I made many circuits that looked something similar to that photo above in my post-secondary schooling, I am an Electronics Technologist by trade after all. Most were not quite that involved, but in my analog design course we created a complicated chain of signal conversions that went from I think 0-10V to 4-20mA to frequency modulation back to 0-10V. It was a lot of fine tuning of all those conversions to get perfectly 0-10V in and 0-10V out with a bunch of mess in the middle
We did PCB milling as well, but with software and a little CNC milling machine. Built our own PIC microcontroller programmers on the milling machine, I still have mine, but have probably lost the software to use it some time ago.
In high school I had a basic electronics course as well, where we did some acid etching. It wasn't that fancy, we literally just drew on the copper with a sharpie and then dunked it in acid. The sharpie is enough to protect it and make useful traces.
I still use those breadboards. This project was on one last week. It's a dual-axis camera slider controller and it looked like a huge mess until I mounted it all up.
When I went to school we had to build a tube intercom as a project. I learned computer logic with a transistor based training computer like this that used core memory. For the course final they disabled 3 transistors and gave you a program that you had 2 hours to get running.
We had to make circuit boards with tape and drill holes then etching when I was in tech school - got through basic & industrial electronics then tried going for advanced math/electronics at night school while working a menial factory job in the carpet industry and fell out because they could not teach me what I could do with this knowledge nor demonstrate a use for it while I was young and I wanted to get out into the world and explore and make money and navigate my existence on my own (and afford chasing girls and cars).
Got into commercial/industrial building maintenance and electro-mechanical-pnuematic control systems then into DDC and wound-up in management for a controls manufacturing company then into consulting then covid pushed me out of the employment arena due to the constraints and funding issues that ensued after 45 years.
Dad was involved with the aviation industry as a Canadian technology contractor/technician and spent most of my childhood in SE Asia supporting the VN war and retrofitting military aircraft with what would eventually become today's flight recording black boxes and taught me how to read simple electrical schematics and about electromagnetism stuff by the time I was 6 YO.
Left home at 17 and somehow managed to apply myself sufficiently to retire at 62 - military school at 14 YO didn't hurt me one bit, either.
OK - back to the subject concerning good deals . . .
@Tom_S said:
Ron - did she smack you with a ruler if you didn't complete the task?
And I don't think the name they used for that machine would get the green light these days!
She was just in the picture I ran across. She was the first person with a PHD in computer science in the US and founded a computer science program at a college here in Iowa.
From Wikipedia: Mary Kenneth Keller, B.V.M. (December 17, 1913 – January 10, 1985) was an American Roman Catholic religious sister, educator and pioneer in computer science. She was the first person to earn a Ph.D. in computer science in the United States. Keller and Irving C. Tang were the first two recipients of computer science doctorates (Keller's Ph.D. and Tang's D.Sc. were awarded on the same day)
All of my instructors were male as were all my classmates. I'm one of the few people in the world that can say they graduated from Iowa State University at age 19.
I had a sister Mary. Ruler on your knuckles or yard stick on your butt. We had to clean chalkboard erasers by slapping them together after class. I still remember our duck and cover drills. My mother said I could count to 10 in 6 languages, but I don't remember that.
I never attended schools that were affiliated, but my Irish grandmother on my moms side made sure we had our share of corporal punishment. Funny story (not necessarily funny 'hahaha') was I was born and baptized Catholic. My father comes from an Irish protestant family. When I was 8, we left the Catholic church and that was quite the scandal. I had no idea why there was such tension at family gatherings until many years later when I started learning about The Troubles. Both sets of grandparents ended up in the US due to the tension "at home" vis-a-vis religious affiliation, and then this happened. We kind of laugh about now, but 40 years ago the family was still pretty Irish.
Some of my fondest memories are of hanging out at Grandma's house on weekends listening to the old folk tell stories about home, singing songs, and drinking a lot of whiskey and beer. My grandma had six siblings and she had seven children, some of our gatherings could be quite large and energetic. My dad only had three siblings, but - his grand-parents emigrated to the US a few years after their first son was born (my grandpa). They proceeded to have 13 more children over the course of 25 years. By the time my grandpa was married and they had my dad, they still had two more kids to go. My dads uncles took the place of his cousins as his first best friends. What a family! On my dads side, we are spread quite heavily from Broadus, MT to Gillette, WY to Rapid City, SD. There is another lineage that emigrated to Canada in the days before their border restrictions were as non-favorable to "the bad guys". The one great-great-uncle of mine apparently rustled a few horses and heads of cattle and drove them straight to Manitoba and never came back.
Anyways, pretty crazy big (mostly) Irish families on both sides.
One cool thing about this whole thing is, if I ever wanted to, I can claim Irish citizenship. Not high on my list (my roots are pretty deep in the midwest), but daydreams happen. I plan on going "home" someday, visit the Healy and Malley territories.
At this point I think the wooden spoons are afraid of my butt cheeks. Mom got so sick of loosing spoons she bought a nylon spoon. Let me tell ya that thing hits different. Outch!
My dad had a pretty stout paddle from his college fraternity hanging in the basement. The threat was always there for us to see - he never had to use it on me!
Steve, et al, I just discovered that tshirt website. It's a lot of good stuff! They support independent artists, and I have found MANY shirts I would wear.
Comments
I made many circuits that looked something similar to that photo above in my post-secondary schooling, I am an Electronics Technologist by trade after all. Most were not quite that involved, but in my analog design course we created a complicated chain of signal conversions that went from I think 0-10V to 4-20mA to frequency modulation back to 0-10V. It was a lot of fine tuning of all those conversions to get perfectly 0-10V in and 0-10V out with a bunch of mess in the middle
We did PCB milling as well, but with software and a little CNC milling machine. Built our own PIC microcontroller programmers on the milling machine, I still have mine, but have probably lost the software to use it some time ago.
In high school I had a basic electronics course as well, where we did some acid etching. It wasn't that fancy, we literally just drew on the copper with a sharpie and then dunked it in acid. The sharpie is enough to protect it and make useful traces.
I still use those breadboards. This project was on one last week. It's a dual-axis camera slider controller and it looked like a huge mess until I mounted it all up.
When I went to school we had to build a tube intercom as a project. I learned computer logic with a transistor based training computer like this that used core memory. For the course final they disabled 3 transistors and gave you a program that you had 2 hours to get running.
Ron
Some youtube computer nerds recently did a nice video about a mechanical calculator that was pretty neat-o
Ron - did she smack you with a ruler if you didn't complete the task?
And I don't think the name they used for that machine would get the green light these days!
Reminds me of that scene in the Blues Brothers...
I just see Jane as the mother in the cone heads family . . .
We had to make circuit boards with tape and drill holes then etching when I was in tech school - got through basic & industrial electronics then tried going for advanced math/electronics at night school while working a menial factory job in the carpet industry and fell out because they could not teach me what I could do with this knowledge nor demonstrate a use for it while I was young and I wanted to get out into the world and explore and make money and navigate my existence on my own (and afford chasing girls and cars).
Got into commercial/industrial building maintenance and electro-mechanical-pnuematic control systems then into DDC and wound-up in management for a controls manufacturing company then into consulting then covid pushed me out of the employment arena due to the constraints and funding issues that ensued after 45 years.
Dad was involved with the aviation industry as a Canadian technology contractor/technician and spent most of my childhood in SE Asia supporting the VN war and retrofitting military aircraft with what would eventually become today's flight recording black boxes and taught me how to read simple electrical schematics and about electromagnetism stuff by the time I was 6 YO.
Left home at 17 and somehow managed to apply myself sufficiently to retire at 62 - military school at 14 YO didn't hurt me one bit, either.
OK - back to the subject concerning good deals . . .
She was just in the picture I ran across. She was the first person with a PHD in computer science in the US and founded a computer science program at a college here in Iowa.
From Wikipedia: Mary Kenneth Keller, B.V.M. (December 17, 1913 – January 10, 1985) was an American Roman Catholic religious sister, educator and pioneer in computer science. She was the first person to earn a Ph.D. in computer science in the United States. Keller and Irving C. Tang were the first two recipients of computer science doctorates (Keller's Ph.D. and Tang's D.Sc. were awarded on the same day)
All of my instructors were male as were all my classmates. I'm one of the few people in the world that can say they graduated from Iowa State University at age 19.
I had a sister Mary. Ruler on your knuckles or yard stick on your butt. We had to clean chalkboard erasers by slapping them together after class. I still remember our duck and cover drills. My mother said I could count to 10 in 6 languages, but I don't remember that.
Interesting turn on this thread
I never attended schools that were affiliated, but my Irish grandmother on my moms side made sure we had our share of corporal punishment. Funny story (not necessarily funny 'hahaha') was I was born and baptized Catholic. My father comes from an Irish protestant family. When I was 8, we left the Catholic church and that was quite the scandal. I had no idea why there was such tension at family gatherings until many years later when I started learning about The Troubles. Both sets of grandparents ended up in the US due to the tension "at home" vis-a-vis religious affiliation, and then this happened. We kind of laugh about now, but 40 years ago the family was still pretty Irish.
Some of my fondest memories are of hanging out at Grandma's house on weekends listening to the old folk tell stories about home, singing songs, and drinking a lot of whiskey and beer. My grandma had six siblings and she had seven children, some of our gatherings could be quite large and energetic. My dad only had three siblings, but - his grand-parents emigrated to the US a few years after their first son was born (my grandpa). They proceeded to have 13 more children over the course of 25 years. By the time my grandpa was married and they had my dad, they still had two more kids to go. My dads uncles took the place of his cousins as his first best friends. What a family! On my dads side, we are spread quite heavily from Broadus, MT to Gillette, WY to Rapid City, SD. There is another lineage that emigrated to Canada in the days before their border restrictions were as non-favorable to "the bad guys". The one great-great-uncle of mine apparently rustled a few horses and heads of cattle and drove them straight to Manitoba and never came back.
Anyways, pretty crazy big (mostly) Irish families on both sides.
One cool thing about this whole thing is, if I ever wanted to, I can claim Irish citizenship. Not high on my list (my roots are pretty deep in the midwest), but daydreams happen. I plan on going "home" someday, visit the Healy and Malley territories.
I have had many a wooden spoon broken over my backside . . .
At this point I think the wooden spoons are afraid of my butt cheeks. Mom got so sick of loosing spoons she bought a nylon spoon. Let me tell ya that thing hits different. Outch!
https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirts?query=wooden+spoon+survivor
InDIYana Event Website
^ Thanks, Wolf!
I got such a [much needed] laugh/chuckle from that post!
My dad had a pretty stout paddle from his college fraternity hanging in the basement. The threat was always there for us to see - he never had to use it on me!
Steve, et al, I just discovered that tshirt website. It's a lot of good stuff! They support independent artists, and I have found MANY shirts I would wear.
Case in point:
https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirts?page=2&query=speakers+audio
Careful, might not be SFW. There is a 'mature content: hidden' at the bottom if you prefer it.
InDIYana Event Website
I've bought a lot at 6 Dollar T-shirts.
Yup got a few shirts in the cart! Nice find🤘🏼
6- from Tee-Public or 6 Dollar?
If anyone is curious what led me to the Tee Public site, it was this one:
https://www.teepublic.com/t-shirt/245135-spaceship?store_id=51452
InDIYana Event Website
Thanks Ben, found a few gems on that site!
You are welcome!
InDIYana Event Website
Tee public
PE has 10% off for President's Day with code PREZDAY10.
Think I'll use this opportunity to pick up a pair of GRS 12SW-4HE 12" Paper Cone subs before they are all gone.
https://www.parts-express.com/Tang-Band-W5-1138SMF-5-1-4-Paper-Cone-Subwoofer-Speaker-264-917
5 hours left. 25% off. With PREZDAY10 code for 35%.
Fun driver for sure.
Yikes! Just noticed PE has jacked the price of the good ole TC9FD18-08 from about $12 to $22.62!!!
Such is the world we live in.