5.Morse Tutor February 1981

It was February 1981 when a artical in the practical wireless came up for a Morse Code tutor ...Now that is a device that sends out random morse code to learn the new language.

As a shortwave listener in those days before I got my Ham Licence and still pirating on the CB with my Yeasu 707 and 3 element Yagi  and a interest to learn the morse code one day and also a curiousity on how they do it with the logic chips in those days.There where some programs on the ZX80 and Commodore 64 computer to generate and decode morsecode but not something that was portable that you could take with you in the bus on the way to work  .It sparked my interest to investigate a project and I found the Daytona D70 that I borrowed From Leon ZS6RF after he leared the morse code while driving around in his car to his customers learning morse code..When I eventually got it from him it was not working anymore and I opened it to have a look and found it was quite a complicated device.I tried to fault find it but with my limited logic knowledge and no schematic diagram i failed to fix it ..So I thought again of sharing the technology and I copied the board on a simple cad program. I completely rebuild it I could build a new one and it would work with new IC's ..But there was still a surprise after I build it there was not only logic IC's but a PROM (Programable Read Only Memory) chip on board ..And that delayed the project cause it was a absolete PROM that you could not get anymore...So project shelfed in file with a prototype PCB ...Years later when I was looking for a circuit I found the Schematic Diagram in the Back of the Dytona D70 Booklet .If I found that earlier when it was manufactured in 1980 it would have helped me fix it ..well after finding found the D70 somewhere in my inventtory I atempted to repair it again and was very succesfull but to late to help me with my morse code training...

There is now in DBOX Replacement Board that has the Programming info and PCB'S available ...The Club Tech team also Build a new Morse Tutor Using the ESP31 micro to generate Morse code with and Has a screen for letters and words on the screen...

The Project in the practical Wireless Feb 1981 is very simular to the Daytona D70 Design but all working with logic chips and A good project for Students learning basic cmos and ttl logics steps..The new ones are all done with writing Code with arduino code... 

The Original Morse Tutor Made by Datong Electronics.

Very complicated Schematic and understanding how it worked was a good exercise for logic electronic students .