 Notice. New forum software under development. It's going to miss a few functions and look a bit ugly for a while, but I'm working on it full time now as the old forum was too unstable. Couple days, all good. If you notice any issues, please contact me. |
Forum Index : Microcontroller and PC projects : Silicon Chip mag
Page 1 of 2   |
|||||
| Author | Message | ||||
Bill.b Senior Member  Joined: 25/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 238 |
Hi all, I think I have purchased my last copy of Silicone Chip Magazine as the price has now increase to AU $14.00. I have every copy since it was first published. Bill Edited 2025-10-01 15:46 by Bill.b In the interests of the environment, this post has been constructed entirely from recycled electrons. |
||||
palcal Guru  Joined: 12/10/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2000 |
I have all the copies too and am thinking the same. The mag is mostly things I have no interest in anyway, "It is better to be ignorant and ask a stupid question than to be plain Stupid and not ask at all" |
||||
Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8156 |
Not something we ever got over here. I gave up getting electronics mags many years ago now. I got The Raspberry Pi Handbook for Christmas and the cover price was £14 (AU$ 28.5) then, goodness knows what it will be this Christmas. Mind you, it's a fairly thick tome. I miss the old electronics and computing mags, with their pages and pages of adverts for interesting nick-nacks from Tottenham Court Road (which used to have loads of odd electronics shops) and long lists of valves and semiconductors! At one point I was getting Practical Wireless, Practical Electronics and Everyday Electronics! Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
||||
IanT Senior Member Joined: 29/11/2016 Location: United KingdomPosts: 112 |
No Wireless World Mick?  IanT |
||||
Marcel27 Regular Member  Joined: 13/08/2024 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 99 |
For every magazine there is a tripping point to stop reading. There are 2 things for me, (1) the price and (2) is it still worth reading it. 1. Everything has become so much more expensive and the quality does not go along with the price increase. 2. I don't like the layout with empty pages with only photo's. I downloaded old Elektor magazines from the Archive. I still love the layout and the way these articles were written and the circuits they explain. Nowadays there is no depth of articles. Last year I bought an Elektor. I saw the layout of an article, a picture spread over 2 pages, a title and a subtitle and the text started on page 3. WTF! I don't pay for empty pages. The article was superficially treated. I don't buy the Elektor anymore. Still lot's of old Elektors to go |
||||
| Wolfgang Newbie  Joined: 03/11/2021 Location: GermanyPosts: 24 |
It was precisely for these reasons that I cancelled my Elektor subscription some time ago. |
||||
phil99 Guru Joined: 11/02/2018 Location: AustraliaPosts: 2755 |
You can save a little with the online subscription. $100 / year. |
||||
| Volhout Guru Joined: 05/03/2018 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 5306 |
Let's face it. Electronics as a hobby is currently on it's last legs. Starting in the 1920's there was a technology leap every decade, and many new applications for electronics where invented. And was cheaper to create your own circuits, and you learned a lot. The digital evolution started the decay in the 90's. It became cheaper to buy, and technology came to a level that individuals (hobby) could only be interesting in niche markets. And that is still going on. Do you envision building your own mobile phone ? There still will be markets where the industry is not present, I see initiatives on this forum as well. But it is becoming more and more rare. There is a lot of interest in retro, vintage stuff. But mainly by the grey haired male population. So what should these magazines publish? I think they have a hard time coming up with innovative idea's, hence the base articles on application notes and development platforms from vendors like the TI's and Analog Devices. And cost wise they can't compete with the Aliexpres a likes. Quality wise... yes. Additional complication is that the fun of building stuff manually is taken away by the ever shrinking component size. I personally cannot (at home) work with 0402 resitors, let alone 0201. And through hole parts... try to find them at the Digikey/Farnell/Mouser. Gone... Our local Electronics store (discrete parts/ic's) is closed now. Keep the good memories alive, but I think in 10 years this hobby is dead. Volhout P.S. my favourite magazine was "Electronic Design" that (for many years) contained a column "Design Idea's", and every column had an innovative circuit. Like using a TV high voltage rectifier diode valve, controlled by the heater voltage, as an adjustable high voltage electronic load. Or (in times where switching regulators where not common) a 2 transistor (10 components) 18-12V -> 5V 1A buck regulator. Parts that you typically had in your parts bin... Pure Gold... Edited 2025-10-01 22:48 by Volhout PicomiteVGA PETSCII ROBOTS |
||||
| Marcel27 Regular Member Joined: 13/08/2024 Location: NetherlandsPosts: 99 |
... and maybe me too. |
||||
| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8156 |
Wireless World - A great mag for those very clever people (relative to me anyway) with deep pockets! I got a few but not many. Radio Constructor was another. I rather liked that one but it didn't turn up on the shelves very often. Rather slim and with a lot of TV related articles IIRC. I agree, Volhout. The electronics hobby has nowhere to go now. :( It costs a lot more to build a simple device than to buy a commercial unit, fully built and with more and better facilities. That's one of the reasons I keep designing round the PicoMite using modules and, where I can, through-hole components. It's a bit like playing electronics and, hopefully, brings back just a bit of the "look and feel" of Heathkit. Much, much cheaper though. :) Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
||||
stanleyella Guru Joined: 25/06/2022 Location: United KingdomPosts: 2645 |
I used to read ETI. https://www.worldradiohistory.com/ETI_Magazine.htm |
||||
Martin H. Guru Joined: 04/06/2022 Location: GermanyPosts: 1279 |
Well, in the 80s, the annual "EleKtor Halbleiterhefte" were a good source of basic circuits that you could adapt to your own needs. I found this Video that explains it quite well (English audio selectable) how it developed. 'no comment |
||||
| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8156 |
I loved Elektor's TUP TUN DUG DUS approach. Very sensible. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
||||
| DaveC5 Newbie Joined: 24/09/2025 Location: United KingdomPosts: 11 |
I gave up on Everyday Electronics in the early 80s after what seemed to be the 3rd or 4th camera flash slave project in a year. The ETI special digests were incredibly useful, though. Optimistically I'd say electronics hobbying will continue, much the same way that woodworking continues, even though power tools are cheaply available and Ikea deliver. There will always be some people who just get a kick out of making things. The hobby will change, sure, as Arduinos, Adafruit etc. have done much to democratise it. Looking online at the projects people do in the Maker world, I think there are plenty of people who "do" electronics to some level that maybe wouldn't consider themselves primarily electronics enthusiasts. Cheers Dave |
||||
| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8156 |
The main problem that I foresee is with small components. At the moment we still have a reasonable choice of through-hole stuff and quite a lot of the larger sizes of surface mount. Unfortunately the surface mount range that is solderable by hand is shrinking rapidly, with many chips especially only possible to fit using computerised pick & place. I've tried going down to 0402 resistors and it's no joke, even with a steady hand, good lighting and magnification (essential for inspection after soldering). I don't recognize the "build something by loading libraries into a SBC and connect some stuff to its pins" field as anything like the electronics hobby. It's a microcontroller hobby, which is different in many ways. A lot of it is clever stuff, to be sure, but it's not the same thing to me and I've been messing with the stuff since I learned to read the resistor values for my colour-blind dad as a kid, then moved onto using valves rescued from old TVs. Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
||||
| zeitfest Guru Joined: 31/07/2019 Location: AustraliaPosts: 608 |
We need a "Citizen Tech" movement ! It is increasingly difficult to do anything that is not "lifestyle entertainment" or sport. I did hope the STEM movement would be good but it turned into an education genre, no point in expecting any disruptive innovation there. |
||||
Grogster Admin Group  Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9660 |
I got my September issue yesterday at Jaycar(they were quite late getting the issue in), and it is $14.90 in Kiwi dollars. Fifteen bucks for a hobby magazine. I did make a mental note of that last night before I started reading it. I feel as though it is only fair to SC, to point out that they HAVE to charge what they do, to remain profitable as a business. I DON'T think they are ripping anyone off with their prices, it just reflects how expensive things are now - everything is, and SC is no exception to that rule. I too have most copies of SC from back around the year 2000 or so, and I still enjoy reading it, and I will continue to buy copies - for now - but if the price goes up over about $16 an issue, that will pretty much be the end of it for me too. We mustn't be ungrateful to SC though - they have published so many articles on the MicroMite series of chips and boards(that they didn't have to), that without them doing that, I don't think that the MM would be anywhere NEAR as popular as it is now in the hobby MCU area. We all owe SC a great deal of gratitude for their support of the MM - let's not forget that, DESPITE the price of the magazine now. Looking back in time a little, I seem to recall the fall of Electronics Australia magazine, of which I had copies of from the 80's through to the time when they ceased publication, and SC basically took ownership of them at that point. I remember LOTS of useful, interesting projects in EA for YEARS, but then they tried to improve their market share with a complete reformat and refocus and that basically ended the magazine, cos everyone who bought it for the projects and technical stuff, stopped buying it overnight, essentially. I don't blame EA for doing that at the time either. You have to go where you think the profit is, and in EA's case, that seemed to be the reformat to concentrate mostly on articles about the latest commerical and domestic electronics, and only a few pages of the magazine were left for any project like material. I'm going on my memory for all of that, so apologies if I have not got that exactly right, this is just how I remember it at the time. Please feel free to correct me, if I have got anything seriously wrong in the above. So, when EA ceased, I then picked up SC and started following that from then, right up to now. As for SMD parts, yeah, I had to resolder a couple of 0402 resistors on a module a week or so back, and yes - not fun. My standard SMD is 1206, and they are super-easy to hand solder. Even 0805 is easy enough to hand-solder, but once you get smaller then that....  Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
||||
Geoffg Guru Joined: 06/06/2011 Location: AustraliaPosts: 3306 |
It should be said that Silicon Chip is a very lean organisation. Their office is quite basic and their full time headcount is just 4 or 5 including the receptionist and editor. Many of their articles come from part time people (like me) who mostly do it for fun (they do not pay much). I remember the previous editor (Leo Simpson) saying that when he started Silicon Chip there were seven similar magazines in Australia and now it's down to just one. He also noted that the magazine's readership was rapidly aging as few young people are interested in building stuff these days. It is the same all over the world with no UK magazines left and only a few in the USA and Europe. We seem to be headed for the same fate as the dinosaurs. Geoff Geoff Graham - http://geoffg.net |
||||
| Grogster Admin Group Joined: 31/12/2012 Location: New ZealandPosts: 9660 |
It's really unfortunate. Growing up, I had an interest in electronics from an early age - ten or so. My parents and brother encouraged that(my brother was doing his electrical training back then), and for my birthday I remember receiving the "Dick Smith Fun Way Into Electronics volume 1" book and full kit of parts. This was the brilliant marketing strategy by Dick Smith, to get newcomers to play with simple discretes like resistors, caps and transistors. Back then, all the projects in the book, were assembled using a block of wood with holes drilled in it, and a bag of screws and washers, and you literally screwed all the connections down to the wooden block. Later kits they swapped the wood for a blue plastic thing, but the wood block was way better IMHO - easier to screw, cos the plastic was very light, but also tough, so it kept sliding away from you as you tried to do up the screws!  Dick Smith followed that up with Funway volume 2, and Funway volume 3. The 3rd book introduced the newbie to various DIL chips. From there, I went to be an avid reader of EA while it lasted, and then SC right up till now - the interest has never left me, as evidenced by the fact that I now run my own electronic business doing everything from basic equipment servicing, to PCB design etc. It's been a life-long love affair for me, and both EA and SC have been a big part of that journey, teaching me new tricks along the way, as I learnt more and more. Memories......   Smoke makes things work. When the smoke gets out, it stops! |
||||
| Mixtel90 Guru Joined: 05/10/2019 Location: United KingdomPosts: 8156 |
It concerns me a bit and has done for some time. You can "build" your electronics and test it in a simulator, with virtual test gear, the likes of which you could never hope to own, translate the circuit into a PCB designer, lay it out with the autorouter and get it made - all without ever even seeing a component never mind soldering one. I'm pretty sure this isn't the way to get people interested in electronics. There is a certain simple joy in seeing a diode explode or smelling the stink of singed skin occasionally, even if it makes you swear a lot. :) You learn though, and that's what the hobby is about - learning. Who are going to have the open minds necessary to keep electronics progressing in the future? Is it going to stagnate into only chip designers who have never soldered? Who will weedle out the really strange circuits of basic components rather than using building blocks? Mick Zilog Inside! nascom.info for Nascom & Gemini Preliminary MMBasic docs & my PCB designs |
||||
| Page 1 of 2 |
|||||
 Print this page |
 |
The Back Shed's forum code is written, and hosted, in Australia. | © JAQ Software 2025 |
