Heathkit
shop.heathkit.com
shop.heathkit.com
> I got to know this man, whose name was Larry Lang, and he taught me a lot of electronics. He was great. He used to build Heathkits. Heathkits were really great. Heathkits were these products that you would buy in kit form. You actually paid more money for them than if you just went and bought the finished product, if it was available. These Heathkits would come with these detailed manuals about how to put this thing together, and all the parts would be laid out in a certain way and color coded. You’d actually build this thing yourself.
> I would say that gave one several things. It gave one an understanding of what was inside a finished product and how it worked, because it would include a theory of operation. But maybe even more importantly, it gave one the sense that one could build the things that one saw around oneself in the universe. These things were not mysteries anymore. I mean, you looked at a television set, and you would think, “I haven’t built one of those—but I could. There’s one of those in the Heathkit catalog, and I’ve built two other Heathkits, so I could build a television set.” Things became much more clear that they were the results of human creation, not these magical things that just appeared in one’s environment that one had no knowledge of their interiors. It gave a tremendous degree of self-confidence that, through exploration and learning, one could understand seemingly very complex things in one’s environment. My childhood was very fortunate in that way.
My Dad would get Heathkit and I would build them. I even built 3 H-151 (IBM compatible) computers. My soldering skills were pretty good. But I didn't understand how they worked - I just followed the instructions.
When I was a kid, around 5 years old, back in 1976, we got our first home game console. It was a Heathkit Pong clone, with variants for a couple related games, including duck hunt.
A few years back I read https://pong-story.com/heathkit.htm which told me that my Dad must have had a Heathkit TV back then:
> First, it requires a Heathkit TV set to operate because of its composite output. Back in 1976, only monitors and hi-tech equipment had a composite input. To use this system, the user had to open his TV set in order to connect a few wires to its electronic circuits. This is the case with the Heathkit TV sets: the user manual explains how to connect the system to several TV sets released by Heathkit. The system has another interesting feature: the sound does not come from the system itself like most of the other PONG consoles, but comes from the TV set
Indeed, Heath's instructions took a paint-by-numbers approach that did not offer analysis or explanation, so I have to disagree with hypertexthero that more than very basic theory was communicated. As for circuitry explanation, I found out the hard way on one occasion that I hadn't soldered a transistor properly, but there were no instructions on how to test for such a problem within the same "anyone can do this on a kitchen table" kit, so I mailed the board to Heath and they sent it back in working order for a small fee and postage. It is nevertheless a fond memory.
In business terms, Heathkit isn't something that he would have respected as anything but an unscalable niche hobby. Sucks that he would've been right about that.
But he was right about the transformative power of building things yourself.
EDIT: apparently, "commode" has been a word for normal furniture way longer than it was a euphemism for "toilet".
It was a long, long time until I truly and deeply appreciated what a labor of love, and what a technical achievement that must have been for my father to build that. I never really liked the stereo because it seemed obsolete before its time and didn't sound all that good, but man, handbuilt. Hats off to you, papa.
My father's in his 90s now, and I think he still uses that scope!
https://web.archive.org/web/20230501123146/https://shop.heat...
As a kid, I remember seeing their Hero 2000 on Mr Wizard. It ignited my imagination and I ordered a catalog. Then I saw the price. I went on to get a number of other robots, mostly from Tomy, but they paled in comparison to Hero 2000. When I got a little older, I even started reading about neural networks. Shame I never went further with that!
https://partofthething.com/thoughts/the-hero-jr-personal-rob...
A guy keeps contacting me to try to sell his if you want one.
At one point I had something else that was closer to a breadboard (though it wasn't) but as I vaguely recall it had a lot more options but it was hard to actually build a working circuit.
I did briefly get into Heathkit after I graduated school at one point and built a power supply that I still use sometimes but it was pretty much the end of the Heathkit era at that point.
That market niche was taken by a huge electronics hobbyist industry which included ten or so popular stores, a handful of monthly magazines, and various suppliers of project kits. The kits were advertised in the magazines and occasionally a kit would be featured as a project. Bigger projects could be spread over many months, with fairly minimal assembly instructions - often just a board view with component IDs/values - but relatively detailed "How it works" breakdowns.
There would also be regular features about technician/cookbook-level design topics. Not exactly EE grad level engineering, but enough of an overview to glue simple circuits together.
While some kits were complete others required inventive design for packaging, labelling, and board connections.
IMO it was more diverse and DIY-oriented scene with a smaller range of projects, but less hand-holding and more educational background detail.
I know the US had a similar scene, but some of the UK magazines had an attitude that was irreverent, fun, but still educational. I don't think there was a US equivalent.
I still wish we could have afforded an H11 though.
Had a look around and I'm interested in buying this microcontroller kit, has anyone tried this before? What did you think?: https://web.archive.org/web/20221203215708/https://shop.heat...
I took a Nand2Tetris course at my Uni and really enjoyed it, but was disappointed when there was no practical element for physically building any of the circuits. Hoping this can scratch my itch.
Unfortunately Heathkit didn't really make kits from 1992 until recently (I think the past year or two, though the Wikipedia article[0] is vague on when it resumed), aside from a brief, failed attempt in 2012.
You could start smaller with other simple devices, but there are lot of options if you click around.
Anyone wanting to get into computing at a low level could easily do worse. Ben's kits are fantastic!
You can still use breadboards and discrete components to experiment with the basics, but now you've got the world of microcontrollers and FPGAs to explore, you can use open-source tools to design custom PCBs and have them manufactured inexpensively, you can 3D print housings or mechanical parts for your projects, you can build inexpensive IOT devices with ESP8266 modules, you can do things with robotics and drones that we could hardly imagine in the 80s, and it's all more affordable then ever (although stock shortages of certain items may still be a problem...)
They kept it around for over 25 years. The reality is if anything went wrong with it, my father still had the instructions and could just refer to it to ultimately perform a repair.
Love it!
Sure it's interesting, but it's not tied to any recent news, and so I have to click every link just to find out if it's interesting to me
Got on their mailing list when they attempted a comeback but haven't heard a thing from them in years.
Heathkit today is very retro. If you want to look forward, there's Adafruit and Seeed Studio.
Side note - I really miss that you can barely buy RC car "kits" anymore. Everything now comes RTR (ready-to-run). And that takes most of the fun out of it, for me at least.
For plane and quadcopter it’s way harder though :\ submarines is still a more open field though ! Then there’s the hydraulics model. None are in kit, which saddens me a lot. Maybe too dangerous for common folk (like building a tube amp)
> So the time stays accurate and the alarm stays active with no line power--for weeks.
> Batteries: 6 AA cells required (not included).
Seems strange to brag about 6 AA batteries keeping time for a few weeks, when there are watches that run for 10 years on a coin cell. Maybe the batteries actually power the LEDs?
They were all a wonderful experience. The kits were excellent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eico
There was a lot of military surplus gear back then too for DIYers.
They're the only reason I've ever heard of Benton Harbor, MI.
Except then they say "you might hear stations from half-way across the continent". Well, in that case, if you like Talk radio, 7MHz might be your best choice. (Antenna's a lot shorter too.)