Whatever happened to Olson Electronics?

Damn, I forgot all about those free pearls...... I agree Radio Shack had much to do with it. Too bad RS didn't at least stick with what they originally were intended. From what I recall, they began as a parts source for ham radio guys.

I dont know how to even describe them these days. Their parts supply is darn near non-existant. They dont have much in the line of radios, CB, shorttwave, scanners, computers, or any of that stuff anymore, and what they do have is costly. Everytime I go to a RS store these days I ask myself how they stay in business. It looks like cellphones are their major business now, and with all the competition in that market, its hard to imagine how they survive. particularly since there is a RS store in almost every medium sized town and several in every big city.

Until yesterday, I had never ever heard the word Arduino. Looking at these kit websites I keep seeing the word. Now I see it in this message. So, I went to google and brought up a few webpages. Maybe I'm just too damn old to understand this.....

I'm seeing a board that plugs into the serial port on a computer. They are discussing software and writing C++ code, and stuff like that.... I ended up saying WTF????? I just dont understand this..... If I order a kit, I expect a board and a pile of resistors, caps, semiconductors, and a few other parts. What does any of this have to do with software? Why is this "kit" going to be connected to a computer? For example, if I build an audio amplifier kit, why does it get hooked to a computer? The more I read these articles, the more confused I get. Especially when they start talking compiling in C++ programming and using Bluetooth (which I thought was for cellphones). All I can understand is that this stuff is designed for those under the age of 30, and anyone older than 30 cant understand it. I sure dont!!!! Of course I might be missing something. Have they found a way to make a computer insert and solder parts onto a board just by pressing keys or using software? Damn, that would require a USB soldering iron and robot to insert the parts..... I think I better leave all of this for the under 30 crowd who have blue teeth. While they're eyes are stuck to their cellphone screens, I can sneak up on them with a vacuum tube and scare the crap out of them with it. Ya know, the filament glow inside the tube will scare them..... :)

And, just for fun, there's always the "I'll trade this fully charged

Your local DNS cache (different from the browser's cache) contains a lookup table of URLs against IP addresses. When you type

The domaintools.com lookup gives what *their* DNS server has. A DNS query from your local machine will (usually [*]) return the same result.

From a command prompt, enter "ipconfig /flushdns" followed by "ipconfig /registerdns". That should clear your DNS cache and then re-connect to the designated DNS server.

I can't recall whether there are any built-in tools in Win98se to allow you do to an explicit DNS lookup. That's what the "NetLab" mentioned earlier will allow you to do; you can enter

Thanks, I just googled it and see what you're saying. It even says "This site may be compromised".

Which it obviously is!!!!

I found an email address on the site (ladda AT kitsrus.com). I'll send an email to let them know. Not sure how they can fix this, but that's not my job.

How can a site get compromised like this? If it was an actual redirect, I'd understand it (sort of), but the URL in top of my browser retains the correct URL when the page is showing the viagra junk. This internet stuff sure can get weird at times!!!1

At least now I know it's not my own computer.

BTW: I fixed the problem in K-Meleon. I compared the settings to a fresh install which I did on a spare computer. This is what I found.

There is a setting in K-Meleon called "User Agent". It should be set to "default". Somehow mine got set to "custom" rather than "default". (I probably clicked the wrong button when I was recently changing some java script settings a few weeks ago). I'm not sure what this setting is supposed to really do?????? But, setting it back to "default" fixed the problem. ~~~~~~GO FIGURE~~~~~~

Weird how this shit works!!!! Sometimes I think it's intended to drive us insane :)

When I lived in Barstow ca., I used to travel all over sometimes stopping at several radio shacks, riverside surplus, Mac's electronics in san bernadino, Fontana. There was a place in riverside that sold ham stuff, was closed down, but still had the front sign. Forget the name. I had mail ordered a vfo to Pittsburgh from this place in the 60's.

Just before my radio shack closed down, they had remolded to what I thought was excellent floor displays, and were really at their peak for looking at products. I was sad. Bought a bunch of stuff cheap before they closed.

Greg

Chrome

It looks like you were veiwing a copy of the webpage in your computer's chache memory, and the problem had been fixed. Google will continue to show the bad information until it crawls that site again. That could be months, since there is no tag telling the searchbots when to revisit the site for updates.

There is always

A lot of Arduino and compatible third party hardware is available on Ebay. I recently bought a Mega 2560 board and a couple expansion boards to test some ideas for some imbedded control projects like the network interfaced gate controls I'm building.

Lots of information at these pages:

I see Mac's is still in business. Was a Lafayette associate store. Bought my first calculator there in 1974.

Greg

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Just last week I bought the Arduino Ethernet board, single board, 2 by

If I would have to had done that 5 years ago, it would mean hacking an ISA ethernet card, using countless hours and having something looking quite ugly.

Only bad thing is the Arduino IDE, no breakpoints, variable watches etc.

So before long I will fire up the AVR Studio, port the SW to that environment (easy), and full debugging possibilities...

Cheers

Klaus

I still prefer printed books over 400 page PDFs anyday.

There have always been useles LED toys- just now they come in more than red, and used transistors not microcontrollers.

In grade school we made line following robot kits which were pretty fun as you assembled the board and then built the mechanical parts and spent 10 times the assembly time adjusting it. There was a knock off "clapper" kit with no case that ran off line voltage too. I used mine for many years with just a pushbutton switch from a VCR front panel or something like that in place of the microphone. They had all sorts of great stuff like radio transmitters.

All the datasheets from the kit maker were green. The company may have been Greymark or Graymark.

Oddly, when I went to radio shack last week, they had piles of some sorts of kits again. Electronic kits must be a rage these days. I did not see any of those graph paper mini engineers' notebooks from Forest Mims though. They had fresh looking bottles of PCB etchant too, somethign I've not seen in a while.