The rude 2000

Hero 2000 Does the Unexpected

If you're writing a service manual on a product, you'll spend a lot of time just playing with it. It's not time wasted, you learn about how it works and you can tell your readers the normal operating characteristics of the product.
The Hero 2000 was Heath's most advanced and expensive robot. It had an 8088 CPU for its main processor, plus about ten dedicated processors to handle motion and sensor functions. Though not advertised as such, it was a multi-tasking, multi-processing computer system. If you programmed it to move about, speak, pick up objects, describe what it senses, the 8088 would send the appropriate commands to the subprocessors and would react accordingly to their responses.

So there I was, sitting in my office and playing around with the Hero 2000. That included the remote-control interface—which was really a keyboard connected to a transmitter that Heath had used in a number of their radio-controlled model airplane kits.

Since I was in the office with the door closed (and being somewhat bored), I programmed Hero to swing about, move its arm, and shout words most people don't use in mixed company.

It turned out that the test fixture used by the service techs downstairs was tuned to the same frequency. Luckily, it was mounted on blocks so it couldn't move from its spot. However, it did move its arm and shout words most people don't us—just as a group of Heath customers that were touring the plant walked by.

Sigh.

Reprinted with permission of:

Bill Wilkinson - Check out his great Heathkit page here

For questions or comments, contact: hotwing@hero-1.com

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