Just go to http://soldersmoke.com. On that archive page, just click on the blue hyperlinks and your audio player should play that episode.
http://soldersmoke.com
Even though it is outside my normal analog comfort zone, I really liked this video. Farhan sent it to me, along with this note:
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As a kid, do you remember Don Lancaster's books? I learnt most of my digital electronics from him. I still have the 7 dollar video generator book on my shelf. He predates the Homebrew Computer Club. In fact, he is probably the reason for the HCC, because he put in the pieces that were used by others like the two Steves to build their own computers.
His most brilliant hack was to build a "TV typewriter" out of standard TTL parts that were just coming out in the surplus market. For $120, you could, if you build etched your own PCBs and managed to pry parts of fellow builder's dead fingers, build a circuit that, if you typed your name, it showed up on the TV screen! Never mind that dad wanted to get back to watching football or mom wanted the kitchen counter to be cleared out. Those days, parents had no appreciation for their kids being on TV, I guess.
In an earlier hack, he encouraged people through his articles in Radio Electronics to build their own Qwerty keyboard. With this in hand, you could, um .. um... well type something and sit back. There was nothing to connect it to. The fun thing was, there were no key switches available. You had to build those as well. Wind your own springs, make your own keytops, Once it was built, you could use a VOM to check that the ASCII bits corresponding to the key you held down would correctly show up on the 7 data lines. I guess the girls were surely impressed. You just needed to carry the power supply with +5, -5v, +12v, the keyboard itself, an ASCII chart and a VOM to school to show off.
Jokes apart, he kept building things and builds them to this day. His TTL cookbook and CMOS cookbooks were the goto books for almost all digital elecctronics hackers. It is a pity that no one acknowledges his knack. He has scanned in a few of his books on his 1990s www.tinaja.com. Check https://www.tinaja.com/ebooks/cmoscb.pdf
This keyboard is a very-cool example of what could be called *granular* or *fine-grain* homebrewing--breaking a project into very-small components for DIY fabrication (such as the keyboard switches). This allows for--or even requires--crossing *conceptual domains*. A keyboard switch is *electro*-*mechanical*, a TV screen is *electro*-*optical*, ASCII is *cyber*-*electronic*, and so forth. Here's another Ham-related example of granular homebrew that just now showed up in my email-- this one is "acousto-electric": https://www.instructables.com/DIY-Large-Diaphragm-True-Condenser-Microphone-Caps/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
Great stuff. Reading through that CMOS cookbook reminds me a lot of the construction/debugging techniques that were described in Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine."
"SolderSmoke -- Global Adventures in Wireless Electronics" is now available as an e-book for Amazon's Kindle.
Here's the site:
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B004V9FIVW
Bill's OTHER Book (Warning: Not About Radio)
Click on the image to learn more
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N6ORS here, still have the ttl cookbook, also, didn't he author a timer cookbook?
ReplyDeleteThis keyboard is a very-cool example of what could be called *granular* or *fine-grain* homebrewing--breaking a project into very-small components for DIY fabrication (such as the keyboard switches). This allows for--or even requires--crossing *conceptual domains*. A keyboard switch is *electro*-*mechanical*, a TV screen is *electro*-*optical*, ASCII is *cyber*-*electronic*, and so forth. Here's another Ham-related example of granular homebrew that just now showed up in my email-- this one is "acousto-electric":
ReplyDeletehttps://www.instructables.com/DIY-Large-Diaphragm-True-Condenser-Microphone-Caps/?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email
Great stuff. Reading through that CMOS cookbook reminds me a lot of the construction/debugging techniques that were described in Kidder's "Soul of a New Machine."
ReplyDeleteFun, thanks! Just looked at Don Lancaster's blog. Still writing fun and interesting stuff in 2022. https://www.tinaja.com/whtnu22.shtml
ReplyDeleteDave WA1LBP