Radio Shack Electronic Kits

Mine was a RS Solar Power Kit. Not as many items as the *in1 kits, but using the solar cells was cool.

While the instructions did not go into to too much detail on the why, they did cover it at least a little. With the easy spring connections, I would often switch things around to see what would happen. The results were the most obvious with the sound experiments.

The important thing with the kits was that you at least learned what different parts were called. Twenty five years later when my wife wanted to build a Sinclar ZX81 we bought surplus, I got her a 150 in 1 kit first just so she could learn what the pieces were before she started on building the computer since she knew nothing about electronics when she started. The kits gave you confidence that you could do this, even if you didn't completely understand what it was that you were doing.

Paul Pawelski

- exray - wrote:

Nice. Original?

-- jm

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Note: My E-mail address has been altered to avoid spam

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You should have adjusted the circuit to detect only burgers above 80 degrees F.

--
        If John McCain gets the 2008 Republican Presidential nomination,
           my vote for President will be a write-in for Jiang Zemin.

Those kits were for sissies. Real children start out immediately playing with the mains wiring and electric train sets, lighting, motors etc...the school of hard knocks and shocks.

If a child walks into school with a 2nd - 3rd degree electrical burn these days, it is probable the police will soon be around to arrest the parents:-)

Hahah- that's when I learned you do not strip the wires with your teeth when they're plugged into the transformer...

Yes they should be, but you seem to have missed the point! With the laws today - the parents would be arrested immediately - in most cases for Child Abuse - and questions asked later. The answer of trying to teach them electronics probably wouldn't be a good answer now days. Many of those who made and uphold the laws either didn't grow up like we did - or - lead a very sheltered life and took very few chances.

It certainly wasn't my parents fault, I was a very inquisitive child. Hell, I stuck my fingers in empty light sockets and hit the switch and did many other stupd stunts - more than I can keep count of. But, I LEARNED. Back in those good ole days - Child Abuse may have been around, but parents weren't busted just for looking at their child - in a cross manner. THAT was living. Today - you have to watch anything and everything. I'm glad my kids are grown, now I don't have that worry.

--- With all due respect and being as polite as I can be, I disagree.

As far as I can see, Jim Thompson's outlook on life seems to me to be that of a (according to him) polio victim who somehow managed to mollify that disability (to which all of us who refused to succumb to that illness should kow-tow) and then went on to achieve semi-greatness by learning how to transfer circuits onto silicon.

Not a big deal.

Got a circuit which needs to be reproduced a zillion times? Also not a big deal, no matter what you've been told.

Learning occurs on many levels, not the least of which is the information which we're given when we're ignorant and _can't_ analyze the data given us.

I learned the names for red and green when I was very young, and I still see them the same way and call them the names I learned back then.

-- John Fields Professional Circuit Designer

"In a crosspost to a large but apparently related set of newsgroups, specifically: sci.electronics.design, rec.radio.amateur.homebrew, sci.electronics.equipment, sci.electronics.repair and comp.robotics.misc; "

Is there a problem with posting a suitable topic to a number of groups that would find it interesting?

It definitely was not meant to be spam.

TMT

I only recall that Radio Shack had them, probably over many decades. I never owned one.

But I don't feel particularly deprived - when I was about five to six years old I got a Heathkit version of these "N-in-1" kits. I have no clue of the model number, but I think it had: one transistor, one diode, one variable coil (magnetic material on the end of a small threaded rod that went into the coil, you turn the end of the rod to 'tune' it

- common then, I don't see them nowadays) several capacitors and resistors small crystal earphone I recall that it used small compression springs to accept the wires, and Fahnestock clips to connect to things off-board: earphone, antenna and ground. Or perhaps it used only springs, but Fahnestock clips were common connectors for these projects. There were two radio projects, one with the diode, and one with the transistor. The one with the transistor was of course much more sensitive and played louder through the earphone.

I later recall having another brand, a 'more advanced' model on an actual printed circuit board (there were traces between each component's leads and the clips or springs on the board), perhaps it was a Knight-Kit. It had a relay, a silicon photocell, probably two transistors, and the usual passive components.

Man, I wanted one of those kits SOOO bad!

Hello Michael,

I believe most come with a wall wart type supply. After all, they pay $300 or more for those gizmos. But that's just the problem, kids have way too much money. We had to make do with whatever parts a discarded radio or TV set yielded. And that was plenty. I remember jumping up and down in joy as a kid when I found a 13.56MHz crystal in a TV. That discovery propelled me into the ISM business.

Regards, Joerg

I built one and still have it in a box, somewhere. Interesting unit, at the time.

Jon

I recall my first electronics kit consisted of a single hair pin (U shaped hair pin) i promptly applied it to the nearest power source i could find (which happened to be a 120v outlet) nothing happened at first so i proceeded with my experimentation of wiggling the hair pin so as to make contact, i remember the lights flickering and then i recall a loud scream imminated from my general locale and the rest blurs

my second electronic kit was radio shack am radio with ear plug phone it scratched out some noise and occasional radio signal

my third project was a shock box (pop-mech kit ?) where i dug up some old transformer from my dads shop that resembled the one in the design (same shape & number of wires) and i applied either 6v lantern battery or couple of D cells to the indicated wires then self-tested the output... i have no idea what i put together but my arm ached and felt like jello for a short while after the test.

4th came the 100 or 125 kit from RS where you had to build some of the elments/switches/ variable capacitor ? ( eg. bunch of thin brass(copper) sheets and some thin plastic wafered together with an adjustment knob? ) i remeber lights, buzzers (elec keyboard ), meter ?,

I enjoyed it then but electronics interest faded quickly once the TRS-80, TI-99-4a, timex sinclair, ataris and commodores etc became available for play plus the video games of 70-80

did someone complain ?

cross posting is for relevant groups, those appear to be relevant excepting (repair) and i might have added (sci.electronics.basics) or (misc) but i am just a humble hobbier :)

I'm sure we've all had our turn at learning things the "hard" way back then. Some funny, some not so funny - at least not then - but boy is it nice to sit back and laugh at ourselves now...... But hey - we made it - and learned a lot along the way. IF we all admitted to all the things we did then, many would wonder how we either survived or weren't put in a looney bin.

CLF

This explains a lot about you, Fred! ;-)

--
Service to my country? Been there, Done that, and I\'ve got my DD214 to
prove it.
Member of DAV #85.

Michael A. Terrell
Central Florida

True story:

At the ripe age of 11, I received my first Digi-Key catalog (Dad was into electronics...). At the time I was big into neon lights (sad I know), and had collected lots of the little bulbs from Radio Shack, salvaged equipment, etc.

Digi-Key had bare bulbs for 11 cents each! And strangely, they were listed as requiring 120v (without a resistor specification, and not pre-attached resistors, assembly, etc). I had to have a couple, as surely these were exotic and unusual bulbs.

So I taped two dimes and two pennies to an index card, filled out the order form, and mailed the whole thing to Digi-Key, along with a personal note about how much I loved neon lights (yes, still sad).

Couple weeks later I got back a stern typewritten note about minimum orders, effort of fulfilling tiny requests, shipping charges, yadda, yadda... and enclosed in the envelope with this letter were two neon lights wrapped in bubble wrap!

I could not wait to test my new neon lights that didn't require a current limiting resistor. Still, something seemed ominous about that, so I enclosed the first one in a glass jar, "just in case". Applied 120V and POW, tiny neon bomb!

I sent the broken glass and freed electrodes, carefully padded and wrapped, back to Digi-Key with a nastygram of my own, stating what had happened and how these were NOT 120V neon bulbs despite the catalog specification. Couple of weeks later I received a reply in the mail, with an apology, a statement of catalog revision, and... a replacement neon bulb ;) .

Ah, Digi-Key, thou dost know customer service.

Thanks, Josh

P.S. Hope this wasn't too off-topic.

same could be said of most hams!! I bought an HT recently and I was astounded to learn HRO did NOT stock SMA connectors (needed for the HT), or RG174.

Hams pay $30 to $60 for coax with BNCs at each end. Hams pay $30 for

12VDC 200mA wall warts! Hams pay $15 to $30 for serial cables.

do hams actually BUILD anything these days?

yeah.