RV Placer

[Mike]

For historic interest only....
I picked up an RV placer along with three RV1s machines recently.
Unfortunately the disk on the PC had died so couldn't fire it up ( anyone got RV Placer software? )
It doesn't use vision but has some sort of optical sensor on an additional motor that can swing up to the nozzle - I think this is some sort of part-shadow sensing system. i have the manual but only mentions it in passing.
All the motion control is via  a board in the PSU box with two Hitachi Z80 processors and 8 full-bridge drivers. I think it connects to the PC parallel port, maybe also one or two COM ports.
At the top of the shaft is an odd assmbly containing 4 red LEDs and a sensor - not sure what this would be for - it does have the rotary index sensor as on later machines. I wonder if maybe it shines light down the shaft for fid sensing?

Open to offers to get it out of the way...

[Mike]

update - looking through the manual is says that when fid sensing it makes a couple of passes over the fids in each direction, so I think it is some sort of straight-down through-the-nozzle narrow beam optical detector. pretty clever if it worked, but I guess the presence of the fid cam and all the calibration stuff on the 1/4s means maybe it didn't.