A Crummy Commercial

IMO the internet stinks for recent history, the boring details like what did this place look like in 1969 - that kind of thing.  However there are a few outposts like Pinterest that do have a little history (along with a LOT of ads). Recently I saw this Red Barn ad in a Pinterest email.   Curiously while I don't think I ever was in a Red Barn restaurant the ad did spark a memory. As I recall there was a Red Barn on Fond du Lac avenue right next to Amateur Electronic Supply.  So I jumped in my internet car and tried to take a "drive" around that area.  Unfortunately Microsoft Bing has killed their streetside part of the maps.  Fortunately Google did a pass through that area for street view fairly recently in November 2025. I *think* this used to be the Red Barn: the barn roof is gone though To the north is where AES used to be: South of the Red Barn was Evans and Kunz pet shop: And finally here is the former Fruit Ranch food store: I tried to verify some of these...

It happens: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2026/02/byte-magazine-artist-robert-tinney-who-illustrated-the-birth-of-pcs-dies-at-78/ I didn't know Robert Tinney had a site with posters: https://tinney.net/product/1776 I *think* this is the cover of the first issue of Byte that I ever bought: I probably got it at Amateur Electronic Supply ?  Not sure on that. Unfortunately this is what the BYTE covers turned into after a while: I guess you can't blame them, editors are wordsmiths not artists.  They see a blank space and want to fill it with words (in sans serif type yet).  QST covers aren't quite the same since full color and large format, my own corny sunset cover: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/09/go-back-50-years.html Byte kinda degenerated from a hobby magazine into yet another corporate rag - I suppose that's where the money was, at least for a while.   I used to enjoy fooling with computers - now they are just another appliance. Best Regards, Chuck, WB9KZY...

Einstein did "thought experiments" => engineers do "design thought experiments" :)  Before simulation or breadboarding the engineer thinks about how to solve the problem, maybe with something new factored in.  Idea (which many engineers don't like to confront) is to make things more cheaply. This was one of the first ways for an experimenter or a ham to add speech to an electronic project: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Instrument_SP0256 I have one of those chips (SP0256A-AL2 from Radio Shack): I did take it out of the package and misplaced the doc Here is the Radio Shack datasheet for the 276-1784 SP0256A-AL2 chip: https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_gispeechGe56AAL2datasheetRadioShack2761784Apr1984_15859898 I can't recall ever using the chip.  There are still a few of them on Ebay but the prices !  Also, the phoneme based voice synthesizers didn't sound that great.  So the SP0256 isn't really an option for the 21st century project desi...

I dug out the Morsemaster II, last mentioned here: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2023/11/morsemaster-switches-part-ii.html I tried it out but it didn't seem to be working.  After fiddling with it a little I could hear a really faint stream of Morse code.  After opening it up I decided that the earphone jack might be bad so I took it out - WRONG. The sidetone uses a 555 timer circuit, some variation of which has been used by many hams for a CPO.  I finally realized it was the 220 uF output cap.  So I replaced it with a 100 uF cap (all I had at hand) and bingo, it worked, very loud and thumpy !  I had to turn down the volume. it wasn't born bad - it became bad  :) I decided to check the cap value, the AADE LC Meter manual cautions against polarized caps so I dug out the B&K 810C cap meter.  Here is the reading: So sometime along the line that cap lost almost all of the original value.  And since capacitive reactance is inversely related to capacit...

What was the biggest news out of Super Bowl 60 for me ? The perfect weather ?  (yawn, it's California) The ads ? (no, I wasn't able to watch the game) Seahawks 29, Patriots 13   (no, not this either) Bad Bunny halftime show ?   (nope) Coincidentally I saw this on Sunday: https://x.com/WiscoGrant/status/2020553342003318952 source:  https://www.campbells.com/products/chunky/pabst-beer-cheese-with-potatoes-chorizo/ Are you kidding me ?  They also have: source:  https://www.campbells.com/products/chunky/pabst-beef-bacon-beer-chili-with-beans/ BTW in case the combo of Pabst and cheese sounds weird see the bottom of this post: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2025/12/frizz.html Pabst-ett was a "cheese-food" created and sold by Pabst during prohibition.  Described as: "a pleasing combination of cheese, milk protein, milk sugar, milk minerals"  IOW: Velveeta ? source:  https://www.pabstmansion.com/2022/06/pabstett/ update:  Helpful Househol...

Recently I became aware of Kwik Trip Dunkers due to this guy: https://www.si.com/fannation/college/cfb-hq/news/gennings-dunker-2026-nfl-draft-prospect-profile-grades-rank-measurements Apparently he is a BIG fan of Culver's, the fast food chain that originated in Wisconsin.  Anyway Dunkers are a cake donut in various rotating flavors sold six to a box. But when I saw pictures of a Dunker: I immediately thought of Egekvist donuts in a box.  They were also boxed cake donuts sold at Mann's.  But somewhere along the line either Mann's changed wholesalers or Egekvist went out of business because they stopped being offered.  I tried looking for a picture of Egekvist donuts but this was the only one I found: the Egekvist ones were in the yellow windowed boxes source:  https://www.flickr.com/photos/40150075@N04/44967499092 It's so fuzzy that I'm not sure what brand is what, but you get the idea.  It's not that the Egekvist donuts were super great, it was more t...

The summer of the moon landings, 1969, I had graduated from grade school and was about to start high school.  So I took a couple of summer classes at Nicolet High School.  The first one was mechanical drawing - this was way before computerized drawing CAD programs of course.  But the other course was touch typing.  And then I never did any typing again for 4 years !  Also you don't remember touch typing without using it.  Finally, touch typing depends a LOT on the particular keyboard layout - muscle memory gets developed and it's hard (at least for me) to shift to a different keyboard on a computer.  I never really nailed down touch typing numbers (and certainly shifted number symbols) but now I can sorta no look type but with the caveat of lots of mistakes.  I remember a fellow named Tony at GTE would marvel at how fast I could type on the Sentry IC tester terminal and how fast I could make mistakes :) It turns out that I didn't really ever use t...