Fairchild Channel F?

Sweet thanks for his info. and yes he does have me beat.

Still wondering why our boards look so different. I thought the model 1's were identical..hmm.

I do know, my original one came from J.C. Penny...do those even exist anymore? ...lol

 

I think this guy would be able to tell you all the differences between all the boards and he probably has all the schematics
that you might need for your board..

I will send him a link, so that he may visit us on this site.

 

I noticed our Box's were totally different as well. I'm wondering if one is the 1976 and the other is 1977 model. What i'd heard was they didnt make any changes the sesond year but maybe they did..hmm. Nothing else came out till the Model 2 which neither of ours obvioisly are. Interesting..and not a lot of info out there to research either..hmm.

 

This is the information on my board that I recieved from e5frog.

If you send me some pics, I will have him take a look at them for you.

 

Looks like mine is the first year and your's is the revision then. Which even though mine isn't built as good as yours, it's what I wanted since a 1976 original model is what I had when I was a kid.

Thanks, i'll send them right away.

 

Well it looks like those spots were meant to be open. Recieved a message stating:

"I have a 1st gen Fairchild Channel F as well. My board looks the same as yours with the 2 missing IC's. The board says Copyright 12/6/76 / 04-9002-00 / Rev G. It's fully functional and works great, not sure what the intent was for those 2 slots. (Mine needed some repair to get working -- one of the diode bridge rectifiers failed, but once I replaced it with a new one it was back in business)."

Strange because his board looks like mine except..it's blue! My board is Copyright date 10/19/76, 04-9002-00 RevG. Wondering if there was a board before mine or it's the oldest? I know they went on sale for the christmas season of 76..just not sure when production started?

From what i've seen, I think yours was 77. Did you see a copyright date on it?

 

Well, according to the numbers on both your boards (12/6/76 and 10/19/76), I'd guess yours is the oldest by two months.
Difference in board color is most likely simply due to them being a different batch (Made in a different board house or even simply having different materials available at the time)

Sometimes, parts of boards are unpopulated, because they planned on putting another chip in the unit, used those sockets for debugging purpose or some other reason related to manufacturing.

 

Yeah, I got the part that mine's older..I'm wondering if that's the oldest set of boards they made?. Been checking online and not a lot of guys posting pics of thier boards but so far..seems like I have the oldest. Just a curious its thing, all means nothing if I can't get it running....lol

 

So update: Got the Fairchild up and running a long time ago and now I have another broken one to figure out..lol. The great news is , the Mrs. made me this kick ass shirt recently. Thought i'd share.