Re: [time-nuts] time-nuts Digest, Vol 18, Issue 1
As a data point, I visited MIT last November and headed for selected
spots, some last seen in 1960. The Edgerton Center on the 4th floor
of Building 4 had a class in session doing things with 555 timers and
LEDs. The instructor told me that they have resources for 12 students.
They get 25 applications, from grad students to local high school
students.
Lessee, there are about 4000 MIT undergrads, and about 15 are interested
in a hands-on lab. Maybe that's to be expected, but I remember how
disappointed I was when the EE department tore out the rotating equipment
lab and replaced it with courses in vector math in 1955. I switched to
Mechanical Engineering because they hadn't gone completely abstract.
OTOH, engineers live to create stuff with other people's money. The
building blocks keep changing, but the urge to build is still there.
I build computers with motherboards and power supplies and cases, etc.
I build a time lab with boxes purchased from eBay.
The thing is, we have lost the 7-12 group, the Boy Electricians, the
Gilbert chemistry sets and the magic of radio. TV promised to be an
exceptional teaching tool, but selfish people with an unending greed
turned it into a behavioral modification tool to create consumers.
Kids learn early to concentrate on consumption and forget about how
the world works. The people with the most influence on kids don't want
consumers that know how to think, especially not creatively.
I can't do anything about it, although I did donate to the Edgerton
Center, so I play with time and wait to see if Limits to Growth was
right about the population collapse in 2020.
Best wishes for the new year, but don't blame me if it keeps getting worse.
Bill Hawkins
Good points Bill. Heck, if I was doing today what I was doing in my early
teens I would be considered a terrorist. I go to LL quite a lot, and a lot
of the newer hires there are MIT grads. At least most of the ones hired at
LL do care, and somewhat understand hardware. Still, until they get at least
10 or 15 years under their belt they get confused between the esoteric
mathematical gyrations and reality. - Mike
Mike B. Feher
89 Arnold Blvd.
Howell, NJ, 07731
732-886-5960
-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On
Behalf Of Bill Hawkins
Sent: Monday, January 02, 2006 11:40 PM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Help - Hope?
As a data point, I visited MIT last November and headed for selected
spots, some last seen in 1960. The Edgerton Center on the 4th floor
of Building 4 had a class in session doing things with 555 timers and
LEDs. The instructor told me that they have resources for 12 students.
They get 25 applications, from grad students to local high school
students.
Lessee, there are about 4000 MIT undergrads, and about 15 are interested
in a hands-on lab. Maybe that's to be expected, but I remember how
disappointed I was when the EE department tore out the rotating equipment
lab and replaced it with courses in vector math in 1955. I switched to
Mechanical Engineering because they hadn't gone completely abstract.
OTOH, engineers live to create stuff with other people's money. The
building blocks keep changing, but the urge to build is still there.
I build computers with motherboards and power supplies and cases, etc.
I build a time lab with boxes purchased from eBay.
The thing is, we have lost the 7-12 group, the Boy Electricians, the
Gilbert chemistry sets and the magic of radio. TV promised to be an
exceptional teaching tool, but selfish people with an unending greed
turned it into a behavioral modification tool to create consumers.
Kids learn early to concentrate on consumption and forget about how
the world works. The people with the most influence on kids don't want
consumers that know how to think, especially not creatively.
I can't do anything about it, although I did donate to the Edgerton
Center, so I play with time and wait to see if Limits to Growth was
right about the population collapse in 2020.
Best wishes for the new year, but don't blame me if it keeps getting worse.
Bill Hawkins
time-nuts mailing list
time-nuts@febo.com
https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts
Mike Feher wrote:
I just bought myself a couple of Hakko model 850 hot air surface mount
soldering stations and various nozzles.
But that is at quite a considerable cost. Fine if you are a professional
or dedicated hobbiest, but not if you are a child.
It's hard to see how a significant number of 7-11 year olds will have
the money to buy that sort of kit and the other bits you need to so SM
technology.
It really does make it easy.
Try taking some 7-11 year olds and getting them to build something at
the component level using SM technology. The space between pins is
almost certainly going to decrease, which will make it more difficult in
10 years time than it is now.
No doubt, in 10 years I'll look back and wish I'd not posted this
message, as electronics would have changed in a way I can't foresee.
Change it will no doubt do.
Dr. David Kirkby wrote:
Mike Feher wrote:
I just bought myself a couple of Hakko model 850 hot air surface mount
soldering stations and various nozzles.
But that is at quite a considerable cost. Fine if you are a professional
or dedicated hobbiest, but not if you are a child.
Poppycock! and to show we are friends, I'll add a ;-)
Wander over to ebay, and do a search on "(SMD,SMT,solder) (rework,re-work,
hot air,hot-air)' and tell me what you find.
There are very credible HAKKO 850 compatible SMT rework stations available
for $70! My 12 year old son buys Warhammer models (tin soldiers for the
back pain crowd) for $35 each using a combination of his allowance, and money
he gets as presents from relatives.
When we were kids (putting on my grandpa Simpson suit), we spent $3 for a
cheapo RadioShack soldering iron. As a teen, I spent $3 to fill the tank
on my car. To fill that same car with its 19 gallons of gas now costs
nearly $60.
I think just about any teenager can afford a SMT rework station.
Heck, I even import one of the fanciest stations out there from Aoyue
in China. It has a 70W digitally controlled hakko compatible soldering iron
with fume vacuum, a 500W digitally controlled hakko compatible hot air section,
an air flow gauge, and 5 different SMD air tips. I sell the whole thing
for right around $200.
My point is that the things that my friends and I did to dabble in technology
strained our finances way back in the tube era, and the cost to play today
isn't all that much more than we paid for a Gilbert chemistry set.
It's hard to see how a significant number of 7-11 year olds will have
the money to buy that sort of kit and the other bits you need to so SM
technology.
There are more than a few guys that are dabbling in SMT manufacturing using
a teflon coated electric frying pan. Cooking up a bunch of 2"x3" PCB's is
very much like frying up some potato wedges. You have to watch them, and
scoot them around a bit with a plastic spatula so that all of the solder gets
melted. Wallyworld has electric frying pans for $35. Do a google, and you
can easily find instructions for doing SMT work on the cheap.
If a kid wants to work in this arena, he will. You ought to see the mass of
equipment my son access to (that he ignores completely).
-Chuck
In message 43BA78B7.8070000@erols.com, Chuck Harris writes:
If a kid wants to work in this arena, he will. You ought to see the mass of
equipment my son access to (that he ignores completely).
I don't think the question if there is a barrier as much as to what
the height of it is.
It used to be that you could look at technology and guess how it
worked. With a bit of skill, you could take it apart, validate
your hypothesis, and put it back together again in working condition.
All of those three steps are significantly harder today as a result
of the push for "intellectual property" as much as the push for
cheaper products. It's the same reason that so many consumer
products these days are non-repairable.
So yes, there has always been a barrier and now it is higher, and
no, it is not unscalable for the truly determined.
But have we compensated properly for the raised barrier, so that
there will be enough engineers 10-20 years from now ? Doesn't look
like it over here in Denmark.
Poul-Henning
--
Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
In message 43BA78B7.8070000@erols.com, Chuck Harris writes:
If a kid wants to work in this arena, he will. You ought to see the mass of
equipment my son access to (that he ignores completely).
I don't think the question if there is a barrier as much as to what
the height of it is.
Well, I was a teen when TTL logic started to make its debut. I wanted
to make a computer, so I had a barrier I had to scale first. I needed
to know what TTL chips were available, and what they could do. Texas
Instruments helped me with that by sending me a complimentary data book.
Then I had to know how a computer worked. That was tougher, because
the books I could find in the library only gave a brief hand wave to
how a computer functioned. DEC sent me their fine series on the PDP8,
and even still, it took the better part of a year before I figured out
what must be going on, and designed my own micro programmed CPU. I couldn't
build it though, because it would have cost me more than $1000 in parts,
and I had no way, other than a front panel, to get data into or out of
the CPU. And I had nothing other than a simple logic probe to test
out my design...
So tell me, with the advent of the internet, how are today's hurdles
higher than what I had to conquer?
I can find full information on how to assemble circuitry using surface
mount technology. I can find full datasheets on virtually any chip that
exists, or ever existed. I can find full programming information on
every microprocessor out there, and I can get free software to program
the chips, make the PCB's, and even simulate the result. And to top
it all off, I can get a prototype run of boards made for less than $50!
All of the information I needed to make my first CPU exists on the net
as program files for PLA's that can be programmed using the parallel port
on a PC... Oh yeah, and everyone has a PC...
From my perspective, things are much easier for the electronics hobbyist
today than they have ever been before.
-Chuck
In message 43BAA3A5.3060201@erols.com, Chuck Harris writes:
From my perspective, things are much easier for the electronics hobbyist
today than they have ever been before.
No doubt about that.
But the question was if it has become (too much) harder to become
an electronics hobbyist in the first place.
--
Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk@FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
On Tue, 2006-01-03 at 17:22 +0100, Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
But the question was if it has become (too much) harder to become
an electronics hobbyist in the first place.
I don't think it has become harder. It may well have become less
attractive in comparison to other things one can do as a hobby that just
didn't exist when we were making our choices, though.
As an example, my teenage daughter is starting to learn Python right
now. For the things she thinks are fun to poke at and experiment with
in her spare time, that's probably a good choice... and that choice was
completely unavailable (inconceivable?) when I was that age.
Bdale
From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" phk@phk.freebsd.dk
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Help - Hope?
Date: Tue, 03 Jan 2006 17:22:32 +0100
Message-ID: 85496.1136305352@critter.freebsd.dk
In message 43BAA3A5.3060201@erols.com, Chuck Harris writes:
From my perspective, things are much easier for the electronics hobbyist
today than they have ever been before.
No doubt about that.
But the question was if it has become (too much) harder to become
an electronics hobbyist in the first place.
To some degree yes, to some degree no. The real threat is maybe not integration
but rather stuff like ROHS, which can make it much harder getting components we
used to have available.
There is alot of information available "out there", but it lacks organisation
and what is lacking is the good hands-on-tips on how to actually design,
actually assemble. There is however alot of inspiration from all kinds of
projects around. It starts by wanting to make a little cable, goes further to
some minor gadget and then it rolls on. For instance, when the kids gets tired
with softsynths and have catched on the awe for big modulars, they want to
learn to make it themselfs... and they do! They find alot of info, find the
forums, asks and learns. Read schematics and see what people like Jürgen Haible
is doing. I imagine that similar stuff happends in other branches.
They start from a different place, but their start is not based on the old
fashination of talking over radio-waves... everyone is doing that these days!
Cheers,
Magnus
I remember as a teenager in the early '60s getting DEC catalogs. They were
really comprehensive. Regardless, I was never able to build a computer from
their literature. I think the basic concept for the computer I described
previously was inspired by an article in Popular Electronics. - Mike
Mike B. Feher, N4FS
89 Arnold Blvd.
Howell, NJ, 07731
732-886-5960
-----Original Message-----
From: time-nuts-bounces@febo.com [mailto:time-nuts-bounces@febo.com] On
Behalf Of Chuck Harris
Sent: Tuesday, January 03, 2006 11:18 AM
To: Discussion of precise time and frequency measurement
Subject: Re: [time-nuts] Help - Hope?
Poul-Henning Kamp wrote:
In message 43BA78B7.8070000@erols.com, Chuck Harris writes:
If a kid wants to work in this arena, he will. You ought to see the mass
of
equipment my son access to (that he ignores completely).
I don't think the question if there is a barrier as much as to what
the height of it is.
Well, I was a teen when TTL logic started to make its debut. I wanted
to make a computer, so I had a barrier I had to scale first. I needed
to know what TTL chips were available, and what they could do. Texas
Instruments helped me with that by sending me a complimentary data book.
Then I had to know how a computer worked. That was tougher, because
the books I could find in the library only gave a brief hand wave to
how a computer functioned. DEC sent me their fine series on the PDP8,
and even still, it took the better part of a year before I figured out
what must be going on, and designed my own micro programmed CPU. I couldn't
build it though, because it would have cost me more than $1000 in parts,
and I had no way, other than a front panel, to get data into or out of
the CPU. And I had nothing other than a simple logic probe to test
out my design...
So tell me, with the advent of the internet, how are today's hurdles
higher than what I had to conquer?
I can find full information on how to assemble circuitry using surface
mount technology. I can find full datasheets on virtually any chip that
exists, or ever existed. I can find full programming information on
every microprocessor out there, and I can get free software to program
the chips, make the PCB's, and even simulate the result. And to top
it all off, I can get a prototype run of boards made for less than $50!
All of the information I needed to make my first CPU exists on the net
as program files for PLA's that can be programmed using the parallel port
on a PC... Oh yeah, and everyone has a PC...
From my perspective, things are much easier for the electronics hobbyist
today than they have ever been before.
-Chuck
time-nuts mailing list
time-nuts@febo.com
https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts