How we did electronics in the 1980s...

[Wilksey]

Maplins certainly have changed in the last few years!  They have become more generic rather than selling components, they are OK if you want a semi cheap disco light for your living room.....

We never had a RS, we had Tandy where I live, I used to live in that place!

I remember the old mail order and BBS, and the phone bills of dial up internet, and you waited with baited breath as your parents opened the BT bill... (Of course, dial up become financially available to general public in the UK in the mid - late 90's if I remember, anyone remember Freeserve? The best thing since AOL and Netscape free trials!)

[coppice]

If Wikipedia is anywhere near reliable, it says there that Mentor started in 1981, OrCAD in 1985 and Cadence in 1988. Even still, no parent of a kid toying with electronics in the 80's would be sane enough to give him an expensive IBM PC - Sinclairs, Commodores, MSXs would be the most probable choices.

Wikipedia might be reliable, but you have to actually read it. Cadence was a new name in 1988 for the merger of two older companies, each of which was several years older.

OrCAD wasn't the first PC CAD software, although it was the first to really take off. OrCAD schematic files became the input format for a lot of tools almost overnight. Schematic software became available remarkably quickly after the IBM PC was launched, although PCB software took a little longer.

Kids might not have had many IBM PCs in the early 80s, but adults certainly did. The PC was initially a consumer and one man business machine. Larger businesses were highly suspicious of these things.

[Simon]

Maplins certainly have changed in the last few years!  They have become more generic rather than selling components, they are OK if you want a semi cheap disco light for your living room.....

semi cheap ? hm, my definition of maplin is that it makes some ebay sellers from china with dodgy goods look like jesus christs own table top sale, I bought a digital caliper in there that worked sporadically and by the time i tried to return it first to where I bought it (where conveniently it started to work again) and then by post i spent almost as much as the thing cost me.

If i ever enter a maplins I assume "the pose" look straight ahead dodge any of their pathetic sales assistants that "think" they can help you and arms ready to metaphorically brush them aside as they know nothing of what I'm looking for but think they know all about that DVD player they think they can sell me or whatever other very general consumer goods that I can buy anywhere and would never buy from that dump given my previous experience of a company that sell shit and does not care.

[jancumps]

Well most of us didn't have direct access to the internet unless we were in a college, but that's broadly true.

What he means is the WWW as we know it now, and search engines, e-commerce, images and PDF's, and basically the entire worlds knowledge online.

Are you sure you don't mean the 1880s? Most of the CAD software we use for boards today existed in the early 80s, and older programs existed before that. We used to use 4k resolution screens,  too. We're only just getting back to that.

Altium started in mid 80's as Protel AutoTrax.
I started with a shareware program called PCBreeze from Kepic in Australia (it was the authors name IIRC) in the mid-late 80's.
Wow, you can still download it from an old shareware archive:
http://aet.calu.edu/ftp/eet/sharware/disk7/

Ok, couldn' resist... Installed a dos emulator and downloaded pcbreeze

Here is my first layout. Don't spare your critique.

[jancumps]

And here's one of the demo boards that came with PCBreeze:

[nfmax]

For hobby stuff, I used the original Easy-PC for DOS, with the original 'booby trap' menu system. It was actually pretty good for simple boards. I still have it somewhere, I wonder if it still works? At work we used Redcap for schematic capture (on the first IBM XT I ever saw in captivity) and then Redboard when it became available. They turned into Cadstar which Racal sold on to Zuken. Interesting both packages are still around!

Max

[G0HZU]

EasyPC PCB design software (from NumberOne in the UK) was released in the mid/late 80s and 'Circuitbusters' released Star and Superstar(pro) in the 1980s.
This was a really useful RF design/synthesis package. Circuitbusters then became Eagleware a few years later. HP also released AppCAD and Numberone also had programs like Analyser and Analyser 2 back around those days.

These were the first proper CAD tools I ever used about 25yrs ago. I still have copies of all this SW from 25yrs ago but I'm not sure if any of it will run on a modern PC.

All the above SW started out really cheap to buy. I think EasyPC was £49 in the UK and the Circuitbusters SW started out at about $99 in the USA. So this stuff was easily within reach of the hobbyist and small business owner

[Radio Tech]

Some of you guys make me feel old. What is this PCB stuff you speak of?     
When I started at the age of 11 or 12 we used no circuit boards. Everything I build was terminal strips and point to point wiring. And at that time there were plenty of local part houses including my favorite Radio Shack.  Guess you can say I started "dumpster diving" in the early 70's. There were so many TV shops back then and used parts were plentiful.

Somewhere around here I have hand drawings of old tube projects that were very crude...   

[fcb]

I still use Easy-PC (v18 now), and have had a full license since DOS days and update it annually.

www.numberone.com

[cosmos]

I found a box of these in the basement

[m100]

First designs I built back in the 70's were with a ratsnest, on a veroboard or hand drawn with etch resist pen pcbs.   The only ready made PCB's were in a few kits I built (Maplin or Tandy maybe?)

By the early to mid 80's I was working in a large utility company doing low volume analogue and 6800 micro designs for use within the company.  Initially tape on film and then using (an unknown make) of PCB CAD on a BBC Model B, dot matrix printed on fanfold paper, copied to presentation acetates with office photocopier.  UV exposed and etched in bubble tank.  We later added an immersion tin tank.  Did plenty of double sided 'Eurocard' 160 x100mm boards but none of them had through hole plating, all top to bottom connections were achieved using soldered vias made with bits of cut off resistor leads (no soldering of the top side of components was a strictly adhered design rule)  Even did gold plating of PCB edge connectors in the lab. 

Moved to something on a PC in the late 1980's, can't recall the name of that software either! but still had no autorouting.  A clampdown on chemicals in the workplace restricted the 'official' use of our etching facilities in about 1990, at around the time self designs were also beginning to be frowned upon.  My first self designed but outsourced for manufacture PCB was in about 1991/2, single sided but the first one I ever did with a solder mask.  It even came back from the manufacturers with roller plating and at a price so cheap it wasn't even worth etching anything other than one offs any more.

[Refrigerator]

I've always wanted to play with electronics, made my first circuit when i was 5 years old, it was a little 12V lamp hooked up through a pot to a 9V battery all in a cardboard box, i also connected a small broken piece of some radio pcb that had a 3,5mm jack in it, i thought that if i plugged some headphones in that jack i would hear radio... silly me.

[22swg]

Where did all you EEs get your PCs ! ... in the 70s really a lot of ££££ $$$$ , I had to DIY a 286 machine , repair a monitor, borrow a copy of DOS 3.1 . Only software I bought was Turbo Basic.  Now my 4 year old grandson has an i-thing, pretends he is a shark and kills swimmers ......   

[mikerj]

Where did all you EEs get your PCs ! ... in the 70s really a lot of ££££ $$$$ , I had to DIY a 286 machine , repair a monitor, borrow a copy of DOS 3.1 . Only software I bought was Turbo Basic.  Now my 4 year old grandson has an i-thing, pretends he is a shark and kills swimmers ......

I DIY'd a 286 from parts bought at a local computer auction which were very popular at the time.  Since I was at school and lacking in funds, I bought a dead 286 motherboard for a few GBP's with a vague hope of repairing it.  After many hours trying to find out why it wouldn't boot I decided to try swapping the two BIOS EPROMs over (two 8 bit 27xx devices) and it all sprung into life, booting DOS from a floppy drive until I could afford a second hand 20MB MFM drive and interface.

[Tandy]

The only ready made PCB's were in a few kits I built (Maplin or Tandy maybe?)

They were probably from Maplin as back then they had their own magazine called 'Electronics the Maplin Magazine' where they had new projects each month that they sold as kits. Tandy had a small number of kits up to about the mid 80's when the kits were replaced with Science Lab X-in-1 experimenter labs with the spring terminals.

Page from the 1980 catalogue showing kits.

[free_electron]

SmartWORK ! drool .... that was the bees knees ! it would even shave dip pads to run traces between them. something today's software cant even do !

Late 70's : i made single sided pcb's . draw on 5mm ruled paper. wrap board in paper. use an awl to punch center marks for holes. use a Decon-dalo ink pen to draw pattern and etch in sodium persulfate ( i never used that icky brown crap )
Early 80's i went photo way. i would print on 24 needle printer from smartwork , transfer to Litex film ( essentially x-ray film from Agfa ) and then expose PCB. in 1988 i went to Nokia in finland during summer holidays ( i won a inter-school competition that earned me a 2 month internship at Noka in Finland ) and discovered SMD ! and then my world changed. I also discovered Autotrax then ( and a layout program from Teradyne called Vanguard)

so yeah. how we did electronics in the 80's ? in my time i used photo boards and SMD 

[jancumps]

I found a box of these in the basement

I'll see your Elektor and raise you my Elektuur

[rsjsouza]

Cadence was a new name in 1988 for the merger of two older companies, each of which was several years older.

And yet still a CAD system unattainable for the hobbyist in the 80's, irrespective of its name...

Kids might not have had many IBM PCs in the early 80s (...)

As the original poster mentioned, "got into electronics pretty early on in life. In the 1980s that meant no (...) CAD software.". The vast majority of hobbyists in the 80's did not have access to CAD software - apart perhaps from free_electron

I'll see your Elektor and raise you my Elektuur

I actually remember this cover! My dad had the British version of it.

[PA0PBZ]

SmartWORK ! drool .... that was the bees knees ! it would even shave dip pads to run traces between them. something today's software cant even do !

SmartWork FTW!

[SeanB]

The only ready made PCB's were in a few kits I built (Maplin or Tandy maybe?)

They were probably from Maplin as back then they had their own magazine called 'Electronics the Maplin Magazine' where they had new projects each month that they sold as kits. Tandy had a small number of kits up to about the mid 80's when the kits were replaced with Science Lab X-in-1 experimenter labs with the spring terminals.

Page from the 1980 catalogue showing kits.

I have one of those spring reverb lines by me, never knew it was a Maplin supplied part. A little crusty and the rubbers are well past their best before date.

[cosmos]

I found a box of these in the basement

I'll see your Elektor and raise you my Elektuur

how about this one?
with my home made pcb of the coverpage design below, populated 100% with scavenged parts from boards found in the skip of a local electronics factory.
artwork seems to have been photocopied to multiple layers of transparencies and exposed in the sun.
etching was with ferrocloride (can still remembermost of my clothes had stains and holes, holes mostly from spilled battery acid)

[RobertoLG]

Some oldies

[jancumps]

Some oldies

I'll see your oldies and raise you this oldie:



1969

[atferrari]

Some oldies

Eu compre as duas no Brasil! Meu irmao! Uma delas esta aquí conmigo.

Got them in Brazil from the stand.

[atferrari]

My very first PCB was drawn with a toothpick and nail polish. It worked! (The PCB came out OK from the FeCl bath). The electronic side of it? It did not worked at all.

Still a stumbling block for me!