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Arcanyn
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17 Jan 2009, 8:32 am

I did a few when I was a kid; they were mostly kits as I recall. More recently I've been building a giant capacitor - I saw the physics department of my university demonstrate a 200mF capacitor discharging, and after seeing it I decided I just had to have one that was even bigger, because I could really have a lot of fun with it. I've still got to add quite a lot more capacitors to get there though . . .



Pikachu
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17 Jan 2009, 9:39 am

Let's see

Most of my electronics projects have mainy been messing with LEDs and numerous other components wired in series, purely for fun

I have built a mixed use reception antenna, using a loop type antenna from a TV, A soldering iron body (the soldering iron was burned out), and a whole load of copper wire aquired from transformers and motors from a dead television/video recorder combi unit, and it has a massively long feed cable, and it works, it is currently in a box in the garage with all my other crap

Messing with antennas is something I'm known for, heh

I've not done anything involving fixing components to a circuit board yet but I intend to in the future to occupy me and get me off the computer a bit


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PrisonerSix
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26 Jan 2009, 4:45 pm

When I was a kid, I did build a crystal radio, and I also built a Heathkit shortwave receiver. However, the Heathkit wasn't a success. The main reason for that was I wanted to spend hours in a quiet room working on it, but my parents and my sister didn't like that and we always ended up fighting whenever I wanted to work.

They wanted me to just drop what I was doing and go swimming when my sister did, which I couldn't stand. The excuses for my having to swim included I needed exercise, and needed to balance my activities, which made little sense to me because the amount of time I needed to have enough exercise to be balanced just happened to be whatever amount of time my sister spent swimming and it had to be done with her. Sometimes I was 2 or 3 times a day. They'd even threaten to take the kit and throw it in the trash if I didn't drop what I was doing to go swimming when my sister wanted me to. They wouldn't even compromise on swimming at a preset time for a certain number of hours, the only way they'd accept it is me being at my sister's mercy, dropping my activities for swimming at her whim. My swimming on my sister's command had some sort of sacred status to them that I will never understand.

I got it finished, but it didn't work, so it had to be taken in for repairs. After that, I gave up on electronics, kits, etc., because I didn't want to fight anymore. I would occasionally read the magazines are look at a Heathkit catalog, and all I could remember was how I had to fight to build something I was perfectly capable of building if I had been left alone to work in peace. It was like my crime was having my own interests.

I didn't touch another electronics project for nearly 10 years when I decided to try changing out a modem in a PC. A few years after that, I transplanted a new motherboard into an old PC, which was also fun. Later I started building and modifying my own computers and even though it wasn't Heathkit, it was still fun and since I lived on my own at that time, I was finally free to work in peace.

I'm also a ham radio operator and like to experiment with wire antennas. You never know what you're going to work with just a piece of wire in the air, or in the attic. I spend most of my time on digital modes now, alot more interesting, alot more fun.


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gramirez
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26 Jan 2009, 4:59 pm

Anyone ever build computer boards? like PCI, NuBus, ISA, etc.?


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QuantumCowboy
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07 Feb 2009, 2:56 pm

I have been building electronic projects since I was in grade school.

What particularly are you wondering about?


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