[sdiy] Death of DIY?

[Michael Buchstaller]

> It's not like an 11 year
>old could walk into an engineering company and ask for help with a
>transistor circuit...
>
>Actually I DID do that, and the secretary called an engineer (George
>Hoffman, UNICO Inc.) who let me in the engineering lab and helped me get my
>flip-flop to, well, flip-flop. Can you imagine anyone doing that anymore?

I had the same Experience approx. 15 years ago. I went to a computer company
here in munich and asked for help with a transistor circuit for controlling a motor.
(simple bridge, but for 24V/60 Amps).
After some laughing, the senior engineer explained me how to do things, that i
had to limit the inrush current to avoid frying the power transistors every time, and gave
lots of other useful advice.
Two years later, i built an 80 MHz oscillator that was intended to measure short
time intervals by resetting a counter, gating the oscillator pulses into the counter, and
then reading out that counter. Of course, it did not work very well. Again, the people at
that company were very helpfull. I was allowed to use their Scope after working hours
and fix my circuit.

Again, i cannot thank thoes people much enough. (This was PCS computer systems; they
made Motorola-based Unix workstations at that time)

Of course, in the later years many friends and other people asked me for help, and if
i can by any means, i try to do that.
Best if i can make them interested in the techy side of things and teach them at least enough
basics to give them a start.


-Michael Buchstaller