Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!bu.edu!telecom-request
From: gordonl@microsoft.UUCP (Gordon LETWIN)
Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom
Subject: Re: Tandy/Heathkit
Message-ID: <74370@bu.edu.bu.edu>
Date: 9 Feb 91 21:19:01 GMT
Sender: news@bu.edu.bu.edu
Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA
Lines: 36
Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu
X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 105, Message 2 of 7


In article <16709@accuvax.nwu.edu>, Ed_Greenberg@3mail.3com.com
writes:

> Many people recently got a Heathkit catalog.  

> It was pitiful. About 30% of the stuff in the catalog was buildable.
> The rest was sold assembled-only ... their concept
> of building a computer is to plug the boards in.

Heath made plenty of mistakes, for sure, but they're not totally
responsible for their downfall.  Have you looked inside a state of the
art computer today?  I just examined the motherboard of a Compaq
386/20e with an eye towards diagnosing/repairing it.  It seemed that
half of the chips were ASIC, they were nearly all .05" lead spaced
surface mount, with many many high pin-count (or is it leg-count?)
chips.

I've had years of experience hacking electronics, but I couldn't
remove and replace even one of those high count SM chips without
special tools and a lot of practice.  Can you imagine regular folks
building a board with hundreds of them on it?

And then testing -- kit folks have to be able to test and diagnose what
they build.  You need something like signature analysis to test a
board like this ... you can't do it with a voltmeter or even a scope.

So Heath is pretty much forced into offering you preassembled and
pretested boards, unless you want a computer made from socketed MSI
which would be the size of your desk and cost much more than a
prebuilt one.


gordon letwin

(I worked for Heath fifteen years ago, but that doesn't matter...)