(Mine was branded Braun, not Raytheon. not sure if that because the Braun branded versions got sold in Australia, or if dad got it in Germany or Europe - he travelled there for work quite a bit during his career.)
It had a great 10-year-old friendly manual, which I can't seem to fond anywhere, except for this pic:
You're Australian, didn't grow up on Dick Smith Fun Way kits .. but some German thingy sourced through Dads adventures instead?
Mate .. strewth! Hand in your Vegemite card, ocka!
Disclaimer: I had all the Fun Way books, all the beginner kits on crappy particle boards, the 'advanced' kits with PCB's and things, the soldering iron special bundle with all the books and a couple of kits .. but I still preferred hacking around with my Denshi blocks instead.. ;)
Denshi Blocks, oh boy are they great. Still got mine! It even has a synthesizer in it, ffs ..
I also had those spring terminal type "100 in 1" kits. From memory Tandy ones though, not Dick Smith? I don't think Dick Smith stores stared appearing until I was in high school - maybe late 70s? By then I was onto having my own soldering iron and assembling PCB kits and later making my own PBCs with etch resist pens and ferric chloride.
"Adventuring Dad" was working for AWA at the time, deep in the military industrial complex and visiting military contractors and bases in the UK and Europe regularly.
aa-jv 4 hours ago [-]
Ah, yes I remember that the DSE kits were at first all mail order, which was an essential element to learning such things way out back in the bush, where I lived at the time .. had a HAM-radio afflicted uncle who delighted in giving me old electronics junk to disassemble and turn into working piles of components for our experiments, and his reward was to get on the ham and get some kits ordered for delivering at the local water hole. Wouldn't have had such a big leg up on life if I hadn't burned my fingers that way as a ripe 10 year old electronics engineering wannabe.
The 100 in 1 kits were fun, they could be wired up to basically anything, and for a few years my uncle had one semi-permanently wired in as a power rectifier for one of his experiments .. crazy times.
mitchbob 1 days ago [-]
Ah, nostalgia. I'd drool over the Heathkit catalogs as a kid. I still have a Van Alstine-modified Dynaco PAT 5 preamp with walnut case that's been the heart of my audio system for almost 40 years. Absolutely trouble free all these years and still sounds great.
k310 4 days ago [-]
I LOVED these kits. I could only afford a handful but I would order manuals and build many in my mind.
Later on, I built countless S-100 computer cards when I had a paying job, and that led to other jobs. I never took a course in electronics and computers.
A far cry from Arduino and RaspberryPI, but interfaces get you (often) into that "old" world of discrete analog parts and sensors.
autoexec 1 days ago [-]
Are there similar kits still being made and sold today? It seems like it'd be easier and cheaper than ever to make kits that can do some very cool things, but I never see them where toys are sold. These things should be in every toy isle and museum gift shop.
jdsnape 1 days ago [-]
Yeah I’ve had the same thought. You can get cheap kits but the instructions tend to be vague/machine translated from Chinese.
I think there’s a gap in the market for quality kits with good educational instructions - but I think the market size would be very small
lmpdev 1 days ago [-]
Jaycar in Australia still sells them
Just released new packaging actually
cf100clunk 4 days ago [-]
Dad and I built a variety of Heathkit and EICO stuff way back when, from oscilloscopes to signal generators to whatever.
hawtads 1 days ago [-]
Elenco is still around. I just bought a XP-720K linear power supply kit last week.
asdefghyk 1 days ago [-]
Another related nostalgic site
For Electronic project Kits - like X in 1 Electronic Projecy kits, where X is some number from about 10 to a few 100 .....
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lectron#/media/File:Egger-Lect...
(Mine was branded Braun, not Raytheon. not sure if that because the Braun branded versions got sold in Australia, or if dad got it in Germany or Europe - he travelled there for work quite a bit during his career.)
It had a great 10-year-old friendly manual, which I can't seem to fond anywhere, except for this pic:
https://www.radiofundgrube.de/bilder/expkasten/zoom/braun_le...
https://shop.elenco.com/consumers/snap-circuits-pro.html
Mate .. strewth! Hand in your Vegemite card, ocka!
Disclaimer: I had all the Fun Way books, all the beginner kits on crappy particle boards, the 'advanced' kits with PCB's and things, the soldering iron special bundle with all the books and a couple of kits .. but I still preferred hacking around with my Denshi blocks instead.. ;)
Denshi Blocks, oh boy are they great. Still got mine! It even has a synthesizer in it, ffs ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denshi_block
Comparison with the spring kits:
https://kevinboone.me/denshi.html
"Adventuring Dad" was working for AWA at the time, deep in the military industrial complex and visiting military contractors and bases in the UK and Europe regularly.
The 100 in 1 kits were fun, they could be wired up to basically anything, and for a few years my uncle had one semi-permanently wired in as a power rectifier for one of his experiments .. crazy times.
Later on, I built countless S-100 computer cards when I had a paying job, and that led to other jobs. I never took a course in electronics and computers.
A far cry from Arduino and RaspberryPI, but interfaces get you (often) into that "old" world of discrete analog parts and sensors.
I think there’s a gap in the market for quality kits with good educational instructions - but I think the market size would be very small
Just released new packaging actually
For Electronic project Kits - like X in 1 Electronic Projecy kits, where X is some number from about 10 to a few 100 .....
https://web.archive.org/web/20260221183623/http://www.zpag.n...
OR the direct link -( Im not sure if Hacker news would smash the site .... ) http://www.zpag.net/Electroniques/Kit/Electronic_Kit.htm