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Heathkit

CB Radio

8mm video cassettes

MiniDisc audio recorders

Cameras that used film.

Believe it or not, Heathkit LIVES!!!

https://shop.heathkit.com/shop

Heathkit is coming back.

Newegg better watch out.

I have wished for the past two years that I could find my old Radio Shack experimenter kit with the breadboard and spring connectors.

Yea, under my desk I have the Electronics Learning Lab. I've thought about giving it to one of my nieces. Heathkit had some good ones too. Now we have Make Zine and Craft Zine for makers and other Do It Yourselfers.

Falcon

Heathkit Educational Systems

They are still around and their stuff is good. You are not going to touch it for $5 though.

Going back 40 years, HeathKit and to a lesser degree Radio Shack were the big names in home electronics kits. Projects ranged from simple amplifiers and AM radios to electronic organs and TV's.

Going back about 35 years with the dawn of the microcomputers, IMASI and ALTAIR were branded kits. I was very surprised to see that IMSAI is still around: www.imsai.net For that matter, you can still build an Altair 8800 using NOS (new old stock) www.altairkit.com

Moving into the early 80's, the Timex Sinclair made a 4 chip z80 set. Believe it or not, you can still buy that one too. www.zebrasystems.com

About that time we also tried out an OKI Semiconductor evaluation kit for a digital PCM encoder (think digital answering machines, voice recorders). You can check the various semiconductors manufacturers who publish evaluation kits, sometimes with sample projects for a slightly more advanced challenge.

Think they went out of business at one time, but it looks like they are back.

http://www.heathkit.com/ i remember my father made a bunch of things many years ago, like an oscilliscope and such.

http://www.heathkit.com/

the demise of popular electronics and the slate of similar magazines, in which you had both semi-interesting one or two element circuits to learn off of as welll as more advanced functional items is badly missed.

There are still some good electronics magazines published. There's Everyday Practical Electronics for instance. Steve Ciarcia's Ciruit Cellar , I used to love to read his "Circuit Cellar" column in the print edition of "Byte" magazine, is good though works mainly with microcontrollers. Ooh I see you mention both "Byte" and "Ciruit Cellar" later. Then there's Make zine, which is about hacking most anything, an example is one issue on hacking plants. One article was on how to setup a mycology lab and grow mushrooms. So though it's not just electronics they do have some electronics projects.

as is heathkit

Heathkit is still around but I don't know how good they are now.

I tinkered with electronics & "Radio-Shack" projects back in the late 1970s & early '80s and I still like to go into the local electronics stores to look around (note: NOT Radio Shack anymore).

Yeap, way back when RadShack had some good learning projects, but now they have hardly anything. At least the ones around here as I've looked for them. Heathkit had some good things too but I don't know how well they are now.

Luckily these guys are still around. I hope they make a big comeback. Homemade chips...hmmmm. Now I got the munchies.

While they don't sell kits anymore, the company is still in business, and retains copyrights on all the old manuals, etc.

http://www.heathkit.com/

I think you've got a good point, though I suspect that it has more to do with the way that technology has changed so that hardware hacking is no longer a viable hobby for most.

Most people just buy whole computers and, perhaps, plug in a few boards if they're really adept. Practically nobody buys soldering irons, transistors and blank pc boards any more. With the demise of the hobbyist market companies like Heathkit have had to change their stripes. The efficiency of multi-layer boards, wave soldering machines and surface mount devices means a hobbyist can't even make something for themselves for less than twice what it costs to buy it complete.

I suppose all of this has manifested itself at electronics stores by putting downward pressure on the demand for knowlegable staff. All the geeks have moved on to software, where the knowlege base is online, not in the store.

Whatever happened to Heathkit? They used to rock when it came to supplying do-it-yourself electronic kits. It looks like heathkit.com does primarily educational stuff. It's a shame. It guess there isn't much room for soldering in a surface mount world, but it would still be cool if more companies had kits like this.

Back in my younger days, my father and I built a great number of heathkit kits. We built a vacuum tube volt-ohm meter, a digital circuit trainer (still works), and took some basic digital electronic self study courses. Not only were they a great way to do some father son stuff, but I (and he) learned a great deal from all of it.

I don't know if they still have all the kits and whatnot, but here's a link.