Is the age of Electronics as a hobby falling down?!

[wizard]

Well said cowboybob

Good to see you on Excellent. You deserve it absolutely. A nicer and more worthy person is very hard to find anywhere...

Regards,
tvtech

Yes tvtech, He is.

I can swear that he is one of the best persons I have seen in my life time.
I respect him always and see him as my father! Unfortunately my broken English does not let me to say my real respects to him as he deserves it.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

In some respects, you need mentors or someone that's smarter than you. I helped someone to get over the hurdles so he could make tube amps even though I could not do it. I've learned to fix unfamiliar stuff (scientific instruments) by asking questions.

The Internet, is very powerful to learn how to do things and sometimes it provides a basis of eat problems are common. I would not have guessed that the reson the turn signals don't work sometimes is because of the Hazzard switch. There a youtube videos showing you how to do the replacement.

In my youth, stiff was made from standard parts. Now,a days everything is custom. You may need to buy a refrigerator becase the lamp socket is unavalable or need to buy a new lawn mower because a drive wheel is "unavailable".

It so happens, you need a different kill set and almost access to a machine shop to fix stuff. The obsolete used lamp socket came from ebay. The lawn mower wheel came from a different shop who had access to aftermarket parts.

I repaired a vacuum cleaner, using a local vacuum repair shop because the internet sources DID not have the required part.

I'm in the process of repairing a 40+ old dehumidifier, agian, using the local vacuum cleaner shop. The power cord is really special. It's costing me over $50.00 USD to make a useable power cord. The cord was $15.00 USD, but I need a few parts like teflon wire, fiberglass sleeves and heat shrink to deal with vibrational issues. I'm smart enough to know I need to deal with that. In the process, the all metal dehumidifier will get upgraded to a 3-wire cord.

Building electronics is definately harder now as a hobby. SMT is still very new to me.

Fixing current stuff is nearly impossible. Primarily, because of the lack of information and lack of replacement parts.

 

[throbscottle]

Interesting question, Wizard.

It just happens that today I saw this on slashdot: https://slashdot.org/story/13/07/12/0334244/electrical-engineering-labor-pool-shrinking

I wonder if by "electrical engineers" they also include electronic engineers? Kind of relevant, don't you think?

I would speculate that this shrinking pool of EE's is a direct result of electronics declining as a hobby - as someone else mentioned, kids get into programming now - maybe it's more "glamorous" whereas electronics was where the glamour was when I was a kid. I dunno. Not to mention, programming is a lot more accessible

I also read this - don't know if it's relevant: https://news.slashdot.org/story/13/...-with-students-until-they-realize-theyre-hard

When I went to college years ago, I did a City & Guilds course in electronic servicing (though I didn't finish). You could also do HNC and HND college courses in electronics. I presume there were also degree level courses. I was looking to possibly re-educate myself and go back to college if I could find a suitable electronics course - but they don't exist anymore! What we have now are general engineering courses, which also include electronics. To my mind that means you have to go to college for a lot longer and study things which you aren't necessarily interested in if you want to gain a formal qualification which /includes/ electronics. Crazy - but I suppose the people who design the courses know what they are doing, since what I trained to do (domestic TV/radio repairs) doesn't exist anymore. It's all board swaps now, unless you are working on specialist stuff I suppose.

Someone else mentioned Radio Shack. Long gone from the UK - I think they shut up their shops here about 1999. A sad loss - they may have been expensive but they were certainly convenient.

Also, take Maplin. They started out as a mail order business which primarily supplied components to hobbyists. Now everyone has a Maplin shop within easy reach, and they sell mainly gadgets. Don't ask a Maplin sales monkey for advice about a component, they just don't know.

In today's world, sadly, electronics = gadgets and appliances in most peoples minds, and these devices tend to pretty much monolithic slabs with most of the functionality in a single slab of silicon, not really things you can tinker with unless you are far more knowledgeable than the average hobbyist.

Then you get the wannabes who think they can hack their gadgets Disney style without even the basic knowledge, then get discouraged because they discover it's hard - another loss to the hobbyist community. Though credit where it's due, some of them succeed.

Anyway, rant over. Thanks for the interesting question

 

[audioguru]

Hi Uncle $crooge,

I respect to you and to your posts here. But are you interested in electronics as a hobby yet?

My entire career was in electronics and it has been and still is one of my hobbies.
I design electronic circuits, improve other people's circuits and fix some.

 

[Val Gretchev]

I think you are asking me how my career went after the era of big computers.

I was lucky. In 1970 they asked me to join a team of engineers at the IBM Laboratory to work on the Bank of Montreal project. This was long before the Internet and if you put money into a bank branch, you had to go to that branch to take money out. We take it for granted today that a bank’s branches are all connected together and you can deal with any branch no matter where in the country it is located. The bank of Montreal started the ball rolling and asked IBM to supply the system and implement a country-wide network. IBM had the computers but they didn’t have the bank terminals. I ended up taking over the design of the terminal control unit and implemented all of the logic circuits.

I then stayed in the lab until 1980 designing more systems. I did an off-track betting terminal and control unit for Australia, ticket terminal for Brazilian Airlines, did microcode speed improvements for the System 370 Model 155 mainframe, and designed a small computer for controlling machines used in silicon wafer processing of integrated circuits for logic and memory chips (picture below) in IBM’s own manufacturing facilities.

I worked my way up through the ranks of engineering from Associate Engineer to Advisory Engineer. In 1980 I started to feel institutionalized (knowing how to navigate in only one company and ignoring the greater world outside). An opportunity came up for me to participate in a management role to start up a new company using a large sum of government money. I became a manager of a team of engineers engaged in the design and manufacturing of high speed non-impact printers based on ion deposition technology.

In 1990 I moved to another company where I managed a team of engineers and scientists in designing an elemental mass spectrometer. This was probably the most exotic piece of equipment I have ever worked on. I managed the budget, schedule and company resources and I performed all the personnel functions for the engineers such as skills development, performance reviews, education and training, and I attended all the trade shows and assisted in the sales of the product.
In 1999 I moved to Vancouver to manage a team of engineers engaged in the development of printers that made master printing plates for the newspaper industry.

After 20 years in management, I decided to get back into hardware design. Luckily, while I did my management job during the day, I stayed current in electronics development on my own time and was able to switch horses in mid stream.

I retired in 2004 and moved back to Ontario where I am still designing custom products for small volume production.

 

[tvtech]

I think you are asking me how my career went after the era of big computers.

I was lucky. In 1970 they asked me to join a team of engineers at the IBM Laboratory to work on the Bank of Montreal project. This was long before the Internet and if you put money into a bank branch, you had to go to that branch to take money out. We take it for granted today that a bank’s branches are all connected together and you can deal with any branch no matter where in the country it is located. The bank of Montreal started the ball rolling and asked IBM to supply the system and implement a country-wide network. IBM had the computers but they didn’t have the bank terminals. I ended up taking over the design of the terminal control unit and implemented all of the logic circuits.

I then stayed in the lab until 1980 designing more systems. I did an off-track betting terminal and control unit for Australia, ticket terminal for Brazilian Airlines, did microcode speed improvements for the System 370 Model 155 mainframe, and designed a small computer for controlling machines used in silicon wafer processing of integrated circuits for logic and memory chips (picture below) in IBM’s own manufacturing facilities.

I worked my way up through the ranks of engineering from Associate Engineer to Advisory Engineer. In 1980 I started to feel institutionalized (knowing how to navigate in only one company and ignoring the greater world outside). An opportunity came up for me to participate in a management role to start up a new company using a large sum of government money. I became a manager of a team of engineers engaged in the design and manufacturing of high speed non-impact printers based on ion deposition technology.

In 1990 I moved to another company where I managed a team of engineers and scientists in designing an elemental mass spectrometer. This was probably the most exotic piece of equipment I have ever worked on. I managed the budget, schedule and company resources and I performed all the personnel functions for the engineers such as skills development, performance reviews, education and training, and I attended all the trade shows and assisted in the sales of the product.
In 1999 I moved to Vancouver to manage a team of engineers engaged in the development of printers that made master printing plates for the newspaper industry.

After 20 years in management, I decided to get back into hardware design. Luckily, while I did my management job during the day, I stayed current in electronics development on my own time and was able to switch horses in mid stream.

I retired in 2004 and moved back to Ontario where I am still designing custom products for small volume production.

I am blown away.

Thanks for posting here Val. I am sure we can learn lot's from you

Regards,
tvtech

 

[Brian Griffin]

Many years back I used to see tons of electronic hobby kits sold. Mini DIY-clocks, seven-segment counters, mini-games, mini LED roulette and stuff. My father used to fix radios and TVs (he has that certificates, earned them by taking night classes many years before I was born) and saw him doing that. Plus, my curious mind made me check out on those Life Sciences books where I could construct those astable multivibrator circuits using a plastic terminal block, and the electronic components left by my uncle after his radio repair store got razed down.

I did a lot of messing around with those, but in a limited time due to the demands of an Asian family (studies come first). However, I still managed to make time learning programming and electronics.

When I have that Pickit 2 for my birthday gift, there the spark went, I experiment more with electronics and programming. I admit it isn't a long way, but I'm still learning and reading tons of stuff despite not being in EE background (I'm from Biomed Engineering).

 

[tvtech]

Many years back I used to see tons of electronic hobby kits sold. Mini DIY-clocks, seven-segment counters, mini-games, mini LED roulette and stuff. My father used to fix radios and TVs (he has that certificates, earned them by taking night classes many years before I was born) and saw him doing that. Plus, my curious mind made me check out on those Life Sciences books where I could construct those astable multivibrator circuits using a plastic terminal block, and the electronic components left by my uncle after his radio repair store got razed down.

I did a lot of messing around with those, but in a limited time due to the demands of an Asian family (studies come first). However, I still managed to make time learning programming and electronics.

When I have that Pickit 2 for my birthday gift, there the spark went, I experiment more with electronics and programming. I admit it isn't a long way, but I'm still learning and reading tons of stuff despite not being in EE background (I'm from Biomed Engineering).

You know what Brian...I like you. You are honest. You are not scared to share your life experiences with us here...great stuff

+1 okay ?

Regards,
tvtech

 

[Brian Griffin]

You know what Brian...I like you. You are honest. You are not scared to share your life experiences with us here...great stuff

+1 okay ?

Regards,
tvtech

Hello, thanks for that.

Back in the late 90s, we have a lot of good stuff hanging around in nearby electronic stores. Those days the fascination with astable multivibrators, 555s and logic gates were the thing. I was quite obsessed with electronics during the younger days, back then even I was found drawing myself cool gadgets like personal organizers. (My pa bought a Casio Digital Diary back in his training days in US, runs off from three CR2032, and that was the wow-factor back then). How could a small thing with a QWERTY keyboard, a reminder, world clock, phone-book were all inside? Iomega Zip was cool, but never owned it. I used to day dream about having that Pentium 233 with MMX back then too, which in there was something like that premium-grade Alienware PC. As a kid, growing up in a very strict parenthood is kinda tough, so I kept myself mostly out of trouble. A phone call from a teacher from school is no good news, so I have to keep my standards - at least no breaking stuff at school.

Plus, my interest of electronics fuelled by one of my friend who is my neighbour too. On times I would visit his home, and play PC games on it, and saw his storeroom chock-full of circuit boards, and a table full of electronic components. His pa was a service technician, repairing computers, arcade games, TVs and stuff. He was knowledgeable and he thinks quick. I was wanting to have all his knowledge, and I was pretty amazed by his desk (up to that part Diablo on PC wasn't interesting anymore) Sadly, they were having a lot of family problems, and their inter-family turmoil was neverending. 12 years later, I have never seen them anymore.

Some years later, when I got my K6-2 PC (all my pa could afford, I apologize to him if I was a jerk in front of him begging to replace that clunky 486 PC that won't play 240p movies), I got into programming. That time Counter-Strike was the thing on that planet, and again, strict parenthood had reminded me not to hang out in cybercafes, so I used to play with bots (artificially controlled players) in that game. Guess what? I was intrigued. I wanted to write my own bots, and gave me more reason to learn up stuff. I didn't care much if my friends were calling me a jerk for not joining them. It wasn't important anyway.

So, my pa got me a book in C++. That 24-days one. Yep, I cruised to where I got stuck - Pointers. I was 14 when I did learn C++ by my own. I kept on experimenting on making my own program to work, stack overflow, blue screens, stack underflow, crash and crash and crash. Then again, academic obligations kept me out from learning programming, for another 5-7 years. My study life didn't go too well during that time (don't want to explain it here), therefore I had to put off that obsession.

Much later when I finally got into an engineering faculty, my parents have stopped monitoring me too much as I was already 21. As usual, I'm not a brightest kid in the college, but I have to struggle. It was rewarding, whatever I learned in my teenage days, I didn't have to struggle in the programming semesters. I spent my semester breaks rereading the electronic books, the op-amps, and experimenting it. That time, finally, more of these electronics are available to be purchased on the 'net, and I have my first bank card. So, I ordered a bag of components and proceed to knock myself out experiemnting.

In late 2008 I got a Pickit 2 and some other stuff for my birthday. There it went again, how I could be so much excited writing in assembly, and have the first blinking LED. Then, how to change the blinking speed, how to read buttons and how to make the microcontroller to sing its first Christmas tune. Plus my music education for 11 years had drove me to write microcontroller programs which... plays music.

I did wrote a tutorial in a local electronic magazine and it was the last publication, sadly. But I did still publish some more of it at the online site.

I was never that satisfied until now. I had experimented with HC11, PIC16-18F, PIC24-33 and PIC32. Later if I have the time, it's assembly on the Cortex M3.

Sorry for the lengthy explaination. It was the age of electronics, but only in the late 90s. I don't see much of it now - except tablets, tablets and more Angry Birds. Not much imagination left, so I have to think hard how to get these days back.

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

Val

I was blown away too. Mass Specs are cool. Some of these semingly complex devices are fairly simple, Scanning Electron Microscopes (SEM). X-ray diffraction, RF sputtering, DC sputtering. The older technology systems are far easier to fix. I once maintained an SEM from the 80s tat was built almost entirely from 741 OP amps.

I did see early laser printer and voice recognition research being performed. I also saw a votrax keyboard, which had phonemes on it for voice synthesis. Mid 70's, I would guess. The typesetter was probably something like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CAT_(phototypesetter) I also saw early drum scanners/

But disk drives the size of washing machines still baffle me.

 

[debe]

The age of repairing electronics (TV VCRs Microwave ovens) for me here in Australia is prety mutch over. Since Digital TV is here & replacement items are so cheap. Currently in the process of throwing out nearly 40 yrs of workshop manuals & parts that will now nolonger be of any use. Its time to move on, but still very interested in electronics so will be keeping all the acumulated test equipment.

 

[Val Gretchev]

The typesetter machine is shown in these pictures from the sales literature. A very accurate linear actuator is used along with an air bearing motor that rotates a prism. The laser beam is created in a sealed environment that is temperature controlled. High precision is important when trying to achieve this printer resolution. The trick is to design it in such a way that manufacturing can duplicate these machines for mass production.

 

[Val Gretchev]

More pictures from a long time ago.

This installation was at Ontario Hydro in the late 1960s. It was their corporate computer that did payroll, printed customer bills, and performed all other company functions.

Ontario gets a big percentage of electrical power from nuclear facilities. They use the CANDU reactor which uses heavy water as a moderator. The fuel bundles are depleted unevenly depending on where in the chamber they are located. A robot shuffles them around to get consistent fuel depletion.

One of the critical uses of this computer was to run a program to determine how to shuffle the fuel bundles according to some algorithm.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CANDU_reactor

 

[fezder]

The age of repairing electronics (TV VCRs Microwave ovens) for me here in Australia is prety mutch over. Since Digital TV is here & replacement items are so cheap. Currently in the process of throwing out nearly 40 yrs of workshop manuals & parts that will now nolonger be of any use. Its time to move on, but still very interested in electronics so will be keeping all the acumulated test equipment.

i'm not sure is this appropriate, but i would be interested of those manuals and such ....do you have any stuff left that could be useful?

 

[debe]

The service manuals have already gone to the paper recyclers, & parts to the scrap yard. Realy did need to get rid of the clutter.

 

[ronv]

Here is a picture of me with one of my first computers in 1967. They occupied an entire floor of an office building. I used to install these monsters and fix them when they broke down. Now I build much more powerful machines on a 4" x 3" board.

Boy does that picture bring back memories. I designed disk and tape drives for IBM mainframes for many years. I remember the first disk drive I worked on - 100 megabytes, about $25,000. About the size of a dishwasher. The last one I worked on for PC's was 3 1/2 inch 500 gig for about $100 retail.

 

[fezder]

The service manuals have already gone to the paper recyclers, & parts to the scrap yard. Realy did need to get rid of the clutter.

ah, i see

 

[throbscottle]

Loving the story swaps - keep it up guys!

 

[fezder]

too bad if this hobby is dying out, just found this hobby, very entertaining and educating!

 

[cowboybob]

Not so much as dying out as evolving...