Speak & Spell, Then & Now
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- Опубликовано: 22 окт 2020
- Found an original model 1978 Speak & Spell at Goodwill. Then I bought a 2019 model Speak & Spell at Target. In this video I take them both apart and compare.
I hope to fix the VFD of the original Speak & Spell in a future video. 
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Every time Ben says "you know" I'm like "no Ben, I have no clue what you're talking about, but I'm deeply intrigued nonetheless".
Haha so true
If the VFD has two cathodes, one toward each end, that might explain the graduated brightness - if the one at the left has a dry joint or a short or something.
Didnt think you were in to EE friendo
@@novafawks yeah, been following Ben and a few other EE you tubers for a long time. Ben's casual, but incredibly deep expertise makes him very watchable
Heya Shrimp!!
Nice to see you here
The VFD still has good vacuum. The getter (shiny coating on the inside of the glass) is still intact. I would replace all the caps on the power board and it might come back to life.
I was about to say a gassy tube would have white getter spots.
More or less my thoughts... My money would be on what looks like a grey electrolytic on the high voltage board.
Exactly. The VFD is good, the transformer is good, so there's really nothing left to have failed other than bad solder joints and dry caps.
Ugh the new one. Horrible! Others may have already said, but the old unit's VFD has in-tact getters. (the black blobs inside.) Designed to suck up any air that may leak in. If they are white or gone then gas has been let in. Man's that VFD is not gassy.
The dim screen is likely from the DC-DC not giving enough voltage. TechTangents had a video on this with an old calculator. He had to change a cap or two on the DC-DC which IIRC fixed the issue.
Yeah I think it was a blackjack/calculator hybrid
I mean it’s a quarter the price and vastly more reliable. I don’t see why old men call the consolidation of components “horrible”. The worst part of this is the battery life and screen
"Spell disenfranchise! D - I - S - F ...."
I got a second laugh once I realized he stopped at the typo. 🤣🤣🤣
heard over and over again until you got the words "That is incorrect. The correct spelling is..."
🤣🤣🤣🤣
I wonder if ET could have phoned home with that new turd? My guess is not.
It's too advanced.
A little hard to circuit bend the new version.
The old version didn't seem like very much to work with either.
@@draconic5129 The old version was plenty bright enough , back in it's day. Even in the Australian sun.
@@draconic5129 the old one was state of the art for its time, even if there wasn’t much to it. The history behind its tech is super fascinating
New voice sounds a little like Leonard Nimoy. It's a Spock and Spell 😁
Live long and spell...
that would be....illogical
@@sonicase I am sure there are some logic gates just laying around in there somewhere... :-)
lol i was thinking the exact same and then saw your comment 😁
_[WHEEZE]_
I worked at the factory in 1978 where they were made. Seen thousands of them.
When I was a kid, I got thrown out of the local Toys "R" Us for trying to make the display Speak & Spell say swear words.
Remember, as the packaging said, the new device was designed and built "as you remembered it." That means recreating an experience people remembered, not actually trying to recreate the real experience or improving on it. This is why their LED backlighting is dim and weak and using a membrane keyboard instead of that janky button keyboard. After all, this toy isn't sold to be an educational tool, as we can design an app for tablets to do that. (Leapfrog and Amazon have much better products for this.) This toy was solely built to play on parents' nostalgic memories (just like you had when you were waxing about having one as a kid) and wishing to share that experience with their kids.
Also, my experience with Speak & Spells is rather limited. I never had one, but I remember being a preteen at the house of a family friend and bored out of my skull. They had one laying around (used and abused). So, I picked it up and toyed with it. And, yes, I tried to spell curse words on it...
The membrane keyboard was actually on the revised 80s version
The 1970s TI calculators used those wire interconnects to their keyboard pads, as the wires are the actual matrix as well.
yup! I have a couple of old 70s calculators, they do indeed...
Hey! Fancy seeing you here!
On the old VFD modules (and CRTs) a common problem was that the heater would foul up over time and kick off fewer electrons. You could sometimes buy yourself more display life by increasing the heater voltage by a few percent.
If only the first couple of letters are dark, that may be uneven phosphor wear AKA burn-in.
Is the word 'solder' included on any of the expansion cards?
I was thinking of saying that :)
How about Aluminium?
@@VAX1970 too many letters! Only aluminum will fit on the display
ess oh dee dee ee arr
Stupid ass
Long time lurker, first comment. You’re a riot to watch. Absolutely no doubt we’re the same age, ET is the first movie I remember seeing in the theatre too. Trip down memory lane watching your videos.
I stumbled across this video. I watched it and loved it. I am just now seeing that this is Ben Heck!!! I used to love watching your videos back in the day. Glad I found your channel.
There is a way to "rejuvenate" old VFD displays, by applying a certain higher voltage on the pins. There's plenty of tutorials on RUclips to do just that. They do it with old alfanumeric pinball displays as well. Not sure if that's a solution, but may be worth a shot?
yes. just push 9v over the emitter wires for a 5 count if i member to rejuvenate for vfd.
Likely to damage them
@@the_eminent_Joshua_E_Hrouda Not if done correctly.
It could be a bad capacitor in the VFD high voltage supply. It seems to have voltage for the first digit on the right and then get dimmer as it scans across. So get out the oscilloscope.
Yes that voltage converter has a dead capacitor, the long axial capacitor most likely, used to store the -30v used in the display. The sagging voltage is why the display is dim at the one end.
I swapped it, no change.
@@BenHeckHacks Then likely the VFD is losing emission. Low filament voltage will do that.
@@BenHeckHacks I have a modern Futaba dot-matrix character VFD in some high-end audio gear dating to about 2010. After years and years of use, the least-used pixels are the brightest, and the most-used pixels are the dimmest.
Like screen burn on a monochrome CRT or plasma display.
My guess: The phosphor coating is becoming NFG. It goes from left to right, because the left-most segments are the most-used and the right-most characters are the least-used.
This is because displaying user input goes from left to right.
@@blarggggg Looks like that to me as well. Probably increasing the filament voltage a bit or the anode voltage would make it brighter.
Your presumption about the two keypad matrices is correct. They are from Texas Instruments TI-12XX (& TI-14XX...) calculator series. When introduced in 1975 all models used a 6*4 matrix of the same construction, wires and all. All calculator models in the range used the same single chip implementation; which for the time was cutting edge. Lower-end models in the series simply hid more functions behind the metal keyplate. Removing the the keyplate from your base model TI-1200 would expose the missing Change-Sign key and 4 fully functional memory keys. TI would later create a revised 5x4 version of the matrix for these lower-end models and it was this version they would go on to reuse two of in the original 1978 Speak & Spell.
Fantastic! Can’t wait for the repair of the old one! Def want to see some modding if possible of either
Brilliant. This episode is up there with the Nintendo cabinet you did. Thank you so much
I've been waiting my whole life to see Ben Heck with a Speak & Spell.
Edit: Please turn it into a synthesizer.
ruclips.net/video/JnaFHuWGylI/видео.html
You put a lot more effort in to this than the '8-bit Guy'. A LOT.
He's not a hardware guy.
I'm just building my own z80 note at this very moment as u release this vid, I had my own boards made from your github files, hope u dont mind! Such an ace project, thanks for creating it.
I started building one too. Got it up to the insert sd card screen.
Ive been trying all day to get it to work, i finally got it sort of working. Ive altered the following in the arduino sketch...
Change 1:
//TWBR = 6; //Change prescaler to increase I2C speed to max of 400KHz
TWBR = 12; //Change prescaler for I2C speed of 250KHz
Change 2:
case 5:
//fileName[1] = 13; //Break (cntrl-C)
fileName[1] = 27; //Escape
Change 3:
void getFileName(const char *str) {
int x = 0;
for (x=0;x
@@willyarma_uk haven't got that far, just assembled, flash the micro and turned it on, I'll have to flash and insert the sd and give it a try this weekend.
@@willyarma_uk Just finished assembling mine. I noticed Ben updated the arduino files 5 days ago, flashed that and note works fine. Did freeze up on me once though.
@@RanHam I'm having terrible problems with it not loading to ram properly, I've just removed the Cypress RAM chips and replaced them with some ISSI ones and its much better but not perfect.
I had an 80s model when I was a kid and it actually helped me to learn, unfortunately it was given away when I didn't need it anymore however I found a couple on ebay not long ago so I have it back.
I modified one to be powered from a lithium battery and i could reuse the dc connector to charge it, pretty easy and reversible mod you pretty much tack on the TP4056 module to handle the 18650 and don't need to actually modify anything on the board
I remember Xmas day ‘84, I had my speak & spell. Good times!
yay! A new Ben video on one of my favorite toys to mod!
That was a really fun video. Good stuff.
Your videos give me hope whenever you post one
I'm from Iran and I enjoyed that joke way more than appropriate😂🤣😂🤣
Keep up being awesome🤘🤘🤘
I love how excited you are getting over wired in keys 😂 good vid man
Wow, Ben Heck in my city, eating our steaks. Glad you enjoyed it!
I loved this video, thank you for the time and effort you put into that, i always wanted to see whats underneath.
Board edge connectors were a common practice, it’s a free connection. I still place them on PCBs even though it’s a lot of surface mount design.
The old one is sick! If you do a repair video on it, I would love to see it. Cool video Ben
"That is Incorrect, the correct spelling is.......C.O.L.O.R" No!! I live in europe, it's Colour!! This always got me as a kid :)
These things were good at teaching you amercian, not english.
There are 2 verson of english there is lazy american and the queens
@@goFyourself69 As if! British English is incredibly lazy, with no rules and not pronouncing things the way they are spelled. American English is based on making things (more) consistent and following rules.
And don't get me started on the British mangling of foreign words. If you want to talk lazy (and insensitive and inconsiderate), start there. "Chili" has one "L", *NOT* two!
@@awo1fman What's up with British "Alluminum"?
I think Canada uses colour as well. Learning any dialect of English has to be pretty difficult. English has rules, but then later changes it's mind. I before E, except if your Irish!
Ah, same sort of chip is in the Speech synthesizer module for my TI994a computer! I love that thing; was my first computer and it still works last I checked.
I was 6 in 1979 I am 47 now lol
That is how math works, yes. Thank you for that
Me too.
How veteran :v
Back in my TRS80 days, I had a Speak and Spell which I modified to connect to the TRS80 to act as a phonetic speech unit. The hand solder may be been where some ribbon cable was connected to do similar mod.
I have a pile of old speak n spell read and maths from back when I was into circuit bending. When I was a kid in the 80s my neighbors younger kid had one and her older brother snagged it for me so I could take it apart! I took everything apart and I had to get in and see that speech chip!
In this day and age, the electronics to do a Speak & Spell are so much more compact than they were 40 years ago. There was a Speak & Spell Compact that was smaller, but the Basic Fun machine is only as big as it is because it's made to be a true replica with the speaker, display, and keyboard being true to the original design.
I can still hear its voice saying "A E I O U" from all those times playing hangman.
"A B C D E F G I WILL KILL YOUR FAMILY" ruclips.net/video/NoCIF6Pz7Xs/видео.html
The reveal on the key matrix holding it in got an audible "Oh jeeze!" out of me.
I enjoy watching your videos and listening to your commentary- in this video you sound a lot like Bill Murray back on SNL
07:44 I know... I can make Speak & Spell Portable. Heheh!
This whole video makes me think of Halt and Catch fire where the wife worked at TI. And their kids had a Speak n Spell.
So nostalgic, that display.
When experimenting with VFD I read that using DC across the filament of the VFD can cause one side to be brighter, maybe the boost circuit is only outputting DC? We picked up one of those in the early 90's with a speech defect, it was lots of fun to play with!
Pretty cool. I still have the math, spell and read ones in my basement with the newer membrane keypad. I'll have to dig them out now to see if they still work.
So that's why the circuit benders are always looking for the vintage models. The new one are far less hackable.
Please post a video of the VFD repaired, I'd like to see that 78 greatness come back to life.
I had a 2XL with the high tec 8 trac tapes. loved it
The VFD is dim because the voltages going to it would be incorrect due to the crude switchless power supply failing. You need to check that first. Check the diodes on it since they are known to fail. The transistors are also known to short, but they are part of the startup oscillation so if they do fail then usually the whole unit doesn't work because the crude "flyback" (I'm using that term loosely) acts as a oscillator/feedback pulse to provide the system clock. When those transistors also fail, they usually burn up in a spectacular fashion due to the current draw. Check the capacitor on the board too since when I read mine it was so old it said the 1uF capacitor was reading a ESR of >20 uF. The VFD also operates on a negative voltage and a positive voltage rail giving you (if I recall) around 16V difference from the 6V power supply. It doesn't run at a high voltage like you suspected. The gas in the VFD would be fine still because the other segments are illuminating. Just check the voltages. If you need a spare Speak and Spell to repair yours, I have one but I cracked the "flyback" coil open to make a schematic from it since a coil was burned out in it (the enamel finally broke down and shorted) and it needs a new power supply designed using new modern components (since finding a replacement coil is impossible).
I didn't have one of these as a kid, my talking device/toy of choice was a "Talking Computron" which did all the spelling and math in just one toy. I even had two book + cartridges to go with it!
E.T. was one of the first movies that I ever watched in a theater where the line to get in was wrapped around the building. It's also one of the earliest movies that I remember seeing. Prior to that, I do remember seeing Airplane at a drive-in while sitting in the back of my dad's Pinto.
I have the new speak & spell and I do like it.
Ben: "I can make speak and spell portable"
Everyone Else, Literally Everyone Else: "Umm, Ben, It's already portable" "there, there's a handle on top" :)
Make it PORTABLE-ER!
@@BenHeckHacks : Adding another handle?
=O>
@@BenHeckHacks you could make it pocket sized, it would be easier to use the newer one but cooler to use the older one.
Me: "You mean a Speak & Spell Compact? Because that's actually already a thing too."
@@BenHeckHacks Please do a wrist watch version! And sell it to me!
Like a CRT, VFDs are phosphor based devices. The filaments emit electrons, and the character masks block or pass the flow of electrons to the segments, which are phosphor coated.It is possible for a VFD to simply suffer phosphor burn in over time. Fortunately, that 8 character VFD isn't an uncommon part.
There's also the Touch & Tell...I had one but I had only one program sheet with it and no cartridges. Still very popular in special education settings.
Using solid wire for board-to-board connectors was a very common technique in Texas Instruments products at the time.
We had the 2nd gen original ones back when I was little, took them apart when they crapped themselves too... Though the math one, as I recall, we used a DC-DC adapter that SAID it was the right voltage, but wasn't (or maybe was wrong polarity) and smoked the poor thing.
Very interesting stuff. I didn't know there was a new version. The three wires were down to the original using two halves of speech. In circuit bending this could be hacked to produce stereo sound. What you saw in ET was basically circuit bending before it became a thing. Those keypads are like what's in TI calculators.
The 2 speech chips were needed as TI apparently wasn't making a rom big enough to hold all the speech data. I think you can also modify it to switch these 2 lines to the speaker on and off, to effectively only get part of a word spoken. Great fun to bend these things. Thank you Reed Ghazala !
VFD are basically vacuum tube with a fluorescent anode like CRT or tuning indicator on old radio. Typical voltages are 1.5V for the filament (directly heated cathode) and 25V for grids and anodes. (Sometime more with for multiplexing)
Thought there was a negative voltage as well. It's been a while since I played with VFDs.
@@lelandclayton5462 The control grid of normal tubes are biased negatively
Ben, if you figured out a way to drive that speech synthesis chip I'd be overjoyed! A singing speak and spell or something would be absolutely incredible
John Madden.
It’s not quite that simple sadly, though you can create a custom rom expansion card if you do a little reverse engineering, the ROM data is incredibly simple, but you’d have to record your own PCM words-it won’t use the original voice :(
@@kanpaifighto true, it would be super challenging. I’m not really hoping for him to get it to properly speak words, I just think it might be fun if he got it making some garbled noises
I wish I would have known you were in Houston!!!!!!! I would have tried to get you to sign my ti 84 or something lol
I was there for like 11 whole hours haha. Maybe next time!
That keyboard (on the 78 version) totally smacks of being a (scientific?) calculator turned sideways X2. Which makes sense since they were probably trying to make this a parts bin unit.
On the 1978 version, TI saved money by using a speaker with a center tapped coil. This way the output of the chip could have two positive outputs referenced to ground, one of them representing the positive part of the waveform, and one representing the negative part of the waveform (except inverted, of course). That way they could drive the speaker without having to add circuitry to either have a power amplifier, or a positive and negative rail voltage. It also doubled the effective resolution of the ADC, by having it repeat on each half (albeit with horrible zero cross distortion). Later versions replaced the speaker with a standard speaker, and drove the output through a center tapped transformer.
we also had a computron. I think was the name of it. It was really fun.
Sir, I'm not here for any specific interest in the Speak & Spell but my love of Texas Instruments after supporting the TI-99/4A for 40 years. I was surprised to not see a chip numbered with TMS5200. This is the first time I've seen a Speak & Spell opened. The additional speech cartridges were planned for the TI Speech Synthesiser but very few have a port, but they do all have a hinged flap where the cartridges would go.
I never knew the Speak & Spell supported them too! 👍🏻🙂
Someone's never seen E.T.
was there ever a follow up on the replacement screen, just wondering. love the videos thanks for all the hard work
I would pay serious money to support a project to faithfully emulate these from their original rom code. You criticize the cheap construction, but they were WONDERFUL toys and amazing technology for the 70s. Speak and Math was my favorite. EDIT: Oh goodness! The MAME project has done exactly this. Technology is wonderful. ◡̈
The reason that the voice in the modern unit is nothing like the original is that in the 21st Century, you can get gigs of computer memory in a smaller space than the 64K that the old unit was limited to, and you have plenty of room for speech samples at a much higher sampling rate. On the old unit, the built-in word list or expansion module, I believe, took up 32K of memory. The other half of the memory had to fit the program code for everything to run as well as the speech samples for the letters, "Spell," "Try," "Here is your score," "I Win," etc. They compressed it to fit in the limited memory, and it sounds robotic. The modern unit can have speech samples at CD quality or close to it, and it's much clearer, so it's easier to understand the words. I think they processed the sound digitally to make it somewhat robotic for those who remember the old unit.
The 1978 model I have is the membrane keyboard. The 80's models had the chiclet keys. The raised keys were the upgrade.
i magined to write onto my sd cards and it has stayed there for years...all hail the mighty BIC
Ah, brings be back to preteen tinkering me. Tore apart one of these S&S, a 6-switch Atari VCS er 2600, and somehow a Sega's earlier game console PCB ended up bisected. Honestly I didn't know about the S&S speed option. But by the time I was through exploring it was toast. I was picking up broken yellow key letters for years afterward.
2:41 - That tan colored screw driver to the right. I've had the exact same one for 30 years! It was my first screw driver ever and it's still holding up strong. Surprised I haven't lost it.
The wired keyboard is common on consumer electronics back then.
The remote control for the Jerrold TV set top boxes (1980's) had the same construction. (I was production supervisor there)
I remember having on of these as a child. Sadly the unit stopped working couple days later and my parents sent it back for warranty (I guess). I never got back the replacement. But it was pretty good while it lasted.
If you know how to reconnect everything back together after you take it apart, you are amazing, because I'm just a computer programmer, so that's more than I can do.
I had a sample vf display like 15 years ago at a place I worked and I accidentally dropped it. I heard the gas slowly leak out. It still worked fine after that, so I remember thinking it was more of a life thing. Like the gas had nothing to do with individual segments, but more with the life of the product. When I say I remember, I assume I remember it because someone told me. We regularly had the rep from the display company visit us because he wanted us to use the display in our machines. So, maybe I asked him.
As a kid I had a Speak & Maths. I don't think I learnt much maths from it, I just used to play around making it say stuff and eventually I dissembled it to see how it worked.
The keyboard modules are totally off-the-shelf, but not industrial. TI used those EXACT SAME modules in their four-function calculators of the era.
I genuinely love knowing that the Speak & Spell keyboard was originally two calculator keyboards glued together.
Can't wait to see how you fix/replace the screen on the original Speak and Spell.
The construction of the keypad and screen inside the case is very similar to TI's contemporary calculators, like the TI-30 or TI-1400. There are 13 wires connecting the keypad and display module, and then the entire assembly mostly floats free in the case.
Confusion about House of Haunted Hills movies hits close to home. All I know is the '59 and '99 films are goofy fun =)
Ben, Is there some type of filter you can remove to make the display brighter? I did this with a bookshelf stereo that had two blue LEDs and some type of panel with dots on it to make the system look high tech and expensive. I took both this panel and the LEDs out and it's MUCH better.
I wonder how E.T. would hack the 2019 speak and spell to phone home. At least keep the original sound of the 1970s speak and spell
I have a speak and spell app on my phone.
13:36 I LOLed so hard when you were talking about writing on SD cards vs. walls. Too true! And how about the signature space on credit/debit cards? 🤣
Those are bad too. When I get a new card I usually sign it then let it sit out overnight before putting it in wallet.
The show "Halt and Catch Fire", drama based (at first) on the early computer industry in Texas, had a character who worked at Texas Instruments on the Speak and Spell.
The VFD darkening on one side may have something to do with a DC bias, or a single AC phase. I remember screwing around with one, and the datasheet mentioning that the best method would be two opposite phase ac starting from either side (bias voltages) and one AC polarity if you didn't care about a dim side and a brighter side, and call your local rep if you wanted to use DC or squarewave from one side. Good luck!
Who wants Ben to make an improved Speak & Spell?
I took apart one from the 80s and there was many much more components and smaller tracers on the pcb.
Ben, please mod this modern POS! Breathe some coolness into it! 😎
Speak & Spell mini "HECK Edition"?🤔
TI used lots of those little DC-DC convertors (on the small brown paxolin board) in loads of products - eg. the TI-58/59 programmable calculators. The gradient brightness of the VFD probably shows the o/p voltage of the DC-DC is low. I'd look up the required drive voltage for the tube (probably between 29 and 60V) and compare to the actual voltage coming out of the convertor.
The funny rubber strip that connects the display to the circuit board is called a Zebra Strip. Zebra Strips are a slice through hundreds of alternating rubber plies -- originally white nonconductive rubber and black conductive rubber sheets. Basically the strip conducts electricity bottom to top and not ply-to-ply. They are especially nice for making contact with ITO-conductor-on-glass, like in a VFD or a LCD built by stacking two glasses, because they are solderless, conformal and "alignment agnostic". So long as your circuit board contacts align with the glass contacts you get a connection, no matter if the Zebra strip budges left or right a bit.
This one (nicely) has nonconductive facings protecting the world from the zappy voltages otherwise present on the sides of the strip. Zebra strips used on cheap LCD watches and calculators often skip the protective facings.
Today's tech is still loaded with Zebra strips, though often much smaller and caged out of sight.
A few broken filament wires in the VFD could cause one side to be dimmer than the other (depending on which direction the filaments run in). Might also be too low filament voltage with wires not getting hot enough all the way along to emit electrons. Cheers!!
No solder mask around the individual pins on the chips, just like on the TI99/4A. Makes it really easy to bridge pins when reworking.
Burn the crud off of the VFD by applying a higher voltage to the filaments.
yeah, I was yelling it at the screen with no effect. You run them up gently until you see them glow dim orange, and then leave it to bake for a few minutes. Too yellow and you will burn them out
I just replaced a tac switch inside a bicycle headlight that was sandwiched between two circuit boards, and there were a pair of leads/struts just like that connecting them together. Managed to get them apart, replace the button, and walk them back together; and it's all thanks to Ben Heck! For just nine easy payments, you too can learn to put tiny, poorly-thought-out gadgets back in working order!
I believe one of my favorite arcade games Gauntlet uses these chips for the speech. That’s why I clicked the video haha
The modern one had even less than I expected!
Definitely about the watch this in its entirety LOL time to get the kitten and make her watch it with me
I remember those keyboards with the wires coming out the end in calculators. In case you don't take them apart. The wires are actually part of the mechanism of of the keys. That's why they didn't use ribbon cables.
Several have commented on the VFD not being gassy (getter state) but there is another failure mode which could explain why one side is brighter. The display has suspended cathode wires strung across the front of the display. If one breaks (fatigue or shock) it can cause fading of the display. It may also cause shorts though I am not sure on that one and that likely would take out the entire display, maybe damage the B+ boost convertor.
Maybe look at the VFD under the microscope or magnifier and check that the cathodes are intact.
And, the first commandment for techs is: "thou shall always check voltages". :)
Cheers,