I started in Amateur Radio in the 7th grade, attended a military tech school, and got an associates degree in electronics from a private tech school as well, all before going to and graduating from a 4 year college. So, I'm a long time electronics nerd, having burned a lot of solder in my life designing, building and repairing various circuits.

Prior to the 555 timer chip, it used to take an entire circuit board of components. Building a timer circuit utilizing a 555 timer was my first experience with an integrated circuit chip, and I remember wondering what genius had come up with it.

Hard to look back now and remember how amazed those of us were when these marvels first appeared. I remember calling a co worker over to look at the circuit saying "can you believe you can buy this chip for 50 cents?" Later versions cost about half that..

NMG -- similiar experience here. I still have on my bookshelf at home a book called "TTL Cookbook" i bought in 1974. It had descriptions of several chips that I thought were just the most amazing things ever. There were chips with 4 flip-flops (wow!), op amps, timers, various gates, etc. I used to buy them at Radio shack and breadboard them for fun. I never built anything really practical, but it was fun as hell making LEDs turn on and off and watching predictible outputs from forcing gates into alternative states. I had a blast.

Simple things for simple minds, i guess. LOL

same thing here Goatman.. us oilfield folks..

Wow, the TTL Cookbook reference definitely takes me back (even STILL use it for some things since TTL circuits/components tend to be "hardier"). My favs (in no particular order) are the 555, 6502, Z80, 741, and CCD but that's probably more indicative of my requirements/hobbies (and to some extent, my 'era').

I'm often amazed that just one of today's "simple" config files requires MUCH more memory than was available (at ANY cost!) to implement entire programs back then. The joy/thrill of saving a few lines of assembly code through some clever use of POP SHIFT has been diminished by the incredibly low "cost per K" for memory now.

BTW, good eye CalifChris for this 'cater to Geeks' thread!

Microchips isn't that what Elves eat and REALLY short short people??

While I never got into the circuit building myself, my step-dad (Electrical Engineer with a Masters degree) did. I thought it was pretty cool.

The closest I got was Z80 assembly. Learned it from a book on 8080/8085 processing. I had to use the TRSDOS Debug utility and Memdump to make an executable, but the knowledge I picked up on file format structures and binary math is still useful to me today since programming is still a hobby of mine.

I would love to get an EEPROM writer and have a go at circuit building some time. I already have an idea for something that would be quite useful.

Come to think of it, I did make speaker system that used a laser as a trasmitter between the stereo reciever and the speaker about 10 years ago, but that was a relatively easy project. Used a laser pointer with the power leads wired to a headphone jack so the laser pulsed with the sound frequencies. A photosensitive component on the other end caught the pulses and translated it back for the speakers.

I didn't see a real use for it at the time, but it was pretty cool.

My current idea is to use a similar setup with a "Screaming Meanie" alarm clock to make a high decibel laser-tripped alarm system. It would be good for announcing guests stepping onto the porch, young kids go places in the house they shouldn't, scare animals getting on the furniture, or any number of other things. At 120dB the alarm would be loud enough to wake the dead.

YAWN

I developed an interest in electronics at an early age and was dissecting old radios and hifis for speakers and turntables. My folks bought me a Radio Shack amplifier kit when I was 12, assembled it and it worked.

Breathing solder fumes wasn't so much fun tho.

Solder fumes rocked when I was in Electroics class in 9th and 10th grade. I could breathe that in all day long and never tire of it. In fact when a certain George Michael song comes on the radio I can still smell it. NOT because of what the song was saying it was just the one that was played alot in class. Yummmmm

Larry

Larry, solder was made of LEAD. This explains mostly everything about you.

Sorry I don't believe in that Poppycock about Lead. I can understand some people being alergic to it I still feel the "Threat" is overblown like an overblown lead fuse. Bunch of rubbish.

Larry

#11 | Posted by LarryMohr at 2009-05-03 10:39 PM | Reply | Flag: Has a bad case, which explains a lot.

Ummm......you didn't also eat paint chips, didja?

No of course not. Only a fool would eat paint chips. Sides we had no painted rooms in My house. Wood Panelling from floor to ceiling. Thank You very much.

Larry

Just checkin', bro.