[sdiy] Radfio Shack

[Richard Wentk]

At 01:57 21/10/2004 -0400, Colin Hinz wrote:
>On Fri, 8 Oct 2004, Richard Wentk wrote:
>
> > Amateur electronics has been becoming more of a crafts market like amateur
> > furniture design or cabinet making than a mass market hobby. It seems
> > likely this will continue.
>
>That's been the case for quite a while, though, hasn't it? One has to
>only look at the sorts of projects published in the (surviving)
>electronics hobbyist magazines to see this. Prior to sometime in the
>early 1990s or even the late 1980s, there were lots of projects that
>would appeal to the average gadget-fiend-about-the-house. Since then,
>projects have either needed microcontroller expertise, or else have
>been relatively specialized in application.


I think there's still a fair amount of RF hobbyist interest, but it's a 
similar situation. You can buy a microcontrolled base station for less than 
it costs to make one. And building something equivalent to a top line model 
is completely outside the reach of a casual hobbyist.

Still, I'm disappointed that there isn't more interest in microcontrolled 
and DSP based synth DIY. The perception that it *has* to be analogue, and 
it also has to be an analogue copy of an existing module, is holding DIY 
back significantly.

>For over a decade, I subscribed to the Canadian version of Electronics
>Today International. When the magazine finally packed it in around 1992,
>I didn't grieve its passing. Instead, I wondered, "How did they manage
>to hang around so long?"

ETI UK died decades ago, and I buy Elektor maybe once or twice a year now. 
There's a UK company that's been running exactly the same ad in Elektor and 
Practical Electronics for maybe twenty years now. :-)

>Last Sunday, I discovered that two stores which are a short bicycle jaunt
>from home both have good stocks of the CA3080. Germanium diodes, too.

Yes, but what happens when they're gone?

I can imagine in some future world exotic nano-technology giving everyone a 
custom chip fab at home, but in the intervening century or so DIY is going 
to have to deal with the problem that these parts just don't exist any more.

Richard