3. a brief inspection of the analog board (the one that handles all of the CRT low and high voltage circuitry) showed zero signs of leaky capacitors, burned traces or anything you'd expect out of a high-usage machine. this probably was used once, and sat in someone's closet for 30 years
4. now for the fun part. the mainboard/PCB disconnects from the analog board with a single power plug, and then slips out of the bottom of the frame. super simple design.
5. with the board extracted, i immediately went for the most important thing in my mind: the ROM. no one has ever thought to dump the ROM for this poor old beast, so it's time i did that. you'll recognize the ROM as the 28-pin DIP chip labelled "Norpak Corporation VERSION C".
you can also see the modem circuitry in the top right, and a big chunky Hitachi processor above the ROM. that's a cpu! it runs at 2mhz, and it turns out that's a motorola 6809 variant - the same one that went into the Tandy TRS-80 and many other early 80s computers.
