Author Topic: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)  (Read 25263 times)

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline intabits

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 334
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #75 on: December 26, 2020, 01:26:29 am »

So 307 Elizabeth must have been part this shop on the corner of Little Lonsdale?
(Still can't picture it)




The shop to its left is 303.

 

Offline Kerlin

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 181
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #76 on: December 26, 2020, 04:58:26 am »
My recollection is that the corner shop was divided into two smaller shops, one behind the other.
Homecrafts was the rear one so the display window and entrance was in little Lonsdale st and was one down from the corner.
« Last Edit: December 26, 2020, 05:15:14 am by Kerlin »
Do you know what the thread is about and are Comprehending what has been said ?
 

Offline Circlotron

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3362
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #77 on: December 26, 2020, 11:10:11 am »
All Electronics Components were at 118 Lonsdale St  next door to Wesley Uniting Church, now a pizza restaurant.
 

Offline VK3DRB

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2272
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #78 on: December 26, 2020, 12:12:11 pm »
The was also Ham Radio Supplies in Elizabeth Street. I bought an FRG-7 there in 1977.  I still proudly have the machine, 43 years old - the radio that is.

The guy who said George Brown might have been involved in Hi-Fi gear, might have been thinking of George Hawthorn Electronics - a well known audio shop in the 70's. George Hawthorn himself sold his business, but the business name remained. George then joined IBM as an engineer. He was a colleague of mine in the 80's. He was very smart, and one heck of a nice chap too. George passed away a few years ago.

Other audio shops:  Brash's ("Right on, Mr B"), that big store I cannot recall the name of that used to advertise in the Green Guide selling Blaupunkt "Cherman Excellence" rubbish, Tivoli HiFi, Klapp Electronics, and of course Northern Electronics, just to name a few. Klapp and Tivoli are still around and they have maintained their excellent reputation.

Tandy Electronics was pretty big, but I did not like paying $2 for a beautiful presentation pack of a couple of one watt resistors (today's equivalent of $10 each). But to their credit, every Tandy product came with a schematic diagram. I lived about 2 km from a Tandy, but would drive to the city 12 km away to Ellistronics, even if it was uneconomical to do so. There was just something nice about visiting Ellistronics.

Northern Electronics quoted a neighbour of mine to fix a fault on his TV after a "free" diagnosis and quote. The quote was a huge $250 (back in 1979, which is equivalent to around $2500 today) to replace the mains transformer on a valve TV. The neighbour saw me for a second opinion, because be could not afford the repair cost. But the fault was just the mains power on/off switch - an obvious fault to anyone who knew anything about electronics. The switch was spungy and it was inoperable (open circuit all the time). One minute to suspect it, five minutes to debug it. Nothing wrong with the transformer. I fixed it for free and my neighbour was absolutely delighted, giving me a bottle of good quality Ouzo in appreciation (he was Greek).

Unfortunately ripping off customers was rife in the TV repair business. Remember Miller Radio in Melbourne caught red-handed on A Current Affair committing fraud? They immediately went out of business after the show was aired. I knew a bloke in 1977 who charged a customer $350 (around $3500 in today's money) for a re-gunned 26 inch picture tube; but the fault was just a simple 5W resistor that had gone open. He replaced the resistor and cleaned the front and back of the old picture tube and wrote some dummy letters and numbers on the back of the tube with a white marker to make it look like the tube had just been replaced, just in case.
 

Offline Kerlin

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 181
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #79 on: December 27, 2020, 03:41:55 am »
I would definable say that most TV repair shops were reputable and all customers were stingy, they thought everything should cost $2, and listened too much to the rubbish that was propagated by the media. Don't the public have a big reputation for always doing that anyway?

I never worked full time in TV repair as I could get better paid jobs, it was just an interest.

I did however complete four years of TV and video repair courses at RMIT and met many technicians who attended the courses.
I also worked part time, after work, in in the workshops of three TV repair shops as well as at home.
I have a BOCP and TVOPs,  worked as a Senior Technician at Channel 7 and and have trained in installed and repaired digital TV stations.

When I hire technicians anyone who applies that is qualified in and has done TV repair gets the job.
The very best of repair technicians for sure.
Fixing all kinds of items with often no circuit, RF, SMPS, digital anything you name they can fix it and have it ready in a fraction of a day.


« Last Edit: December 27, 2020, 04:09:50 am by Kerlin »
Do you know what the thread is about and are Comprehending what has been said ?
 

Offline I wanted a rude username

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 662
  • Country: au
  • ... but this username is also acceptable.
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #80 on: December 27, 2020, 05:25:00 am »
Maybe located, in Little Lonsdale just around the corner from Swanston street.

There was a radio parts store right there, on Little Lonsdale Street, in one of the little 19th century buildings opposite the church just west of Swanston Street. It was noticeable from Swanston owing to the entire frontage being painted yellow. Closed down some time in the early 2000s I think, and it's quite possible the entire building was torn down, as there are two 2000s era buildings in that strip.
 

Offline vk6zgo

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7854
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #81 on: December 27, 2020, 08:17:33 am »
I would definable say that most TV repair shops were reputable and all customers were stingy, they thought everything should cost $2, and listened too much to the rubbish that was propagated by the media. Don't the public have a big reputation for always doing that anyway?

I never worked full time in TV repair as I could get better paid jobs, it was just an interest.

I did however complete four years of TV and video repair courses at RMIT and met many technicians who attended the courses.
I also worked part time, after work, in in the workshops of three TV repair shops as well as at home.
I have a BOCP and TVOPs,  worked as a Senior Technician at Channel 7 and and have trained in installed and repaired digital TV stations.

When I hire technicians anyone who applies that is qualified in and has done TV repair gets the job.
The very best of repair technicians for sure.
Fixing all kinds of items with often no circuit, RF, SMPS, digital anything you name they can fix it and have it ready in a fraction of a day.

I worked both for PMG/Telecom Aust, then for Ch7, & I have mixed feelings about TV service companies.

At one point, in an early flirtation with "outsourcing", TVW7 decided to send all the failed "second level" picture monitors, & domestic TVs out to TV Service companies, with the aim of giving the station techs extra time  for more important stuff.

Amongst these were several big, heavy 27" Sony sets.
The CRTs had low emission, so we supplied a regunned tube along with the first set, requesting that the chosen company change the tubes over, adjust & converge the TV, & return it, along with the removed tube.

We further specified that they do nothing to the removed tube, as it needed to be suitable for regunning.

After about a week & a half, we got them back, the tube flopping round in its unsealed box, with the end of the neck smashed off, & the TV with gross colour purity issues, & almost no work having been done on the convergence.

We ended up burning more time fixing their stuff-up than we took to do the job ourselves, which we proved by promptly doing the job properly on the other one.

We came out of it OK, though, as we found another company, which,although a bit slow, did a competent job, for a very much reduced number of jobs.

Even they had their moments, though, ----on one occasion, we did a bit of "first in maintenance" on one TV, determined pretty much what area the problem was in, attached a note outlining what we had done, & dropped it in to them, feeling virtuous because we had "helped them out".

Alas for our efforts, when we got it back, we could see where our note had been torn off, & a fault docket tied on, where under "reported fault" it said "doesn't work!"

On the other hand, I always found it annoying when a TV Network would find some self satisfied twat "Engineer" who would, in between talking a lot of crap, "set a trap" to prove TV service companies were ripoff merchants.

On one occasion, one of these tweaked an internal control in a new set, & sent it off to the company concerned.
The TV servicemen, tested it, saw an apparent fault, found the misadjusted control, which led them further down the rabbithole.

I know that if I found a misadjusted control, I would assume it had been so tweaked as a "bodge" to compensate for a real fault, which was evidently intermittent.

This what the guys did, then after spending hours,looking for an intermittent fault, reset the control, left the thing on test for hours, & with misgivings, returned it, saying "if it played up, bring it back!"

Of course, "Bighead" then quoted the time they spent as being evidence that they were crooks!

Why a TV Network, with "in house" technical expertise "coming out of their ears", wouldn't check with a passing Tech or EE before engaging a "showboat" is beyond me!


 

Offline MIS42N

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 528
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #82 on: December 27, 2020, 09:32:46 am »
Brought back bits of old memories (can't remember it all). I bought stuff at Waltham trading - one was a 1000W light bulb, the bulb was at least a 30cm sphere and it was BRIGHT. About the only use was playing pranks - wire it up in someone's room so it is a meter or so inside the door and watch the reaction when they come home and turn the light on.

I built an oscilloscope, I think it was an Radio TV and Hobbies design, bought a Cathode Ray tube from Waltham's war surplus. No idea where it went, moved too many times.

I also designed a 50W amplifier using 6CA7s running with an ultralinear transformer and a regulated 400V power supply. The regulation was using a 2N3055 which I bought from Mullard somewhere in Melbourne along with the valves. I have a vague thought they were in Carlton. The 2N3055 sat on a heat sink standing on insulators, the base was fed by a 150-0-150 30mA transformer usually used in preamps but I used it single ended to get 400V. The collector was fed somewhere between 430V and 460V depending on the volume. OH&S would have a fit, it was lethal. There was a 75V zener from collector to base to protect the transistor. This must have been prior to 1966 because I remember the 2N3055 cost £1/5/-, a small fortune. Surprisingly it all worked as intended and delivered a very clean sound (into a speaker enclosure with 2 15inch Fane woofers and I can't remember what handled the high frequencies). It was a huge thing and I sold it in 1968 when I moved to Wollongong.

I also bought and built a couple of kits from Radio Spares in Lonsdale St. (after returning to Melbourne in 1970).

My electronics has been on the backburner since the late 70's, about the time kids turned up. Just getting back into it building microprocessor based 'things'. Electronics Australia published a sidereal clock I built, little more than a GPS module, a PIC16F628A and an 8 segment display. Didn't get any interest so it now displays UTC time in the kitchen because I've not gotten around to putting in the time zone correction. I never did find out for definite if a GPS unit outputs a 1ppS then the NMEA data of the time of the 1ppS, or if the NMEA data is for the next pulse. I assume the former. There isn't a talking clock any more to check against.

Another early haunt was Encel Electronics in Bridge Rd Richmond. Bought JH turntable, Grace tone arm. It had a Garrott cartridge which I bought from Brian Garrot (I believe unfortunately he died not long after) Still got them but nowhere to set up. I was going to buy a replacement stylus, quoted about 5 times what I paid for the cartridge so it sits unused.
 

Offline GlennSprigg

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1259
  • Country: au
  • Medically retired Tech. Old School / re-learning !
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #83 on: December 27, 2020, 11:33:04 am »
To satisfy old 'Adelaidians' here, (I used to live in Adelaide), there was an ancient shop towards Port Adelaide, that
was called 'Robby's'. He was an old man who had a 'Steptoe & Sons' version of an ancient electronics store!  There
were downstairs & upstairs areas that went way back, in definitely cluttered fire-hazard areas, full of every ancient
bit of valve equipment & parts you could imagine, including military. He would pull apart or de-solder countless parts
too, to make massive stocks of knobs, pots, terminals, valve bases etc etc etc. If you needed it, he had it!!!
He also had a MASSIVE collection of old valves/tubes hidden away. Later on, his son took over, but did not have the
same interest. Has been closed up for years now, but would love to have been in a position to make an offer!!   :D
I had so much stuff that I had collected from him, including some very rare tubes & components...
Now, these places are as rare as 'Rocking-Horse Shit', or vanished all together !!!   :-\
Diagonal of 1x1 square = Root-2. Ok.
Diagonal of 1x1x1 cube = Root-3 !!!  Beautiful !!
 

Offline digsys

  • Supporter
  • ****
  • Posts: 2209
  • Country: au
    • DIGSYS
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #84 on: December 27, 2020, 12:31:54 pm »
Quote from: GlennSprigg
To satisfy old 'Adelaidians' here, (I used to live in Adelaide), there was an ancient shop towards Port Adelaide, that was called 'Robby's' ....
ooooooo That's pretty much exactly my story .. even just came back from Adelaide today !! I surely must have seen you there. We'd ride down there on our bikes all the way from Prospect on many occasions. Also collected heaps of awesome stuff. Late 60s for me
Hello <tap> <tap> .. is this thing on?
 
The following users thanked this post: GlennSprigg

Offline GlennSprigg

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 1259
  • Country: au
  • Medically retired Tech. Old School / re-learning !
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #85 on: December 27, 2020, 12:55:44 pm »
Quote from: GlennSprigg
To satisfy old 'Adelaidians' here, (I used to live in Adelaide), there was an ancient shop towards Port Adelaide, that was called 'Robby's' ....
ooooooo That's pretty much exactly my story .. even just came back from Adelaide today !! I surely must have seen you there. We'd ride down there on our bikes all the way from Prospect on many occasions. Also collected heaps of awesome stuff. Late 60s for me

It was a great place for any enthusiast in the know!!
I'm glad someone else remembers!!!!...
Could tell a million story's... Must look you up...  :-+
Diagonal of 1x1 square = Root-2. Ok.
Diagonal of 1x1x1 cube = Root-3 !!!  Beautiful !!
 
The following users thanked this post: digsys

Offline vk6zgo

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 7854
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #86 on: December 27, 2020, 02:15:07 pm »
For Christmas SWMBO bought me a DVD which has all the copies of "Radio & Hobbies/Radio, Television & Hobbies" magazine from April 1939 to March 1965 on it.

I went on a search through it to find the first & second radios I ever built, wanting  to try building them again, to find out whether they  were as crap as I remember, or was it because I didn't know much at the time & stuffed things up?

This, of course necessitated scrolling through multiple pages, & coming across ads for shops whose stock I had salivated over many years before.
Shop names  & component brands I had forgotten came swirling back.

When I read some articles, I could remember most of the text before I read it.-------thus, the  brain wastes memory space!

 

Offline Circlotron

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 3362
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #87 on: December 27, 2020, 10:15:11 pm »
I got one of those DVDs some years ago now too. I know what you mean about the text sticking in your unconscious mind. I didn’t start buying EA until Feb 71 though. Must’ve studied every single word on every page back in those pre Internet days. First radio I built was “Little Jim”, a two valve regenerative job (man, they used that word “job” a lot in the early mags) using a twin triode and headphones. Couldn’t get anything out of it at all. I used a big trimmer cap instead of a proper tuning cap so that wouldn’t have helped...

Those R,TV&H mags on DVD, one shortcoming of them is they don’t have the actual text embedded in the scanned PDFs like many old mags available online do. Dunno how it is done but I’d like to be able to convert them somehow so that they could be searchable using Recoll or similar.
« Last Edit: December 28, 2020, 04:19:00 am by Circlotron »
 

Offline johnh

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 225
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #88 on: December 28, 2020, 03:27:42 am »
All Electronics Components were at 118 Lonsdale St  next door to Wesley Uniting Church, now a pizza restaurant.

It's now an brand  new multi story office block

 

Offline cdev

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • !
  • Posts: 7350
  • Country: 00
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #89 on: December 29, 2020, 09:58:25 pm »
When I was a kid I used to hop the bus or PATH train to go to the area of lower Manhattan that housed what was then still a fading warren of electronics shops along Canal Street. many of them were , I was told already gone. But there was something special about the remaining unique shops, crammed to the roof with exotic surplus, also new electronics components including exotic new chips could be bought right there, when you had decided what you needed, you just wrote down what you wanted on a little list with the little short pencil they gave you, and they would fetch it for you. There were still a lot of those stores. So many many were in the basements or on the second floors of buildings, entered by going up stairs.
I still remember how amazing the displays of all the parts looked, many of them were blinking or doing whatever it was they did.. (they would build little demos for them)  This was during the heyday of
US electronics manufacturing.

I'm really glad that I got to see it. I also met lots of interesting people in those stores. I made some great friends. Its funny how many of them I kept meeting again and again in various settings.

I guess the world just isn't as big as we think it is!

« Last Edit: December 29, 2020, 10:03:39 pm by cdev »
"What the large print giveth, the small print taketh away."
 

Offline VK3DRB

  • Super Contributor
  • ***
  • Posts: 2272
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #90 on: December 30, 2020, 06:09:47 am »
I would definable say that most TV repair shops were reputable and all customers were stingy, they thought everything should cost $2, and listened too much to the rubbish that was propagated by the media. Don't the public have a big reputation for always doing that anyway?

I never worked full time in TV repair as I could get better paid jobs, it was just an interest.

I did however complete four years of TV and video repair courses at RMIT and met many technicians who attended the courses.
I also worked part time, after work, in in the workshops of three TV repair shops as well as at home.
I have a BOCP and TVOPs,  worked as a Senior Technician at Channel 7 and and have trained in installed and repaired digital TV stations.

When I hire technicians anyone who applies that is qualified in and has done TV repair gets the job.
The very best of repair technicians for sure.
Fixing all kinds of items with often no circuit, RF, SMPS, digital anything you name they can fix it and have it ready in a fraction of a day.

I agree that the best technical people are often those who were TV repairmen - prior to the 2000's perhaps where everything was component level debug.

I did some technical training in TV's and video recorders at RMIT too because I wanted to increase my skills in practical electronics and to make money on the side fixing TV's and VCRs. The RMIT course was excellent and I learnt heaps. I also have an engineering degree. Like you I found there was little money in fixing TVs and VCRs for tight arsed ignorant consumers. However I made a packet buying heaps of faulty colour TVs at a low cost outright, fixing them and selling them for a big profit. In fact, I was making more money per week in my spare time doing this, than as a full time IBM engineer. But I gave the TV business away partly because it was to difficult to have two jobs and I did not want to give the IBM career the axe. Besides, under Hawke/Keating socialism, the taxation was punitive to those who wanted to earn good money... I was in the 50% income tax bracket. I did though help a mate start an electronics repair shop in the 90's. Every Thursday night I would debug the difficult ones and I was paid in pizza and beer (non-taxable at the time). It was good technical experience and a lot of fun.

You might remember Rod Humphris, Ken Gent. Mr Molnar and Des Bird. I knew a technician from Channel 7 who went on to run a TV service shop in South Melbourne, but I think he did it full time, so it was probably not you.

IMO, the best design engineers are those who have been experienced technicians. They understand debug, accessibility, serviceability and failure modes. All too often I see equipment designed by mechanical engineers and/or electronics engineers or/or embedded programmers where the last thing on their mind is the debug technician, because they do not understand or appreciate the issues involved in maintenance because they have never done it before. Having electronics manufacturing experience is also a big plus for DFM and DFT.
 

Offline Kerlin

  • Regular Contributor
  • *
  • Posts: 181
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #91 on: December 30, 2020, 10:55:18 pm »
Yep I am a student of Rod Humphris and others. I even go back to Rex Wales, was a piece of the furniture there for over 20 years and yet another 20 years at Nth Syd college.
There was also a group of others that ran engineering courses but none them had practical experience and were no where near as motivating as those guys above.
 I didnt see any future in TV repair except for the great practical experience and did similar to you.
I had a daytime job in Government telecoms that paid better and we had a very easy life. But later when I moved into own business realised that I had wasted 20 years there.
I worked in designing embedded software and hardware for telecommunications devices in Asia for years. I eventually realized the software ability came from TV repair, as you need to follow a documentable logical process (similar to software) to fix such a complex discrete device and be able to back track through the process to find an error (debugging).

Like many in Melbourne this all and much more came out of those old disposals shops.

I am on 2 meters and HF maybe catch you there some time?  I think you can do PMs on this board.
Also rod is active at HRSA so am going along there to run into him.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2020, 12:13:42 am by Kerlin »
Do you know what the thread is about and are Comprehending what has been said ?
 

Offline intabits

  • Frequent Contributor
  • **
  • Posts: 334
  • Country: au
Re: Old electronics shops in Melbourne: what's there today (video)
« Reply #92 on: February 02, 2021, 09:19:33 pm »
While looking for something else, I stumbled across some ads for McGraths, Homecrafts, Ham Radio Supplies, Waltham Trading Co., plus others, some of which I don't remember by name, though I must have visited them at some time.




















 


Share me

Digg  Facebook  SlashDot  Delicious  Technorati  Twitter  Google  Yahoo
Smf