Author Topic: How we did electronics in the 1980s...  (Read 25397 times)

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Offline ZadTopic starter

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #50 on: October 25, 2014, 01:28:33 am »
In 1983 virtually nobody here in the UK had workstation level personal computers, and even fewer 13 year olds. Certainly around here nobody had the sort of income to buy a printer, most of us were drooling at the new ZX Spectrum! I think our brethren over in the US don't quite appreciate how tight money was for most people over this side of the Atlantic back then. Nail varnish worked fine for my early needs, and then a fancy Dalo etch resist pen and rub-down transfers.

I was lucky, my dad was a TV repair man (working for one of the few enlightened companies who regularly ran their own night school training sessions and gave their people a thorough grounding in engineering theory as well as operation and repair) so I used to get scrap boards from all sorts of electronic goods. It also meant I could order from Radio Spares (RS Components) and Farnell, who are based just down the road from me in Leeds. Also in Leeds at the time was M&B radio, who had a shop in the railway arches next to Leeds station. A classic electronics shop, with bins full of components, stacks of populated PCBs from ex military equipment and racks piled high with "boat anchor" test gear. Electronics heaven if you are 13, or 113 really. Sadly long gone. Anyway, I got my copper clad from there - none of this fancy photo resist.

Even as recently as 1992 when I was a postgrad student studying Radio Comms, you had to ask really nicely to get access to the Internet. Undergrads didn't even get a whiff of it. So yes, I was on the Internet before the Mosaic browser existed thankyouverymuch (I was on the amateur radio AX25 BBSs long before that). Talking of which, this was in one of my 5.25in storage boxes:



I suspect I got that for my first PC, a cannibalised Amstrad PC1640 (8086) motherboard and other stuff bought cheap from an amateur radio show.




Offline IanB

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #51 on: October 25, 2014, 01:35:40 am »
In 1983 virtually nobody here in the UK had workstation level personal computers, and even fewer 13 year olds. Certainly around here nobody had the sort of income to buy a printer, most of us were drooling at the new ZX Spectrum!

In 1983 I was drooling over the BBC Model B. But alas, I could only dream...
 

Offline rmacintosh

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #52 on: October 25, 2014, 02:00:14 am »
my grey beard isnt long enough for this thread,
but I still use my dads old VOM meter from back in the early 80's.

 
 

Offline RobertoLG

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #53 on: October 25, 2014, 02:04:01 am »
Talking about old gear LOL!

LABO RF generator  Mod F6

Sorry for the bad picture, here are some beter ones, "not mine"  http://produto.mercadolivre.com.br/MLB-594260563-gerador-de-rf-modelo-f6-marca-labo-aceita-lance-_JM
« Last Edit: October 25, 2014, 02:24:51 am by RobertoLG »
 

Offline RobertoLG

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #54 on: October 25, 2014, 02:06:54 am »
Some oldies :)


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



1969

Hehe, in october of this year I came to this world :)
 

Offline RobertoLG

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #55 on: October 25, 2014, 02:10:04 am »
Some oldies :)

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

Got them in Brazil from the stand.

I got some others too, but they are brazilian magazines  :-+
 

Offline bills

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #56 on: October 25, 2014, 02:34:49 am »
Realy ? 1980's I started in the 1960's we had to use books and magazines I would have given my eye teeth to have a 2n107 or a ck . PCB what were those? "btw I know"
my components were scavenged from old TV's and radios, had some cool WW2 surplus stuff good parts source.
fast forward to the 80's Loved wire wrap proto typing, fast forward to now 38 days from retirement my PLC's are now out of date back to the old radios. my  oldest set was homebrewed in 1919. My oldest TV is from 1952 the year I was born. and yes they all work.     
Never argue with idiots. They drag you down to their level and beat you with experience.
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #57 on: October 25, 2014, 03:25:37 am »
Before WWW there was Usenet, and it was pretty computer and electronics oriented.

I even have a book on how to send e-mail from one network to another, because you had to specify gateways depending what network it was destined for. I have the book at work but I'll check if mouser had a domain back then.

Oh the days when you didn't have to compress anything to send it via the internet.

Edit: of course big data then was in the Megabyte range.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2014, 03:29:41 am by miguelvp »
 

Offline Bud

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #58 on: October 25, 2014, 04:03:41 am »
Back then I did not have access to FeCl etchant and my friend who worked at a medical supply house gave me a bottle of nitric acid. Worked as a charm but I had  to be quick because it ate copper like crazy.
Facebook-free life and Rigol-free shack.
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #59 on: October 25, 2014, 04:18:47 am »
Back then you could go the the Chemist store and purchase all kinds of chemicals in Spain. So you want sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate? no problem, I made such a purchase on my early teens and the chemist didn't even flinched, but he knew me and my family and that I liked to experiment with things :)

Edit: Then again for electronics it wasn't that great, I fried the Z-80 on my ZX-81 because I shorted the edge expansion card plugin some circuit I did, I ordered it from the electronic store and it took 2 months for it to arrive.
« Last Edit: October 25, 2014, 04:24:21 am by miguelvp »
 

Offline coppice

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #60 on: October 25, 2014, 04:32:11 am »
Some of you guys make me feel old. What is this PCB stuff you speak of?  :-//   :-DD
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...   :scared:
I started in the late 60s, and I started with PCBs. I also started with valves/tubes. It worries me now when I think of my father letting a 12 year old design and build things with 500V or more on them. He was an electrical engineer, and actually taught me electrical safety. He just trusted me.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #61 on: October 25, 2014, 04:39:48 am »
Before WWW there was Usenet, and it was pretty computer and electronics oriented.
Usenet and thousands of bulletin boards (BBSs), many of which were electronics focused. There used to be mountains of material on those sites. A 10MB hard drive can hold a surprising amount of good material when its pure test, and simple graphics images.

Schematics distributed as graphics files were a big thing well before most amateurs had CAD software.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #62 on: October 25, 2014, 04:43:34 am »
Back then you could go the the Chemist store and purchase all kinds of chemicals in Spain. So you want sulfur, charcoal and potassium nitrate? no problem.
I bet playing with those was a blast.  :)

The local pharmacies in the UK in the 60s and 70s stocked quite a few rather oddball things, which didn't appear to have medical use. FeCl could always be bought there. Perhaps they catered for the medical electronics market.  ;)
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #63 on: October 25, 2014, 04:50:40 am »
Farmers, plumbers, dentists, doctors, school teachers etc.. a lot of professions needed chemicals, as well as households will need chemicals for whatever reason.
 

Offline coppice

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #64 on: October 25, 2014, 05:02:34 am »
Farmers, plumbers, dentists, doctors, school teachers etc.. a lot of professions needed chemicals, as well as households will need chemicals for whatever reason.
2 of the 5 jobs you listed are medical, so they are naturally catered for by a pharamcy, but by stuff labelled pharmaceutical grade. Not by scruffy bags simply labelled "Ferric Chloride". School teachers got their supplies from specialist companies serving the lab market. Plumbers got their supplies from the numerous plumber supply shops. We didn't see too many farmers in 1960s suburban London.

If local professionals needed chemical supplies from the local pharmacy in the 60s they would still need them today. Try going in your local Boots the Chemist in North London now and see if you can buy FeCl.
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #65 on: October 25, 2014, 05:13:45 am »
It´s been a while so my memory fails me a bit. There were different stores that sold chemical products and anyone could go and buy them. I bet some where old school pharmacies, then there where farmer oriented shops that would sell chemicals as well, there where also industrial shops. Anyways it was all pretty much unregulated back then.
 

Tac Eht Xilef

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #66 on: October 25, 2014, 05:46:08 am »
The local pharmacies in the UK in the 60s and 70s stocked quite a few rather oddball things, which didn't appear to have medical use. FeCl could always be bought there. Perhaps they catered for the medical electronics market.  ;)

Back in the day it was used as a styptic. Drop a few grains on some damp cotton wadding, dab it on a cut or graze, and the blood just magically stops!

My grandfather (who was an old bushie, timbercutter, and fencing contractor) used to swear by the stuff for shaving cuts and drawing out splinters.
 

Offline Bored@Work

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #67 on: October 25, 2014, 06:10:00 am »
bulletin boards (BBSs),

Illegal then in many countries, at least in Europe. And that made the equipment to run a BBS or to access one rather expensive. I remember the times well. Many European countries had monopoly government agencies, for running postal, telegraph and telephone service, aka the PTTs.

Using the sacred telephone network for data transfer? This scared the shit out of the bureaucrats at the PTTs. The network was for telephony, dammit. And you were asked to only make phone calls for serious things, and keep the calls short. Date transfer? Run for the hills!

Modems, even the acoustic couplers, need to be certified by the PTTs. It was impossible for an individual to buy a legal modem. Even companies couldn't buy a modem. Modems had to be rented from the PTTs, and as a company you could only rent one if you had a legitimate reason. I.e. if they had vetted you that you had a real, extremely important reason. You were also required to put the uplink side (the board) on a separate telephone line, and the PTTs claimed they connected such line in the CO in a way it would not interfere with phone service. At times when it was still hard for a normal household to get a normal telephone line, and some households had to share a line, it was impossible to get a special, second dedicated line for a BBS.

At one point certified acoustic couplers appeared, which an individual could indeed buy. For what amounted to the equivalent of something like $1000 then. You can't run a serious BBS with an acoustic coupler. And it is a PITA to use one even if you are just a BBS user.

If you wanted to run a BBS you had to illegally import, or illegally buy, and illegally posses, illegally connect, and illegally operate a non-certified modem. All acts were individually punishable. Already importing a non-certified modem or just having one was an offense. So was trading them. And don't ask about the cost for such illegal modems. And if you were serious about running the BBS 24/7 you had to obtain a normal second telephone line under some pretense and illegally repurpose it for data transfer. We where lightyears away from the friendly neighborhood BBS' I have been told existed in the US.

Running a BBS was often more about the act of running one at all, not about providing particular material to the public.

A bit later certified modems appeared which were almost affordable. The big problem was speed. 300 Baud was the standard. 600 Baud was fast. 1200 Baud was super-high end, and extremely expensive. I am not sure if it 1200 Baud or already 2400 Baud was the highest speed that qualified for certification. So back to illegal modems.

At the beginning of the 90th illegal modems were a mass phenomena and started to become cheap. BBS operators and then also BBS users were typically using illegal modems. Authorities hardly cared any more. Although the last raid of BBS systems for illegal modems I know of was around 1992 or 1993.

Then the market was swamped with legal, certified and rather cheap modems. Most of them even worked :). ISPs serving individuals started to appear in the second half of the 90th, and these cheap modems were used in the early days of the Internet by individuals to hop onto the Information Superhighway Dirt Track. Which meant, whatever BBS were dying. Some continued on the Internet, some even morphed into an ISP, but it was basically over.
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Offline SeanB

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #68 on: October 25, 2014, 06:34:48 am »
You were lucky. In the 1980's the only places here that had computers were the banks ( IBM mainframes and dedicated banking terminals in the branches, and with a printer that was either a Diablo or a specialised one to print in the account books), in the university ( HP mainframe, complete with robed attendants), and a few large businesses where a computer was used to do some specialised functions like accounting, data processing or such. Personal computers were mosly the very expensive ZX ones, and some schools had Apple ]['s in a room.

By 1990 you had companies offering PC clones and networking to business for accounts, inventory and such, all with a service contract and yearly fees that included then an annual service ( dedust and check it works well) and support by a trained technician.

Internet was something that was offered via a gateway on the Prestel clone operated by the national TELCO, and was just a page where you got a UNIX shell to use. Modems were 300 baud, 1200/75 or later 2400baud. Then came the first 19200 baud units ( what speed) and they pretty much stayed that way till you had 56k modems, which are still common as ADSL is not going to ever work on some of the old long copper lines. You still buy them new here.
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #69 on: October 25, 2014, 06:50:32 am »
Sure they had CPM/80 systems somewhere, it wasn't all system 36 for small to medium companies.

For personal computers the OS-9 based systems came around the same time as the ZX Spectrum as I recall, like the Dragon and other compatible systems.
 

Offline Towger

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #70 on: October 25, 2014, 06:58:21 am »
bulletin boards (BBSs),
Illegal then in many countries, at least in Europe.

Maybe behind the Iron Curtain...
 

Offline timb

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #71 on: October 25, 2014, 06:59:27 am »

I found a box of these in the basement

I'll see your Elektor and raise you my Elektuur



If either one of you (or anyone) has a good scanner, can you please get me a TIFF file at the highest scan resolution you can (1200 to 2400DPI or better would be awesome). I want to clean it up and make some wall paper! *Drool*


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Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic; e.g., Cheez Whiz, Hot Dogs and RF.
 

Offline miguelvp

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #72 on: October 25, 2014, 07:07:52 am »
bulletin boards (BBSs),
Illegal then in many countries, at least in Europe.

Maybe behind the Iron Curtain...

The BBSs where not illegal, the non certified modems where illegal. Spain had the same regulations where it was illegal to even plug in a non Telefónica phone. Only approved equipment was allowed to be plugged in. Not that they would know what you had in your home, so even if illegal it was hardly enforced.

Packet radio was all the rage because of the lack of internet and the lack of modems and the official approved ones that you could buy were a piece of crap.

Also getting a new phone line would take months, as in around 3 to 6 months. I do not miss that time period at all. We have more accessible everything now, and better electronics for hobbyists. I hear a lot about how good the good old times were, but they were not, they actually sucked compared to now.
 

Offline Towger

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #73 on: October 25, 2014, 07:50:18 am »
The BBSs where not illegal, the non certified modems where illegal. Spain had the same regulations where it was illegal to even plug in a non Telefónica phone. Only approved equipment was allowed to be plugged in. Not that they would know what you had in your home, so even if illegal it was hardly enforced.

Those rules there never in forced here, no BBSes were ever raided, despite some of them having a large amount of 'warez'...
The only thing that really annoyed the state phone company was when the banks started to reduce their number of dedicated leased (very expensive) lines and just replaced them with normal ones with modems on each end. In the 80's phone calls were not timed, so the banks would just leave the modems connected 24/7.  Once the phone company copped on to this the previously rock solid 24h phone lines liked to drop their connections every few hours, or so I was told by those in the know ;-)

Modems were very expensive here. My first modem was an surplus Prestel 1200/75 baud ISA modem card, I think I got it from Bull http://www.bullnet.co.uk/contact.htm in the UK. It never worked well and I eventually used its MAX232 chip in a decoder card for the old analog Astra satellites.  Then got a V22bis from the UK, V32bis (Supra) from the US etc. 
 

Offline SeanB

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Re: How we did electronics in the 1980s...
« Reply #74 on: October 25, 2014, 08:49:32 am »
That change probably coincided with the replacement of the old electromechanical exchanges with the fully electronic ones, where you could program a call timer to do the disconnect automatically.
 


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