7/22/2023 0 Comments Chef chen redwood city![]() ![]() ![]() If you or someone you know is interested in building electronic kits, do check out their website. I am most of the way through building their electronic digital clock, and the experience is just as I remembered it. But this part of my story has a happy ending: Heathkit has been resurrected! They only have a tiny number of kits at the moment, but their current incarnation possesses the original designs and instruction manuals and they plan to reintroduce updated kits to the kit-building public. That particular building has had a few different tenants over the years, the latest appearing just recently when Medallion Rug Outlet-whom I presume is connected to Medallion Rug Gallery-moved in.Īlthough I understand the economics behind Heathkit getting out of the kit business, I was nevertheless depressed when they did: I whiled away a great many happy hours building and then using my Heathkit projects. ![]() Heathkit got out of the kit business in 1992, having closed their Redwood City store (I believe) sometime before. When I moved to the Bay Area I was delighted to discover that they had a couple of stores here, one of which was at the corner of Middlefield Road and Woodside Road in Redwood City-in this building: Heathkit had a few retail stores, the nearest to me being in downtown Los Angeles, far from my home. I built a handful of Heathkits, including a shortwave radio receiver (with vacuum tubes!), a pocket calculator, a computer terminal, and, finally, a 16-bit computer with two 8-inch floppy drives. Heathkit was a Michigan-based company that designed and sold kits for a wide variety of electronic devices: everything from simple radios up through color televisions, shortwave transceivers, electronic test equipment, and, starting in the late 1970s, computers. Back then one of my favorites was the Heathkit catalog. I also spent a ton of time poring through technical magazines and catalogs. I spent a lot of time at my local Radio Shack (which actually was a good place for electronic parts back then) and, later, at my local computer store. But it is up again, now, so enjoy!Įven as a kid I was into computers and electronics. I posted this article on Friday afternoon as usual, but due to a technical glitch my site was unavailable until a short while ago. ![]()
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