A Crummy Commercial

I found this faux-Ten-Tec project in a junkbox.  It's an IR remote controlled muter project of mine from 1998 using a Motorola 68HC705J1A microcontroller.    Big news:  it still works ! Here is the back plate: almost 27 years old ! The case is a General Foods International Coffees tin covered with fake wood grain shelf paper.  The front is actually the bottom of the tin covered with shelf paper, there is a hole for the IR receiver module to "see" the Sony remote control.  The back is a circuit board I re-purposed from some other project. Here are the boards inside: The only problem with this project:  adding a timed delay to the mute would be a hassle since I don't have a computer at hand that will run the Motorola assembler and the programmer.  I think it requires a computer with a parallel port ? So even though it does work I may pivot to a different approach: use a PIC as a timed remote for the Sony CPS-EP313 stereo.  May need to buy some ...

I do get microcontroller code requests for kits.  I always say NO.   "oh I won't share the code with anyone else"   Yes, I know you won't because I won't give out the code ! :) I can understand these requests, sometimes from DX customers - certainly the DX requests are reasonable considering that I stopped selling outside the US.  I usually suggest that they use some kind of US based forwarder like a friend or relative but this isn't always possible. I have shared PIC based projects in the past: http://wb9kzy.com/projects.htm  I spent time on these, tried to document them but got feedback maybe two times ?  Partly this is due to the general move to Arduino and beyond and partly due to assembly code.  I claim no special expertise, I am a self taught coder.  I suppose the opposite could be true: too many comments/suggestions/feedbacks turning into a huge time sink. I dunno, is it time to post hex files (if not source code) ?  Not yet,...

 When I first started selling kits I used the Motorola MC68hc705j1a, a 20 pin EPROM based microcontroller. see: https://wb9kzy.blogspot.com/2022/01/before-flash-there-was-eprom-that.html Motorola would usually promote their new chips with an offer.  For the MC68hc705c8 they had a programmer and a course that sold for something like $68.  Then if you took a test (and passed it) they'd refund your money.  They also had courses for the 68HC16 which which included an intro to DSP.  When the j1a chip came out I was able to build my own programmer.  Later I bought a boatload of j1a chips for 33 cents each, the only problem was that the seller had ground off the part number !   I really liked the Motorola chips, the assembly language was easy to use with few gotchas.  But that's not to say there weren't problems.  For example Motorola had an EEPROM based chip, the 68HC805 but they were unobtainium.  And the EPROM based J1a was VERY hard to obta...