Comment by baz00

Yeah that. Particularly when it came to test equipment which was pretty much down to building it yourself (or being rich). I saw a lot of things that looked like plumbing in the 80s rather than electronics. Not until the 90s did I understand this stuff and it was actually pretty amazing what people were building with no gear and no tools. One of the finest things I saw was a Lecher line or movable short. And some weird stuff on 10GHz that used micrometers for tuning!