dave wrote:
Bill Baka wrote:
At any rate I self educated myself and by ten years old
I was buying used console short wave sets and fixing them up and
probably could have gotten a job as a repair tech at 11 years old.
That motivated me all the way to college, at which point I found
myself way ahead of the rest of the classes. These days things are
going needlessly complex and tinkering is just about out. I can fix
*ANYTHING* built before 1980 since I can get down to the real
component level, but the new stuff is throw away.

I am 60 and I do component level repair on SMD boards. I can fix more
"anything" than you can.

Missed the point. I am an engineer and got that way from loving the
tinkering. Give a kid a box of 'dust' '05001' SMD parts and you will not
have a happy kid building things. I have two microscopes at home, both
lab grade, and some of the passive SMD is getting ridiculous. Concepts
look good in my head, schematic looks good, Spice simulation is OK,
final product is microscopic. Hard to tinker, and I don't know many kids
who will want to play SMD.

Bill Baka