27 thoughts on “Eevblog #54 – electronics – when i was a boy…”
Very cool to hear how you got into electronics Dave- a cool and relatable story. I sadly wasn't invested in hardware engineering before choosing it for school, but to be honest I've learnt more from only a short time messing around with my spare parts than I have in all lectures. School around here teaches the nitty gritty calculations and very simple construction but if you learn on your own, you don't even need to bother taking notes and can do very well. All ya need is some great circuitry ideas you wanna build! (And the money for test equip helps too…) Personally, my muse was and always has been programming – I would tear websites and Windows system files apart back since i was 9-10 and learned all about simple scripting languages, file systems, architectures…definitely a parallel from a different time haha.
Also, sorry to keep necroposting, but this is an extremely important video, but… Keeping a library is VITAL. Erasure of information is a very real thing, and should your area, or god forbid, everybody, lose access to the internet, we are screwed. I fully believe it is vital to keep as many dead tree and local server copies of as many books as possible. Yes, parts books, datasheets, etc, but also many fiction and nonfiction books. Everything from the US constitution, the Quran, several versions of the Bible, Mahabarata, etc, as well as Rules for Radicals, the Communist Manifesto, the works of HP Lovecraft, and Motorola CPU manuals. Information is much better than gold, and is far more valuable in any context. Don't rely on the Internet guys. Information has a funny way of unexisting if we aren't careful curators.
Haha, yes. I love heathkit. I actually still have on my bench the dual-channel Heathkit scope my dad used to build his first z80 micro back in the day. Unfortunately idiot teenage me threw away the computer itself after a power surge fried it, and the H19 terminal hooked up to it, but I have all his design documents and even some copies of the ROM source, and hope to build an exact duplicate of it in honor of him – in addition to the multichannel sound card he was obviously designing for it, as he unfortunately cannot help me with it any more. I'll tell you though – even though I have much newer digital kit nowadays with much higher bandwidth, I am very tempted to recreate his old machine with as much of his original equipment as possible – which I can now calibrate against my much more advanced modern-ish (mostly 90s) lab equipment.
Haha, I love it. Yeah, I started taking stuff apart at 5 or 6, whenever my dad showed me how a screwdriver worked, and my parents would give me all sorts of stuff to take apart (i particularly remember an old ma bell 1st gen dtmf phone). I'd take everything apart. wasn't too good at putting any of it together. But you could get an idea – this goes to that, that goes to that other thing – hey i know what what part does, that's where the sound comes out! how does it get there? Later on I got kits like the tandy components-on-springs kit, and made little transmitters and things. Crystal radio kits also. Having my dad's electronics, computer, and ham radio books on the shelves helped a lot too – both for information and to help fuel the passion.
That was back in the 80s, and now I have my own children and try to make sure I have as exciting of a lab as possible to encourage them to come down, play with stuff, take it apart, and come up with crazy ideas we can brainstorm through. I hope my youngest will have the same drive and technolust that I had as a kid, and will become the beautiful 3rd generation engineer I know he can be. I hope he makes me feel stupid as he gets older lol.
Thanks Dave, that was great. When I was eight years old my parents asked what I wanted for my birthday, I said, "A soldering iron". That was almost 70 years ago! Today I'm a retired electronic engineer and I still design circuits.
I was a country kid living in Michigan, USA. We lived in a tiny house on a gravel road, and we had a hand water pump and an outhouse. So I had essentially nothing electronic to play with, or even take apart. But I played with magnets and compasses and batteries and flashlights from a very early age. What I did have was a next-door neighbor who had a TV-radio repair shop in his garage. Guess where I hung out? Once I was working as an electronics tech I started gathering free data books. I had over 800 data books when my shop got flooded and I lost them all.
I've been scavenging parts all my life. So now I have 10's of thousands of surplus parts, mostly sorted out. I only wish I had the Internet available when I was a kid. I had wanted to become a ham radio operator from the time I was 10, but I was 18 before I even knew of the existence of the ARRL Handbook. Now that I'm old I spend all day long reading and watching tech stuff like your channel on the web, building a few things, giving away parts, and answering questions for young engineering students. It's a good old-age.
Analogia das teorias da eletronica em economia ? Potência economica, o padrão economico da rainha elisabeth não se adapta aos empresarios americanos por causa das leis trabalhistas entende ?
Entendi amigo, eu sei mexer em aparelhos de laboratórios de eletronica, gerador de barras, osciloscópios, frequencimetros, multi.wtros e etc… fica tranquilo, o assunto no momento e analogia da eletrônica em comparação a economia entende ?
I believe the Australian Education department needs to recruit this creator to encourage math /Engineering teachers. The enthusiasm maybe contagious. Thank you for continuing to contribute to community.
I started with the RS 150 in one kit, bits of it still exist, but mostly it got scavenged for parts over the years. I also have the Forest Mims book you showed. I use to do all sort of stuff with 74xx series ICs. Then I went off in to the early TRS-80, (I still have it) I'm slow getting back to real electronics now after loosing interest in ham radio. I have tried the micro controls stuff like the ESP8266 but that isn't for me. I bough my first oscilloscope a few months back that turned out to be dead, ended up scrapping it, but someday I'll save up some money and try getting another one. I was about 7 when I first got interested after seeing my uncle making electronic projects but he was no help, he thought it was funny always telling my wrong stuff when I asked how it worked. I still have to look up how a transistor works every time I build something with one because he told me so many different wrong ways they work. So I went on my own and learned what I know on my own.
Many peeps here in comments were of old days, I am 17 as of now damn people back then are so lucky that interest in electronics sparked at very young age. I do also ripped stuff apart to see how it works (mostly toys such as battery powered toy train, mechanical helicopter. I bought my first breadboard at almost 3$ (struggling that time, I just wanted to get in touch with a breadboard [I live in Philippines so you know]) and my 5$ multimeter both at age 16. My extremely basic electronic tinkering starts from dealing with dead earphone (along with soldering, I wasted ridiculously long time wondering and trying how to stick solder into a headphone wire until I discovered I just have to burn it a little bit) and its not just simple soldering, it was extremely hard it was like a wooden handle 5$ 40w soldering iron with some dumb tip (I dont know about flux or tip cleaner) I also dont have a helping hand that can hold the wires (My hands would go red and hot trying to hold it)
Bit by bit I'm trying to collect the most basic stuff; some couple of resistor and ceramic capacitor, some jacks, arduino kit (thx for my research mates that provided funds to use this for our research thesis project and I now have access to play with this, my poor ass cant afford it)
The modern world disturbs my journey in learning more about electronics but since I subscribed (sept.2021) and watched some video and its inspiring me to continue pursuing to learn If only the continents in the world are connected to each other (pangaea), electronics hobbyists can meet each other more often Well yeah Imma stop the comment right here there's a lot more videos to watch from the Legendary Dave
For me since the age of 2 I've had a thing for electricity, when I was 2, I took all the child locks off of the electrical outlets, then at age 4 I found some wires that were exposed in my backyard and got my first shock of 120 volts. Later I had started taking things apart, and I'd do some tinkering, and at one point I was playing around with an electric piano that had a mic input and I was using a broken set of headphones as a mic, and one of my parents friends who was an electrical engineer saw what I did and asked me how I knew a speaker worked the same way as a microphone, and I told him "by experimenting". a few days later a radioshack science fair electronics kit shows up on my porch. I played with the thing a bit, but eventually got bored with it, and it wasn't till a few years later when I became interested into audio gear that I became interested in electronics again, and I soon learned to solder, before long I found myself repairing outlets and switches around the house and then I fixed some more complicated stuff like lighting dimmers. Later I learned I had a huge advantage over most people when it comes to getting shocked, because I had an extremely high body resistance of 5 mega ohms, which allowed me to run 70 volts AC across my chest without feeling anything.
So much this. I remember Electronics Today International, Everyday Electronics etc. We are the fortunate ones because we made the things we wanted & liked it too. If i want an audio amp on a board i can just buy it now.
I wanted a kit, with no luck in 78', I was 15. in 1981 the US Navy had me on the APS-80 Radar Bench Stationed in the Philippines. I was 18. btw the APS-80 has no transistors. Tube city. I'm 58 still no luck on the kit. So… keep it to yourself. Great Show! I know 11yrs ago. (Past Dave)
I grew up in the middle east and started doing the same thing by taking apart all the toys that i had. Parents got frustrated and there were no hobby shops in the emirates so it was hard to learn. Then when travelled back to Pakistan my dad got me an AM radio kit and my mom learned how to solder and thought me how (i was 8 at the time). I had no idea about anything that was happening with the circuits but it was marvelous to make something that worked. The internet was very young then and I was able to get small circuits diagrams but etching was not possible cause those solutions were all banned to civilians. I would save up all the schematics for my summer trip to Pakistan and have my boards made there, bought all my tools as well. Thanks to the exchange rate my middle eastern pocket money could buy a lot of supplies in Pakistan. I then went on to uni in N. America and became a computer engineer and got really into the software side of things. Maybe it was because finding parts and tools was not that frustrating with software. Though now I am primarily into software, i still tinker with electronics when i can. Seeing your vids has got me to start building a small electronics lab again.
Still remember we went to this little shop called the "Elite Kit Center" in Karachi Pakistan that made kits for university courses and technician practice. They probably had over 500 different kits. The walls were littered with them it felt like a toy store but for electronics. Nothing fancy just parts and pcb in a bag and a 2 page instruction sheet. Every year whenever they saw me they would bring me and my mom to the back of the shop get us some tea and start getting things for our order while another guy would see what my current circuit was up to. I even got a PIC programmer in hopes of learning it but man there were no instructions and proper guides. Your blog 2 decades ago would've been amazing hahaa. Man those were some times.
Oh wow, I can so relate to this.thanks for bringing back the memories ! Started electronics in the mid 19-seventies.
I still want to know how EVERYTHING works, that started at age… eeehhh Younger then I can remember.. I still have that and that will never stop. Had the Philips kits with such springs myself at age 12, remember the Tandy / radio shack shop in Gouda-NL and all the weird but interesting stuff they offered, still have that same blue book with designs you showed, my first multimeter was even simpler and very small but looked very like that, was proud having it and used it for everything, had (still have) a library including the tube handbook and transistor reference, build a counter and function generator. One birthday present I once asked for when young was … a single power transistor ! (Parents were totally confused but I told them, they could buy it at that TV repair shop at the corner). Nobody even in remote family did anything with electronics, for my parents it was magic. Specially when I did light a non-connected TL tube in an dipole antenna and 100MHz transmitter and moved the TL through the room once it was lit dimming it with the power control. Could not afford the magazines, so read them in the library. Build pirate radio stations with tubes and transistors, just for the fun and experiment. Wiring an electromotor made from metal from old tin cans. Guess many here did that. Repaired the old tube-based radios and TVs for fun building own tools like a neon lamp on an isolated stick to verify the high voltage being present. Learned everything about everything electronics in these years and that got me my income through life and invaluable insight in everything electronics, analog, digital, RF and even embedded software. Repaired electronics, was an FAE, started my own company and the broad insight I gained in my hobby years now seems quite unique and was.. and still is.. the basis for my succes. Can now retire early because of it :-).
Again, thanks for sharing it, I notice very many here can relate.
I'm a 90s kid from India and still I had the same journey towards the field of electronics…. Fell in love with electronics bcs how gadgets work fascinated me I used to take electronic things apart, save pocket money-gift money to buy my first soldering Iron at an age of 9yrs and multimeter at 10 My parents always encouraged me , bought me electronics magazines… And that passion drew me electronics till date I graduated with Electronics degree , I did masters in electronics and communication …. All with gold medals because for me electronics came naturally..
And now working as a government engineer officer in field of electronics….. And I still take out time to do my own projects…. Thanks Dave for sharing your story…
Awesome summary, My first project was at about 5 years old late 60’s hooking up batteries, switches and light bulbs then pulling things appat but no supporting system that I could grow my curiosity. For that reason I probably wouldn’t want to relive that time and prefer the 80’s
I am from India, am 21 started electronics when i was maybe 11 or 12 trust me in 3rd world countries i still can't afford an oscilloscope though i used to save for stuff exactly like you did still do.
Thanks for sharing your story Dave. Mine was pretty similar. First a crystal radio, thereafter I received a 10 in 1 Tandy electronics kit at the age of 13 (1973/74) – much later I received a 100 in 1 in a beautiful wooden box and the rest is history.
This was how I got started tinkering with electronics. This is like watching my life history. Saving money to buy a nice meter to replace the last one that got the smoke let out, spending hours at a time in radio shack. I'm 10 years older than Dave, so in the late 70s, I was bitten by the computer big. Having a commodore Pet or TRS-80 was absolutely out of the question, but my parents did get me a Cosmac Elf kit to put together. Still have it. It's something I will never part with. Also have a wooden boxed 150 in 1 science fair kit too, with the book. Still have old magazines, Forest Mims books and some old data books. Waiting for the next issue of electronics magazines was painful.
Very cool to hear how you got into electronics Dave- a cool and relatable story. I sadly wasn't invested in hardware engineering before choosing it for school, but to be honest I've learnt more from only a short time messing around with my spare parts than I have in all lectures. School around here teaches the nitty gritty calculations and very simple construction but if you learn on your own, you don't even need to bother taking notes and can do very well. All ya need is some great circuitry ideas you wanna build! (And the money for test equip helps too…)
Personally, my muse was and always has been programming – I would tear websites and Windows system files apart back since i was 9-10 and learned all about simple scripting languages, file systems, architectures…definitely a parallel from a different time haha.
Also, sorry to keep necroposting, but this is an extremely important video, but… Keeping a library is VITAL. Erasure of information is a very real thing, and should your area, or god forbid, everybody, lose access to the internet, we are screwed. I fully believe it is vital to keep as many dead tree and local server copies of as many books as possible. Yes, parts books, datasheets, etc, but also many fiction and nonfiction books. Everything from the US constitution, the Quran, several versions of the Bible, Mahabarata, etc, as well as Rules for Radicals, the Communist Manifesto, the works of HP Lovecraft, and Motorola CPU manuals. Information is much better than gold, and is far more valuable in any context. Don't rely on the Internet guys. Information has a funny way of unexisting if we aren't careful curators.
Haha, yes. I love heathkit. I actually still have on my bench the dual-channel Heathkit scope my dad used to build his first z80 micro back in the day. Unfortunately idiot teenage me threw away the computer itself after a power surge fried it, and the H19 terminal hooked up to it, but I have all his design documents and even some copies of the ROM source, and hope to build an exact duplicate of it in honor of him – in addition to the multichannel sound card he was obviously designing for it, as he unfortunately cannot help me with it any more. I'll tell you though – even though I have much newer digital kit nowadays with much higher bandwidth, I am very tempted to recreate his old machine with as much of his original equipment as possible – which I can now calibrate against my much more advanced modern-ish (mostly 90s) lab equipment.
Haha, I love it. Yeah, I started taking stuff apart at 5 or 6, whenever my dad showed me how a screwdriver worked, and my parents would give me all sorts of stuff to take apart (i particularly remember an old ma bell 1st gen dtmf phone). I'd take everything apart. wasn't too good at putting any of it together. But you could get an idea – this goes to that, that goes to that other thing – hey i know what what part does, that's where the sound comes out! how does it get there? Later on I got kits like the tandy components-on-springs kit, and made little transmitters and things. Crystal radio kits also. Having my dad's electronics, computer, and ham radio books on the shelves helped a lot too – both for information and to help fuel the passion.
That was back in the 80s, and now I have my own children and try to make sure I have as exciting of a lab as possible to encourage them to come down, play with stuff, take it apart, and come up with crazy ideas we can brainstorm through. I hope my youngest will have the same drive and technolust that I had as a kid, and will become the beautiful 3rd generation engineer I know he can be. I hope he makes me feel stupid as he gets older lol.
I had one of those early 70's
Thanks Dave, that was great. When I was eight years old my parents asked what I wanted for my birthday, I said, "A soldering iron". That was almost 70 years ago! Today I'm a retired electronic engineer and I still design circuits.
I was a country kid living in Michigan, USA. We lived in a tiny house on a gravel road, and we had a hand water pump and an outhouse. So I had essentially nothing electronic to play with, or even take apart. But I played with magnets and compasses and batteries and flashlights from a very early age. What I did have was a next-door neighbor who had a TV-radio repair shop in his garage. Guess where I hung out? Once I was working as an electronics tech I started gathering free data books. I had over 800 data books when my shop got flooded and I lost them all.
I've been scavenging parts all my life. So now I have 10's of thousands of surplus parts, mostly sorted out. I only wish I had the Internet available when I was a kid. I had wanted to become a ham radio operator from the time I was 10, but I was 18 before I even knew of the existence of the ARRL Handbook. Now that I'm old I spend all day long reading and watching tech stuff like your channel on the web, building a few things, giving away parts, and answering questions for young engineering students. It's a good old-age.
This guy is amazing, he self taught everything he knows about electronics to himself. His shows are very informative.
Você precisa eatudar o Documento único Rics para ajudar na administração dos trabalhadores do EUA?
Analogia das teorias da eletronica em economia ? Potência economica, o padrão economico da rainha elisabeth não se adapta aos empresarios americanos por causa das leis trabalhistas entende ?
Entendi amigo, eu sei mexer em aparelhos de laboratórios de eletronica, gerador de barras, osciloscópios, frequencimetros, multi.wtros e etc… fica tranquilo, o assunto no momento e analogia da eletrônica em comparação a economia entende ?
I believe the Australian Education department needs to recruit this creator to encourage math /Engineering teachers. The enthusiasm maybe contagious. Thank you for continuing to contribute to community.
Ah man the nostalgia watching this video…
I started with the RS 150 in one kit, bits of it still exist, but mostly it got scavenged for parts over the years. I also have the Forest Mims book you showed. I use to do all sort of stuff with 74xx series ICs. Then I went off in to the early TRS-80, (I still have it) I'm slow getting back to real electronics now after loosing interest in ham radio. I have tried the micro controls stuff like the ESP8266 but that isn't for me. I bough my first oscilloscope a few months back that turned out to be dead, ended up scrapping it, but someday I'll save up some money and try getting another one. I was about 7 when I first got interested after seeing my uncle making electronic projects but he was no help, he thought it was funny always telling my wrong stuff when I asked how it worked. I still have to look up how a transistor works every time I build something with one because he told me so many different wrong ways they work. So I went on my own and learned what I know on my own.
Many peeps here in comments were of old days, I am 17 as of now damn people back then are so lucky that interest in electronics sparked at very young age. I do also ripped stuff apart to see how it works (mostly toys such as battery powered toy train, mechanical helicopter. I bought my first breadboard at almost 3$ (struggling that time, I just wanted to get in touch with a breadboard [I live in Philippines so you know]) and my 5$ multimeter both at age 16. My extremely basic electronic tinkering starts from dealing with dead earphone (along with soldering, I wasted ridiculously long time wondering and trying how to stick solder into a headphone wire until I discovered I just have to burn it a little bit) and its not just simple soldering, it was extremely hard it was like a wooden handle 5$ 40w soldering iron with some dumb tip (I dont know about flux or tip cleaner) I also dont have a helping hand that can hold the wires (My hands would go red and hot trying to hold it)
Bit by bit I'm trying to collect the most basic stuff; some couple of resistor and ceramic capacitor, some jacks, arduino kit (thx for my research mates that provided funds to use this for our research thesis project and I now have access to play with this, my poor ass cant afford it)
The modern world disturbs my journey in learning more about electronics but since I subscribed (sept.2021) and watched some video and its inspiring me to continue pursuing to learn
If only the continents in the world are connected to each other (pangaea), electronics hobbyists can meet each other more often
Well yeah Imma stop the comment right here there's a lot more videos to watch from the Legendary Dave
For me since the age of 2 I've had a thing for electricity, when I was 2, I took all the child locks off of the electrical outlets, then at age 4 I found some wires that were exposed in my backyard and got my first shock of 120 volts. Later I had started taking things apart, and I'd do some tinkering, and at one point I was playing around with an electric piano that had a mic input and I was using a broken set of headphones as a mic, and one of my parents friends who was an electrical engineer saw what I did and asked me how I knew a speaker worked the same way as a microphone, and I told him "by experimenting". a few days later a radioshack science fair electronics kit shows up on my porch. I played with the thing a bit, but eventually got bored with it, and it wasn't till a few years later when I became interested into audio gear that I became interested in electronics again, and I soon learned to solder, before long I found myself repairing outlets and switches around the house and then I fixed some more complicated stuff like lighting dimmers. Later I learned I had a huge advantage over most people when it comes to getting shocked, because I had an extremely high body resistance of 5 mega ohms, which allowed me to run 70 volts AC across my chest without feeling anything.
So much this. I remember Electronics Today International, Everyday Electronics etc. We are the fortunate ones because we made the things we wanted & liked it too. If i want an audio amp on a board i can just buy it now.
I wanted a kit, with no luck in 78', I was 15. in 1981 the US Navy had me on the APS-80 Radar Bench Stationed in the Philippines. I was 18. btw the APS-80 has no transistors. Tube city. I'm 58 still no luck on the kit. So… keep it to yourself. Great Show! I know 11yrs ago. (Past Dave)
I grew up in the middle east and started doing the same thing by taking apart all the toys that i had. Parents got frustrated and there were no hobby shops in the emirates so it was hard to learn. Then when travelled back to Pakistan my dad got me an AM radio kit and my mom learned how to solder and thought me how (i was 8 at the time). I had no idea about anything that was happening with the circuits but it was marvelous to make something that worked. The internet was very young then and I was able to get small circuits diagrams but etching was not possible cause those solutions were all banned to civilians. I would save up all the schematics for my summer trip to Pakistan and have my boards made there, bought all my tools as well. Thanks to the exchange rate my middle eastern pocket money could buy a lot of supplies in Pakistan. I then went on to uni in N. America and became a computer engineer and got really into the software side of things. Maybe it was because finding parts and tools was not that frustrating with software. Though now I am primarily into software, i still tinker with electronics when i can. Seeing your vids has got me to start building a small electronics lab again.
Still remember we went to this little shop called the "Elite Kit Center" in Karachi Pakistan that made kits for university courses and technician practice. They probably had over 500 different kits. The walls were littered with them it felt like a toy store but for electronics. Nothing fancy just parts and pcb in a bag and a 2 page instruction sheet. Every year whenever they saw me they would bring me and my mom to the back of the shop get us some tea and start getting things for our order while another guy would see what my current circuit was up to. I even got a PIC programmer in hopes of learning it but man there were no instructions and proper guides. Your blog 2 decades ago would've been amazing hahaa. Man those were some times.
Oh wow, I can so relate to this.thanks for bringing back the memories ! Started electronics in the mid 19-seventies.
I still want to know how EVERYTHING works, that started at age… eeehhh Younger then I can remember.. I still have that and that will never stop. Had the Philips kits with such springs myself at age 12, remember the Tandy / radio shack shop in Gouda-NL and all the weird but interesting stuff they offered, still have that same blue book with designs you showed, my first multimeter was even simpler and very small but looked very like that, was proud having it and used it for everything, had (still have) a library including the tube handbook and transistor reference, build a counter and function generator.
One birthday present I once asked for when young was … a single power transistor ! (Parents were totally confused but I told them, they could buy it at that TV repair shop at the corner). Nobody even in remote family did anything with electronics, for my parents it was magic. Specially when I did light a non-connected TL tube in an dipole antenna and 100MHz transmitter and moved the TL through the room once it was lit dimming it with the power control. Could not afford the magazines, so read them in the library. Build pirate radio stations with tubes and transistors, just for the fun and experiment. Wiring an electromotor made from metal from old tin cans. Guess many here did that. Repaired the old tube-based radios and TVs for fun building own tools like a neon lamp on an isolated stick to verify the high voltage being present.
Learned everything about everything electronics in these years and that got me my income through life and invaluable insight in everything electronics, analog, digital, RF and even embedded software. Repaired electronics, was an FAE, started my own company and the broad insight I gained in my hobby years now seems quite unique and was.. and still is.. the basis for my succes. Can now retire early because of it :-).
Again, thanks for sharing it, I notice very many here can relate.
I'm a 90s kid from India and still I had the same journey towards the field of electronics….
Fell in love with electronics bcs how gadgets work fascinated me
I used to take electronic things apart, save pocket money-gift money to buy my first soldering Iron at an age of 9yrs and multimeter at 10
My parents always encouraged me , bought me electronics magazines…
And that passion drew me electronics till date
I graduated with Electronics degree , I did masters in electronics and communication ….
All with gold medals because for me electronics came naturally..
And now working as a government engineer officer in field of electronics…..
And I still take out time to do my own projects….
Thanks Dave for sharing your story…
"1000 BGA's on frying pans in the kitchen"
I laughed so hard on that one, had to reflow a couple ps3 that way.
Awesome summary, My first project was at about 5 years old late 60’s hooking up batteries, switches and light bulbs then pulling things appat but no supporting system that I could grow my curiosity. For that reason I probably wouldn’t want to relive that time and prefer the 80’s
I am from India, am 21 started electronics when i was maybe 11 or 12 trust me in 3rd world countries i still can't afford an oscilloscope though i used to save for stuff exactly like you did still do.
Thanks for sharing your story Dave. Mine was pretty similar. First a crystal radio, thereafter I received a 10 in 1 Tandy electronics kit at the age of 13 (1973/74) – much later I received a 100 in 1 in a beautiful wooden box and the rest is history.
What English accent is his? It sounds very high pitched. I am just curious.
This was how I got started tinkering with electronics. This is like watching my life history. Saving money to buy a nice meter to replace the last one that got the smoke let out, spending hours at a time in radio shack. I'm 10 years older than Dave, so in the late 70s, I was bitten by the computer big. Having a commodore Pet or TRS-80 was absolutely out of the question, but my parents did get me a Cosmac Elf kit to put together. Still have it. It's something I will never part with. Also have a wooden boxed 150 in 1 science fair kit too, with the book. Still have old magazines, Forest Mims books and some old data books. Waiting for the next issue of electronics magazines was painful.