On 06/11/2020 17:28, gareth evans wrote:
Does anyone here remember what was the precursor
to the Philips Radionic series?

I am thinking of about 1963 which is a few years
before the Philips X20 et seq came about.

I can't be sure if it is the same one, but the one I had was a carbon
copy of a commercial kit made by my dad. The circuits of which there
were many possible were drawn on card and for each one there was also a
card component layout that fitted on a piece of holey hardboard.

Battery and loud speaker on the RHS. On/off switch, variable resistor
and tuning capacitor on the top. Clips went through the board holes and
springs with washers on clamped the component leads. Care was necessary
not to short out things as you built it the springs stood about 1" high.

The transistors were an AF116 x1 (PNP) and AC127 x2 (NPN). The most
complex thing it could make was a one octave electronic organ.

The SW radio was quite sensitive once you attached a long wire antenna
and an earth to it. The amplifier was less impressive and relied on a
high impedance loudspeaker to work at all. The transistors were puny.

The modular fixing technique on the x40 looks to be more sophisticated
than on the kit that I had.
I lusted after one of those kits but with 5 of us
brothers and sisters, the Xmas budget limited
each of us to Xmas presents costing £1 only and the electronics kit
was about £3.



--
Regards,
Martin Brown