Teardown Tuesday A rather obscure consumer device from 1995, a pocket organiser / fax machine. The Handifax 1000. Also known as the Smith Corona Handifax 1000 It's bodge time!
I love these teardowns especially of this type of vintage electronics. Taking stuff apart and just looking inside is all apart of loving electronics! I also appreciate when you explain exactly what we are looking at and what parts do what on the board, and what their purpose is.
A great thing about faxes was the possibility to send something back with hand written comments. I remember my dad and his brother doing this, who were partners in business, but argued a lot. The same fax would go to and fro multiple times, and the handwritten additions would look more and more agitated with each pass, until finally a big "NO" or something to that effect would be scrawled over the whole page using a marker. Those were the days.
Hi Dave, I had one of these back in 1997. I remember buying it for $50 from a white-van man. It was a great (but huge) PDA. I never got around to testing the fax facilities, i didn't know anyone with a fax machine. And yes, it was sticky when it was new.
CoyoteGames Later on in the teardown he found a switch that disables the unit when the battery cover is open. It's done for safety reasons because of the presence of phone line voltages.
Andrew Somerville I think it's rather to switch the static RAM power supply to the backup coin lithium battery during main batteries replacement. :) the phone lines are only connected to the little PCB with optocouplers (modem with diode bridge and current source transistor) I think the top optocoupler must be for the ring indicator (led to the left) and the bottom one for the line current drive (led to the right)
+Genesis92 I agree that the switch was probably just to make sure the device was generally in an OFF state while replacing the main batteries,... either to reduce the load on the coin cell (prevent possibly trying to power the device from coin) or possibly as you suggest to alternate which source is keeping the memory alive. I see now that there WAS an option to connect directly to the phone line.
The micro switch is to shut the thing off before you remove the batteries. This was before the days of flash memory, so all your data was stored in ram. If the coin cell was drained then you'd lose all your data.
Around the time that thing was made I had the job of checking out production of gear in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan for consumer and IT stuff for a company I worked for. A big aspect for phone line connected gear was Austel testing. The bodge board looks like an attempt at line isolation and presenting the right capacitance to the line too. Austel would take a bit of gear and test it for a fee and once lost a very expensive phone we submitted with the response sorry bad luck. 1kv finger test :)
Great video. I think the product being so bodged is a good lesson for some of the younger EE people. How do you manage as an engineer a reasonable development cycle with unrealistic marketing or business goals.
Budging of the year awards of 94. Hilarious. As if the dip package bent to surface mount was not enough, there is the side mounted resistor. Outstanding.
Dave, I've seen worse. I used to have a speaker. The board was broken in the middle, which was repaired with Hotglue. The contacts were restored with aluminum foil ...
I assume because the phone line has up to 48 V AC on it? You can see the small added pcb has wires going to the rj45 like connectors, so it's used with the phone line.
it'll be for the ring signal most likely, also the phone system runs off 48 - 50 volts DC, the bridge means any wiring errors wont affect things too much and rectifies the AC ring signal (which is like 120 odd volts peak)
Dave, you asked "where are PDA's these days anyway?". Well, most people have smart phones, which have most of the same features as the PDA's of the past, and then some. So look to your cell phone as today's version of the PDA. My old Windows Mobile version 6 was able to send faxes, and create faxes. Pretty cool stuff! I love your videos, keep up the great work!
+phattieg Very true. "Where did the PDAs go?" Well, they took over the phone market by integrating themselves into something that more and more people where already carrying. I had many PDAs, including those from Handspring that had a Sprint cellular module... which was the start of the end for the 'feature phone'. The Audiovox Thera was another smash hit especially in the resale market.
I noticed, that you havent put on the battery cover, when you tried to turn it on, and later you talked about that microswitch, that disconnects the batteries during battery changeing. It wont start until you put that cover on. Nice video:)
6 лет назад
that switch is probably for switch over to backup battery... casio sf-r20 databank had some similar thing but that had a switchplate that covered the screws to the batterys
did anybody notice that this device was not even able of handling incoming faxes, but just for sending out what you typed in the keyboard. (and off course no camera to to scan documents...)
Thanks for the explanation, I never knew that. What makes them choose a packageless version as opposed to one that is in a plastic package? is it a cost saving thing?
I'm tempted to send you the bodgiest board you may have ever seen. It's the main camera PCBs from a 1983 video camera. There are more wires than traces on that board.
Iam shure that the small swich is the reason why it did not start... If i'd use something like that it will be to stabilize the power to avoid the processor jumping registers...
I'm thinking perhaps that the bodge board etc might have been put there to allow it to be telecom approved. Have you ever heard an Australian dial tone? It used to be rough as hell (at least in QLD) requiring ATX&D1 mods on imported modems just to get them to work.
I noticed there wasn't the signature whistling tune on the fast forwarded screw removal bit, but I got an idea: Why not stick some like old silent movie piano music on those segments? It would be fun and right in line with your quirky demeanor :D
I dont think the PAL is "boged on" because there is a silk screen shape for the chip under it. it is however a very "interesting" take on surface mounting. lol
Man, this is one of your best (well, at least one of the funniest) tear downs ever. I laughed at my monitor when I heard things like "of-the-shelve-ness" or "they bodged the bodge board". This episode has a massive re-watch value.
I don't think he mocks the engineers, at least not in this video. After watching maybe 50+ videos of EEVblog, I think t's just Dave's style of presenting stuff. He mocks the product, because it looks funny from today's perspective, but he doesn't seem to mock the engineers who made it back then.
WOW! Did the CEO hire his nephew to do the electronics design? Never seen anything quite so horrifying in my life when it comes to Consumer Electronics. My first thought when you popped open the case was "rat's nest"
A youtube user called Ashens reviewed the Amstrad PDA600 Penpad, and it was new (from the 80's I believe) in the box and had the same stickiness issue, but so much so that he couldn't use it without gloves even after cleaning and scrapping it. Old tech FTW.
Based on dates it would seem that they were attempting to do what Blackberry succeeded in doing. The first Blackberries were released in 1996 according to Wikipedia, so that would have killed this device simply by having access to a mobile network instead of relying on the acoustic coupler! This same device, ten years earlier, would have been a sure winner if they could have met the right price-point. Fax was the bee's knees in the '80s.
+Aadil Shah Kind of, but not really. There were already better devices out before and about the same time as this one (see the Newton or Nokia's Communicator) and other much smaller devices that had everything except the built in coupler... but some had the ability to plug in to the phone line through a cable anyway. The Blackberry you are talking about was just a special pager and had no fax capabilities, it just allowed you to return pages basically. It was another few years before their pager even had email access.
When you first tried powering this up at 4:52 the battery cover was off, was the cover being off preventing power up due to the switch you found inside?
What exactly is Baud Rate? I've heard of it but don't really know what it is, what would, say, a 56k modem be in baud rate, would that be something like 56 bauds or is that a completely different thing?
Usually it's because its a packageless chip that is wire bonded to the PCB or a flip chip. Without the black goop it would be very proned to damage as the wire bond leads are extremely tiny and so are exposed packages, not to mention oxidation of the chip.
That battery door switch probly kept the power off.. And what you mean PDA's whent the way of the smart phone... PDA's morphed into smart phones :) The first "smart phones" were PDA's fitted with Cell kits. So PDA's are far from dead :) far indeed :)
Indeed, i actually laughed at that flattened DIP. Initially i thought Dave got hold of something that was already hacked by a modder - then I realized they would have done a much better job of soldering and modifying the device ;)
hey Dave : ) do you know about patents? have you ever needed to yourself? could be an interesting topic for the fans who make new ideas/ products each day.
1995? I know there was a time when a stringer would have taken out a second mortgage for something like this, but I think this was a bit late to the party.
follow-up: There was a clip about a predecessor to this called a Mojo in _Almost Famous_. "It's a very modern machine that transmits pages over the telephone. It only takes 18 minutes a page!"
Oh my god, that thing was just full of nasty hacks. Makes you wonder what the designers were thinking back then. Must have cost them a fortune to do all those hacks when manufacturing this thing.
Ashens reviewed an Amstrad touch screen "PDA" some time ago and its cover had a similar issue with the rubber rotting and turning into a horrible sticky residue, he used Acetone to remove it, so if you want to remove that residue you could try using some Acetone, but you'd want to be careful not to damage the plastic casing.
Baud rate is symbol transitions per second. For example a V.34 (33k6) modem is 3420 baud with 10 bits in each symbol.Resulting in 34200 bits per second. The resulting bit rate on the rs232 interface is netto 33600 bits per second without overhead In day to day speaking baud rate is bits per second through the telephone line.,
Last comment, given they don't appear to have done any development of the product (short of deciding what it will look like in 1993 it is amazing they got this out by the 32nd week. Most of their protection (claims) in the patent relate to the size, shape and movement of the unit with a nod given to the active noise canceling.
Why does that bodge chip on the CPU side loko like the tracks on the PCB are made for it?! (The silk screen printing seems to match up too!) They seem to have designed in the bodge!
![I.N "HALLUCINATION" | [Stray Kids : SKZ-PLAYER]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/n5B5q1Hwt_U/mqdefault.jpg)
I love these teardowns especially of this type of vintage electronics. Taking stuff apart and just looking inside is all apart of loving electronics! I also appreciate when you explain exactly what we are looking at and what parts do what on the board, and what their purpose is.
Vintage pieces like this fill me a sense of wonder and excitement. Thanks for digging it up.
A great thing about faxes was the possibility to send something back with hand written comments. I remember my dad and his brother doing this, who were partners in business, but argued a lot. The same fax would go to and fro multiple times, and the handwritten additions would look more and more agitated with each pass, until finally a big "NO" or something to that effect would be scrawled over the whole page using a marker. Those were the days.
The Yamaha YTM401-F is a fax modem chip.
Hi Dave, I had one of these back in 1997. I remember buying it for $50 from a white-van man. It was a great (but huge) PDA. I never got around to testing the fax facilities, i didn't know anyone with a fax machine. And yes, it was sticky when it was new.
Rubber reversion
Maybe it would have turned on with the battery cover closed...
Sarah Cartwright Thinking the same thing.
Sarah Cartwright I think the contrast was down.
CoyoteGames Later on in the teardown he found a switch that disables the unit when the battery cover is open. It's done for safety reasons because of the presence of phone line voltages.
Andrew Somerville
I think it's rather to switch the static RAM power supply to the backup coin lithium battery during main batteries replacement. :)
the phone lines are only connected to the little PCB with optocouplers (modem with diode bridge and current source transistor)
I think the top optocoupler must be for the ring indicator (led to the left) and the bottom one for the line current drive (led to the right)
+Genesis92 I agree that the switch was probably just to make sure the device was generally in an OFF state while replacing the main batteries,... either to reduce the load on the coin cell (prevent possibly trying to power the device from coin) or possibly as you suggest to alternate which source is keeping the memory alive.
I see now that there WAS an option to connect directly to the phone line.
Brilliant! I can hardly believe how many corners were cut there! Great vid!
Great video once again. I always look forward to Tuesdays! Thank you!
I like the on-edge surface mount resistor just by the Yamaha chip!
The micro switch is to shut the thing off before you remove the batteries. This was before the days of flash memory, so all your data was stored in ram. If the coin cell was drained then you'd lose all your data.
You didn't have the battery cover on when you tried to turn on the unit. If you had, it might had turned on. Post a follow-up!
Was about to say exactly that! I really wanted to see this thing working
Auch - that's cheered me up so much! Seeing the inside of that.... thing... has made my day xD
Around the time that thing was made I had the job of checking out production of gear in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan for consumer and IT stuff for a company I worked for. A big aspect for phone line connected gear was Austel testing. The bodge board looks like an attempt at line isolation and presenting the right capacitance to the line too. Austel would take a bit of gear and test it for a fee and once lost a very expensive phone we submitted with the response sorry bad luck. 1kv finger test :)
Maybe they were the subcontractor hired to do the actual design and layout. Or maybe some shelf company or affiliated company etc.
Great video. I think the product being so bodged is a good lesson for some of the younger EE people. How do you manage as an engineer a reasonable development cycle with unrealistic marketing or business goals.
When you first tried to turn it on, I was surprised that it didnt work. After watching the teardown, I am surprised it ever worked at all.
The Yamaha chip was probably a polyphonic synthesiser.
Budging of the year awards of 94.
Hilarious. As if the dip package bent to surface mount was not enough, there is the side mounted resistor. Outstanding.
Dave, I've seen worse. I used to have a speaker. The board was broken in the middle, which was repaired with Hotglue. The contacts were restored with aluminum foil ...
I assume because the phone line has up to 48 V AC on it?
You can see the small added pcb has wires going to the rj45 like connectors, so it's used with the phone line.
it'll be for the ring signal most likely, also the phone system runs off 48 - 50 volts DC, the bridge means any wiring errors wont affect things too much and rectifies the AC ring signal (which is like 120 odd volts peak)
Dave, you asked "where are PDA's these days anyway?". Well, most people have smart phones, which have most of the same features as the PDA's of the past, and then some. So look to your cell phone as today's version of the PDA. My old Windows Mobile version 6 was able to send faxes, and create faxes. Pretty cool stuff! I love your videos, keep up the great work!
+phattieg Very true. "Where did the PDAs go?" Well, they took over the phone market by integrating themselves into something that more and more people where already carrying.
I had many PDAs, including those from Handspring that had a Sprint cellular module... which was the start of the end for the 'feature phone'. The Audiovox Thera was another smash hit especially in the resale market.
The Yamaha chip is an LCD controller. I'm pretty sure the LCD display isn't a TFT type.
Is that DIP package on an LCD board really a bodge? Seems like a nice way to place through-hole part on a SMT-PCB for me :)
Same here. It does not look as if they just fitted a DIP part to a SMD footprint, but more like they designed it that way.
I noticed, that you havent put on the battery cover, when you tried to turn it on, and later you talked about that microswitch, that disconnects the batteries during battery changeing. It wont start until you put that cover on. Nice video:)
that switch is probably for switch over to backup battery... casio sf-r20 databank had some similar thing but that had a switchplate that covered the screws to the batterys
The Yamaha chip could be the tone generator for the acoustic coupler.
No. He failed to put the battery cover back on when he tried to turn it on and that clearly worked the microswitch on the circuit board.
haha hey! whatever happened to "dont turn it on, take it apart" :D Love your shows man.. inspiration to work on my electronics projects again!
The yamaha chip was more than likely used for the modem.
did anybody notice that this device was not even able of handling incoming faxes, but just for sending out what you typed in the keyboard.
(and off course no camera to to scan documents...)
Thanks for the explanation, I never knew that. What makes them choose a packageless version as opposed to one that is in a plastic package? is it a cost saving thing?
thumbs up Dave. Do you think are we still getting similar quality products being shipped out of China to this date??
I'm tempted to send you the bodgiest board you may have ever seen. It's the main camera PCBs from a 1983 video camera. There are more wires than traces on that board.
Iam shure that the small swich is the reason why it did not start... If i'd use something like that it will be to stabilize the power to avoid the processor jumping registers...
I missed him not putting the battery cover back on. Thanks for correcting me.
Terribbble just terrible Murial...loved that movie...we use that joke quite often!! Love your teardowns...!@@! Johnne in Seattle
That rubber finish going sticky and stinky seems to be a common thing for the 90's organisers. Thankfully my S3a etc didn't have that finish :)
Back in the day people faxed when out on drilling rigs before email became the way to do it.
this is awesome - thanks for uploading it! I collect old skool Psions and the like so this is so far up my street it's poking out the other end!
Maybe the bodge job was the main feature, and the fax functionality was just something they threw in at the last minute.
I'm thinking perhaps that the bodge board etc might have been put there to allow it to be telecom approved. Have you ever heard an Australian dial tone? It used to be rough as hell (at least in QLD) requiring ATX&D1 mods on imported modems just to get them to work.
You should take a look at the LCD too.
I noticed there wasn't the signature whistling tune on the fast forwarded screw removal bit, but I got an idea: Why not stick some like old silent movie piano music on those segments? It would be fun and right in line with your quirky demeanor :D
I dont think the PAL is "boged on" because there is a silk screen shape for the chip under it. it is however a very "interesting" take on surface mounting. lol
That's why they called it a P-A-L !
I am wondering if the device required the CR232 battery to start up ?
can you upload the instruction video please?
I've seen other retro hardware videos like this where the rubberised plastic has decomposed.
Wow, I never expected that!!!
15:12 , it is AMD chip :D
Wonder if it was designed to meet USA standards, and the OZ ones were different enough that the mod board was the easiest way of meeting OZ standrds?
Man, this is one of your best (well, at least one of the funniest) tear downs ever. I laughed at my monitor when I heard things like "of-the-shelve-ness" or "they bodged the bodge board". This episode has a massive re-watch value.
You mock, but how many PDA/calculator/fax/acoustically-coupled modem/phone book/alarm clock/lint rollers have you designed?
Yeah. Thought so...
I don't think he mocks the engineers, at least not in this video. After watching maybe 50+ videos of EEVblog, I think t's just Dave's style of presenting stuff. He mocks the product, because it looks funny from today's perspective, but he doesn't seem to mock the engineers who made it back then.
WOW! Did the CEO hire his nephew to do the electronics design? Never seen anything quite so horrifying in my life when it comes to Consumer Electronics. My first thought when you popped open the case was "rat's nest"
A youtube user called Ashens reviewed the Amstrad PDA600 Penpad, and it was new (from the 80's I believe) in the box and had the same stickiness issue, but so much so that he couldn't use it without gloves even after cleaning and scrapping it.
Old tech FTW.
About a reason it may not turn on:
Some old devices that use a button cell memory back up won't power up with a bad button cell battery.
Based on dates it would seem that they were attempting to do what Blackberry succeeded in doing. The first Blackberries were released in 1996 according to Wikipedia, so that would have killed this device simply by having access to a mobile network instead of relying on the acoustic coupler!
This same device, ten years earlier, would have been a sure winner if they could have met the right price-point. Fax was the bee's knees in the '80s.
Aadil Shah Also the Nokia 9000 Communicator was introduced in 1996.
+Aadil Shah Kind of, but not really. There were already better devices out before and about the same time as this one (see the Newton or Nokia's Communicator) and other much smaller devices that had everything except the built in coupler... but some had the ability to plug in to the phone line through a cable anyway.
The Blackberry you are talking about was just a special pager and had no fax capabilities, it just allowed you to return pages basically. It was another few years before their pager even had email access.
Was this thing able to receive fax or just send? A received fax would be a large bitmap (not just text). 256 KB of memory would be low for that.
This was uploaded on my 21st bday, it must be win.
Lol, sticky electronics. Great teardown vid
Why do they cover chips in that black stuff? is it so you can't see what chip it is or is there another reason?
When I saw that, I wished he would put the batteries back in at that point!
When you first tried powering this up at 4:52 the battery cover was off, was the cover being off preventing power up due to the switch you found inside?
What exactly is Baud Rate? I've heard of it but don't really know what it is, what would, say, a 56k modem be in baud rate, would that be something like 56 bauds or is that a completely different thing?
You should do a soldering station shootout :D
I started laughing when I saw the back of the board. Just wow!
Really missed the whistling in the time lapse!
Already done it. #106
So because of that switch at 9 min you were not able to power on this Handifax :D would be interesting to see it powered on ;)
Did the Micro Switch keep it from turning on? Maybe thats why it did not turn on.
To all engineers: if you marketing department gives you a hard time about not rushing a product to market, make them watch this video!
:)
Is of that category "things that nobody needs", because the most important part of a fax is missing : The sccanner !
I Foto an old Psion organizer whose rubber shell is dissolving in the same way. :)
"They've bodged the bodged PCB", that would make a great T-Shirt.
Usually it's because its a packageless chip that is wire bonded to the PCB or a flip chip. Without the black goop it would be very proned to damage as the wire bond leads are extremely tiny and so are exposed packages, not to mention oxidation of the chip.
That little switch is why it didn't work.
I would have really liked to see this "vintage gadget" in action...
If that's how bad the electronics is, I'd love to see how buggy the firmware is! It's a shame it didn't power up.
About 3:46 How is called a electronic that like sticky stuffs : mechanic
Btw, that switch might have been a reason why it didn't power up
Telecom Australia - For Australia good enough!
That battery door switch probly kept the power off..
And what you mean PDA's whent the way of the smart phone...
PDA's morphed into smart phones :)
The first "smart phones" were PDA's fitted with Cell kits.
So PDA's are far from dead :) far indeed :)
Fairly certain that logo on that PAL is an AMD logo. Although I have no idea if AMD was using that logo in the early 90s
Bodge -- informal ( Austral ) to make or adjust in a false or clumsy way: I bodged the figures. Bettering the English language one word at a time!
Indeed, i actually laughed at that flattened DIP. Initially i thought Dave got hold of something that was already hacked by a modder - then I realized they would have done a much better job of soldering and modifying the device ;)
Why is there a bridge rectifier if it's powered from a battery?
hey Dave : ) do you know about patents? have you ever needed to yourself? could be an interesting topic for the fans who make new ideas/ products each day.
You got all that equipment for yourself?????
1995? I know there was a time when a stringer would have taken out a second mortgage for something like this, but I think this was a bit late to the party.
follow-up: There was a clip about a predecessor to this called a Mojo in _Almost Famous_. "It's a very modern machine that transmits pages over the telephone. It only takes 18 minutes a page!"
any idea why it didn't work?
Oh my god, that thing was just full of nasty hacks. Makes you wonder what the designers were thinking back then. Must have cost them a fortune to do all those hacks when manufacturing this thing.
Ashens reviewed an Amstrad touch screen "PDA" some time ago and its cover had a similar issue with the rubber rotting and turning into a horrible sticky residue, he used Acetone to remove it, so if you want to remove that residue you could try using some Acetone, but you'd want to be careful not to damage the plastic casing.
I had one and loved it
Baud rate is symbol transitions per second. For example a V.34 (33k6) modem is 3420 baud with 10 bits in each symbol.Resulting in 34200 bits per second. The resulting bit rate on the rs232 interface is netto 33600 bits per second without overhead
In day to day speaking baud rate is bits per second through the telephone line.,
turn it on, show some scences from the instruction video
Last comment, given they don't appear to have done any development of the product (short of deciding what it will look like in 1993 it is amazing they got this out by the 32nd week. Most of their protection (claims) in the patent relate to the size, shape and movement of the unit with a nod given to the active noise canceling.
What if any thing could you use from that in a new project.
@ 9:00 is the reason the unit would not turn on for you
Why does that bodge chip on the CPU side loko like the tracks on the PCB are made for it?! (The silk screen printing seems to match up too!) They seem to have designed in the bodge!
Sarah Cartwright Yeah I wondered if maybe a larger package was 1st choice?