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Wow! I'm 21 now but I wish I had known about this when I was younger and getting into programming, I would have been all over this. I sometimes get a little jealous of the old timers - I think being able to grow up with the evolution of computers and learn as they become more complex is a really wonderful thing.

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.

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Ben Eater might be up your ally. Just finished his 8-bit CPU build, boy it was an experience.

https://eater.net/8bit/

This is the way.

Yup. Very nice to see.

Ben is doing a fantastic job creating that same computing learning ramp so many of us grew up on.

Anyone wanting to get into computing at a low level could easily do worse. Ben's kits are fantastic!

> I'm 21 now but I wish I had known about this when I was younger and getting into programming, I would have been all over this.

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.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heathkit

Retrocomputing continues to increase in popularity. In addition to the Heatkit, you might be interested in kits from RC2014, SmartyKit, Ben Eater, Foenix C256, etc. There’s many more that are based around an RPi or microcontroller if you’re less concerned about authenticity.

These days, the possibilities for hobbyist electronics are endless.

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...)

Relating to the shortages, I'd love to learn to dump and replace the firmware on all the obsolete routers, ip cameras, smartphones, nas, etc. To do whatever I want. There is no reason you couldn't make a modern wifi niu talk zigbee and listen to your electric meter, its all software. We should own our hardware.

Take a look at https://www.tindie.com/ there are many single-board Z80/6502 computers that you can assemble for sale.

You could start smaller with other simple devices, but there are lot of options if you click around.

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