30 Jul
2004
30 Jul
'04
9:52 a.m.
[The Voice of the Crystal amd Instruments of Amplification]
They sound interesting. I'll see if I can find a
couple of copies. You
They are still in print AFAIK. I got mine from Camden Miniature Steam
Services in Rode (near Bath, England). I assume you can get them in the
States.
might be intersted in this site
<http://home.earthlink.net/~lenyr/index.html>. He's build a lot of odd
electronic devices including Tunnel Diodes using the zinc coating on
galvanized sheet metal and borax rectifiers.
Thanks, I will take a look.
Same with the devices on the website that I pointed
out but still it's an
interesting education into what can be done with simple materials and the
characteristics some materials that we seldom use any more.
Exactly.
So do I but I have to draw the line somewhere and I
just choose not to
spend time on readily available devices. I'd rather spend it on something
It depends. If I think I can build a 'better' device than the one I can
afford commerically, then I build it. If I think I'm going to learn
something useful, then I build it.
Sometimes I do actually buy a modern device, but it has to be well made
(that's non-trivial to find these days ;-(), it has to be repairable, and
it has to work properly. Quite a few modern devices fall down on all 3
points!
like the homemade tunnel diode where I'll learn
more than I would bulding
EPROM programmers. I've build the programmers and frankly I didn't learn
much from it but maybe that's because I've done a LOT of work in digital
electronics.
You or I probably wouldn't learn much from building a programmer (and
actually, the only reason _I'd_ build a programer would be to get one
that actually worked on a computer that I owned, as opposed to an Wintel
box), but for people who've not got the experience, it can be well worth
having a go. Just remmeber that you _will_ destroy a few EPROMs during
testing (I am somewhat proud to say that IIRC I only blew up one chip).
-tony