting.

It's a little car that actually follows a white line. There you go. You get all these robots these days. You know people build these line following robots.

This was back in the 19th, the late 1970s. There you go using just transistors. Ah awesome. Who the hell needs a micro controller and everything else? Just half a dozen and that's it.

and this is one. I Remember building but I don't I can't find it I don't know whatever happened to it I lost it somewhere along the line. the True: RMS AC Voltmeter. Mine didn't look quite as good as that, but these are back before the days of digital multimeters and true RMS was a big deal back then and the fun doesn't stop there.

I've got Volume 11 as well I'm not sure where the rest of them are I'm sure I did have a complete collection at one time or another, but we've bumped up the price to 4.95 and we're into the Uh John Farrell uh era I guess. And yeah, it's a bit more modern, but still. There's you know, not a single micro controller in there because they weren't invented back then and a classic 1978 ad for a Alec digital multimeter. Check it out.

Check the style of the case it's in like it's some hobby remote control. uh, charger or something like that. I Whopping one percent accuracy. Uh 12 separate ranges ah, three digit zero to 999 display.

It didn't even have three and a half digits back then. Unbelievable. And here we are. in 1984 we got lab notes and data.

This is an ETI publication and basically what it was was a collection of Articles technical articles that appeared in ETI magazine. This was a fantastic way that you actually got info. I Mean you know? check out some of these uh, things that are actually published in here. We've got.

you know how to use 3080 Op amps? Um, buy fit and buy CMOS Op amps. So which battery to use? Electrostatic discharge, logic troubleshooting sign, add measurement? Ah, it's got everything God Everything you possibly want and data sheets because data sheets were actually quite hard to get back then. So you actually had half a book full of just data sheets. so you'd have data sheets for Led displays, the intercell, the famous intercell, uh, panel, driver device, and here's actually articles on THD analyzers for audio circuits.

stuff like that. Beautiful. I Love it. Valuable info I Spent ages just pouring over this and this would be a reference book you'd keep on your bookshelf.

We're back to 1977 and Test Gear I Used to love test gear. everyone. everyone loved test gear. They still do.

You used to build your own test gear, it's still got some dust on it from 1977 I think and these were great. All of the basically a compendium of all the um, all the test gear projects published in Uh ETI magazine at the time. Impedance Meter. Ah, these were great and that's volume one at three dollars and I've got volume two here as well and they just kept on going.

What do we date? What's the date? No, but we're still back in Uh six digit Um phone numbers Melbourne had progressed to uh, seven digit phone numbers. but I love it I Used to read these in the schoolyard. just cover to cover. dog-eared these things I loved them.

and there's volume three. There we go I still I think I think they stopped at volume three I'm not sure if they ever did a volume four, but ah man. I used to love these magazines Here was one of my favorites. Electronics Australia Electronic test gear to build and we're talking uh, 1985 here.

Right in my sort of prime years of uh, Hobby Electronics when I was a kid, the Weller ad for the Weller soldering iron it would lust after I never used to be able to afford it. it's yellowed, it's been ripped, modulated signal injector and uh, check out I've still got some notes written there. There you go. I I obviously built this thing I kind of sort of remember I'm pretty sure I don't have it any more.

Estimate: 10 bucks I'd have to buy 10 bucks worth of parts to make this sucker. probably have to go down to Tandy um or Radio Shack for you us, uh people back then and ah, buy these parts I Just love it. Ah, couldn't get enough of this thing. I think I actually got beat up in the schoolyard for bringing this thing to uh, school.

you know. Handy low-cost RC substitution boxes I Actually built? here? it is. There's well, there's my version of it. Anyway, that's my version of the Um RC Oh well.

the r substitution box. Fantastic stuff. And of course not everyone had a dual trace or a dual beam. There's a difference there.

oscilloscope back then. So you build this oscilloscope uh, switch to add dual Trace capabilities to a single beam or a single trace oscilloscope. and I Loved volume one so much. I Was absolutely stoked when one of my projects made it was published in volume two.

Uh, it went up to 6.95 Whoa. Real expensive back then because it was a real big issue. but 1993 we're talking about here and uh, check out. you might recognize a name in here.

Well, no, it's not here. DSO adapter for PCS number 62. let's check it out. This was back when uh Jim Rowe who uh now is semi-retired but still works for Silicon Chip here was the managing editor of EA back then.

But let's go over to page 62 and you may certainly recognize the name. It's me. Yay! This is one of my, uh, most successful test gear projects I had published and I've actually got it up here. Here is the original look at this.

This has still got the dust on it. There's my original PC DSO adapter that I built and that was actually the one they photographed so it didn't It did actually look like that that was actually paper with some transparency. um, transparency overlay. You can see the Shine off the transparency that was my first original prototype.

Ah, brilliant. And there's a wiring diagram that I actually Drew for it and I actually did that in uh, Protel schematic back then because I you know you didn't have access to a mechanical CAD package so you'd use your Um electronic schematic package to actually do that. and uh, there's the wiring inside of it what it looks like. Ah, great overlay.

I did all the overlays and I did a uh, once again. this block diagram I did that in the schematic editor and you had the front panels uh, back then published so you would photocopy them and just stick them on. And there's the circuit of this classic project. It used the Adc-0820 uh, it was what was called a half flash analog to digital converter.

so I would actually do four bits uh at a time and no microcontrollers back there here. It had 32k of uh SRAM it had some. it had an address counter, it had some decoders, some some smart latching that actually hooked up to the PC parallel port here. and it was rather clever.

I thought I was quite proud of this design and it was incredibly incredibly popular, which led to the Mark II version as well. And here's the electronics: Australia Projects and Circuit Book 1984 Vintage I can remember behind that and uh, here's a classic project. They sold tens of thousands of these and it they I think they still sold the kit like 20 years later, but um, in circuit transition. Unfortunately I've cut out the front panel because I didn't have access to a photocopier back then.

they were a bit, uh, rare out when I was a kid. So I I just cut out the uh, cut it straight out of the magazine and these circuit cookbooks. They were incredibly popular because it was basically a compendium. A shock.

a big compendium of short uh circuit ideas which they typically are still from the manufacturer's data sheets and app nodes and it reprinted by demand. It was so popular and these were fantastic references for the bookshelf. Anyone remember Teletext? No anyone. 199 bucks.

Hook it up and you get teletext on your TV But no, these things are great. Look at all the projects separate into all the categories: alarms, audio, automobiles, photography, opto games General boom and you would just get uh, short application note like circuits with a brief circuit description and these were awesome references before the information revolution Saturday Avo Projects: look at the hair 1980s vintage in it Tony Henson Never heard of him, but uh I wonder what's happened to him now? Maybe he was just there for the photo shoot? Maybe he's not actually a hobby hobbyist. The VZ 200. Ah, I was quite excited by this one.

99 IC Projects 1982 Edition because uh, this was an American Magazine uh by uh Davis publishing I'm not sure what they did back then, but it was rare to get an American Magazine in Australia back then and somebody gave this to me I Don't know where I actually acquired it from, but it was a whole list of oh there's the there's the ad for the original uh Sinclair Zx81 the build it yourself in kit form for you could save a whopping 50 bucks by building it yourself, soldering it. Awesome! NPO Capacitor anyone with two steering diodes and slow scan TV Anyone remember that one? that's a real breath blast from the past. My first job was actually working on that dial up slow scan TV equipment that would actually uh, transmit, uh, slow scan TV You can actually see the pixels line by line transmit them over the telephone line. It was one that was my first job back when I was 17.

we've got tutorials on circuit board etching the old Dallow pen how to do it, wire wrapping what tools you need to wire up ETI Circuit Techniques Volume One I Learned so much from this 1981 vintage. It is and Op Amps and it had the Op Amp cookbook and it had all the different Op-amp circuits and configurations and the active filter cookbook. Ah, Triple Five timer applications how apps. And here's the FM Bud Books from Talking Electronics I Told you about these things were absolutely classic.

The first one 1986, they would tell you everything you needed to know Colin Mitchell What a class act. Really, He really knew how to write and he really knew how to. Well, he still does. He still writes stuff on his website I Believe.

but uh, you could build these. Um FM bugs and I spent so many hours I need to tell stories and all sorts of stuff like that and give you life advice and all sorts of things and how to run a business. And we've got 14 FM bugs to build. We've got bugging in its prevention.

We've got more FM Bags Five more FM Bugs As you can see I like to collect them Security devices Smart Security devices Book one? Huh? More FM bugs than you can poke a stick at anyone Remember public domain software talking about Electronics Just like countless other companies around the world would sell you all these different types of programs. Any program you want six bucks each on a disk and they'll ship it to you. and that included postage. It was great.

Uh, and you know all these like PC right? And all these um programs back in the old days that were freeware or public domain or shareware you could actually buy on disk because there was no internet, you really couldn't download them unless you're hooked onto a bulletin board somewhere which were even back then wasn't Uh, you know it wasn't very common at all. and especially at 300 bits per second. You'd pay you six bucks including postage. and let's ship your one on a disk.

and this is the one that started talking. Electronics Well, actually it's a reprint, um, of issue one. uh, several years after the fact. but uh, this was the first magazine for Colin Mitchell it wouldn't come out monthly.

it had famously come out Uh, when it was ready. basically? um, as soon as he got it together. Um, he would actually release the uh, the actual magazine so you'd have to go. There was no schedule so you had to go to your a news agent a couple of times a week to see.

Oh, have you got a new talking Electronics in yet? you know has it. Come in no guy. you go home disappointed. You ride home on your bike and well, ah, with your tail between your legs I Used to love talking Electronics build your own three chip Z80 computer for 72 bucks.

What a bargain! This is the talking Electronics uh micro comp computer and it was really quite neat. It was a three chip design I Had the Z80, it had the Eprom and a latch decoder on a couple of seven segment uh displays. and you would have to enter darling data manually in via the dip switches. But it was a perfectly fine working computer.

And here's a classic talking: Electronics Project: uh, book back 1981 vintage I can remember buying this I spent my 3.95 and as you can see, I've taped it back. It's very dog-eared and the great thing about talking Electronics back then is the actual PCB used to come taped or stapled to the front panel. that's why there's the staple Mark there which I'd actually rip the board out and I taped it back up and it came with a free PCB and that was awesome! This one is for the classic Mini frequency count of the three digit frequency counter I Built this and I thought it was the most awesome thing ever because I had a frequency counter. It was great.

CD 4026's three-digit display. You could, uh, move the display uh across. You could actually shift it to get more digits in the display depending upon the upper frequency of course and you put it in a cassette case. A few people out there remember cassettes sold before CDs Kitties? Um, yeah, you actually built it.

It was quite novel and the project would actually use individual LEDs because the individual LEDs were cheaper than a seven segment display so you would actually solder in. You know, 50 LEDs in there. Great stuff and one of the best things ever was Colin Mitchell's 10 minute digital course. He used to hand write this on graph paper hand Drew everything and this begun my I Think this possibly begun my love affair with grid paper at the time and uh, it basically says should I do this course If you can describe the operation of this circuit then you don't need this course.

that's what he says and this was a great introduction to Digital Electronics I Thought it was the best thing I'd ever read. It was great. Oh memories, memories, memories, memories, Ah and Pcbs were expensive back then, so everything was single-sided Here's the Uh Tech One computer which was a more advanced version of the three chip one we saw before and back then it was done on a single sided board. You'll note all the links and things in here and because it was very difficult to actually um, uh, do RAM on a single sided board.

One of the easy things to do the classic things was to do what was called a ram stack and you would actually stack the RAM chips up like that You'd actually solder the chips on top of each other because the only thing which changed was one of the address lines. That was it. Everything else. the data and address was actually paralleled up.

It was a classic example of how to actually get a lot of Ram with you know, without having to do a complex uh, single herb double-sided board and there's a classic tech one talking Electronics Computer that was the more advanced version I was talking about input, keypad and everything. Ah, it even generates sound I Loved it and it was only 87.30 What a bargain! and talking Electronics would actually compile a 4000 series sorry, a 74 HC double O Series devices Data Book And because if you didn't have the data book, you could actually buy this at your local news agent. It was brilliant. He just photocopied them and obviously got permission I guess to photocopy the manufacturer's data sheets and just reprinted them.

Electronics Notebook number six anyone complete with crosswords and IQ tests. And here's a talking Electronics kit order form. Now why am I mentioning this? Why is it remarkable? Well, it's remarkable because talking Electronics is the only company I knew of uh, where hobbyists and young kids. It doesn't matter if you were eight years old like I was or something you could.

Um, you know you didn't have access to a check or something like that and you couldn't get a money order. you know they were. They cost extra money so no checks under 15. But you could send stamps.

you could actually pay by postage stamps. You could actually go into the post office and say I want ten dollars worth of stamps please and you would actually fill out this order form and you'd pay by stamps. It was unbelievable because then he would then go and use the stamps. obviously.

uh, post the kits. but I just thought that was so remarkable. Ah, Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that trip down memory lane. Foreign.