memories (was: RE: Pretty quiet around here lately)

[Doug Tymofichuk]

Ha! At least you didn't have to smelt your metals in a 
furnace hand made from clay you gathered yourself, using 
ore that you mined yourself with bare hands from the base 
of cliffs, and wood and coal that you 
gathered/mined/split/ignited with your bare hands like I 
had to. And that was before I developed opposable thumbs on 
my hands!  ;-)

On Wed, 05 Apr 2000 09:23:06 -0700 Greg Montalbano 
<Greg.Montalbano at ucop.edu> wrote:

> Awww, you kids were spoiled.... back in MY day, we didn't 
> even have solder -- had to melt two components together 
> over an open fire. Tools?  WE couldn't afford tools;  had 
> to bite pieces of metal with our teeth.  And WIRE??? WE had 
> to stretch our OWN wire from old bits of junk copper.....
> 
> 
> >	>So if you start like I did, a broke teenager who wants to
> >	>build some synth modules, you'll have a much easier
> >	>time today than in 1970. I could not get perf board,
> >	>so my first synthesizer was made on unperforated
> >	>phenolic board, and the component holes drilled one
> >	>at a time for each component. Suffice to say, things
> >	>are a lot better today.
> >
> >For me it was 10 years later (around 1980), but "broke 
> teenager" >would be a perfect description as well.
> > >CA3080 ? Too expensive. Started to explore discrete 
> transistors >(often unsoldered from broken HiFi stuff) for 
> VCAs instead. >
> >Veroboard was unreachable for me as well. I made my 
> first >PCBs with thick enamel paint and a tiny brush on the 
> raw copper, >and got the right chemicals somewhere to etch 
> the boards. >(After getting *very bad* results with nitric 
> acid - which I >stupidly thought the only acid to bite 
> copper (;->)  ) >
> >And then I remember I had the whole layout in mirror 
> image >rather than right. Helped myself by bending all the 
> opamp's >pins upward and soldering the ICs in bottom up. 
> (Ouuuch - not >recommended !)
> > >Those were the times in a little German town without a 
> proper >electronics shop ...
> > >JH.
> > >

----------------------
Doug Tymofichuk
dougt at cancerboard.ab.ca