Restoring The Heathkit GC-1000 Most Accurate Clock

It doesn't surprise me they did! We didn't have Heathkit in the UK from what I remember, might have been something similar in Tandy (a UK Radioshack), where as a kid I spent many an hour looking at the components and dreaming about what they might do or what I might build from them, but didn't have the cash to ever have afforded any decent kits like a radio controlled clock if they had them. I have recently taken from an old radio controlled LCD clock a MSF module and rod antenna that receives the time signal in the UK on 60KHz, just a chip on board, Googled and found some code for Arduino that decodes the on/offs from the single output pin from it, and was able to receive and decode the time, very satisfying. However, I think building something like the HeathKit clock from all those discrete components back in the day radio clocks just were not a thing, must have been so much more satisfying and a thing of joy and wonder. Great to see you getting it working again.

Leigh

Nice hack to get the clock working again. And great to see that another Heathkit is back in service. Loved watching you build the signal tracer about a year ago. How about getting that working when you have time. That might make a nice video. Thanks for sharing Fran.

David Blake

Heathkit changed their clock displays every couple years just so that they could sell more kits! It's true.

Fran Blanche

Hi Fran, no worries. I get the Patreon email when the videos are posted so perhaps a lot of others have turned of the notifications and just go by the YouTube alert. Will watch the new video later. Thanks for your reply. A shame the Heathkit clock doesn't have a VFD, but I guess at the time it was extra special having 7 segment LEDs, and easier to source and replace.

Leigh

It is tough with a worldwide audience. My past surveys with Patrons indicated that almost all Patrons preferred to watch the videos on YouTube, and only a small fraction (about 1-2%) watch the advanced previews on Patreon. Because of this I have tended to shorten the lag time to launching the newer videos.

Fran Blanche

One thing I've notice is whilst I get a nice warm feeling being a Patreon when I get an email to be first to watch a new video, that before I've had chance to watch it, it's already on YouTube! 10 hours ago I got the Patreon email for the new video which was 2 hours before I got up (in UK), then went to work, so just haven't had chance to watch it yet, but it is now on YouTube. This also may make it look like a lot of your Patreon's aren't watching the videos when you post them privately, but we are, just not quick enough :-) Still looking forward to watching it of course.

Leigh

Looking forward to watching this later when home from work, thanks Fran.

Leigh

Good job! If it still has the annoying symptom of not starting the digital functions when power applied until given stimulus by switching to test mode, you might want to use an o-scope to see if the reference clock (oscillator) starts running at power up.

As always! Thanks! Looking forward for the future. Have a beautiful weekend. 🤗

Why the carbon stack-up for the dropper? I thought you had boxes and boxes of ceramic power resistors. The white rectangular ones, if memory serves.

BobC