[sdiy] Death of DIY?

[Paul Schreiber]

<<note: I am an old fart>>

The slow death is due to several factors, including:

a) lack of the great "gee whiz!" factor in people under 30yrs old. I think many of the DIYers
were in grade school in 1970 at the height of Moog Mania. A nice stereo was 8 months of saving
(only doctors and RICH PEOPLE had credit cards). Ham radio was still a large DIY community.

b) affluent parents. All you young pups have computers by the time you are 12yrs old. You are so
ingrained with Nintendo/PS/etc that you can't even comprehend an Evans & Sutherland graphics
cabinet that used to cost $1.3million, and have LESS power than a GeForce2. You get cell phones,
MP3 players ,and cracked copiesof  Reason. The parents of us old farts had NOTHING. You had to
EARN (gasp!) money, and at $1.25/hr DIY was looking good. I was estatic in1977 when I gota job
for $4/hr and could send Digikey like $15/month for parts to build Electronotes circuits.

c) lack of patience. Stuff doesn't work, and you are actually better off to fix it. There is one
WONDERFUL thing about eBay: it totally destroyed the 1980-2000 era of rip-off test equipment
dealers. Tek 465s for $150? GET ONE!! Put it on Daddy's VISA card :)  A friend just bought a
$3400 HP freq counter (new in 1985) for $45 and it works *perfectly*. Pre-eBay, I personally
spent over $46,000 on test equipment. The *exact same* equipment today on eBay is roughly $2,000.

Paul S.