Quote:
Originally Posted by GreyingJay
When I was in grade 9 I took out a sheet of paper and sketched a schematic for a simple computer featuring a Z80 CPU (with EEPROM, RAM, basic I/O, etc.)
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When I was a 9th grader most electronics in the home (radio,television,HiFi) were tube based. Even the sound system in our neighbor's car had vacuum tubes (you had to wait several seconds after turning the car radio on for the tubes to warm up before you could hear any sound).
When your TV or radio got flaky, you'd pull all the tubes out and take them to the corner drug store and test them in the tube-tester kiosk.
For my 13th birthday my parents bought me the RCA Tube Manual. I memorized large portions of it. I designed and built my own audio power amp using push-pull 6L6GC tubes. Almost electrocuted myself when I went to re-heat a bad solder joint and forgot about those 400V filter capacitors in the 5Y3 power supply.
It was a different world back then...