I was 14 when I started the electronics hobby. It was 1984 and I was a boy from the GDR. People say today, it was a bad time back then. Yes that's true. When I turned 15 I had to drive my S50 moped up to 120 km (round trip) to buy electronic components in a shop. The rest of the day I had problems sitting down and my back ached and I was frozen too. That's why I quickly learned to slaughter old equipment to get components. All I had at that time was sodium persulfate for etching (the stuff always ruined my clothes) a syringe with a cannula filled with paint to draw the tracks. Then there was an electronically controlled soldering iron (a gift from my father), solder and a completely worn drill for drilling holes. Measuring instruments were very expensive at the time. So I built some from used pointer instruments, which I calibrated in the physics lab of my school. One of the first projects I built was a digital counter that consisted of over 25 pieces 7400-Series ICs. BCD decoders and counter chips were also expensive and hard to get, so I had to build most things from NAND gates. The counter worked very well...
My best buddy in the past was also an avid electronics craftsman. We built the craziest things and soldered countless IC's. And suddenly, completely unexpected and far too young, he died. Then I finished my hobby. That was in 1999.
