So I spent a couple of hours last night and a few more today building myself a new tuner. As expected, the soldering was the straight-forward element, and a significant proportion of the time, effort and frustration was expended on the mechanical side. (I never did get those pesky plastic rivets to stay in place), and this caused me to reflect;

Despite the soldering of all the components being relatively slow compared to 2003 constuction techniques (manual PTH technology vs automated SMT) and the kit itself being a simple circuit relative to many of todays circuits, in the space of a few hours I was able, in the comfort of my own home and using relatively inexpensive techniques, to construct a useful electronic gadget.

Big deal? Of course it is.

If I was building a 'decent' radio receiver 50 years ago, it would almost certainly be AM only. It wouldn't have FM or weatherband capabilities. It wouldn't be able to automatically determine which station was tuned. It wouldn't be stereo. It certainly wouldn't interface to the coolest car stereo on the planet. It would probably be many sizes bigger, far less resiliant to physical damage, less reliable generally, and have cost more (in real terms). It would have taken me longer to build, and still had plenty of frustrations along the way. It would have probably taken me 4 attempts to wind the coil without losing count.

You see that 'simple' circuit is actually rather complex after all. It's too easy to see todays circuits as simple building blocks, and forget the underlying complexity. That is in part due to the fact that for many of todays circuits, building blocks are the only way that we can visualise them - they are so complex that it is impossible to do otherwise. We rely on the creative and technical skills of engineers around the World to design and build these blocks, and trust that they will work as specified. Every integrated circuit within a circuit is one such building block. When was the last time you saw a 28 transistor circuit used instead of an Op Amp? (The venerable 741...)

And the construction techniques are also very clever. Despite PTH being fairly old hat now, consider what life was like before pcbs. Wire-wrap was common for a while - that is wrapping a wire around a component lead and running it to the next component, rinse and repeat for all connections. What happens if you got the first one wrong? It ending up at the bottom of the rats nest of wires, hidden from view, waiting for you to pull all the wires off to find it. Ugh.
With a pcb, if you get the component in the correct place (with the correct orientation where relevant), you're good to go. And the board is nicely silkscreened with component labels. Get a component in the wrong place? Simple to correct, without undoing the whole board. It's amazing. It really is.

I wouldn't even know what the circuit construction techniques of 50 years ago were. Maybe I'll hazard a guess that my radio would be built with screw terminal connections. Probably designing the layout on a big chunk of wood as I went.

So as my ponderances continued, I realised that in the 'simple' tuner I had just built was a PIC, a microcontroller that is more powerful than the computers used to put Man on the Moon. I also wondered what the geeks at Station X would have made of it in 1944. (What would they have thought about the empeg?!)

We take all of this modern complex electronic gadgetry for granted. We buy our PCs and upgrade them with 'building blocks' we bought just around the corner (or even more miraculously, from some store we've never visited paying with a piece of plastic, without leaving our homes). We expect them to work, without paying much attention to the complexity within. We expect to be able to change the graphics card and gain better graphic quality, or upgrade the processor to gain faster programs. We discard technology that 1980's scientists and engineers would have craved without a second thought.
"Better, Faster, Cheaper, Smaller, Better, Faster, Cheaper, Smaller...", the mantra of our generation. When do we stop to consider the absurdity of the situation? What we have today is astounding.

There is a sad part to this progress. It is getting more and more difficult for hobbyists to live on the edge. The construction technology is becoming too difficult to work with, especially for the really interesting stuff. You just cannot solder BGAs in your home lab. The economics of the game are such that small volume production is often unviable, and it is a brave person that takes a brand new idea from conception to market, especially without big money behind them.

So next time your PC flakes on you, remember - Don't be upset that it's stopped working, be amazed that it ever did.

And spare a thought for all those little transistors whose all too brief existence was spent serving your needs...you never did bother to find out exactly what they did.

Patrick - Thanks for the *great* kit. Truly a pleasure to assemble.
Hugo - Thanks for the dedication to the idea.

Wow. Well said.

*Ditto*

word.

So next time your PC flakes on you, remember - Don't be upset that it's stopped working, be amazed that it ever did.

This is why I never once got upset at my computer during my recent difficulties. I love that it can do what it can do.

Another ditto for me as well

that was beautiful

Nice piece, I can certainly relate to that.
I'm going to show that to my poor suffering colleagues who receive PC DOA complaints from end users.

Especially:
So next time your PC flakes on you, remember - Don't be upset that it's stopped working, be amazed that it ever did.

And spare a thought for all those little transistors whose all too brief existence was spent serving your needs...you never did bother to find out exactly what they did.