[sdiy] Way OT - Who's the oldest?

[groovyshaman]

As a kid I always was taking crap apart and usually never able to get it 
back together, and I've always loved music.  In 6th grade a friend of 
the family invited me to check out a ham club.  I had found this old 
Viking transmitter with BIG tubes (==cool) at the dump so I brought it 
for show and tell and powered it up, and basically it blew up 
spectacularly in front of everyone.  Didn't really want to learn code 
anyway (boring) so I quit that.  Bought a subscription to Popular 
Electronics, salivated over the Altair projects, liked it so much I 
renewed it for the next 6 years.  Made my first PCB in 76, a fog horn or 
some such noisemaker, built into a coffee can.  Nearly went blind from 
the arc-lamp used to develop the photo-resist but I learned how to do 
it.  Built my first "synth" in 77 on solderless breadboard in a small 
rat shack project box, SN76477 based.  I actually still have it but the 
connections are shot and now its more fun to shake it to make noises. 
Model rockets competed for scarce $$ in 78-79 so not much electronics 
there, but in 80 I helped a friend build a GR2000 TV; that was COOL and 
stayed with me.  In 81 as an intern at Perkin-Elmer I built an Atomic 
Spectrometer burner control box running embedded basic (yikes!) and blew 
up a burner head when I didn't reduce the nitrous flow correctly 
following a power off/reset condition.  Ok that's not electronics but 
I'm proud of that one. (actually I think we fixed that with a bigger cap 
to hold the acetylene solenoid open longer)  Didn't do much electronics 
related from about 81 until 2001 when I started building MOTM synth kits 
and building my book library.  I also started to hit ham swap meets and 
picked up a Tek mainframe scope and other odds and ends for cheap.  I'm 
still in serious learning mode when it comes to DIY but I am having 
serious fun.  This list has been a major source of that learning for 
which I'm appreciative.  Oh, and I'm 46.

George Kisslak
Danbury, CT
USA