Quote from: mnementh on Today at 06:56:31
Yes that's a Heath Voltage Reference Source from the M-E Lab Components series (Snippity) I will probably make sure it works, calibrate it, play with it a bit to see how accurate it is and then ask if anyone more interested in collecting Heath gear than me wants to buy it.
And how I came to to be introduced to the trash barrel, well that's a story for another evening.
Yummy analog goodness from the golden age of American Electronics!
Please, do tell!
mnem
Okay, since you asked. This is TL;DR material...
![Laughing :-DD](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/smiley_laughing.gif.pagespeed.ce._hfWAz_QHO.gif)
I went back to visit the guy who saved the workshop from the dumpster, this time to go through boxes of components, and to give him cash from the stuff I sold for him. We were at it for about an hour when he said,
So my next door neighbor also got some stuff. Do you want me to ask him if you can look at it? A few minutes later I met the fellow, who leads me to his van, which is full of amateur radio gear and then to the side of his house, where I discover what looks to be three or four hundred dollars worth of cables, test leads, and small electronics left in the rain, and a garbage pail filled with a random collection of meters, new coax, and random trash.
/begin rant
![Rant :rant:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/rant.gif.pagespeed.ce.koOB_HE-VX.gif)
Turns out this was the man who trashed all the manuals and documentation. He wanted the storage cabinets, so he wheeled them into the driveway and upended them, dumping approximately 100 linear feet of original Tektronix and HP manuals, along with a whole collection of databooks, onto the ground. Then he brought over a wheel barrow and started dumping parts bins full of components into it. That's when the guy I have been working with saw what was going on and stopped him.
![WTF? :wtf:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/wtf2.gif.pagespeed.ce.pxLiY5pjs4.gif)
was he thinking? He destroyed stuff he could have easily sold for some freakin' metal storage bins that he could buy for less than a hundred bucks.
In a rare display of adult restraint, I didn't start cursing, screaming or sobbing when I heard the story. I avoided looking at all the test cables ruined by the rain, quietly went through the trash barrel, extracted the Heath VRS, gave him twenty bucks and left the rest. He offered to sell me everything he took out of the workshop. I politely declined. Given the nature of the conversation and his expectation that what he had was worth tens of thousands of dollars, I imagine that it will all be there when goes on to his reward.
![Rant :rant:](https://www.eevblog.com/forum/Smileys/default/rant.gif.pagespeed.ce.koOB_HE-VX.gif)
/end rant
I went back to my now-friend's garage, talked a bit about how to get the rest of the stuff out of his garage, sorted some more parts, and called it a night. Before I left he remembered two databooks that weren't destroyed and got them for me. The Moto RF device books from the late 80s, a nice find.
I am going to poke around and see if I can find a schematic or manual for the VRS but I don't think I will put a lot of effort into it as I don't think I would use it on my bench and some Heath nut will get more pleasure out of it than I will. I am just glad I saved it from that goofball.