cornponious
New Member
I posted last week about looking for a service manual for the Realistic STA-870 AM/FM receiver. No one here has one, and i've spent a week scouring the internet for a PDF or even a hard copy of this manual. I've looked at manual repositories, forums, message boards, eBay, EVERYWHERE. It seems to simply not exist on the internet. I can find the repair manual for the STA-860, just not the 870. It really makes me miss Tandy Corp.
I'm tenacious, though. So two nights ago I got the idea to search Google's archive of the old USENet newsgroups. I searched it and found a post from 25 years ago. It was a guy who said he had this receiver and needing to do repairs, and was looking for the service manual. There was one reply that was not helpful. He never posted again, but he did state his name in the post, and his email.
So I looked online for this guy. I thought maybe in the following years he may have found this manual, or simply ordered it from Tandy Corp since this was the 90s. I figured it was worth a shot. In my search I was able to locate his surprisingly current LinkedIn page, stating his occupation. The next morning I called his employer, who put me through to his voicemail where I left a message.
A few hours later he called me, and lo and behold he did in fact have a copy of the manual!! He even still has the receiver. I asked him if there was any way he could at least copy the section for tuner alignment, as that was the part I needed. He said if he could find it after work that day, he would do so. I offered to pay him, and he turned that down.
And that afternoon he sent me the scanned pages. And then this morning, he sent a scan of the entire service manual. And I just want to say publicly how much I appreciate him doing this for me, and for the solid state community, because he shared it with me, and now I'm sharing it with all of you, and the world. I've uploaded the manual to HiFiEngine and as soon as it is available I will comment with the link.
I'm tenacious, though. So two nights ago I got the idea to search Google's archive of the old USENet newsgroups. I searched it and found a post from 25 years ago. It was a guy who said he had this receiver and needing to do repairs, and was looking for the service manual. There was one reply that was not helpful. He never posted again, but he did state his name in the post, and his email.
So I looked online for this guy. I thought maybe in the following years he may have found this manual, or simply ordered it from Tandy Corp since this was the 90s. I figured it was worth a shot. In my search I was able to locate his surprisingly current LinkedIn page, stating his occupation. The next morning I called his employer, who put me through to his voicemail where I left a message.
A few hours later he called me, and lo and behold he did in fact have a copy of the manual!! He even still has the receiver. I asked him if there was any way he could at least copy the section for tuner alignment, as that was the part I needed. He said if he could find it after work that day, he would do so. I offered to pay him, and he turned that down.
And that afternoon he sent me the scanned pages. And then this morning, he sent a scan of the entire service manual. And I just want to say publicly how much I appreciate him doing this for me, and for the solid state community, because he shared it with me, and now I'm sharing it with all of you, and the world. I've uploaded the manual to HiFiEngine and as soon as it is available I will comment with the link.
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