[time-nuts] Help - Hope?

Mike Feher mfeher at eozinc.com
Mon Jan 2 21:23:35 EST 2006


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: time-nuts-bounces at febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces at febo.com] 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 <20060102.141403.105215125.cfmd at bredband.net>, 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.


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