30 Apr
2012
30 Apr
'12
11:46 a.m.
On 30 Apr 2012 at 11:24, Rick Bensene wrote:
I built something like this when I was probably
something like 12 or
13 years old. I was purchased at Radio Shack as a kit. It was a four
bit binary counter, with incandescent lights as on the Q outputs,
(though discrete transistor drivers), and a photoresistive cell or
pushbutton switch as the trigger. With the photoresistor as the
trigger, when you waved your hand in front of the photocell, it would
increment the counter, which was pretty cool.
Motorola also offered a bubble-pack of assorted milliwatt RTL TO-100
devices as part of their experimenter's kit line. (Fat chance of
that ever happening again!). The little booklet that came with it
was interesting in that perhaps as many linear applications were
described as digital ones.
--Chuck