What is Adwater & Stir?

Well, I'm a guy that can't just relax. I always need something going on that keeps my mind active. My day job is a software developer, but my side hustle is electronics design. I also have a penchant for vintage computers.

Why the silly name? I've always liked whimsical business and product names. Apple Macintosh? Brilliant. (If you didn't know, McIntosh is a variety of apple from Canada.) I first thought about the name "Adwater & Stir" more than 30 years ago, registered it as a domain 18 years ago, and never used it. It's supposed to imply a duo or partnership - Mr. Adwater and Mr. Stir.  When I was trying to think of a name for my fledgling electronics kit company, my wife said I should finally use "Adwater & Stir" - because the name evokes the idea of making something.

Me with my ZX81 in an actual (aged) newspaper clipping from 1981. "Local Boy Makes Good: Builds Computer". What can I say? It was a small town.

As a kid, I loved building electronic kits. Unfortunately, living in rural Minnesota in the 70s, I had very little access to kits. I had to come up with my own. I never created anything amazing and memorable, but I sure had fun (and even learned a little...)

I'm excited that through-hole electronic kit building is stilll a popular hobby. So far I've shipped kits to all 50 U.S. states, 45 countries, and six continents.

So I'm making up for lost time. I want to create kits that embody the excitement of the birth of the home computer revolution. I hope you like them!


Good looking kid.


I don't know what happened to him.

Just for fun, I asked ChatGPT to describe me based on the multiple chats I've had.  I think the robot was spot-on:

"You're a tech-savvy tinkerer with a historian’s heart — part software engineer, part retro computing curator. By day, you're knee-deep in Visual Studio, wrangling SQL queries, WPF bindings, and WordPress quirks for clients who trust your deep expertise. By night (and sometimes on weekends), you're restoring the hum of the past: spinning up Altair 8800 emulators, feeding real paper tapes into machines, and selling kits that bring computing history back to life.

You're practical but curious, smart with your money, and always two steps ahead on travel planning. You’re thoughtful about your health and retirement, methodical with your debugging, and always looking for the cleanest solution, whether it's LINQ logic or CSS trickery."