What was/is your favorite Electronics Trainer?

[signal]

Do you all remember all the E&L Instruments stuff? I believe they are now known as Global Specialties http://www.globalspecialties.com/electronics-trainers/analog-circuit-a-logic-design-trainers.html

Obviously I am sure many of us learned on Radio Shack kits.  Elenco also made several.

But what is your favorite?  One of my favorite was the E&L Pencilbox


http://www.cristianisrl.it/PDF/LD-2.pdf

When I was in the Air Force, I believe we used NIDA trainers like these:

http://www.nida.com/Products/Hardware/trainers.html

Of course Radio Shack still makes some kits, but I am curious what your favorites were!

[Blofeld]

Obviously I am sure many of us learned on Radio Shack kits.

Or the German equivalent of it. Not my first one, but the one I loved most - Kosmos E200 (about 1980):

[Tandy]

Of course Radio Shack still makes some kits, but I am curious what your favorites were!

Unfortunately not, now that the RadioShack brand has been sold the 'new' RadioShack won't have any electronics kits.

I remember one christmas I got a kit similar to the RadioShack ones but you had to assemble everything yourself, even the variable capacitor came as a bag of metal parts that had to be painstakingly assembled. I was quite excited about it but as an impatient little boy it turned out to be overly complicated for me and I had quite a frustrating time with it, I think I gave up on it. For me a good book with fun circuits, a breadboard and handful of components was the best kit I had.

[manzini]

Lost in my memory..... from 70's.

Red breadboard, components inside 4 pin boxes, transparent plastic cubes with components inside, no ic's.

Was relegated when I started using and pcb's. I wish to remember the brand/model for ebaying to my child's, but I couldn't.

Sorry I can not details of which was my favorite, definitely was this.

[Tandy]

Found an interesting site by a guy called Grant Searle http://zx80.netai.net/grant/ElectronicKits/index.html who has a collection of kits, you might find the one you had on there.

[manzini]

Thanks, I did not find it there, but thanks to that page've seen one similar:





Mine was 4 pins at bottom and each block must be plugged on a breadboard.

[Fraser]

@Tandy,

I believe I had the same kit as you. When trying to build the variable capacitor I found that it was missing one of the vanes. If it is the same kit (Red square breadboard like thing) it was made in Israel and my parents were less than impressed with its quality. My Father made the missing variable capacitor vane for me out of a flat piece of tin !  Anything to keep the kids happy on Christmas day 

My first electronics kit was the Philips Radionics X40 that had a PCB that you mounted components on using using nuts and bolts. A kind of solderless through hole idea !  Each component was mounted on a plastic 'module' that had a pair of screw threads extending out of its bottom to go through the PCB.

That kit worked really well and was excellent quality. Good ol' Philips 

Just found a page showing the X40 kit

http://lushprojects.com/blog/2015/02/philips-radionics-x40/

and another:

http://ee.old.no/radionic/

Aurora

[smjcuk]

Radio shack (Tandy here in the UK) 160-in-1:



That and this bad boy (slightly off topic but caught fire just as often0:

[Fraser]

I had a chemistry set like that as well 

How I did not burn the house down or poison myself I do not know 

Aurora

[smjcuk]

I had a chemistry set like that as well 

How I did not burn the house down or poison myself I do not know 

Aurora

I did. Numerous times. "Mum, the table's on fire after I spilled meths on it". "Nan, your shed's got smoke coming out of it after I caused an electrical fire". "Dad, that ethanol I distilled and drank was probably methanol". "Grandad, I've got acid on my hands and they've gone pink". "Mum, my eye has gone red after the bottle of vinegar and bicarb exploded in my face". "Dad, my eyebrows are gone and I can't see properly after my electrolysis experiment ignited".

And so forth.

It's a rite of passage (he says sitting here after slicing the end of his finger off 30 years later).

[pickle9000]

And of course you can still get the Radio Shack kits under the Elenco brand name. I think they are the actual OEM.

http://www.elenco.com/product/productlist/project_labs=NTQ=

[signal]

I just stumbled upon the NI ELVIS from National Instruments:

http://www.ni.com/ni-elvis/

Anyone know about this?  It looks very nice.  Integrated power supply, scope, function generator, dmm.  The main draw however is the courseware, which looks to be free which follows along with the NI ELVIS circuit cards and kits.  I wonder if there is anything similar to this offering out there, perhaps NIDA.

[nctnico]

I started with this one:


And then Philips came with an entire new series like these:


There where several and I'm quite sure I still have them somewhere. IIRC the system used springs to connect components and that worked quite well as long as the tool to hold the spring down wasn't worn out. The big plus was that you could use any component with legs. Later on I added self made boards with 16 pin DIL sockets so I could use other (digital) chips as well.

[NiHaoMike]

A Radio Shack breadboard, which I still use today.

[Richard Crowley]

Being from a previous generation than most of you, my "electronics trainers" were reading Popular Electronics and also a bit of Electronics Illustrated and Radio Electronics and Electronics World and later dB Magazine.

Most of which are available for fits of nostalgia at: http://www.americanradiohistory.com/index.htm

[signal]

I just picked up an NI myDAQ, with LabView and MultiSim.  I will likely order the Circuits book which follows using this device.  Seems like a really good deal for what you get, plus all their curriculum is online for free.