adorshki
Reverential Member
Inspired by Frono's question in Opsimath's "Ham Radio?" thread:
Heathkit
You must recall it's come up briefly before.
Of probable interest here as well would be guitar amps and audiophile quality amplifier systems and speaker kits with designs licensed from legendary Acoustic Research.
Prior to all that they made their name in Ham and testing gear for same, selling kits through mail order.
Even had a color televison kit which also rivalled anything you could buy retail.
Thousands of electronics enthusiasts loved the challenge, productive recreation, and sense of accomplishment attained from building Heathkits.
Lot of cold winter months in basements and garages spent with 'em.
Designs were respected industry-wide and the warranty was:
"If you built it correctly and it doesn't work we'll fix it for free".
And you could buy educational courses in soldering and electronics theory and build your own oscilloscope to test and fix it yourself if so inclined.
Steve Jobs got his start with Heathkits.
I worked an assistant manager in one of their retail stores for about 5 years from '85-'90 so still have a soft spot for the brand.
A couple of years back when it last came up I was surprised to see they had a new website up and it looked like they were getting back into the eductaional course business at least but link's dead now.
New online virtual museum is up though:
http://www.heathkit-museum.com/
Wiki link:
Heathkit
You must recall it's come up briefly before.
Of probable interest here as well would be guitar amps and audiophile quality amplifier systems and speaker kits with designs licensed from legendary Acoustic Research.
Prior to all that they made their name in Ham and testing gear for same, selling kits through mail order.
Even had a color televison kit which also rivalled anything you could buy retail.
Thousands of electronics enthusiasts loved the challenge, productive recreation, and sense of accomplishment attained from building Heathkits.
Lot of cold winter months in basements and garages spent with 'em.
Designs were respected industry-wide and the warranty was:
"If you built it correctly and it doesn't work we'll fix it for free".
And you could buy educational courses in soldering and electronics theory and build your own oscilloscope to test and fix it yourself if so inclined.
Steve Jobs got his start with Heathkits.
I worked an assistant manager in one of their retail stores for about 5 years from '85-'90 so still have a soft spot for the brand.
Right, what I was getting at earlier about quality of materials (and workmanship, ie proper soldering technique) over the last ten years or so compared to back then.
It was a growing complaint in the store's Owner's Group club as the industry adapted Small Outline Integrated Circuit technology and that stuff just couldn't be soldered by hand at home. Yep, later kits were largely pre-assembled circuit boards and most of the labor was chassis assembly and interconnect. There was also the factor that Zenith had bought 'em and the TV kits were based on Zenith designs, and after they acquired Heathkit's buss designs and OS intellectual properties, used that as the launching pad to mass-produce their own PC compatibles which became the building blocks of the computer kits too.
And I bet if you booted that puppy today it'd still run like a champ. I'd only worry about mechanical deterioration of disc drive or tape storage.
A couple of years back when it last came up I was surprised to see they had a new website up and it looked like they were getting back into the eductaional course business at least but link's dead now.
New online virtual museum is up though:
http://www.heathkit-museum.com/
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