104/104A

[mike bryce]

Oh my yes!

Set your wayback machine to 1975 and just sit back. Can you imagine opening
up the 1975 heathkit catalog and looking at the new digital sb104? Boy I
sure can. Wanted one in the worst way. (I now have about 20 in the
collection)

One has to remember back then this was cutting edge stuff. Digital anything
was right out of star trek.

I asked several of the designers of the 104 why they did this or did that. A
perfect example is the 5 volt regulator circuit. A LM309K would be just one
part and would work great. It was available in 1975 too. So why did you guys
use that unobtainum MCXXX part with twenty support parts?

The answer?

That's what they had a lot of and that is what the management wanted them to
use. Why stock a new part when we got a train car load of MCXXX to use.

Who knew 27 years ago that part would be gone. Wonder if you will be able to
get NE602's in 30 years? Who knows?


The 104 has gotten a bad rap. Sure it's full of critters that sing and
chirp. Yes, it not as sensitive as the stuff we have today on the 15 and 10
meter bands. But it was better than the stuff at the time.

WHile I've never built one from a kit, I've sure fixed a lot of them. A lot
of parts..yes, but I don't see it as that hard to assemble. If you want to
talk about hard to assemble, my vote goes to the HW5400.


Who knows? Maybe it's not so much that heathkit designed a kit that could
not be assembled, but the guys that were building tube based kits could not
make the transformation to the solid state circuits.

--
Mike Bryce WB8VGE
SunLight Energy Systems
"Electricity at the speed of light"

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