Oh my, I had my heart jump when I saw that calculator. I had one. It was my first personal programmable device. It finally allowed me to program at home, without having to borrow computer time somewhere else. It was all mine! Yeah, we were poor. But gosh I can remember some happy moments. You had 104 bytes of RAM for code and 16 registers, IIRC. I wrote several games for it and experimentet endlessly. Remembered a few of the opcodes by heart. Stopped using it when the EEPROM started giving up. And then I got my first ZX Spectrum! BTW, "МК" meant "microcalculator".
Hi, Dave! From Russia with 73! =) Want to say a couple words on MK52 calc. Actual it reads "Am-Ka" (not Mark). It means 'Micro-Calculator'. An it is programmable, engineering. It is possible to run some special code on it for integration, statistics etc. Even kinda of logic or physic-based games. (Like space travel or ballistics) There were strong community of users in SU back then and some fans of vintage Sov-electronics still apreciate it.
Dave you laughed at that guy's collection of desoldered components but you will end up the same. In 30 years someone will make a video (presumably another Dave) about you and it will go like this: "look at this, who would ever need 20 parrot clips?!"
FYI, the TPS L2 walkman is the same one used in the film "guardians of the galaxy", and as a result, prices for them on e-bay etc have recently skyrocketed. CosPlayers making a 'star lord' outfit will be needing one. And actually working ones could fetch well over 800 US$. So... be careful taking it apart (if you do).
The screen problem with your video walkman is a thing a friend of mine calls "screen rot", not much info about it online but when it happens on TFT, the topmost layer is rough and has horizontal white lines on that layer itself. When it happens on DSTN LCDs, the topmost layer actually becomes rough and peels off, and you can see air bubbles. In most cases, the screen would still power on and display an image, but it's not clear. I had an old Alpine car monitor that used to be in my cousin's van when he had it, but it was only the screen and a box thing on the back, and the screen also had screen rot. That same friend of mine also had an iBook G3 with screen rot but I think he replaced the screen since. Also, I know RUclips user vwestlife has a video walkman but his uses Digital8 tape and is in more of a clamshell form factor without a TV tuner, as opposed to yours which looks like a watchman with a built in Video8 VCR.
***** Apart from the physical damage, I'm actually surprised the screen works. I got a very similar unit and the screen only shows pure white which apparently is a common issue due to the rather shoddy SMD caps Sony was using at the time (At least I assume that it's a common issue, since it was an uncommon device and yet there are repair videos on RUclips). I also have a Sony Camcorder and a Panasonic one (that's a rebranded Sony) from the same era and all are showing similar faults. Shame really, I'll have to wait till I have loooads of spare time and an ESR meter to get em fixed.
You should try to fix the LCD on the video walkman. Could just be dirty inside. Take out all the layer of the LCD and clean each part and reassemble. I'd love to own one of these video walkmans.
In Tekbox self powered active load, that are not Darlington pair, it is Sziklai pair (complementary pair or sometimes called complementary Darlington), contrary of Darlington pair it use one NPN and one PNP transistor.
Interesting how the label on the DAT tape says "monday". If I had to guess I'd say this was a backup tape used with a server DAT drive (yup - DAT was also used for computer backups)
sapperlott Quite correct. I've got a couple of shoeboxes full of DAT tapes used for computer backups. I wish I knew how to reliably bulk-erase them; I can't simply discard them because of the data they may contain.
sapperlott I have a degausser (for audio tapes), but erasing DAT is not the same thing. I was never able to find information on degaussers recommended for DAT. Shredding is, as you point out, always an option, though I was rather hoping to preserve the tapes themselves.
One thing I will say about UL ratings is that they don't really mean much in regards to safety. All UL really means is that they looked at representative examples of the product provided by the manufacturer and tested them to ensure they operate as intended and meet the minimum safety guidelines UL has listed. Over the years of living in the US I have seen many UL rated products that could easily burn the house down in a faulted condition and not under supervision.
That hot line would actually be useful not necessarily to talk to the other person but if someone started talking to you just hit the button and you don't haft to remove your headphones to hear them.
EEVblog If you whack the Apple AirPort Express where the two housing parts meet with a large blunt object, it should crack open. I tried doing this method on an Apple iPod charger and it worked like a charm. Saves the plastic dust and less too clean later.
Looks like isopropyl has been used to clean the screen and has damaged the surface. Similar issue with a screen of mine. I used scratch remover paste and a dremel polisher tool came up a dream.
The licenseplate from the Delorean is the wrong one. its the plate from part 1. The model is from part two and has a different futuristic licenseplate (thats from the matchbox one is the right one)
That tuner does look a bit strange, the numbers on the front look at lot like frequencies of A (standard pitch of A is 440Hz) although the alternate pitch 432Hz is outside that range, might just support adjustments close to A440. Also has a passthrough so you can do a quick tune up without needing to unplug your instrument.
EEVblog DAT gear still get used in the professional recording realm still. It isn't hugely popular, but most decent studios still have the gear, no clue if the format is still officially support. Regarding DAT and the music industry, I know over here in the states in the late 80's they passed litigation that leveed a fairly high luxury tax on anything that could read/write DATs in an attempt to limit piracy.
I would think spade lugs would be used for binding posts. The far end connectors that you say are for binding posts look like those that are on the near end of 'scope probe ground leads; they slip over the grounding barrel of the probes. Could that be it? The hot line may be for when one of the listening parties has been smoking something and is not really paying attention to his or her surroundings, if you know what I mean. :-)
márcio lima sousa It's mostly cost, however you can get some shielding if the back side is just one big ground plain. It often makes up the back side of shielding cans.
Some stuff falling between the case and heatsink of the tekbox could be a real problem, but it would never happen. My PCs have cheap cases, and if you look underneath them, the usb front panel pcb board (more like traces connector) is exposed.
If anything, that guitar tuner thing makes for a good mini-disco light kit... :P That apple airpot thing's easy to open if you employ the Photonicinduction "where's my 'ammer" technique... :D Sweet!! I used to have one of them Video Walkmans (ebay purchase) that never worked properly (power wouldn't stay on even with fully charged batteries), lovely bit of kit, but, not exactly reliable... :P Had a lot better luck with that Video Walkman than me, except the screen on mine was good, but the damned unit just refused to stay powered up for more than two minutes...
I *did* learn electronics by learning fundamental physics first (I'm a scientist who has recently got into hobby electronics). It's a fun way to do it if you have a certain sort of mind - different strokes for different folks.
Shawn Swift actually... Mint condition, and working, With the carying case and the headphones... One sold for over a 1000 $ A lot of the ones on ebay don't work or are seriously damaged.
Those Soviet calculators... They ALL had HORRIBLE keyboards. My collection covers the years 1976-1992... NOT ONE GOOD KEYBOARD! XD I have an Elektronika 4-71b, B3-05, Mky-1, mk-61, and two MC 1103... Which is a desktop RPN programmable calculator made for controlling and monitoring external processes. It contains internal ADCs for measuring voltages of +/-9.99V (8 channels).
DAT looks like a small protable VCR inside. The industry asked to bann the 44.1Khz samle rate. Back in that days, a sample rate converter were sorta of complex, you wouldnt be able to copy (digitally) a CD. DAT was supperior, but not as reliable as CD, heads wore out like in the VCRs.
Just like in the last video, when you are fiddling with the package material and it gets noisy, it sounds like underwater here. Tried on different systems, all the same (using the 720p50 and 1080p50 video, e.g. at 15:55). Any idea? Google reencoding messed it up? Or does the original contain it too? Maybe a bad interaction of your codec and their reencoding?
Sounds ok here, tried going low res (144) then HD, sound ok, but at this res my PC started losing sync between the audio & video. I'm using firefox & HTML5 player (Suprise, I thought it was on flash)
EEVblog The TPS-L2 actually has a microphone because the original Walkman was just a portable dictation machine with the recording capability removed. Sony already had several portable cassette players in their line up even already in the early 70ies (see: wegavision.pytalhost.com/Sony/1973/sony73-15.jpg). But it wasn't until 1979 that they (Akio Morita) had the idea to market these as cheap portable cassette *players* with all recording functionality stripped. This particular TPS-L2 didn't have the "Walkman" name on it yet because the name wasn't invented back then. However, there are TPS-L2 models that were actually sold with a Walkman sticker but those were later revisions. Oh, and I wouldn't really do a teardown on this TPS-L2 as this seems to be one of the early models in a quite good condition. These can easily be worth several hundred bucks on eBay.
Yay! MK52 -- have one of these, from late prod run, much better keyboard. The big chip is not custom -- it is the NOR Flash memory :) the flip-chip yellow and white things are ASICs for calculator BCD arithmetics &co.
I'm probably the only one person in the world that was seriously disappointed by way electronics are taught at the university (the "blinking LED first" way). I had really no idea how they are going to explain semiconductors without teaching quantum mechanics and solid state physics first. Well, I was pretty surprised when on first lecture lecturer started speaking about Bohr atom model. Come on, it's (approximately) valid only for hydrogen (or other one-electron atom)...
Oh my, I had my heart jump when I saw that calculator. I had one. It was my first personal programmable device. It finally allowed me to program at home, without having to borrow computer time somewhere else. It was all mine! Yeah, we were poor. But gosh I can remember some happy moments. You had 104 bytes of RAM for code and 16 registers, IIRC. I wrote several games for it and experimentet endlessly. Remembered a few of the opcodes by heart. Stopped using it when the EEPROM started giving up. And then I got my first ZX Spectrum! BTW, "МК" meant "microcalculator".
Your enthusiasm is infectious.
Hi, Dave! From Russia with 73! =)
Want to say a couple words on MK52 calc. Actual it reads "Am-Ka" (not Mark). It means 'Micro-Calculator'. An it is programmable, engineering. It is possible to run some special code on it for integration, statistics etc. Even kinda of logic or physic-based games. (Like space travel or ballistics) There were strong community of users in SU back then and some fans of vintage Sov-electronics still apreciate it.
The TEKBOX enclosure is a bit of 'yoo-hoo-I'm-in -the-breadbox' design :)
Excellent explanation!
Thanks, Dave.
I have an almost antique set of AVO "easy clips". They also have the triangular point usable for probing, that becomes a hook if pressed out.
Dave you laughed at that guy's collection of desoldered components but you will end up the same. In 30 years someone will make a video (presumably another Dave) about you and it will go like this: "look at this, who would ever need 20 parrot clips?!"
CLIn7 l33tW00d god damn fly get off my screen
Thanks for powering up a some of the items.
1990 datecodes on the chips inside the russian calculator !
"Thou shalt not lie" is the meaning of "Du sollst nicht lügen".
Titi Istvan He mentions this in the video.
You should have a multi-teardown video, where the items from your mailbags that would take too long for a two minute teardown.
If I'm not mistaken, that is THE Walkman that was in Guardians of the Galaxy.
Mult succes domnule Filipescu!
FYI, the TPS L2 walkman is the same one used in the film "guardians of the galaxy", and as a result, prices for them on e-bay etc have recently skyrocketed. CosPlayers making a 'star lord' outfit will be needing one. And actually working ones could fetch well over 800 US$.
So... be careful taking it apart (if you do).
Love that video Walkman, so retro!
The screen problem with your video walkman is a thing a friend of mine calls "screen rot", not much info about it online but when it happens on TFT, the topmost layer is rough and has horizontal white lines on that layer itself. When it happens on DSTN LCDs, the topmost layer actually becomes rough and peels off, and you can see air bubbles. In most cases, the screen would still power on and display an image, but it's not clear.
I had an old Alpine car monitor that used to be in my cousin's van when he had it, but it was only the screen and a box thing on the back, and the screen also had screen rot. That same friend of mine also had an iBook G3 with screen rot but I think he replaced the screen since.
Also, I know RUclips user vwestlife has a video walkman but his uses Digital8 tape and is in more of a clamshell form factor without a TV tuner, as opposed to yours which looks like a watchman with a built in Video8 VCR.
***** Interesting ,thanks for the info. Have heard of it but never seen it.
***** Apart from the physical damage, I'm actually surprised the screen works. I got a very similar unit and the screen only shows pure white which apparently is a common issue due to the rather shoddy SMD caps Sony was using at the time (At least I assume that it's a common issue, since it was an uncommon device and yet there are repair videos on RUclips).
I also have a Sony Camcorder and a Panasonic one (that's a rebranded Sony) from the same era and all are showing similar faults. Shame really, I'll have to wait till I have loooads of spare time and an ESR meter to get em fixed.
think that 'Hot Line' button on the Sony Cassette player was for communication when you are on a Motorcycle together.
DAT was quite popular in broadcast radio for quite a while . The quality, duration as size of the tapes worked well till MP3 recorders took over.
You should try to fix the LCD on the video walkman. Could just be dirty inside. Take out all the layer of the LCD and clean each part and reassemble. I'd love to own one of these video walkmans.
In Tekbox self powered active load, that are not Darlington pair, it is Sziklai pair (complementary pair or sometimes called complementary Darlington), contrary of Darlington pair it use one NPN and one PNP transistor.
Miloš Lazović Yes, that's the term that wouldn't pop out of my head. I've done those in another video somewhere...
Interesting how the label on the DAT tape says "monday". If I had to guess I'd say this was a backup tape used with a server DAT drive (yup - DAT was also used for computer backups)
sapperlott Quite correct. I've got a couple of shoeboxes full of DAT tapes used for computer backups. I wish I knew how to reliably bulk-erase them; I can't simply discard them because of the data they may contain.
*****
For bulk erasing you could look for someone with a degausser. Or just hire a mobile shredding service.
sapperlott I have a degausser (for audio tapes), but erasing DAT is not the same thing. I was never able to find information on degaussers recommended for DAT. Shredding is, as you point out, always an option, though I was rather hoping to preserve the tapes themselves.
My first portable cassette player wasn't a Sony Walkman, I had an Aiwa. unit. That was a pretty sweet unit.
The quality of construction of that calculator is with no doubt the product of perestroika.
That DAT is still worth a pretty penny if it is still working. It may only need the heads cleaned.
If you increase the filament voltage on that calculator display, it should work a bit better.
The self powered load ... i don't understand the in- or output connector labeled "ampere meter" .....
One thing I will say about UL ratings is that they don't really mean much in regards to safety. All UL really means is that they looked at representative examples of the product provided by the manufacturer and tested them to ensure they operate as intended and meet the minimum safety guidelines UL has listed. Over the years of living in the US I have seen many UL rated products that could easily burn the house down in a faulted condition and not under supervision.
I think we need an hour and a half vintage Sony special Dave.
i v94 kkch63
Hey Dave, Love the mailbags
Haha, he sniffs the walkman - "Yeah, early eighties" :D
That hot line would actually be useful not necessarily to talk to the other person but if someone started talking to you just hit the button and you don't haft to remove your headphones to hear them.
Love the indiana Jones theme whistling there :)
EEVblog If you whack the Apple AirPort Express where the two housing parts meet with a large blunt object, it should crack open. I tried doing this method on an Apple iPod charger and it worked like a charm. Saves the plastic dust and less too clean later.
The t-shirt at 16:50 says "you shall not lie". That should become mandatory clothing for politicians ;)
Dunno if it was mentioned. I believe it only comes soldered, not crimped, it's the only option, as it should be.
Parrot clips
КР1601РР1 in Russian calculator is a general purpose electrically reprogrammable ROM (4 Kbit), not a custom asic
Looks like isopropyl has been used to clean the screen and has damaged the surface. Similar issue with a screen of mine. I used scratch remover paste and a dremel polisher tool came up a dream.
The licenseplate from the Delorean is the wrong one. its the plate from part 1. The model is from part two and has a different futuristic licenseplate (thats from the matchbox one is the right one)
The tuner had a center negative plug, people need to stop doing that.
nikomo That's evil!
God
nikomo Unfortunately, many many of music equipment like effect pedals do use center negative
brue4u Oh god well all i can say is that the music industry is DUMB
nikomo *cough*sega genesis*cough*casio keyboards*cough*
That tuner does look a bit strange, the numbers on the front look at lot like frequencies of A (standard pitch of A is 440Hz) although the alternate pitch 432Hz is outside that range, might just support adjustments close to A440. Also has a passthrough so you can do a quick tune up without needing to unplug your instrument.
So that's what that gunk was, I saw it on a Russian made TV which had very sticky screws and some gunk around them. Cheers :)
omg I would love to own this video walkman to show my old video8 tapes to friends.
Thumbs up as usually :-) I look forward the walkman teardown.
EEVblog DAT gear still get used in the professional recording realm still. It isn't hugely popular, but most decent studios still have the gear, no clue if the format is still officially support. Regarding DAT and the music industry, I know over here in the states in the late 80's they passed litigation that leveed a fairly high luxury tax on anything that could read/write DATs in an attempt to limit piracy.
I would think spade lugs would be used for binding posts. The far end connectors that you say are for binding posts look like those that are on the near end of 'scope probe ground leads; they slip over the grounding barrel of the probes. Could that be it?
The hot line may be for when one of the listening parties has been smoking something and is not really paying attention to his or her surroundings, if you know what I mean. :-)
Different notes for different strings on a Guitar, Violin, etc
Tshirt text: Du sollst nicht lügen - You shall not lie
those NPN/PNP pairs on the load are called a Sziklai pair
cuebus Yes, mental block.
I had the exact same guitar tuner!
You can still say mailbag monday. Where is the knife? I really enjoy your videos
Would love to see a teardown video for all 3 Sony's.
Test leads are so hard to find[for me]. Anyone know where to source them.[besides Parrot]
the glue has gone behind the screen on that video walkman, its between the screen and plastic window.
Why do you have upside down scopes on the shelf?
I am super excited about the Sony's!!
i love how you sniff the old stuff hahah
Don't tear down the DAT if you ever want it to work again.
Why people avoid using jumpers but use multi layers PCB? isn't it the same?
márcio lima sousa the correct answer is whatever is cheaper
Gillian Seed So it's not about magnetic field interference or something?
márcio lima sousa It's mostly cost, however you can get some shielding if the back side is just one big ground plain. It often makes up the back side of shielding cans.
Some stuff falling between the case and heatsink of the tekbox could be a real problem, but it would never happen. My PCs have cheap cases, and if you look underneath them, the usb front panel pcb board (more like traces connector) is exposed.
I can't help but wonder why anyone would do the thumbs down with this video channel with all this info and Auzzie humour?
I always assumed its mostly done by people who have been wrongly directed here by youtubes search function.
If anything, that guitar tuner thing makes for a good mini-disco light kit... :P
That apple airpot thing's easy to open if you employ the Photonicinduction "where's my 'ammer" technique... :D
Sweet!! I used to have one of them Video Walkmans (ebay purchase) that never worked properly (power wouldn't stay on even with fully charged batteries), lovely bit of kit, but, not exactly reliable... :P
Had a lot better luck with that Video Walkman than me, except the screen on mine was good, but the damned unit just refused to stay powered up for more than two minutes...
Do a two hour mailbag, that should help.
With that Russian calculator, they probably made a better casing for the ones that they sent into space.
30:00 to 39:00 so... this is the analog solution by Tekbox DIGITAL solutions. :-)
I *did* learn electronics by learning fundamental physics first (I'm a scientist who has recently got into hobby electronics). It's a fun way to do it if you have a certain sort of mind - different strokes for different folks.
Dude that's the Walkman from Guardians of the Galaxy.. Get yourself a matching tape..
Keylitho Yeah, those sell for $150+ on ebay!
Shawn Swift actually... Mint condition, and working, With the carying case and the headphones... One sold for over a 1000 $ A lot of the ones on ebay don't work or are seriously damaged.
Keylitho I am not positive but pretty sure it was the one in bttf also,, Marty used the talkback 4 scarin his dad jejeje
By the looks of the video Walkman it may be water damage to the panel.
Those Soviet calculators... They ALL had HORRIBLE keyboards. My collection covers the years 1976-1992... NOT ONE GOOD KEYBOARD! XD I have an Elektronika 4-71b, B3-05, Mky-1, mk-61, and two MC 1103... Which is a desktop RPN programmable calculator made for controlling and monitoring external processes. It contains internal ADCs for measuring voltages of +/-9.99V (8 channels).
Nice, the calculator arrived.
The VFD control board was loose.
The Liquid crystal liquid in the LCD panel has crystallized over time. It's dead jim!
16:09 - Translation "You shall not lie"
DAT looks like a small protable VCR inside. The industry asked to bann the 44.1Khz samle rate. Back in that days, a sample rate converter were sorta of complex, you wouldnt be able to copy (digitally) a CD. DAT was supperior, but not as reliable as CD, heads wore out like in the VCRs.
Never stop sending
oh man~ I wanted a DAT player so bad :D
Just like in the last video, when you are fiddling with the package material and it gets noisy, it sounds like underwater here. Tried on different systems, all the same (using the 720p50 and 1080p50 video, e.g. at 15:55). Any idea? Google reencoding messed it up? Or does the original contain it too? Maybe a bad interaction of your codec and their reencoding?
Sounds ok here, tried going low res (144) then HD, sound ok, but at this res my PC started losing sync between the audio & video.
I'm using firefox & HTML5 player (Suprise, I thought it was on flash)
Dave,
What camera have you used to record this episode?
Thank you
Very generous submissions this time but I think we could do better!
A darlington pair made with an NPN and a PNP instead of dual NPN and PNP is called a sziklai pair.
*****
Thanks.
The videoman's head may need to be cleaned. That thing is very old!
Home taping is killing the recording industry. ;)
the chinees Guy on the video tape at 9:21 min is mr masaru emoto ! ;-)
45:20 some components have no solder on their leads. XD
29:46 "Some dude talk about something" :-D
You shall not lie = Du Sollst nicht lügen
Greetings from Hamburg :-))))))
Makes 17:49 a bit ironic. ;) But of course, 16:05 lets him off the hook, I guess? :)
DAT is much better than CD. The DAT-tapes were used when mastering CD's.
EEVblog The TPS-L2 actually has a microphone because the original Walkman was just a portable dictation machine with the recording capability removed. Sony already had several portable cassette players in their line up even already in the early 70ies (see: wegavision.pytalhost.com/Sony/1973/sony73-15.jpg). But it wasn't until 1979 that they (Akio Morita) had the idea to market these as cheap portable cassette *players* with all recording functionality stripped. This particular TPS-L2 didn't have the "Walkman" name on it yet because the name wasn't invented back then. However, there are TPS-L2 models that were actually sold with a Walkman sticker but those were later revisions.
Oh, and I wouldn't really do a teardown on this TPS-L2 as this seems to be one of the early models in a quite good condition. These can easily be worth several hundred bucks on eBay.
Yay! MK52 -- have one of these, from late prod run, much better keyboard. The big chip is not custom -- it is the NOR Flash memory :) the flip-chip yellow and white things are ASICs for calculator BCD arithmetics &co.
You should have tried to whistle a 1K tone.
28:25 "Hopefully not someone's porno" LOL!!!
"Something was missing before" ? Strange saying on the back of the clip packet. Before what for heaven's sake?
I'm probably the only one person in the world that was seriously disappointed by way electronics are taught at the university (the "blinking LED first" way). I had really no idea how they are going to explain semiconductors without teaching quantum mechanics and solid state physics first. Well, I was pretty surprised when on first lecture lecturer started speaking about Bohr atom model. Come on, it's (approximately) valid only for hydrogen (or other one-electron atom)...
2G tape? That' still better then CD.
I desperately want one of those DAT walkmans!!!
£200 and more in England though through EBay... Ah well, its not to be.
those sony tps-l2's go for stupid amounts of money on ebay now because of the guardians of the galaxy movie
Sorry, Dave. Real time machines look like a British police call box.
Where's the Bowie knife?
Where is the knife???
as a austrian guy i have to laugh about, how you said düsseldorf :D
where the hell is the aussie knife?
emutiny Doh! Forgot!
EEVblog Oh cmon Dave get the hunting knife back!
EEVblog In an alligator's mouth?
smellysam
We have crocs.
I think dave lost it in a game of knifey spoony
Yeah, Alligator Dundee sounds wrong...