2 Feb
2006
2 Feb
'06
2:51 p.m.
Marvin Johnston <marvin at rain.org> wrote:
One thing I've been concerned about for a while is
what seems to be the
lack of electronics building skills. *My* feeling is the desire to work
on this stuff is going away and I'm not sure why. I DO NOT BUY the
argument that components are so small now that nobody can build or hack
equipment anymore as I view that more of an excuse for not building.
It also seems that most (not all) of the people I know that collect
computers now (and used them in the 70's and early 80's) are fairly
competent at working on electronics.
Are kits at all desireable to build by newer entries into electronics
and computers? Or existing builders?
There are a lot of things to build that are not "computers" in the
box-that-sits-on-a-desk-with-disk-storage-and-CRT-and-keyboard realm,
but are interesting electronics.
Lots of fun is to be had playing with microcontrollers for all sorts of
purposes.
Analog computers are always imminently hackable. Try building a circuit
for integrating the Lorentz equations for example. Turn a knob, and you're
tweaking the constants!
At the anti-digital end, some of us are still building radios with tubes
and coils :-).
I'm not going to say that there is no computer stuff to be built,
I'm just saying that many of us have been there, done that, and now
choose to do other things which we find more fulfilling.
Tim.