Old Computer Collecting vs Electronics Building - test-drb@ccmp.vtda.org

2 Feb 2006

This is good news, and I would very much like to be wrong on this! But I
see it at hamfests, swapfests, etc. where people who are selling
components, kits, etc. designed for the homebrew projects. The TRW
swapmeet in El Segundo, CA has gone from a great source of "good stuff"
to more cheap tools, computers and parts, and a lot of other things
unrelated to electronics. BTW, buys there by myself and others include a
lot of classic computer stuff including S-100 cards, DEC stuff, Imsai,
Alpha Micro, Atari 400/800 computers, Cosmic Elf, Popular Electronics
including the Jan/Feb 1975 Altair issues, and the list goes on. Now, it
is rare to find anything classic computer related or the parts to build
stuff with.

What are the right places to look (excluding online Internet sites)?

...
      I disagree with this quite a bit.  There are
plenty of projects out 
 there people are doing.  I see lots of stuff on hackaday.com, 
 avrfreaks.com, people in the Microchip forums, homebrew CPUs, etc.  
 There's no loss of desire at all.  Sure, maybe it's not all built of 
 TTL, but so what?  TTL is slowly going away (IMHO), in favor of micros, 
 FPGAs, and PLDs.  To say the interest in building skills is waning just 
 says to me you're not looking in the right places.

     --jc

 On Thursday 02 February 2006 04:12 pm, Marvin Johnston 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. 