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Octoport
The construction time was not sequential days but a period of about 2 weeks.
This unit was first available in the summer of 1990. Since Heathkit only lasted about another year it really did not have time to become real popular. Here are a few thoughts about the kit. It was pretty clear soon into the construction that this was not the Heathkit of old. The quality control was not there. I had 3 small parts missing, fortunately I have a pretty good junk box. The manual had several areas where the assembly order was not well thought out and would have made assembly a little harder if I had not put a lot of Heathkits together. The final assembly of the PC board, IC installation, left out the installation of 7 ICs. I thought at first they left out a page and then I thought they installed them later. Nope!! They completely left out the ICs and there was no addendum/correction page for the manual. They also changed from the familiar blue model/serial number label to a white silverish label. The serial number is now just the production date which I assume more then one was produced on the same day, mine was 6/27/91. Consider the fact that this was introduced in the summer of 1990 and mine was produced a year later and the errors still had not been corrected. They were obviously shutting the operation down and did not want to be bothered. I will fire up one of my old Zenith computers, load the software and test it next.
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