I will raise a glass to that 8).
Working in a 'Research establishment' there was great excitement when the first cpu's arrived and I remember knocking circuits up on 'Vero Board' with cmos chips, capacitors, diodes and resistors etc.
I remember using a 'wire rap' gun for the first time to help to make the job of connecting thousands of wires up
.
One day in my lab one of the guys was taking our phone to bits and wiring it up to a circuit he made up in his spare time, he ask me to go to one of our other offices and he had modified that too, then the phone rang and before I could pick it up odd sounds were coming from it, then alot of data came on an oscilloscope next to it.
It was a one of the first Modem chip he had ordered and made up a circuit without telling any body, but when other scientist found out they realised it could solve a problem of sending data from some of our remote sites around the country.
I have used some very large 'Transistors' each with a solid base of brass 3'' x3'', it was rated at 500 amps at 1200 volts, we used them for some inverters to drive a new electric motor built inside an train axle .
Fun days.
