I just bought myself a couple of Hakko model 850 hot air surface mount soldering stations and various nozzles. It really does make it easy. But, hey, the first things I used to build used tubes, and my first real transistorized project was a regenerative receiver for 10 meters in the late 1950's. One of my first computer related projects did use the TO-3 style transistors from which I built a computer using pairs of the transistors as flip-flops. Used a rotary telephone dial as the input device. Output had to be interpreted from light bulbs in binary. But, this was even before your time Dr. Kirby, so who is to say where we are headed? For better or worse things are different. - Mike
Mike B. Feher, N4FS 89 Arnold Blvd. Howell, NJ, 07731 732-886-5960 -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dr. David Kirkby Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 9:09 PM To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Help - Hope? Poul-Henning Kamp wrote: > In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Magnus Danielson writes: > > >>But to answer your question, younger people is still attracted and there is >>still plenty of people having the right mind for these things around. > > > A major difference for these younger people is that the technology > of today is reverse engineering resistant. True > There is practically nothing to learn today by taking things apart: > you can't see how they work. True On a similar topic, what worries me now is that it will get more and more difficult for hobbiests to build things, now many chips are only available in surface mount. That trend will continue. I can't see too many children being able to build circuits the way I used to, since it will be very difficult/impossible to solder components together. That must have a knock-on effect later in life, since nobody would have taken much interst in electronics as a child, since they were unable to make anything. Perhaps circuits published in magazines will need to use power transistors, just so they are of a size that is practical to construct without specialist tools and skill. Perhaps children of the future will have to build your own 741 out of a bunch of 2N3055's. _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list [email protected] https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list [email protected] https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
