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Article from 1970's electronics magazine

I am trying to locate a construction project called "LED's and Ladders which was published in one of the well known Australian electronics magazines in the 1970's, or late 1960's probably in Electronics Today (ET), later known as Electronics Today International (ETI), but there is a possibility that it may have been in Radio Television and Hobbies (RTV&H), which was later renamed Electronics Australia

The concept of the project is the same as another puzzle called Stairway to Heaven. It consists of a column of LED's, none of which are illuminated at the start, but by pressing a push button switch at the appropriate time, additional LED's can be illuminated. If the button is pressed at the wrong time, some of the LED's which are illuminated will be extinguished. The object of the puzzle is to get all of the LED's illuminated

Between 1974 and 1979 I taught electronics in a Victorian secondary school, and some of my students made one of them in class, indicating that it was published before 1979. I am interested in making one of these but using my own design based on a PIC microcontroller, and my interest in the magazine is solely for the excellent artwork for the front panel.

I am not interested in the later version with different electronics, and inferior front panel artwork, published in RTV&H/ Electronics Australia in August 1980. This date is outside the relevant time scale hence it cannot be the one of interest.

I would be grateful if someone could provide information as to which magazine and which issue it was published in, or if they have the magazine could they please scan and email me a copy of the front panel artwork to snipped-for-privacy@dcsi.net.au

Reply to
Harry Pfeifer
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LED's and ladders was an Electronics Australia project, and at a guess it was around 1979 as I also remember building it during my high school years!

Reply to
Ray

P.S.

try emailing Silicon Chip, they took on the role of EA back issues when they went under, plus Leo worked there way back then.

Reply to
Ray

"Harry Pfeifer"

** Electronics Australia - March 1976.

Source = RCS Radio master PCB list.

Board number = 76G3

....... Phil

Reply to
Phil Allison

EA March 76 according to the EA project archive:

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Silicon Chip can provide a copy.

Dave :)

Reply to
David L. Jones

Wow, that brings back memories! I built one of those as a kid. It was definitely an Electronics Australia project, & would've been published somewhere within cooee of 1977. That was the project on which I learned to solder PCBs. :)

[...]

It was pretty nice. IIRC, it was a line drawing of the inside of a well (lined with bricks), with a zigzag line of 16 LEDs going up a drawing of a ladder, with the final LED above the opening of the well. It was sized to fit the lid of a medium size Zippy Box (anyone else remember that era, when just about ever magazine project was designed for Zippy Boxes?)

As I said above, it was definitely EA, & I believe it was published some time in 1977, although it may have been as much as a year or two earlier. My copy of the article is long gone, but I got a copy of it (& a half dozen other old projects) in the mid-eighties or so, by going to the State Library (Vic) & photocopying it from the original EA mag's in their archives. I have no idea if they still keep periodicals these days, but it'd only take a phone call to find out.

WRT to emulating the circuit in software, you'd need to be careful to emulate the internals accurately, because the sliding difficulty factor was what made it fun. The LEDs directly represented the voltage on a cap that was fed (via a resistor & the front panel push-button) from the output of a (IIRC) 555 timer, so the higher the voltage on the cap, the hard it was to increase it, & the quicker it'd drop if you timed your button-press badly.

Please let us know how you go at tracking down the original article, because I'm still quite sentimental about that particular project, & I'd love to design a new version of it myself. If you don't have any luck, I might be able to figure out some way of tracking down a copy.

--
   W          
 . | ,. w ,   "Some people are alive only because
  \|/  \|/     it is illegal to kill them."    Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Lionel

Yowza! That'll teach me not to write a long reply to someone before reading everyone else's replies first. :)

(Mind you, I bet it it'd still be quicker & cheaper to photocopy the original mag at the State Library than to mail order it from SC. ;)

--
   W          
 . | ,. w ,   "Some people are alive only because
  \|/  \|/     it is illegal to kill them."    Perna condita delenda est
---^----^---------------------------------------------------------------
Reply to
Lionel

Sure, if you happen to go near the State Library. If not then the petrol/parking or train fair is going to cost you more.

Now, if only SC would make the EA CD like they did for RTV&H. Bet they would make a lot more money on the CD than they ever will selling protocopies.

Dave :)

Reply to
David L. Jones

I do not have a copy of the article, but I think I still have the project I built from the article somewhere in my shed - for sale cheap if I can find it

David

Li>

Reply to
David

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