I would love to read through those old issues, but it's in Russian.... I imaging they build great stuff with even less complicated circuits and parts. Great to see that enough people kept their interest in this topic so they could survive that long :)

@@Orbis92 Google Translate does wonders these days, even realtime translation of what your phone camera "sees". Or you can do OCR with Adobe Acrobat then feed the PDF to GT.

@@Orbis92 I suspect it would have mostly been HAM content and projects. I can't imagine what it would be like to be a HAM radio operator through the 50's 60's and 70's in Russia. Since HAM operators would have been among the very few people in that country capable of receiving and sending information around the world it must have been a very paranoid pastime.

@Ken Mason No, I'm talking shortwave below 30 Mhz. I haven't played around with the satellite weather fax. That is also still around.

If we could get rid of bad journalists, we could have both.

@@SurajGrewal Ack, I can also steal content from the Internet and put it in a "Magazine".

Internet is bad

a week after the internet is gone i will be rich posting books of memes at bookstores for everyone who misses net

@@frogz damn I would buy a book of dank memes right now.

Kostas Albanidis That’s something I too would like to see

should be able to now youtube has finished stuffing round

I don't think so... Elektuur had by far not as many advertisements, and it was not often reviewing stuff or teaching general theory. It was a collection of DIY projects with PCB layouts, true. And it was famous for the monthly section discussing and fixing bugs in the designs :-) And it still exists today, although it is now named Elektor (originally the name of the German/English editions) and only has 6 issues a year. There were of course other magazines.

@EEVblog, coming from you, I take that as a compliment. 😜

I did a survey on this a long time back, and not many people were interested in regular old magazine videos. But sure, a couple a year or something.

Okey dokey sir.. just was hoping.. cheers and have a great day Sir

Sacrilege!

The home computer thing wasnt over - they had just moved on to PCs and cover disks

smArtWork by Wintek, yep the first DOS based Pcb design software I ever used. Came on a protected 5.25" floppy. Used the function keys to lay pads/tracks. The predecessor to Wintek's HiWire II.

Circuit Cellar or Silicon Chip? What's your verdict about Nuts and Volts?

@@samuelschwager I don't have anything to compare it to really, so buffer my simple 3 year hobbyist opinion accordingly. The projects are extensively written, but even without having built any yet I'm seeing several minor errors with things like schematic/silkscreen/BOM errors and pictures that don't match up 100%. I don't see anything critical yet, but I'm seeing stuff like the BOM lists C7 as "xyz," the schematic shows C7 as "xzz," and an included 3D CAD image only shows C1, C4, C6, and C9. Obviously anyone that looked at the entire project would see "C7" is a 100μF filter capacitor and isn't critical to the signal path. Just don't copy/paste and order the BOM blind,..not that anyone should ever do this. There are some printed corrections noted in each issue and online. I mostly appreciate the information and exposure to different aspects of the hobby I may be unaware of. It seems like a collection of projects more than anything, with a broad scope from a couple HAM articles to audio and μCs. The current issue has an article on C precompiler directives and their potential applications with debugging code. That's probably the most useful article for me in this one. There's also a project where a 1W laser diode was used to burn text onto wood pencils. That project design is based on 2 galvo mirrors. I hadn't seen a setup like this before with a DIY type build. There's also a simple 74lvc1g04 based RF frequency counter buffer for TTL inputs. It's basic but it's easier to make use of than a similar datasheet reference type design as everything is detailed and explained in depth. The previous issue had a DIY TL084 on perfboard THD audio analyser that looked interesting to me. So far the mag is interesting on a practical hobbyist level. It doesn't seem like they are trying to force me into ridiculously priced software or proprietary hardware. It's mostly jellybeans and popular hardware. I originally subscribed after finding/using an article freely posted online detailing a simple ICL7135 based frequency counter and prescaler. That's the old Intersil 10MHz fully integrated counter chip. -Jake

@@UpcycleElectronics Thanks, wasn't expecting such an extensive answer :) I'll try an issue or two.

Some things never change. Two decades after that, when I was building DSP machines, someone drilled a hole straight through one of our little audio signal processors and sent it back for repair. "Can you fix it?" No, ya dummy, there's a big hole through the board! :p

It does.. cheers and have a great day sure sir

I had forgotten BK rebadged scopes way back, I think they also rebadged Goldstar scopes?

From memory, you'd photocopy or print onto a transparency which you'd then then place over a board and shine a UV light on it before finally submerging it in a ferric chloride solution.

@@ianweber9248 Don't forget the developer part to harden the coating that wasn't exposed to UV light. :) I've done a number of home-etched boards just a few years ago, but having the fabbed in China is just too cheap to justify the mess nowadays.

My mum sold my 464 for $20. I was NOT happy, still not

@@mycosys In about 1997 I gave mine away to a friend who wanted to get into computers. He got frustrated with it, not knowing how to do anything with it and refusing to learn and he trashed it. Still makes me mad thinking about it, but I guess by 1997 GUIs were everywhere and anything without one was not user friendly.

@@adslf874yti3q7u4hf83 I dont think i wanna know how mine ended up with the neighbours kids

The 424 was the classic. Those coloured keys!

@@EEVblog yup they dont make em like the 464 anymore!...thank god! LOL..colors where nice for kid..being sort of color coded helped learning... and yes...im still downloading weather faxes these days with RTL-SDR!

I paid NZD$1695 for my Amstrad CPC664 Colour in 1986. I then upgraded to a CPC6128. I still had it running up to 1995.

Elektor is published in English, I'm surprised it's not available in Aus.

@@cambridgemart2075 www.elektor.com/elektor-labs-products/magazine/print/sort-by/publicationdate/sort-direction/desc/

In Denmark wee have had ee engineer that publish small folder with print and component you can buy and build, like weekend project, with description. translate.google.dk/translate?hl=da&tab=wT&sl=da&tl=en&u=https%3A%2F%2Fda.wikipedia.org%2Fwiki%2FJostykit

It used to be available in Australia, at least in Melbourne, still have a couple of copies somewhere, great mag and projects.

Hi

I disagree. Hobby electronics wasn't necessarily expensive in Australia in 1985 though some aspects could be. Yes, test gear like oscilloscopes were costly but you didn't need that to enjoy hobby electronics. Full form kits weren't cheap either. But there was plentiful old valve stuff, transistor radios and black & white TVs that you could salvage parts from. And simple parts like transistors, resistors and capacitors weren't too expensive from Dick Smith (though they were from Tandy). Public libraries usually had several electronic books and you could order ones they didn't have. And it was typical for young people to be given heaps of stuff by radio hams (often older men). Cheap electronics, the information revolution and even changing social relationships have changed a lot of this.

Yeah salvaging parts from bins and being given free stuff will never be expensive I suppose. Recession hit my Australian suburb harder than yours I guess. (Y)

A kookaburra

@@vk3ye Neat! Thank ya kindly. :)

Is there anything you didn't do? :->

@@EEVblog By the time you're as old as me you'll have a CV that's just as long ;-)

Mate, so sorry to hear. I have come close to doing it many times over the years, but fortunately still have them. They're incomplete(edit: lots of gap months/years) but stacks and stacks of EA, AEM, ETI, SC etc

What's ergonomics...

I used DR-DOS for years

interesting to realise that Win95 has become old ... since 95 means 1995 and ... 1995 is now ancient. I'd say 1995 became ancient around 2012. so the new ancient year is 2002.

Yep, the serviceman did it for me too.

Ahh yes, the serviceman. I still remember one article I read decades ago regarding troubleshooting vacuum tube circuits. He talked about his calibrated screwdriver - you touched it on the point of interest and slid it towards the chassis until it sparked. The size of the spark indicated the voltage. His colleague had a calibrated finger, but it only measured three voltages: "Yep, it's on", "Ouch!" and "Bloody hell!!".

Got Elektor since 77. Loved their Circuits books as well.

You could buy it at Dick Smith and news agents, though from memory it was about twice the price of the Australian magazines. Later editions of Australian Electronics Monthly had an Elektor section in the middle.

We definitely still / also had CP/M machines in '92 at my university - it was the first time I saw it actually. Well, there's Eastern Europe for you...

No, we didn't get the overseas mags here in Australia.

Still exists, online: www.elektor.com/

And there are copies in the internet archive: archive.org/details/ElektorMagazine

Look, July 1985 :-) archive.org/stream/ElektorMagazine/Elektor%5Bnonlinear.ir%5D%201985-07#mode/2up

We did have Elektor in a form in Australia. For a while it was often presented inside one of the local mags - "Elektor in AEM" I think.