I have alluded on some other threads that I may have picked up a major restoration project. I am going to post this as a quick update here and a plea for some opinions and help from the extensive knowledge here.
Here is the recent acquisition:
- you can see why I have been a bit preoccupied the last week or two and have not built my SOFTY/INS8073 up or repaired my BBC yet.
Anyway - I do now have a very basic three card H8 running checking out 8K of RAM as OK. The H9 (terminal) and the H17 (disk drive) have some significant faults - this is one of the drives for example:
So did the H8 itself but, that is a tale I may expand on in the thread - Many Tantalums, Cleaning and reseating chips, replacing many LS240, RAM fault - etc.
My main ask though is if anyone remembers seeing these advertised anywhere in the UK Electronics and Computing press - I was sort of vaguely aware of the Heath company and perhaps these machines in the late 70's but not sure how. I have come up short on much material that could explain how this unit was purchased and built by someone in the Monmouth area - the single disk it came with is dated 1979 so I would assume that it was not built all in one go (the chips on the H8 are all 1978) so it was around then it was constructed - and very well I will say.
All the units have a lot of chip leg rot and rusty parts so this will be a long job.