UNSW Talk - How I Became The EEVblog Guy
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- Опубликовано: 11 сен 2024
- A partial extract from a talk I gave at UNSW Sept 2023 about how I went from young hobbyist to the EEVblog guy, plus other mussings and some audience questions.
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Yes, that's exactly how many of us nerds grew up back then. Getting your hands on information was very difficult and costly. I can not even imagine what would have happened if the internet existed back then.
Totally different world.
@EEVblog2 Absolutely. However, it is also possible that the internet would have been a too huge distraction for a lot of us, just leading to nowhere.
I don’t think we would have learned, at least not as deeply as we have. Having the Internet at hand has created 2 generations of people that are unable to think logically or critically. If they can’t find the answer in Google, they’re lost.
Porn we would all forget about nerd things and get addicted to porn. That is what would happen
@@c1ph3rpunk quite that. See my self, I can code but I never learned by hearth a single programming language. Everything I need I look for an example and modify it to my use. Even a basic if statement I usually forgot what is the syntax.
Totally agree - magazines were the best source of info in the 80's and 90's! I would have been on an electronic desert island without them!
I was a kid in a former socialist country in Europe, where HAM radio operators and electronics enthusiasts were the best source and information sharers. Otherwise, it eventually boiled down to magazines and books, especially "western" ones like Elektor, if there was any chance of getting them through expat family, for the luckier ones. On the other hand, sourcing the parts was a major pain, especially for students.
Nowadays, when Dave meets his fellow vlogger and my neighbor @RobertFeranec in Sydney subway, one can be assured that the world has definitely shrunk quite a bit.
At age 34, i'm still just a hobbyist, but my parents could tell a thing or two about me "investigating" most of the electrical appliances in the house when i was fewer than 10 years old.
They still tell the story of not giving me toys, but cables and connectors, old light switches etc, as it would entertain me soo much longer!
This was fun to watch thanks for sharing it. I bet 17 year old Dave would have just laughed if someone had told you back then that one day you would be quite a celebrity in the Electronics Engineering and hobbyist world - the world, not just Australia.
Nearly 60 years ago my uncle got me a 9 transistor radio, quickly got tired of listening to it. So I took it apart, hooked the electrolytic caps to my slot car power supply, they blew up, this inspired me to become a EE. Ended my working carrier designing instrumentation for gas turbine R&D, also developed a method for blowing off engine fan blades.
My uncle-story began when I was 12-13. During a visit to my cousin, I discovered his electronics bookshelf. My pick was a project collection booklet, with schematics, descriptions, and pcb/soldering images. This kickstarted my imagination over what could be possible. Thinking back, it was funny I thought every electronic in the World had a standard (designated) PCB as was in the project book, that one could buy and build whatever one wanted. Even I tried to buy that particular PCB in the component store that I chose to build, a 7W amplifier (of course) based on the TDA810.
My uncle was a hobbyist too. He made a lap counter for racing track cars with photoresistors for the kids (they were girls, so not sure who was the real target), doorbells, and such. We made the PCB by hand and etched it with iron chloride etc.
Later I focused on digital and created cartridge and EPROM burner (ha-ha, burner!) for C64. Bought 2 different electronics magazines for years monthly in my high school time from my pocket money, later Elektor, when it became available in my language.
Before the Internet? Bookstore (new books) mainly. Datasheets? Unavailable to my then-knowledge, only the "standard"-ized ones in books, like lists of diodes, zeners, transistors, digitals, etc. I remember once I spent hours in a distributor office's library when I found them, to browse the databooks, mainly memories, and processors, the 68K, Am29000, and the Intel 186, wanted to build computer of course. (still, but with FPGA)
After (during) the Internet? Just Datasheet-Heaven! Thanks, DARPA!
Later I built some PIC and CAN-based stuff for some (small) industrial applications. The advanced part of the software was written by my friend from the State Pension Office department. He was crazy good, he implemented the CANOpen stack within 2 months in C on PIC, which then was interoperable with Schneider PLCs and LabView.
Analog was (and still is) a blank spot in my not-so-active hobbyist and wannabe semi-professional EE life, and I think this is where I need a more systematic and discovering approach. EEVblog gave me a kickstart here as well. The insights that Dave gave us into different aspects of electronics, from basics to professional electronics are priceless, and we can not be thankful enough!
Yesterday I found the "Electronics Textbook Shootout" video from EEVblog, but there are other good book recommendations on RUclips. I'll pick one and go through it and try to understand it more maturely and organized way, as I suddenly become 50. I'm right before buying my first (proper) oscilloscope. In recent years I learned some physics and fundamental electronics, including electromagnetics, basic(s of) chemistry, and material science, and I'm training in math too. I'll take the LTSpice into my toolbox to see how coherent are the theory and the practice, and I'm going to keep the iron hot, I promise!
Thanks, everyone's Uncle Dave!
Ripper video Dave,
I've been watching you since 2014. Great to hear the full back story.
This is a great video! It is so hard to explain GenX things and stuff to the younger generations. "Why you have so many books?" "Well the information was only on ink on the paper"
I was very similar.. My dad was a broadcast engineer and worked for the local public radio station.. He really got me started into electronics (and mechanics as he did everything) I had the tandy electronic kits - I ate them up. They also has some really good books on how electronics worked.. taking things apart. I now have a degree in electronics, Day job as network admin, and hobby in machining... (I used finger nail polish to make my own circuit boards initially... Then found tandy had dry transfers - that made it so much easier...)
Thank you for great advise. Can you imagine how many unseen projects just wanished because nobody pulished it. How many people put blod and tear to some project and it may end up not finished or whatever.
I had both the 150 in One and 200 in One kits. Bloody good stuff
Yeah me too, cooked every semiconductor in them all
Dude what a journey! I started watching you since video number 12! Absolutely brilliant!
Wow that nostalgia, I remember the 50-in-one and my dad helped me work out how the projects worked, then I got the 120-in-one, I think we went down the chemistry project kits after that man you can't buy those any more! Health and safety lol!
Great Stuff Dave, I started with the Philips EE20 "Electronic Engineer" kit I got for my 10th birthday in 1967, though I had wanted to be a commercial pilot it was Electronics that became the path for my life. Now 67..... Family came to Australia from England in 1970 and Electronics Australia every month was the highlight for each and every month, still have many copies from way back then but most were water damaged stored under my Mum and Dad's house in Alexandra Headlands. First multimeter from the 1972 Dick Smith Catalog (still have that). How many stories could these pre-historic kits and magazines tell!! Later when Byte! came along that (alongside EA) became the mazaine of choice. And I do still have all of those. Thanks for all the great content you have provided these past 10 years, outstandiing!
I'm so glad you posted this, thank you!
Wow, this video was a trip down memory lane. I had all of the tandy science projects as well as a kid. Even spent so much time in the local Radio Shack stores that I knew them better than the clerks. Now I have my own repair shop that was my side hustle, now is my fulltime job. First computer for me was the Commodore 64. Great video Dave.
I was yelling magazines and databooks! I remember being impressed when I asked Moto for programming references for the 6809 and being invited to a local office to pick up my books and chat with one of the local engineers.
Amazing times. Good talk Dave. Great perspective in this one.
Respect Dave
They still had those electronics kits in the 90's as well. They were awesome!
That was beautiful! I follow your channel since years and still can't get enough of your aussie accent :-)👋
This is a familiar story to me but I had a couple of other strong interests that kept me from being all about electronics.
I've identified five steps in technological knowledge and skill development. I'm just putting it out for everyone's consideration.
1. Taking stuff apart to see how it works.
2. Putting stuff back together undamaged.
3. Troubleshooting and repairing. This is where you start to be useful to others and get paid.
4. Modification and optimization of existing designs.
5. Design of useful or entertaining devices and products.
Fascinating! I bought Everyday Electronics magazine and my dad had a stack of Practical Electronics magazines from issue #2. My first Tandy set was a 5 in 1 then I graduated to a 65 in 1. Happy days!
Thanks for sharing your amazing story. I also think you had a great parents, who supported you, recognizing your curiosity with electronics at such an early age.
So many similarities to my childhood in the UK. Electronics kit (mine was like a breadboard, so you could plug components in, very cool). Salvaging parts from junk. Buying magazines, contributing to them. Nerdy. To me electronics was a natural progression from Lego. You've got to just love it.
Jeez Dave, that's almost a parallel to my story.
Did all that stuff, was working at Telecom by the late 70's. Worked at the Radiocom centre in Roma, had some spectacular test gear and tech resources and some very smart people. We had magazine subs to EA, ETI, AEM, SC, Elektor - and Playboy of course. A colleague there had an early Protel - now Altium - version - it's copy protection was a laser burned patch on the floppy disk.
I did almost everything you talked about, my best effort was to design and build a Z80 controlled studio console for the budding community radio station. Advanced audio control with remote VCAs, all soft switching, never faulted. Published an article in AEM for their Amstradder column - I disassembled the Amstrad CP/M 3.0 bios and upgraded it to support double-sided 80 track floppy drives. Wrote a new formatter for it.
Almost retired now but still arm deep in circuit and PCB design.
I remember 3 digit manual phone numbers.
👍Thx a lot for this video. Reminds me of the time when I started with electronics.
Reminds me of my start in electronics, same approach, although not as wild as taking a TV apart. We had 3-4 hobby electronic stores locally to me. Used some stores from magazines such as everyday electronics. Took a break to work with computers but got back into it around 12 years ago. Happy days
Nice talk Dave learnt something
Very impressive! I learned quite a bit. I like - always have a side hustle-
Boing.! Got mine from Tandy here in London, UK. A genuine bloke who tells it like it is, rare these days.
I can absolutely relate to this! You've prompted me to try and find my old 200-in-1 (if my parents still have it!) so that I can get my own young kids to have a go.
This was great. DS funway was a real pivot point in my childhood.
Every time Dave mentions something and then quickly says, "nobody here has used xxxx..." Now I feel extremely old.. =`(
A neighbor in Indiana worked at GE Ken Rad tube plant in Owensboro Kentucky. He gave us kids some CK722 Ratheon transistor to pla with
Love your enthusiasm Dave
I was around 9 or 10 I think and I had taken apart everything never to come together again, save for the TV but I was itchin' for it. My mother is a university professor who had students stuying EE, so she asks one of them if he could show me a couple things and takes me to his dorm, he shows me all sorts of stuff and I cannot get enough of it. So this guy gifts me a breadboard which I still have under my bed after 23 years and it's the quality stuff, some DC motors as I was fascinated with them and couple other odds and ends. I also have a popular science book that makes a very good introdcution to electronics and teaches the essentials and I practically memorized it. So my father takes me to this electronics market and buys me whatever I want. In fact I think I still have a healthy amount of solder wire left on a very, very large spool he bought that day.
Then I start experimenting with transistors thanks to the breadboard, make operational cranes with DC motors etc. To this day the sodlering-iron-shaped burn marks on every single carpet still tell the tale of my exploits as I am damn sure your parents' carpets have them too. Did I pursue my interest in electronics? No. Astrophysics was far more interesting and stimulating. What did I end up as? A conference interpreter, a conference interpreter who repairs his own electronics. Do I regret not becoming an EE? No, not unless there is a scope in my line of sight. It is so hard to explain to other people how marvelous osilloscopes are.
The ability to watch Dave (and also Ben Eater and others) do their thing and explain it in a way that I have never seen another to do is why the internet is the greatest invention of all time. Today kids like us have Dave. I wish I was 10 years old now.
So thank you Dave, on behalf of kids like us.
This pretty much mirrors my journey as well. Got a Radio Shack 101 in 1 spring terminal kit at a farm action when I was a kid, scrounging parts from discarded electronics, and fast forward to today and I'm an Electrical Engineer.
Very interesting! I started out the same way, just a few years later than you and in the U.S.: taking things apart as a kid, 200-in-1 electronic project lab, reading Popular Electronics magazine, buying parts at Radio Shack, and building my own projects. I was more into things like robotics and power electronics. I made an oscilloscope out of an old portable B&W TV and tried to build a rail gun. I did electronics repair, then circuit design, then chip design, then I got more into software, and now I work in EDA.
I've still got my Colin Mitchell books.
I hold them dear to my heart!
It's kinda weird that we can't do that now that everything is online.
This is the story of my life! Grew up with the UK version of the kit, springs joining the parts together, then started to mess about.. what happens if I change this 1k resistor tor 10k? I'm almost 70 years old now, still messing about with stuff (never ever made anything the way it was in the magazine... always had to change stuff to make it work (usually) the way I wanted!)
Dave, do you remember a mail list company called Kit Parts? They had a awesome photocopied type magazine/booklet mail order thing going. It may have been before your starting years though.
Loved Tandy's Electronics, was good place. but yes I have seen myself some fo the old school test equipment, and used some a bit. so I understand what you had to go through.
I was yelling "MAGAZINES" in front of my screen.
Thanks for your story! I'm still using the analog multimeter I bought when I was 10, and changed the battery once or twice.
Great video... thanks for sharing. Brought back memories of how I started. Thought you were talking about me. Taking stuff apart... Tandy 50 in I Kits... Learning through Data Books and Electronic Magazines and so on. Still have a lot of the Magazines. Even got published in Popular Electronics with a Front Page.
Fantastic vid.
I had the 20 in one IIRC, the small version. But started out young as well, seeing as I was always wiring up plugs, seeing as my father was blue green colour blind, which I am not. So working with mains from about 4 or 5, before I was even in school. most memorable was wiring a flourescent lamp starter across the mains, because I wanted to see that glow for longer. Never found the metal cover, or the pieces of the glass, and the dog took an hour or two to come back. But lucky for me we had installed a RCD unit in the laundry in the garage, after wiring it up for power using Pyrotenax cable, and that Australian made unit had both a RCD and a 20 A breaker in it, plus it came with the very important 2 Aus standard plug tops, which were used to wire in the socket in the workshop and the laundry to iron. Safety as my mother was tired of getting shocked from the iron or washing machine.
Also going to replace the fuse elements, using some phone wire "liberated" from the local phone techs, who would always give you a few metres of recovered or offcut cable when asked. Often used to braid ornaments, but I also used it as fuse wire when one melted, and always at night, so we could either have lights, or the telly working, or the stove to have dinner, and buying a card of that wire was going to result in missing dinner or a program, or having the fridge defrost. One for lights, 3 for plugs and 6 for the stove, and put the ceramic holder back into the open socket.
Yes data books, still got them, got lots for free from shops, where they had a few sets, or got new sets and gave away the old ones. Also had a call order at the local shop for ETI, Elektor and Television, not so much the US magazines, way too expensive. Later on the monthly subscription, sending in an envelope with the printed subscription card in it, and using a bank cheque, as the local post office did not support international money orders, due to sanctions. Month o so later you got the first of 12 or 13 magazines in, a week or so ahead of the local CNA ( Central News Agency, a chain now a shadow of it's former self, and now barely clinging on, being basically a shoe phone seller, with the odd card and newspaper in stock) getting their stock. Also reading the magazine in store, to see if it was worth buying for a project, and getting that free SRBP board, still got a few around, though often they were the basis of another project entirely, just using the board to hold parts, and a few dozen cut traces, extra holes or stuff mounted top and bottom in a few layers on it. Yes etched my own boards as well, Letraset, tape and permanent marker, plus the Dalo pen, and even bottles of nail varnish my sisters did not like the colour of.
After studying Mech Eng at Uni, I fell in love with Electronics, made by own circuit boards and drilled them, bit rough but they worked. Built many kits that I had no real use for, just to get some time to do things with my hands. Made FM Bugs after seeing a book around 1993 on them. I still love electronics, and find joy in restoring old 8bit computers and upgrading games consoles and old arcade machines. Just got a 3D printer, so that neatly ties in, as I can make a custom housing, once I learn to use CAD again. Yep, you gotta have a passion for what you do, or why else bother doing it.
Pulling stuff apart and getting things to work... and somehow most items had parts left over that all went back into more projects.
I was a chemistry nerd in the late ‘70s. I would accumulate laboratory glassware and chemicals, you could buy acids from HB Selby if you were over 18. The drug labs spoiled it as you can’t buy anything nowadays.
It wasn’t all pyrotechnics and exciting reactions.
I tried to copper plate my locker key but I used the wrong polarity and dissolved it so it wouldn’t open my locker any more.
same here.... always took appliances apart...got told NOT to bring stuff home from the scrapyard at 7yo.
Same here! I took apart all kinds of things. Parents bought me the 150 in 1. Loved it. I started playing with a TRS80. And did fewer electrical project until much later.
i grew up like this, got my first computer and tried all sorts of -sh!ts- interesting things with it
Thank you for uploading the full talk! I have been waiting for this since you started teasing us with the shorts.
I am still a huge believer that if you really want people to get good in what they do, that have to start messing about before the age of roughly twelve and stick with it.
Do as much in your free time as possible to make great things, whatever that is.
My story is very similar to this one, and people sometimes don't believe me when I say I was making, building and soldering stuff when I was just a kid.
I got an electronics kit at age 9 in 1985 but the manual with all the experiments was missing in the box. Took the toy store three weeks to get a replacement, those were the worst three weeks of my life.
This is brilliant - so good to have an insight
I still have my old Radio Electronics, Popular Electronics, and Elektor, Circuit Cellar magazine collection and a whole bunch of data books.
We didn't get those here in the newagents.
I had a ”Electricity Kit” toy as a child. Every kid should have one.
When I grew up a bit, I used it as spare parts when wiring together my own circuits. Destroyed the kit ofcourse, which I later repaired if I remember correctly.
Also took apart the VCR and got two nice burnmarks poking my finger at the wrong place… learned about capacitors that day.
A great story of how things were in the early days. And you have the personality to avoid being labelled as an old fella stuck in the past ;) My family had an electronics test kit and a chemical version. The chemical one was fun, but it didn't help my grades in Chemistry.
I have no clue who you are, never seen you or a vid or blog before. But this was interesting, especially seeing how passionate you are! thanks
Thanks for the upload
I remember David Reid's etc down near Queen Vic, it was a wonderland. Also remember the 7 digit phone numbers ticking over to 8 in Sydney, I was a signwriter at the time, painting 9s on windows for weeks, real life windows that is, before we had MS Paint.
I had that Exact 150 in 1 kit! And yes exactly for the same reason, I got in so much trouble taking things apart..
had same kind of box as kid, only it was from Philips i believe.
am european so would be logical that we had our own version of this box.
remember you had different sizes, the posh ones even got 200+ projects and a bigger board.
24'000AUD in 1990 would be over 56k in todays money, that's a banger entry level salery at that time.
Ooo - I had that same '200-in-1 Electronics kit' from Radio Shack. Good memories. I also worked in Cochlear implants - Maybe we're long lost clones - ha ha.
The Passion is strong with this one.
Cool story, bro! :)
40 subscribers to begin with, then 1K, then 10K... You got there mighty fast.
I really enjoyed watching your talk Dave, it was sort of a mirror of my life in electronics... I started building Crystal sets back in the late 1940s when I was about 7 or 8 years old... and pulling things apart to see how they worked? not that I could understand what I saw!!! I have been watching you forever it seems... Loved hearing about your background.
I was born in 81 in an East European communist country back then. I’ve shared the same passion with you and truly had the same experiences. I still have the old electronics magazines series and books with electronic parts. Impressive, what a cool childhood I had even in a communist regime. I used and analogue multimeter until I was about 15 :)
OOOOOHHHHH the good old days. I remember them all too well. I repaired my cassette tape recorder also when I was about 7 years old. I used to strip things. I used to push every button I could find including the stop button at a department store which when I got caught got my mother and I kicked out. I think we have a lot in common.
Nice Talk, Dave! I can totally relate with myself... Started at age 12 with electronics magazine kits..First job at a local Apple Service Center.. Graduated in electronics engineering in 2009, hired in a public selection in 2010 for the loacal power utility company... Never actually worked on electronics engineering, but got a lot of experience in telecom and computer networks.
Since pandemic I have a side hustle of automotive electrical repair.... Its funny to see kids that does not know the magazine culture and a Fax machine.. ahaha
Man those 150 projects in 1 kit were awesome, I can still picture those spring connectors vividly in my head. What a blast from the past. Also can't believe nobody had heard of Dave. He's a celebrity. Kids these days, man.
I also started by taking apart anything with a circuit, and later I got one of those electronic kits.
And those magazines was like gold mines.
But I gave up the hobby before I could design my own curcuits and got a MSc degree in mechanics, that never gave me a single job.
At 0:37, that really hit me hard. I was exactly like you-always loved taking things apart to see how they were made and how they worked. The first device I took apart was a VHS/VCR player. I was fascinated by how a simple electric motor could move an entire mechanism, how plastic gears engaged and disengaged with perfect timing, and so on. After my parents got our first Philips Full HD Plasma LCD television in 2006, I would stand behind the TV, looking through the ventilation vents to see the inside. My parents would ask, 'What are you doing behind the television?' and I would just answer, 'I’m trying to figure out how this TV works from the inside.'
That television is still working today. I even dumped the firmware from the TV’s motherboard TSOP48 flash ROM. I love buying broken electronic devices from eBay or finding them in the dumpster, fixing them, and selling them as refurbished on eBay. Now, I’m a 25-year-old tech nerd.
An MS-DOS program that I wrote to provide the functionality of an EP (electrophysiology) lab cardiac stimulator, used to assess arrhythmias amongst other things, is still in use in a reseach/non-medical domain. Without masses of interrupts being generated DOS is able to keep good enough timing, at least at time scales of tenths of a millisecond. The pulses are output via a cheap digital board.
I got an EA subscription for my 10th birthday.
I had the best time of my life running home when the magazines were expected to arrive.
And even more-so when there was an Altronics, Dick Smith or Jaycar catalog attached.
But imagine the disappointment when it was a few days late!
So many parallels in your talk Dave. Practical wireless, elektor and ETI were the mags of choice for me in-the mid 70s. I was also in the back of the TV set from my early teens. No home computers in those days, but I bought a Nat Semi Scamp micro in 76 when I was just 18. Had to travel up to London to visit the electronics stores around the Tottenham Court Rd. Got a job as test engineer designing hardware to test new circuit boards at a multinational computer company and never looked back.
The Radio Shack (Tandy) 50-in-1 project kit was my first intro to electronics, I got so much enjoyment from it! - I also still have a parts-cabinet drawer full of funky 1/2W 10/20% tolerance carbon resistors with short twisted leads that I desoldered from dead TVs back in high school 👍😁
So glad you did this. It's such a cool, and familiar story!
Appreciate you posting this. I was born in the early 80s and my first PC was a Tandy 1000EX
Yeah, people don’t realise how expensive computers were back then. Old desktops and laptops that you can chuck Linux on and make them useable are a dime a dozen these days. I can even pick up Dell/HP Xeon servers at auction for $50.
Fun to see! Had pretty much the same start with electronics. Same period too. Soldering off components off old radios, tv ect. Remember discovering the 555 chip. Had at 14 courses for teachers on that chip. One of my last homeprojects was building pirate FM transmitter. Played puckrock and the piratestation was called (Swedish translation) Capten bearded ass. ”Fortunatly” it was quite bad. So it was very broadband, so no one could miss it. Was fun until the knock of the door.. 😂😂😂
Worked with electronics repairs, Oberhausen of omron notedispensers. Avionics repairs and calibrations. But charger career when repairs went to just swapping circutboards. In mid/late 90ś. If younger gen dosens belive it. We used to spend alot of time repairing pc mainboards! 😅
This looks very much like a local TED Talk :D Thanks for sharing your story, Dave
I remember those electronic "spring" kits at Radio Shack in the 80s. Too young to have the $ to buy one back then, my paper route paid like crap lol
Dave - just watch the lot - you are "me" hero!
Dave rule: 1. Keep Wife happy Rule 2 Unspoken - see rule 1
"Dirt poor" remember that well... as I grow up is "Foot- is-Gray" 🙂
also known as Footscray in Victoria. //Keep up the good work.
This was great, Dave! Thanks!👍
I’m old enough to remember when Dave wrote articles about relationships and finding love. ❤
Back in the early 80's there was sort of a battle between Radio Shack (which became Tandy) and Apple in the emerging personal computer space. This didn't seem to happen in Australia where it seemed to be just Tandy. At least that what it seemed like to be on the other side of the world. I went all the way with Apple....and still am.
Still rockin my Dick Smith soldering iron I got as a teenager, 30 years and many tips later it's still in use.
Reminds me kinda I started getting into Software ... typed on computers at Tandy and Quelle until my parents bought me a VIC-20 ... was the most expensive christmas gift I ever had back then, but it has payed of until today ... so greatful I have the right people at the right time👪
I had a similar start, but never went the academic way. Became a sales engineer in the T&M field. It was a title, but my solid background acquired in similar way to Dave, I was able to sell complicated test equipment in the telecom and aerospace industry. But, yeah, as a 12 years old, got 50 in 1 and 200 in 1 type of kits then the brother in law gave me the same multimeter Dave shows, one Christmas. My brother who was at Marconi back then taught me how to use it, ordered datasheet Cookbooks advertised in Electronics Today or Electronics Now. Working for Future at some point got me into serious studies of parts and EE as a whole. I am 5 years older than Dave but in that era, these were the paths available.
Great to hear your story thanks
Great story. Thanks for sharing.
Altium was acquired by Renesas for ~$70 a share - so moving offshore probably was not a bad idea.
Lionel In the early 1960s had electronic kits
It's amazing that new generation of adults have no idea, like literally no one had any idea of how we spread and accessed information before the internet.
yes, i started working on msdos 5.0, ibm pc dos
Ah yes, magazines and the local (outdated) library were my go-to's. Side hustles like you did, yeah I was beta-testing some software from a clever friend. But all of that is soooooo much harder these days unfortunately. Back then I could create a somewhat useful website and be popular with that, impossible these days as you're no longer anywhere near being "the first". :)
Magazines were the only means to get info for everything, before fast internet became a thing.
And even when internet came about, it took a long time for it to get fast enough to displace/kill magazines, I still remember the crazy days of 56k net speeds, 1 MB of data taking hours to download, so magazines were still popular and safe during those days. Then when ADSL came about, it was the start of the end for magazine companies and beginning of modern Internet like we know it today.
Btw when some magazines that i really liked died, because the teams add to give up making them, it was a very sad day to them and me, for some of us, those magines were very special.
This was quite a similar story of mine from when I was ~6, I also found out that an interest in physics is an ally to us engineers regardless of our field.