Hi, whilst removing the tape drive pcb from my latest machine I have noticed it has a Signetics chip on board. I have only so far ever seen Philips chips. According to Wiki Philips acquired Signetics. Just wondering if this may be a rarity?
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That Signetics chip is an EPROM version of the microcontroller; possibly a preproduction model. I wonder if it would be possible to dump the software with an EPROM programmer and maybe reverse-engineer it.
Is that the only chip in the recorder that has a sticker on it?
===Jac
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Hi @Jac , I will have a look later and report back. On shift at the moment 4 x 12 hour very long days 
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Wow! That could be exiting!
This is just the deck controller (i.e the thing that makes the motor go “whirr”, the solenoid go “click” and the sensor switches go “hey”) but it has some potentially interesting software that apparently determines within 5 seconds what the position of the tape is, even if you insert an analog tape that hasn’t been rewound.
Of course it would be more interesting if we could reverse engineer the main microcontroller but on the other hand since that’s a somewhat obscure NEC controller, it would not be as easy as disassembling 8051 code.
===Jac
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That cracked me up big time! 
Managed to get some more images of digital board and R/W board. The first two are the digital board, not sure of manufacturer of the ic under the V21 label.
That is one hell of an interesting player you got there… what do you reckon it was used for? It seems to me that it was used as a test-bed.
Are other components different you think? Higher quality perhaps? Does it sound different from the other 730?
I have a 730 if you would like to have a cross reference just say the word! I’ll open up my deck and take pictures!