Whatever happened to Olson Electronics?

In my opinion, there has never been a better time to be an electronics hobbyist. Look at all the neat products one can buy at a site like

Triple-axis accelerometers for ten bucks. You could probably put together a decent IMU for less than the price of a dinner at Applebees, not including the software development time. Try doing that in whatever "glory days" of electronics projects you're talking about.

There are still magazines and websites that cater to those interested in DIY electronics, like Make magazine. There are websites like

that have huge userbases. Just because some musty old electronics rag isn't publishing schematics of color organs anymore doesn't mean that a lot of kids aren't doing eletronics projects - but the times are different and so are the projects. And honestly, DIY electronics has always been a rather niche market. The vast majority of people in their who are in their 50s or

60s now didn't build anything when they were kids, either.

And it's great to be able to call up a current datasheet for pretty well any device on the planet, 24/7.

And just about any thread of electronics is likely to have a website supporting hobby activities. I'm implementing FPGA projects, and everything I need can be purchased off the web in a form that I can use, or is available for free download. Things have never been better in well over 40 years of messing around with bits IMHO.

Back in the mid-70s, when I was in high school, I signed up for Motorola's update program. It cost about $20 per annum iirc, and for that they'd ship you an entire box of databooks two or three times a year. I still remember going through stuff like MOS memory and weird bipolar stuff. Even though 70% of the databooks got tossed, it made me feel like a real guy instead of a kid with an unusual hobby. Good medicine.

(Of course nowadays the real guys do it like the kids with hobbies, so it's all good.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

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Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

I can remember when Radio Shack was a parts warehouse... big place on Commonwealth Avenue (Boston, near the BU nudist colony :-). You went to the counter, gave them your list, 15-20 minutes a basket came down a conveyor belt. ...Jim Thompson

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| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
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I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Except PIC programming is not "electronics".

I don't see a lot of "kids doing electronics projects" at all. I do see a lot of script kiddies, OTOH.

Olson went bankrupt in the early '80s and closed all their stores. I never bothered to see if the corporate offices & warehouse survived. The store in Cincinnati tried to liquidate their stock, but most of what they had was overpriced junk, and returns.

I miss Burstein-Applebee. They had good prices on current & surplus consumer electronics in the '60s. Most of the parts in my high school electronics classes came from them, or Fair Radio, in Lima, Ohio. Fair radio is still in business.

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You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

Kind of surprised they went bankrupt. They were once very popular. Guess it's a sign of the times, as I said, now a days it's all imported cheap throwaway junk, so no one bothers to build stuff or for that matter even repair most stuff.

I still like doing this stuff, but it's hard to find parts anymore, at least locally. Radio Shack is about all there is, and they have little anymore for parts. Seems they're mostly about cellphones now. Seems they now devote a 4x8 foot piece of floor space for all their components, all in little bins. Whenever I walk into a Radio Shack these days, I'm asked "would you like to purchase a _____ cellphone plan". When I say, "No, I just need a capacitor". they all walk away from me. (probably because they dont know what a capacitor it).

I'll have to look up Fair Radio. I recall the name. Thanks

I agree that it's much easier to get parts data and schematics these days, via the web. I'll have to check this website.

Whoa, wait just one minute.... I'm in my 60's. I built lots of stuff, even a color organ, (which still works). I used to get some of the Popular Electronics kits from "Southwest Technical Products", and built some Eico kits and Heath kits too.

I miss those kits too. They saved the hard part of finding components, etching boards, and winding coils, etc.

Kits are still out there. Ramsey, Sparkfun, and Jameco

all have some flavor of kits available. (Why, oh why, does Jameco insist on such stupidly long URLs?) I'm sure that there are others, these are just the ones that come to mind.

Add SeeedStudio Heathkit is still (or again) around KitsRUs ...

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

Bursteain-Applebee completely blew away Olsen, both for quality and bargains.

A local favorite was Cameradio. Who, believe it or not, still exist. Sort of.

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Many thanks,

Don Lancaster                          voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics   3860 West First Street   Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml   email: don@tinaja.com

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

Amen to BA being better than Olson. I spent many of my meager hard-earned dollars at BA and was never disappointed. I owe a lot of my early knowledge and experience to breaking apart stuff from BA and making it do what I wanted it to do. .

--
Things work out best for the people who make the best of the way things work 
out.

Dave M

I used to buy parts from cameradio and tydings. In the early 60's remember buying transformers and stuff, was making an am modulator. In the 80's ordering parts mostly from the big vendor reps around Pittsburgh.

I got a hold of a pinball machine I was rebuilding. Bad transformer. Lo and behold, Olsen had one, with 4 or 5 taps with all the right voltages. I also bought some of their sell out boxes loaded with parts before they closed. I loved that store.

Greg

I remember buying a five pound assortment from somebody that consisted of one huge unmarked transformer and a zillion 78 RPM phonograph needles.

Ended up selling the needles as compass points to the college mechanical drawing class I was taking for a dime each.

High finance.

--
Many thanks,

Don Lancaster                          voice phone: (928)428-4073
Synergetics   3860 West First Street   Box 809 Thatcher, AZ 85552
rss: http://www.tinaja.com/whtnu.xml   email: don@tinaja.com

Please visit my GURU's LAIR web site at http://www.tinaja.com

ould

out.

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No Jameco for me. We got a batch of negative voltage regulators of which 10-20% would fail to turn on... sometimes.

George H.

Use this instead for that stupidly long Jameco URL (My newsreader software wont allow me to post a URL that long, without breaking it apart on several lines).

I suspect a lot of us older people learned a lot from building kits. Or reading articles about building projects where the theory of operation was included.

Heathkit is trying to get into kits again

I'm going thru this whole list of kit sites. Just a few comments.....

Interesting. From here that link takes me to DIY Electronics, who make the KitsRUs kits. Might want to check your DNS!

Yes, a lot of the kits up above are "LED toys" but that's fine. They're aimed at neophytes, with non-critical components and simple construction that "does something." The intent is to get an early success that can be built upon.

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Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

KITSRUS.COM Registrant: Ladda Kiatgungwalgri po box 88458 SHAM SHUI PO, HONG KONG 99999 HK Domain Name: KITSRUS.COM Administrative Contact , Technical Contact : Kiatgungwalgri, Ladda** snipped-for-privacy@kitsrus.com po box 88458 SHAM SHUI PO, HONG KONG 99999 HK Phone: 852 2304 2250 Fax: 852 2725 0610 Record expires on 09-Mar-2014 Record created on 08-Mar-1997 Database last updated on 07-Feb-2011

A google search says kisrus.com belongs to 'Canadian pharmacy viagra

There is no reference to the canadian pill site in the page source.

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You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.