It talks! - 1980s Vox Clock 3 talking alarm clock
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- Опубликовано: 26 авг 2024
- If the 1980s could talk, they'd tell the time. Exploring the Micronta Vox Clock 3, a.k.a. Spartus AVT (Audio Visual Time) talking alarm clock, featuring a Texas Instruments voice synthesizer chip.
Featuring video clips from:
1984 Chrysler Laser EVA Electronic Voice Alert Demo
• 1984 Chrysler Laser EV...
TRS-80 Voice Synthesizer Demo
• TRS-80 Voice Synthesiz...
B-17 Bomber (Funny AVGN Moment) #1
• B-17 Bomber (Funny AVG...
The Texas Instruments Speak & Spell/Read/Math
• The Texas Instruments ...
Early 1980s Datsun/Nissan Voice Alert phonograph unit
• Early 1980s Datsun/Nis...
The fifty year old Talking Clock Radio
• The fifty year old Tal...
Spartus AVT Talking Clock Demo
• Spartus AVT Talking Cl...
1983 Chrysler Town & Country Electronic Voice Alert System
• 1983 Chrysler Town & C...
Speak & Spell VS The 1986 Chrysler New Yorker
• Speak & Spell VS The 1...
#talking #1980s #clock
I was always happy to see the simulated wood grain disclaimer. That way I didn't get confused and throw it in the fireplace.
@jdslyman Funny. Just got notification of your comment. Two months later.
I had the Vox Clock 2. It stopped working a few years ago. When it announced "It's 2 PM", the cat would come beg for food because that was his feeding time.
Pavlov's cat effect
I would love to replace my phone's voice with a vintage voice synthesizer, because I'd rather know for sure a computer is talking to me rather than an uncanny valley simulation of a human.
I miss the old siri voice. now that was good
"THE TIME IS 5:12"
"lmao wtf was that goofy ass voice"
"my phone"
"SHUT YOUR MOUTH RICARDO"
I love how Radio Shack had a tendency to sell products for many years, largely ignoring contemporary design trends. I suspect that by 1the early '90s, the Vox Clock 3 would've looked very old fashioned. Although these days, the silver and faux woodgrain finish is part of its charm.
I actually LIKED that aspect. A "timeless", definite Radio Shack look! I also was NOT a fan of the "melty" look of later years.
@@jamesslick4790 The "melty" look units were also much lower quality too.
Eh chrome and wood still existed in the early 90s as well.
@@audiophile6475 Perhaps on some audio components, But the majority of small electronics were largely of the melted plastic design school.
@@jamesslick4790 yes for sure but that style wasn't as outdated as you would think by the 90s.
I’ve been on RUclips so long that when the Intellivision B-17 Bomber clip played, I quite literally EXPECTED the following AVGN clip without knowing it was gonna be included. The association will just always be there lol. Thanks for that.
It has quite the not-unbearable (pleasant) alarm sound, but it getting louder in succession keeps it being efficient to wake someone up.
A lot of my blind friends had the talking wrist watches back in the day. It’s really cool now with modern cellphones all that stuff is built in! 😀
hmm?
I wouldn't say it is cool at all anymore with modern decayed software industry forcing updates to continue using the software, needing high-bandwidth connection to be able to download that unnecessarily hundredfold-bloated crapware and keep it in constant connection to cloud to allow telemetry, forcing to replace the phones every few years to be able to use the forcibly-updated versions from which they dropped the support for too old Android API or just made it too bloated to be able to run by the artificially obsolete-declared phone.
Smartphones are cool as a hardware concept, but the thoroughly corrupted, greedy software industry has made their coolness pretty much useless. For me, as a non-blind person, this situation is such a deep PITA that I cannot even imagine how unbearable the situation is for blind people relying on a working smartphone setup and not being able to do all that clumsy and purely unnecessary setup work by themselves.
The greedy software industry with planned obsolesence and other dirty business tactics is nowadays the no. 1 root cause for all the inequality as well as environmental problems of the world. Funnily enough, all those leftist-green snowflakes never give a shit about this issue, as they just happily keep on replacing their iPhones every year, regardless of even any actual need.
Old times were way, way cooler, when kilobytes or very few megabytes sufficed for even speech synthesis, without cloud, without telemetry, and everything once made to work stayed working with the same functionality as long as you wanted, without being broken by forced updates and support droppings.
My dad was a watchmaker and he repaired a lot of mechanical watches for the blind in the day. Those watches were great conversation starters because those watches were so unique. You could push a button on the side, the lunette with the glass flipped off and you could touch the hands and the dial directly. The numbers were embossed in braille. I still have one.
@@albinklein7680 Now that is cool and fascinating!
I went through a lot of watches growing up, but now I don’t even use a watch because of my phone.
I feel the point of having a simulated wood grain finish is kinda diminished when it's labeled as such on it.
I believe that is/was required by law. If it's not real wood, they had to put a sticker on it indicating that it's simulated woodgrain.
@@vwestlife Oh, is that so? Interesting. Makes sense, although personally I'd probably immediately peel that off, so it's unusual to see no one has over all these years.
Obviously the timber-industrial-complex throwing its weight around in Washington DC to pay lobbyists to write ridiculous regulation. 🙄🙄🙄
These were a godsend for the blind. My legally blind cousin had the clock and watch, and magnifying glasses. Now, smartphones have that all built into the OS.
Now, if I could only get my ham radios to do that which some do or now that TVs with digital if I had a voice activated or a embedded I meant 60,000,000,000 inch screen! speech television otherwise I can’t tell by the white noise if the channel is active or not being blind! Though I did tell also people I met the digital TV would suck, but nobody believe me they all wanted to see their football players on a 60000,000,000 in stream!
@@chadvandam7179 There are surprisingly a lot of blind hams. Ronnie Milsap was probably the most famous one. He had a ham shack at his house in Nashville.
@@5roundsrapid263 Unlike many hobbies it makes no difference whether a person on the other end of a radio like can see or not.
p.s. A recently purchased Baofeng 2M handheld seems to have voice announcements built in as standard.
@@MrDuncl It’s a lot more fun than watching TV without video!
@@chadvandam7179 I got a radioiddity GD-77 that out of the box is not blind friendly at all a group got together and made a fork of the open software others had done for it. The modes firmware is called accessible GD77 now the radio talks and everything. All settings are blind friendly.
The same group has also did the same for the the TYT MD 9600 so there are some nice low cost possibility’s out there.
73
Those early speech synthesizers are right in the uncanny valley for sure.
Still not as creepy as the TikTok voices!
It at least didn't require cloud service connection and place ads into the voice stream.
Really? Maybe it’s just because I grew up with them, but for me they’re too artificial to be uncanny. Just like low poly graphics.
Certain Google or Siri voices on the other hand, until I notice the new and ever more subtle artefacts, can creep me out.
@@5roundsrapid263 when the only tell is the consistency of their cadence, or weird mispronunciations, I do not like!
Too artificial to be in the uncanny valley. For me a lot of the newer voice assistants fall into uncanny valley because of how much more realistic they sound but not quite there.
You forgot the part where the car tells me that my door, in fact, is a jar 😜
The door of that vintage car used to be a jar, holding all that condensing water inside. Now it is in fact not anymore, as it has rusted the bottom portion away ;)
They sure liked using the word “sentinel” in the 80s and into the 90s. “Miser” is another one I’ve seen used quite a bit.
Nice alarm clock. Don’t know if I could live with those alarm tones but the Westminster chimes and chrome are slightly redeeming.
"Battery Sentinel" was a Radio Shack trademark. They kept renewing the trademark registration until they filed for bankruptcy, and the trademark was cancelled in 2020.
@@vwestlife They certainly got their moneys worth out of it throughout the years. Aside from RadisShack’s Battery Sentinel, General Motors’ Twilight Sentinel is another one that comes to mind.
omg this was the clock i got for christmas in the mid-80s and used through middle and high school. that alarm 1 melody is burned deep into my soul... gosh i hated how sleep deprived i was during high school.
Fantastic product! I was shocked by the number of batteries but impressed the alarm will sound in a power cut.
Radioshack was sooo much fun to visit as a kid in the 80s! Anyone remember the battery club for kids?
The battery of the month club was available for EVERYONE! (I was well into adulthood when I was still a "member" It kept my smoke detectors supplied for FREE! 👍😊👍
@@jamesslick4790 I always got the 9V because it was the most valuable and used in my RC car radios.
@@BusWithUs. Me too. 9V was the BEST ones to get! That's what smoke detectors used, so you could "time" the replacement schedule for each. LOL In rotation, I did not pay for them for two decades, LOL. It still worked out for Radio Shack, as there was ALWAYS something ELSE I'd end up buying anyway!
Or the giant grey colour five cell flashlights. Often given away for free if you bought a full set of batteries.
@@MrDuncl Yep! And it made sense for them to do that. 1, A free item creates customer loyalty. 2, Flashlights by nature are battery hogs, So repeat battery sales! Source: Worked at RS in the "day", LOL.
My neighbor and baby sitter had a vox clock cube that absolutely blew my mind as a kid. Probably around 1992 or so I'm estimating. Hearing that voice brings back so much nostalgia. Impressive for the time with the phonograph style ones also. Really utilizing the tech they had, brilliant engineering.
Ah I Love theses kind of synthesizer robotic voice and the alarm clock is pretty cool stainless and fake woodgrain I already like it
As someone is is vision impaired and has blind friends, I'm very familiar with talking alarm clocks and I have a number of them myself. This clock is very functional and I think many people would like it, my main gripe with it is that it doesn't speak the time as you're setting it. Since I can see the screen this wouldn't bother me personally, but a totally blind user would need to keep pressing the time announcement button or require sighted assistance to ensure they're setting the time correctly. I don't know if this clock was sold in Australia or not, I didn't know anyone who had this exact model. These days I and many of my friends use or phones and smart speakers to find out the time, though I still use a few talking clocks around the house.
I'm almost positive the talking function in this clock and other similar ones at the time was simply a novelty, part of a passing fad, hence the quirks and its not being really suitable for blind people.
I have the timex one
Sometimes, when you unplug it and plug it back in quickly it circuit bends itself and spazzes out spitting out garbled dialog and unused audio data like a westminster chime, a rooster sound and the word timex.
This sometimes happens if the power goes out.
@@coolelectronics1759 Interesting, very interesting. I've seen a few devices that behave strangely after a brief power interruption, I just can't think of what they are right now. This is why you should always wait about 5 seconds after you turn a device off before you turn it back on. It can be fun to see devices behaving strangely, but you may be running the risk to breaking something.
Yep that was the biggest gripe on it. I went to VSDB a school in Virginia for either blind or deaf students boy in the dorm room next to mine had that exact clock. In fact, he’s the one that sent me the link to this video and asked me says that clock look and sound familiar.
It's in great condition for its age. 7 AAs - so many cells for such a small device! I always wished my alarm clocks had a 24h mode, but even here in Europe they were always stubbornly 12h...
Danish person here, most of the digital clocks I have are 24 H, so that might be a location thing
There may be an internal jumper that can be set to 24 hour mode, one would have to get the data sheet for the chip inside if it’s available. Also if there was a 24 hour model available, it may be possible to see if the chips can be jumpered similarly
@@RickTheGeek Almost all of those simple LED clocks have a 50/60 Hz jumper and a 12/24 jumper which are easy to find on the PCB. However, in my experience, nearly all of them put the "correct" display in, so you won't get the leading 2 in the hour, it will show as a little bar.
Me too, I find a time system that has 2 x 1 o clocks, 2 x 2 o clocks etc in a day rather silly!
@@simonbeasley989 The problem with 24 hour time is with mechanical/dial clocks. First, you need a separate minute scale because 60 doesn't divide evenly into 24. Second, the 24-hour scale is too fine. Both problems make it difficult to read. What you need is metric time.
I like that you showed who really made the clock. I'd love to find a database of all the Radio Shack products cross referenced with pics of the real products they were rebranded from.
This is something I've been wanting for quite a while, especially with regard to their AV equipment. For example I've found that Radio Shack's first CD player (Realistic CD-1000) was a Hitachi, and one of their later ones (Realistic CD-1600) was a Sony.
Many of the Realistic receivers were built in Korea for Radio Shack by Foster Electronics and do not have an equivalent from Pioneer, Sansui, Akai, etc.
@@LakeNipissing their one and only Reel To Reel deck was a rebadged Teac X3.
Their early police scanners were basically Uniden bearcat
I remember dad buying a VCR, a Sharp brand with a remote controll that would talk and direct the user how to programme.
It was space age back than. :)
My dad still has a Voxclock 2 which announces the time every hour and has for about 40 years. I will hear that thing in my sleep for the rest of my life. "It's foh pee em. BEEP"
I wonder if these became popular due to the popularity of the T.V. show Knight Rider and its talking car. I don't recall any increase in interest in making accessible products for the visual impaired during that time, but my recollection could be off. I love your interest and dedication to these old, arcane electronic products!
That's a pretty (creepy) alarm clock. I love these 80s style radios and clocks. I just recently found one of those late 80s 'International'-branded clock-radio-phone hybrids boxed (basicely bandnew) in a thrift store for a couple of euros. It's also fully covered in woodgrain which makes it even more awesome. Can't wait to recieve my first call.
Great memories with this, it would wake me up every morning for school.
I had mine set for both the chimes and voice. Great video as usual.👍🇺🇸
of cource you would have one haha.
I have the timex
Brown, shaped kinda like a bench with big red led and takes a 9v sram batery.
Hope you have a great day today!
Those Kodak zinc batteries are the exact ones you can buy in bulk from Poundland here in England.
Zinc! Zinc! Please come back ! What have i done ?
And Dollar Tree in America too.
still useful and weird in a cute and addictive way.
My grandmother had a talking alarm clock years ago, but she needed it since Diabetes had taken away what crappy sight she already had.
I miss Radio Shack , wish I could time travel back with a big bag of cash and buy all the things I was too broke to buy before .
You can do that today on eBay.
This is so 1980's and I love it!
the accessibility is a great feature. of course i would never think of this as a sighted person...
I never owned a talking clock but the voice is so familiar. It must have been used on some other devices that I just can't place.
I definitely heard it on some phone menus.
VTech??
@user-nv2ql6oe7c
The voice sounds like a synthesized Jack Webb from the old Dragnet TV series!
The voice sounds like that of my parents' old answering machine. The way it says "Ten. Eleven. PM."
I was so hoping to see the nerd do the B17 Bomber impression and I wasn't disappointed!
Oh wow. I'm not normally a car person but that Chrysler dashboard panel is AMAZING 😮
Edit: So is the clock!
I once had a talking watch that operated like this. After about a week I couldn't throw it far enough away!
I just checked a couple of your videos, and your channel is AMAZING!!! You earned a new subscriber!
My grandparents gave me the VoxClock 3 as a Christmas present in 1984-85. That staccato alarm sound and robotic "time announcement" was part of my morning for nearly 15 years. I have no idea where that clock is now.
I love my collection of Vox Clock IIs.
Thanks for sharing bud.
If anyone in the McAllister household had one of those, and they'd put the 7 batteries in, they would have woken up on time; and not left Kevin behind.
I wish I was old enough to see Radio Shack when they sold a lot of interesting stuff. 89 so I just missed it too. By the time I was interested in electronics they had already started getting into beepers and cellphones.
I had a lot of these as a kid...And drove everybody CRAZY with them!!!
Dec 2022 - Yes! I found one of these clocks at a Salvation Army in 1994 for $5 , but let it go somewhere along the way. I was going to hook it to a Vox-activated mic on a CB radio. Naughty me. About the time our first child was born so new priorities took hold. :) I probably have 8mm camcorder footage of it somewhere with the baby videos. Thanks for the great review!
Spartus. Now there's a budget '80s electronics brand name I haven't heard mentioned since the '80s.
Cool clock radio talking version
"Your door is ajar"
0:50 Kind of Big Ben Chimes, a must on every square clock from some small city abroad
i love this clock....the 80s were the best....i rather have this than a new clock..
Sometime in probably the late 80's a buddy of mine had a talking alarm clock, but I remember the voice being normal sounding and it even allowed you to program your name in.
The alarm would go off , say your name and tell you good morning John . Lol
I never could find out what clock it was or brand.
Even Google I couldn't find anything on it
I have a clock or well several that has the Westminster chime, but its hammers hitting the rods. I found it funny when the clock said 4.20.
Even the Austin Maestro had a talking dash option at one point, trouble was, you couldn't get it to shut up some days cos of the amazing wiring job... :P
Which of course prompts the old joke: "Why do the British drink warm beer?" "Because Lucas makes their refrigerators." 😉 Back in the '90s I had both a Triumph TR7 and a TR8, and both had plenty of electrical components badged "Lucas Electronics." Never had any electrics problems with either car, though......
My grandpa had the Vox clock 2. I remember playing with it when I was a kid. Been years since iv seen one.
Also, it’s interesting to note that the voice on there sounds very similar to the Phonemate answering machines from around the same time.
I wish I could find another one of these, I had one along time ago, the speech started, getting quieter and quieter from what I can remember, back in those days I didn’t know enough to attempt to try to repair it. I’m sure finding one that would be a gamble as to whether it worked properly.
Lower volume as you described is one of the few things that actually can be caused by weak capacitors! :)
I know people say that about everything, but, I’m not one of those people lol
I had the Vox Clock 2 my Grandfather got me from the Radio Shack in Bergenfield NJ. It's a Wingstop now 😢😭
Ahh, the memories! Thank you.
I had a friend who worked in an aftersales service of a French equivalent of Best Buy in the early 90's, when Radio Shack closed all their French operations so they were liquidating their remaining products stock. I bought them a talking watch that I offered to my friend. One day at work, he was checking out a defective printer in front of the client and accidentally bumped his watch against the printer, so the watch said "Il est 11 heures 14". Then, the puzzled client looked at my friend and told him "I never knew my printer can also tell the time?!".
Classic!
Radio Shack had a French version of their stores ?? What was the name please.
i want one with the moving parts !
I HAD THAT CLOCK as a kid! It's so interesting to see it here :)
4:42 I absolutely laughed out loud here.
"That's, weird...this whole thing is weird..."
With such contempt hahah
Your headlights are on.
Thank you.
Reminded Eddie Murphey joked on that in an old album I had of his standup comedy from the early 80's.
Lol the way you say “this whole thing is weird” really got me.
The vox clock 3 isn't a complete rebrand of the Spartus AVT, the Spartus AVT does actually use a 9V battery, while as you have seen in the video the Vox Clock 3 uses AA's.
I miss radio shack being down the street from me, they didn’t have everything but many things I bought such as an rf extender that I used when I had 2 TVs and one cable box.
That was the most glorious horrid impression of a Westminster chime ever. I remember hearing these and how terrible they were back in the day.
Your headlights are on
Hits switch
Thank you
I know a lot of blind people that bought that talking clock. I had one of those from about 1986 until it finally pooped out on me in about 2011. That thing was a workhorse that just never died.
We had a 1984 Dodge 600. My dad figured out how to hack it so the voice got turned on. I got a Vox Clock 3 for Christmas once and used it for decades until it completely stopped working. I still have it, but so far I am too nervous to try to repair it.
For most IC-based clocks, the schematic for the clock IC should point out which pin enables 24 hour time when shorted. Some also have a pin which is disabled for 60Hz operation, but connected if it's for 50Hz operation.
And here I thought my GE 7-4643A clock was greedy for needing 2 9V batteries (it's a dual voltage, dual frequency clock which also has a switch for 12 or 24 hour time).
It's 420 ! time to light up 😁
Dang! Seriously, what the heck was up with 7 AA batteries? Just about every single digital clock that I have seen with a battery backup uses a single 9V battery.
AVGN!!
That fax machine at the end reminded me of Tim Hunkin and his “Secret Life of Machines” of which I’m sure you’re a fan. (RIP Rex).
I like how you set it to 4:20 lmao
The synthesizer sounds pretty similar to the ones used in vTech laptops around the 1990's. I wonder if they're the same ones.
This is so cool!
I have a VoxCube 2 clock...still works fine and plays its little tune at the alarm time.
Finally, an answer to the question… “What does the Vox say?”
"Yes, thank you"....
For some reason there was even a talking polaroid camera.
I love it ! I want it !
0:27 B-17 Boooomber! Bombs Away!
Now spell "Come back, Ali. Come back Ali's sister." 😆
My grandpa had a talking alarm clock. It sounded like a demon
"This whole thing is weird" lol
I did have the voice synthesiser module for my Intellivision console and it was a blast to use. I still own my Voxwatch that I purchased at RS when I worked there.
Hey, I recognize that Speak 'N Spell!
I recently bought a Sharp talking clock model CT-660E to add to my collection.
I believe I've got the first version (seen at 1:07), but branded Spartus. I cannot find a picture of it searching Google images or looking on eBay. When I was searching for it, the cube version without a display seems to be pretty popular.
Love the AVGN cut in lmaoooo
I have a VoxClock 3 but it's a bit quiet. I guess I need to go back through it again.
I believe the odd "decorative" vent on top of the clock is actually there to allow dissipation of heat from the power transformer.
I'll bet that Westminster chime got turned off at the second playing! :)
I can only guess the TMS5110 chip needed a lot of current to keep the time and be able to sound alarms during a power blackout. Thus the "AA" batteries instead of a 9 volt battery. But seven batteries instead of six?? 🤔
I actually like this thing!
It probably used 9V but they found it went crazy when low on battery so they put 10.5 instead
I had a Vox clock 3 and the watch. Pretty sure the watch got chewed up by a pet but I might still have the clock somewhere. That woke me up for a few years. The Vox clock 2s sold well at 01-1329 when I was there.
Also, if you had a baterry club card you could get the batteries for free and by the time you had all 7 it was time to start over.
I wonder how many men bought a talking car, dreaming of K.I.T.T. from Knight Rider only to be told that their exterior lights are on when they got out of the car..
In about 1984, when prices had dropped through the floor I bought a Midland UK spec CB rig in a sale. Trying it about I wondered why I kept hearing numbers every time I changed channel. It turned out it was a 2001T which had a speech synthesizer built in to do that. A few years later I sold it on to someone for whom that feature was genuinely useful.
Love the videos ❤