Newsgroups: comp.robotics
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From: 9018816@info.umoncton.ca (DANIEL BOURQUE)
Subject: Looking for HERO-1's add-on MemCom board...
Message-ID: <9018816.2.774204204@info.umoncton.ca>
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Organization: Universite de Moncton
Date: Thu, 14 Jul 1994 09:30:18 GMT
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Hi all!

	I own a HERO-1 personal robot made by the Heath Company (maybe some 
of you heard of this little dude?) and I recently brought it back to life.
I'm trying to get it running to show a few tricks at a grand-openning of a 
Space-Shuttle simulator I helped design.  Looking through articles I saved, 
I found one in PC Magazine (August 21, 1984 *gulp*) that boasts an add-on 
card for the HERO-1 to interface with a PC.  It's an adapter board that 
supplies an RS232 interface and an additional 30K of memory.  The company 
that manufactured this card has since changed its name and address, or has 
gone out of business alltogether.  I am looking for people who could help me 
get my hands on this thing.  Maybe you have a suggestion as to where I 
could look?

The card:
	HERO MemCom Board

The company:
	Micromations, Inc.
	9104 Red Branch Rd.
	Columbia, MD 21045
	(301) 730-1237
	PS: Like I said, this address was in a 1984 article.

	The only way to program its memory is to punch in a machine language 
program through the hexadecimal numeric keypad on its head, and the only way 
to save the memory is to actually record it using a tape recorder that you 
connect to its base, after you instruct it to "spell out" all of the memory 
contents.  When you turn it back on and want to load the program back in, you 
have to hit "play" on the recorder and instruct it to listen and load what it 
hears back into its memory.  There is no way to know if what you recorded 
has taken, and may have to start programming from scratch.  I've never 
gotten it to work properly yet.

Solution:
	If I can get this interface card, I will then start programming a 
parser that translates my language of choice to the robot's machine language.  
(Remember, it uses a 6808 microprocessor, so its instruction set is not that 
of the 8086-based mp's.) Then I download this data into the robot via the 
card, and voila!


Daniel "Reveen" Bourque
EMail: e9018816@info.umoncton.ca
Tel. : (506) 855-5489	// You can call me collect if you call as "Hero-1" 
	 		// or something like that to let me know that it 
			// concerns this subject.

the_question = 0x2b | ~0x2b; (To be, or not to be.  That is the question.)
Sneeze: A nasal orgasm.                          
