Support The 8-Bit Guy on Patreon: / 8bitguy1 Visit my website: www.the8bitguy.... For more information on the Tomy Tutor, there is a forum dedicated to it: atariage.com/f...
Exactly. Interesting, that they do not start with year zero (in this case 1926 is year one, the start of Showa). See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_era_name
The noise on cassette playback is probably from a dirty record/play switch. Open it up and spray some contact cleaner in the switch (it's on the circuit board and mechanically linked to the Record button). Or a quick fix is to put in a blank tape and repeatedly press Record, then Stop, then Record, then Stop, etc. a bunch of times to try to scrape off the oxidation just by mechanically operating the switch.
@@clemensgraetz Not really true today. Back then you had to know about HARWARE and SOFTWARE. Today everyone 8 to 80 really only needs to know about the apps they use. Outside of PC gamers (of all ages) whow build (or at leat customize) their own PCs, I think Generation X and early Millennials on average held the edge on knowing both the applications AND the "innards". Boomers had to learn it as adults, Xers (and early Millennials) learned it as kids and teens, in real time when this shit was all new and in great flux, and for the most part you HAD to code if you wanted software. I'm am in no way "dissing" younger folk, It's just that they were born and grew up in a time where thanks to advanced OSs and software, Shit just WORKS. An analogy: I am a late Boomer, I of course grew up with radio ALWAYS being around. My GRANDFATHER knew more ABOUT radio as he was there when it was born and you had to basically "roll your own". Sure, I knew more of the newer music and stations, but he knew how it ACTUALLY worked! My 20 something nieces and nephews still get me to do any hardware upgrades beyond anything plugged in via USB as they wouldn't "dare" open their PC! I go to THEM when I need advice on the latest app i'm trying to figure out.
What surprises me most is that I owned a Tomy Tutor, an apparently rare computer that even the 8-bit guy has never heard of! Sadly it was now stashed somewhere, or already chucked away.
I had one too. It went to the local Auction house with other junk during spring cleaning in the early 90s. I never had any carts for it or tape drive so I couldn't save anything.
We have a section on the Atariage forum dedicated to the Tomy Tutor and comparable systems. If you are interested in technical details and homebrew multicarts then checkout: atariage.com/forums/forum/345-tomy-tutor-cc40-992-998-cortex-990-mini/
It's so satisfying to watch 8-Bit Guy clean, I can only imagine how satisfying it must be for him to actually put in the work and get the results he does.
When I first looked at this I actually thought it was a toy rather than a full-fledged computer. Having "tutor" in the name and it appearing to have a very education-oriented type of advertising didn't exactly help matters in that. In fact, the set as a whole makes me think of a worn out 1st grade classroom set piece, the kind that the teacher's been using for a few years and looks completely ravaged (the cartridge being marked on in crayon especially). That said, with how dirty it looked it came out great once it was all restored. This was an interesting thing to learn about considering I hadn't heard of it before you made the video. Good stuff!
I felt the same. I was really wondering why he would even bother restoring this but it turns out its not a bad little machine at all. Little kid me back when this came out would have hated it. I was such a computer snob from the earliest 8bits believing only Commodore and Sinclair could make something worth owning.
When I first saw the thumbnail for this video, I thought this "educational computer-thing" was something that V-TECH typically made. The high retail price surprised me, thought it would be some cheap thing sold at Sears.
@@ClayMann Just don't watch the 8 Bit Guys Sinclair review. Of course the best things about the two computers you mention were the affordable price and the huge Games Catalogue. @Haweater Somehow I doubt if they sold many of these at full price. Back around 1983 every toy company thought they had to produce a computer. Mattel and Mettoy I'm looking at you.
This was probably the 80's computer equivalent of Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge. I can imagine how many kids got disappointed on the Christmas morning, 83.
I've been waiting for you to do this video. The Tomy Tutor was my very first computer. I got it for Christmas as a kid. All I had was the computer. No tape deck, no games. But it is how I learned to program, because that's all I could do with it, and then lose it all when powered off.
I lived in Japan for 15 years so I took a look at the name "Tomy". In Japanese it is "トミー" or in Roman letters Tomii. My guess is that that would look too weird so they "Westernized" the name to Tomy (same as with the pronunciation and spelling of Sony rather than Sonii).
The 5-pin DIN connector was not that unpopular for tape devices. It was the standard for reel-to-reel and cassette decks in East Germany and our own KC85 computer line used that connector for the tape drive as well.
Early microcomputers often used a DIN-5 for cassette I/O (e.g. most TRS-80s, original IBM PC), but its pinout was not compatible with the DIN-5 on European audio equipment. With no need for stereo, some pins were used to control the cassette motor (remote pause), and the computer supplied microphone-level rather than line-level audio, intended to connect via a breakout cable to Ear/Mic/Remote jacks on a typical shoebox cassette deck.
My '70s era Sansui stereo amplifier has a 5-pin DIN jack for connecting to a tape deck, one cable for left and right line-level inputs and outputs. Obviously the Tomy Tutor wouldn't use that pinout, but I'm curious what it is set up to use. As others have said, other computers used it in some fashion.
@Derek he didn’t destroy any computer. This is destroying a computer: ruclips.net/video/ptFTEQZBXr8/видео.html What he did was just a attempt to restore it but accidentally broke it (from the inside, from the outside it still looks perfectly fine.) and that also doesn’t change the fact that it was already broken so it really didn’t matter that he made it even worse. It’s just like breaking a already broken glass and then getting a lot of people mad about it.
I had one of these in college and wish I had kept it, but at the time it was near impossible to find peripherals for it so i sold it. It was being sold at a Radio Shack in one of the malls in the Tampa Bay area. I ended up getting a C64 and then an Amiga later on. The Amiga was years ahead of its time and served me well.
I love the dramatic background music that started playing when he started taking it apart and kinda reminds me of a documentary type TV show you might see on the history channel
THEY HAVE MR.DO! ON THIS THING?! Crap now I need one. I'm a Mr.Do! collector. I thought I knew about all the versions of that game. No one ever said "Oh yeah there's also a Tomy Tutor version"!
On the off chance you haven't gotten this comment and weren't aware, the methanol in denatured alcohol can be absorbed through skin and will cause vision deterioration over time. Might be a concern since you are exposed more than average it seems. Might want to wear gloves. Apologies for the probable repeated comment.
But is he using _denatured_ alcohol? Ethanol (grain alcohol) and Isopropyl alcohol are perfectly safe to use for cleaning in any concentration. Of course, methanol is terribly bad for you.
@@TechBench He is. You can see the label briefly, and he uses it on other videos as well. It could also be that he has a brand that uses something other than methanol for the denaturing which doesn't soak through skin.
@@alexmcd378 it has always bugged me. Like, everyone else uses isopropyl alcohol (including myself). I don't know why he uses denatured alcohol, IPA works much better for his needs
@@luansm Well, I'm using denatured as well right now, because IPA is hard to find during the pandemic, and when you do find it you can usually only buy one bottle. But it's temporary for me.
I love how when you speed up the video while you're scrubbing components with the brush that it immediately sounds like you're using a power tool instead of doing it by hand. lol
@@SonOfFurzehatt In Sarah's case it's definitely pur-SELL...I'm old enough to have watched Real People back in the late 1970s (don't judge, we only had 4 channels back then, lol)
If the intro music ever changes ... I will break down and cry! 😞 Then I'll start on online petition to have it put back to its rightful place at the start of these videos. 😁
Great video! nice to see this rare and underrated computer here. There are now good multi cards, including adapters for the expansion port. A small scene too. I am currently developing some games
@@johndododoe1411 Yes, still 8-bit. But the better cpu the tms9995 has build in ram useful for the WP, also the onchip timer are cool. Not forget the new instructions
The 5-pin din style tape connector was very standard at that time in Europe. It was used on stereo cassette recorders and carried both playback and record in stereo. So it was equivalent to four RCA connectors at a time.
In 8-Bit Unboxing from September 2017, you got a strange cartridge that was actually for an educational kids' computer from 1984 called the Teach-a-tron. You should get ahold of that computer and do an episode about it. As I write this, there actually is one on eBay.
When you're retrobrighting some piece of plastic that starts floating like the case for the tape recorder, I believe a shot glass or something equally heavy and transparent would work better.
I thought of this too, however it likely wouldn't make much of a difference because glass is fairly opaque to UV light. A better solution would be to hot glue or tie a heavy nut to the part with a length of thin fishing line.
Awesome reference... but fortunately, these machines _can_ be disassembled for cleaning and repair. Given Johnny 5's limited hardware, I suspect his sentience could possibly be attributed to tin whiskers acting as neurons (see _Whisker (metallurgy)_ on Wikipedia), but that's just a hypothesis.
I could kick myself in the rear for not keeping mine. My first computer was the Tomy Tutor I got in a trade at 7 years old with a friend and it is what I learned BASIC on until I got my first IBM Clone XT in 1991 for my 11th birthday. I hung on to the Tutor until our first major move and after that it disappeared. I miss it honestly and wish I had kept it! Thank you for doing this video. It was a wonderful trip down Memory Lane (no pun intended lol).
This whole time I thought you drop off the planet. I follow you awesomeairgun channel. Never knew you had another channel until I read the comments. They kept commenting 8 Bit Guy so I search you on youtube. Cool your still dropping videos.
@referral madness You would need to ask nvidia for that. But it does save a lot of time on the CPU side, as you need to update a tilemap instead of individual pixels, and give you sprites (albeit only 4 per scanline) for essentially free.
@referral madness It doesn't execute any code, so it would be best to just call it a screen buffer with sprites. There were similar circuits back then like the VIC II or the NES PPU. But it isn't always easy to tell the difference - the Atari 800 chips handled fancy display lists that almost felt like code while the Amiga chips they evolved into actually could execute limited code.
Regarding the polarity of an adapter: If you cannot find an adapter with the correct polarity, then pick the best possible match for an adapter.. And.. Cut the cord on the output side of the adapter. Splice the output cord in reverse of how it was originally; i.e. positive to negative and vice versa. Some solder, shrink tubing, & skill will result in a cable looking really good an most importantly, a perfectly functional adapter.
Or better yet, if you can find a power brick that isn't welded closed, open it, desolder the cable, flip it, resolder it, and snap the case back together, and have something that looks pretty much stock without shrink wrap on the cable 👍
@@paco3523 He misprounounced the last name of the advertising spokeswoman. (I was about to make the same comment since I remember seeing her on TV back in the 80's also.) It seems that it's going to be a thing that he accidentally mispronounces names that he's only ever seen in print before. :D
I was born fifteen years too late to be the right age for this machine when it came out and would have indeed been put off by the kid-friendly marketing by the time I was eight or so, but I think if I lived in that time and my parents had given me one right around age eight, I probably would have used it to death. The manual seems just awesome, and as much as the Commodore 64 had the advantage in the graphics department, you've got to remember that most developers weren't really using it to anywhere near the full of its potential during the first year its lifecycle. Great video! Love the restorations. They may not be the most innovative content every time, but they're still fun to watch.
May I suggest, for cleaning those crevices, you go to Hobby Lobby or Michael's, and look at their bamboo clay carving tools. The edges can be sanded down for closer work, and you are guaranteed not to scratch anything, unless you secretly turn into the Hulk.
Working for Boeing during the late 70's thru 2004 we experimented with dozens of microprocessors that were out. I don't remember the problem our design group was having with the TI9900 and support chips, but it was significant enough to drop it from the list.
Since the topic of future videos was brought up, are there still plans to cover the Amiga in your Commodore History series? I hope this isn't asked too often.
Well, he is known as *8* - bit guy after all... kidding- I would be interested in this as well. I seem to remember mention of a Laser computer video as well once he got more Laser brand computers. I was interested to hear what he had to say about the Laser 3000, a cheap Apple ][ clone that wasn't 100% compatible I used to own.
That connector for the recorder is VERY appropriate. It is a DIN connector used heavily for audio equipment int the 70’s. Using them for anything else was not the custom.
electric dusters as well as hand pumpable air dusters are readily available in compact packaging. Alternately, for folks that use it fairly often, a small air compressor can be had pretty cheap.
While there are reasonable and conscientious alternatives out there (as Mike and John pointed out), I'm hoping that manufacturers eventually produce something in the same form factor that's equally effective, but clean. I'm sure it will happen eventually, if the demand is out there. While I'll probably get a compressor eventually, it's definitely not as convenient.
A strong recommendation for Rust clean up -- Harbor Freight carries an Enzymatic Oxide remover called Vapo-Rust. Its fairly cheap and can be diluted with water so it can be put in all sort of odd shaped containers to level up and cover larger or weird shaped objects. It works best at body temperature and its environmentally safe.. except for the de-oxified particles that fall off the object being de-rusted. It works well on Not only Iron but Stainless Steel, Aluminum and other metals. Be sure to dry, and oil or cover up any de-rusted metals since they can "flash rust" after the old oxides are removed and then exposed to moist air.
My dad bought me this. I believe it was on clearance as it had the tape player and several cartridges. I remember the games being fairly simple and not that interesting. The most fun was programming games from the manual and saving them to cassette.
i gotta admit..love how good you clean stuff up... easy look 30 years younger! that tomy had really seen some sticky fingers over the years! them carts need a retro-bright... use them to experiment with some sort of gel you can paint on and put under uv light!
@@AiOinc1 The 9995 integrates the heart of the TI99/4A into a single chip: the 9900 processor, the two 6810 SRAMs and the circuit for 16 to 8 bit I/O conversion. It also uses more reasonable voltages than the 9900 and can be clocked faster. For the software there is no difference at all.
Does anyone know anything about Tomy Tutor's data bus? On a TI-99, 256 bytes of RAM were connected to the CPU via a 16-bit bus. But the 32KB memory expansion was connected via an 8-bit bus. Operations manipulating 16 bits of data took just as long as if the CPU had been 8-bit. If your program was designed to use the 32KB memory expansion, it was still important to work in the 256-byte area when possible for better speed. Was all 16 KB on the Tomy Tutor on a 16-bit bus?
@@benjaminkrug7423 the 16 bit bus is only inside the 9995. Everything connected to the pins is 8 bits. The internal 128 words (256 bytes) are where the virtual registers live. The 9900 only has an accumulator, a program counter and a workspace pointer which indicates where in RAM the "registers" mentioned in the instructions actually live. That can be anywhere in the address space but have W point outside the 128 internal words would really hurt performance
Your Retro brightening is a lot more successful now than back in the days when you were spreading cream and wrapping them up in plastic hahaha, the thing looks new! I am sure he will proudly display it.
I was trying to remember WHY I had such vivid memories of this particular system.....and then you gave me the answer....it was heavily promoted by Sarah Purcell on the show "Real People".....just like teaching me how to pronounce "Tomy"....cause i made the exact same mistake...let me respectfully teach you that Ms Purcell's name was pronounced "per-CELL"..How would I know this? I was a "Real People" JUNKIE....watched every episode growing up :) absolutely LOVE your channel...and subscribed tonite as I type this...my GOD the memories you bring back!!!! :)
That tape connector is a 5 pin DIN connector and quite common on old reel to reel, cassette decks and receivers here in Europe later ones just had RCA connectors.
IIRC, I saw a textbook in the vertical format once before. It was for learning how to touch type. (for typewriters; it predated typing tutor software or home computers). I found it in the public library in the mid 70's.
I had a TI994a as a kid and you're right - it wasn't as desirable as an Atari or Commodore. But I will see youtube vids of people playing Monkey Island or Dragon's Lair on a TI99 ... And I don't know how they can do it on such a primitive system!
You might not have heard of it, but Scramble (as shown at 17:12) has a more famous offspring in the form of the Gradius/Parodious series. The only way I knew it was connected was the GBA Gradius Galaxies game.
'Produced by Matsushita, the computer was released in Japan in 1982 under the name Pyūta.... The Pyūta Jr. was a console version of the Pyūta, released in April 1983[5], and similarly was only sold in Japan.' If only they released it in Spain as the 'hijo de Pyūta'....
Remember all that loads of computer stuff he received and shown in his mail unboxing videos in passed years? Where them are? Yet he borrowed *another* computer to make this video. Aghh
Daah! But when'll the Amiga series come out?! I've waited for your Amiga docuseries for almost as long as my actual three bit cybernetic memory bank goes back before a hard, but not quite factory, reset. I really don't want to have to wait to watch it past December Thirty First Of Twenty Twenty, whereafter my extremely high tech for cyborgs of my time, somewhat extensive, short term memory resets to Zero, and I'll have to rewatch all of the videos of my RUclips subscriptions all over, again.
Since this thing is Japanese, I'm going to guess that 58.7.18 means July 18th, Shōwa 58, which corresponds to 1983.
Email him about this if you haven't.
Exactly. Interesting, that they do not start with year zero (in this case 1926 is year one, the start of Showa). See also en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_era_name
Whoa, you made me realize how long the Showa Era (i.e. the reigning period of said Emperor) really is
Correct as I was born in Showa 49 (1974)
That's my guess as well.
The noise on cassette playback is probably from a dirty record/play switch. Open it up and spray some contact cleaner in the switch (it's on the circuit board and mechanically linked to the Record button). Or a quick fix is to put in a blank tape and repeatedly press Record, then Stop, then Record, then Stop, etc. a bunch of times to try to scrape off the oxidation just by mechanically operating the switch.
@Karl Jansen don't worry, I ask him
@Karl Jansen Indeed don't worry, I also ask him.
@Karl Jansen I asked
@Karl Jansen I don't remember anyone asking for your opinion on his opinion 😁
@Karl Jansen I also ask him.
Pretty sure the date is YY-M-DD with 58 meaning year 58 of the Showa era. That would make it 18th July 1983.
The 𝙡𝙖𝙥𝙩𝙤𝙥 of 1983
Was going to say the same thing!
So, it's a Showa, not a Growa.
This is correct
Lol showa era.
"no parental guidance necessary" the kids were probably the ones explaining the computer to the adults.
lmao true
*are still
kids learn faster than adults
So true! 😂
@@clemensgraetz Not really true today. Back then you had to know about HARWARE and SOFTWARE. Today everyone 8 to 80 really only needs to know about the apps they use. Outside of PC gamers (of all ages) whow build (or at leat customize) their own PCs, I think Generation X and early Millennials on average held the edge on knowing both the applications AND the "innards". Boomers had to learn it as adults, Xers (and early Millennials) learned it as kids and teens, in real time when this shit was all new and in great flux, and for the most part you HAD to code if you wanted software. I'm am in no way "dissing" younger folk, It's just that they were born and grew up in a time where thanks to advanced OSs and software, Shit just WORKS. An analogy: I am a late Boomer, I of course grew up with radio ALWAYS being around. My GRANDFATHER knew more ABOUT radio as he was there when it was born and you had to basically "roll your own". Sure, I knew more of the newer music and stations, but he knew how it ACTUALLY worked! My 20 something nieces and nephews still get me to do any hardware upgrades beyond anything plugged in via USB as they wouldn't "dare" open their PC! I go to THEM when I need advice on the latest app i'm trying to figure out.
What surprises me most is that I owned a Tomy Tutor, an apparently rare computer that even the 8-bit guy has never heard of! Sadly it was now stashed somewhere, or already chucked away.
I still have mine, with all 10 North American games (plus seven of the Japan-only games)
I had one too. It went to the local Auction house with other junk during spring cleaning in the early 90s. I never had any carts for it or tape drive so I couldn't save anything.
We have a section on the Atariage forum dedicated to the Tomy Tutor and comparable systems. If you are interested in technical details and homebrew multicarts then checkout: atariage.com/forums/forum/345-tomy-tutor-cc40-992-998-cortex-990-mini/
In the 1980's some kids were playing with some toy guns that shoot plastic pellets. 35 years later some random guy finds one of the pellets.
It's so satisfying to watch 8-Bit Guy clean, I can only imagine how satisfying it must be for him to actually put in the work and get the results he does.
When I first looked at this I actually thought it was a toy rather than a full-fledged computer. Having "tutor" in the name and it appearing to have a very education-oriented type of advertising didn't exactly help matters in that. In fact, the set as a whole makes me think of a worn out 1st grade classroom set piece, the kind that the teacher's been using for a few years and looks completely ravaged (the cartridge being marked on in crayon especially). That said, with how dirty it looked it came out great once it was all restored. This was an interesting thing to learn about considering I hadn't heard of it before you made the video. Good stuff!
@TutorialsByKevin Patreon early release. They get to watch the video a few hours before everybody else.
I felt the same. I was really wondering why he would even bother restoring this but it turns out its not a bad little machine at all. Little kid me back when this came out would have hated it. I was such a computer snob from the earliest 8bits believing only Commodore and Sinclair could make something worth owning.
When I first saw the thumbnail for this video, I thought this "educational computer-thing" was something that V-TECH typically made. The high retail price surprised me, thought it would be some cheap thing sold at Sears.
@@ClayMann Just don't watch the 8 Bit Guys Sinclair review. Of course the best things about the two computers you mention were the affordable price and the huge Games Catalogue. @Haweater Somehow I doubt if they sold many of these at full price. Back around 1983 every toy company thought they had to produce a computer. Mattel and Mettoy I'm looking at you.
"I have been sent some Huggies!"
-The 8-Bit Guy
YTP fodder right here
Hmm
There are grown men that wear them and act as a baby! true story lol
Proceeds to open the box from the bottom...
@@NathanChisholm041 Well this channel is about a grown man playing with toys so...
This was probably the 80's computer equivalent of Lee Carvallo's Putting Challenge. I can imagine how many kids got disappointed on the Christmas morning, 83.
I've been waiting for you to do this video. The Tomy Tutor was my very first computer. I got it for Christmas as a kid. All I had was the computer. No tape deck, no games. But it is how I learned to program, because that's all I could do with it, and then lose it all when powered off.
I lived in Japan for 15 years so I took a look at the name "Tomy". In Japanese it is "トミー" or in Roman letters Tomii. My guess is that that would look too weird so they "Westernized" the name to Tomy (same as with the pronunciation and spelling of Sony rather than Sonii).
@TutorialsByKevin Maybe patreon supporters can get the link earlier
Yes, I know the Romanji names are sometimes different from the actual Western-languages Latin-alphabet names.
Can someone tell me what are the 2 pronunciations? I heard the same word
@@OrloxPhoenix Toe Mee
In the modern TakaraTomy ad's (there was a merger) they say it like Tommy.
0:20 damn I was getting ready for a diaper review
The 5-pin DIN connector was not that unpopular for tape devices. It was the standard for reel-to-reel and cassette decks in East Germany and our own KC85 computer line used that connector for the tape drive as well.
Early microcomputers often used a DIN-5 for cassette I/O (e.g. most TRS-80s, original IBM PC), but its pinout was not compatible with the DIN-5 on European audio equipment. With no need for stereo, some pins were used to control the cassette motor (remote pause), and the computer supplied microphone-level rather than line-level audio, intended to connect via a breakout cable to Ear/Mic/Remote jacks on a typical shoebox cassette deck.
@@jordanhazen7761 Haha, beat me to the TRS-80. My model 3 has one. Still works. It would probably survive a nuclear EMP.
My '70s era Sansui stereo amplifier has a 5-pin DIN jack for connecting to a tape deck, one cable for left and right line-level inputs and outputs. Obviously the Tomy Tutor wouldn't use that pinout, but I'm curious what it is set up to use. As others have said, other computers used it in some fashion.
my Sony reel to reel and most cassette deck got it. is realy superior to RCA one cable for do alls. super handy.
That fast forward cleaning was the absolute coolest part
I love your videos, man!
Me too
+ that means me 2
@Derek can't agree more
@Derek he didn’t destroy any computer. This is destroying a computer: ruclips.net/video/ptFTEQZBXr8/видео.html
What he did was just a attempt to restore it but accidentally broke it (from the inside, from the outside it still looks perfectly fine.) and that also doesn’t change the fact that it was already broken so it really didn’t matter that he made it even worse. It’s just like breaking a already broken glass and then getting a lot of people mad about it.
@Derek ruclips.net/video/SYopBjwhF1M/видео.html comments open on this one. Quite a bullish response from him in here.
I had one of these in college and wish I had kept it, but at the time it was near impossible to find peripherals for it so i sold it. It was being sold at a Radio Shack in one of the malls in the Tampa Bay area. I ended up getting a C64 and then an Amiga later on. The Amiga was years ahead of its time and served me well.
I love the dramatic background music that started playing when he started taking it apart and kinda reminds me of a documentary type TV show you might see on the history channel
Yes, but the system being new to you means you're the best to review it, since you don't have nostalgia for it. :P
THEY HAVE MR.DO! ON THIS THING?! Crap now I need one. I'm a Mr.Do! collector. I thought I knew about all the versions of that game. No one ever said "Oh yeah there's also a Tomy Tutor version"!
On the off chance you haven't gotten this comment and weren't aware, the methanol in denatured alcohol can be absorbed through skin and will cause vision deterioration over time. Might be a concern since you are exposed more than average it seems. Might want to wear gloves. Apologies for the probable repeated comment.
wow, I didn't know this
But is he using _denatured_ alcohol? Ethanol (grain alcohol) and Isopropyl alcohol are perfectly safe to use for cleaning in any concentration. Of course, methanol is terribly bad for you.
@@TechBench He is. You can see the label briefly, and he uses it on other videos as well. It could also be that he has a brand that uses something other than methanol for the denaturing which doesn't soak through skin.
@@alexmcd378 it has always bugged me. Like, everyone else uses isopropyl alcohol (including myself). I don't know why he uses denatured alcohol, IPA works much better for his needs
@@luansm Well, I'm using denatured as well right now, because IPA is hard to find during the pandemic, and when you do find it you can usually only buy one bottle. But it's temporary for me.
I love how when you speed up the video while you're scrubbing components with the brush that it immediately sounds like you're using a power tool instead of doing it by hand. lol
Sarah Purcell, rhymes with Duracell. pur SELL not 'pursle.'
In Japan, the company is known as Takara Tomy.
I can't speak for Sarah Purcell, but the correct pronunciation of the English classical composer is 'Pursle'.
It’s only been Takara-Tomy since the two companies merged in 2006 😉
@@SonOfFurzehatt In Sarah's case it's definitely pur-SELL...I'm old enough to have watched Real People back in the late 1970s (don't judge, we only had 4 channels back then, lol)
@@chrisfreemesser5707 Real People was the RUclips of the 1970s.
Give David a break. Like me, he only speaks Texan.
I always love a good retro-brighting episode.
The connector for the tape recorder was actually pretty standard for connecting tape machines! Also often used in hifi equipment
Honestly, the sound of the intro alone brings so much joy to me. I love this show.
If the intro music ever changes ... I will break down and cry! 😞
Then I'll start on online petition to have it put back to its rightful place at the start of these videos. 😁
Sometimes I go back and play the intro again because it just makes me so happy.
I like the old into more. Almost nostalgic.
17:32 "I will not even think of powering it on because I´m 99% sure something will short out" Nice :)
17:25 As someone in my early 20s I can tell you that you forgot to cut out the high pitched noise in pretty much every shot with CRT in it :D
Whenever an 8-Bit Guy video pops up in my subscription box I immediately open it and like before watching.
Great video! nice to see this rare and underrated computer here. There are now good multi cards, including adapters for the expansion port. A small scene too. I am currently developing some games
How much does it internally differ from the 99/4 ? Does it still treat the address lines of the 8-bit memories as a memory mapped I/O port?
@@johndododoe1411 Yes, still 8-bit. But the better cpu the tms9995 has build in ram useful for the WP, also the onchip timer are cool. Not forget the new instructions
The Cleaning is my favorite part in those videos! its so cool to see those mystical old machines come back to life and shine brightly!
The 5-pin din style tape connector was very standard at that time in Europe. It was used on stereo cassette recorders and carried both playback and record in stereo. So it was equivalent to four RCA connectors at a time.
In 8-Bit Unboxing from September 2017, you got a strange cartridge that was actually for an educational kids' computer from 1984 called the Teach-a-tron. You should get ahold of that computer and do an episode about it. As I write this, there actually is one on eBay.
Good video! I do remember this system! It is so much like the TI-99 4/A. I don't remember seeing them in the stores, back in the 80's!
I had one of these back in the day. TOMY now has all of Ertls diecast toys and all made in China versus Iowa :(
That pink projectile probably has a pretty crazy story to tell.
When you're retrobrighting some piece of plastic that starts floating like the case for the tape recorder, I believe a shot glass or something equally heavy and transparent would work better.
I thought of this too, however it likely wouldn't make much of a difference because glass is fairly opaque to UV light. A better solution would be to hot glue or tie a heavy nut to the part with a length of thin fishing line.
@@h2o2go141 Yeah, that sounds like a good option.
I really enjoyed my Tony Tutor Play Computer as a little kid. Never realized they made this. The boot screen is so similar to the TI-99!
8 bit guy:"lets go ahead and start disassembling"
Johnny 5:"NO DISSASSEMBLE!!"
Awesome reference... but fortunately, these machines _can_ be disassembled for cleaning and repair. Given Johnny 5's limited hardware, I suspect his sentience could possibly be attributed to tin whiskers acting as neurons (see _Whisker (metallurgy)_ on Wikipedia), but that's just a hypothesis.
Disassemble??!? Dead!!
or... like the French pantomime guy:
"Ohhh noo! I am ehh dammajjjjj" 😂
Johnny would be really happy to have an qualified friend refurbish after a few decades!
After the hack job from the last video? You bet.
I could kick myself in the rear for not keeping mine. My first computer was the Tomy Tutor I got in a trade at 7 years old with a friend and it is what I learned BASIC on until I got my first IBM Clone XT in 1991 for my 11th birthday. I hung on to the Tutor until our first major move and after that it disappeared. I miss it honestly and wish I had kept it! Thank you for doing this video. It was a wonderful trip down Memory Lane (no pun intended lol).
Fast-forward toothbrush scrubbing is a really calming sound.
11:46 I'd love to hear the backstory behind this
This whole time I thought you drop off the planet. I follow you awesomeairgun channel. Never knew you had another channel until I read the comments. They kept commenting 8 Bit Guy so I search you on youtube. Cool your still dropping videos.
Ah the 9918, can do many, many things. hardware sprites, tiles, refresh DRAM so you don't need extra circuitry... but the color red aint one.
@referral madness You would need to ask nvidia for that. But it does save a lot of time on the CPU side, as you need to update a tilemap instead of individual pixels, and give you sprites (albeit only 4 per scanline) for essentially free.
@referral madness It doesn't execute any code, so it would be best to just call it a screen buffer with sprites. There were similar circuits back then like the VIC II or the NES PPU. But it isn't always easy to tell the difference - the Atari 800 chips handled fancy display lists that almost felt like code while the Amiga chips they evolved into actually could execute limited code.
I don't know why, but these videos are so satisfying to watch.
Regarding the polarity of an adapter:
If you cannot find an adapter with the correct polarity, then pick the best possible match for an adapter..
And..
Cut the cord on the output side of the adapter.
Splice the output cord in reverse of how it was originally; i.e. positive to negative and vice versa.
Some solder, shrink tubing, & skill will result in a cable looking really good an most importantly, a perfectly functional adapter.
I did that for my mother's casio keyboard.
Or better yet, if you can find a power brick that isn't welded closed, open it, desolder the cable, flip it, resolder it, and snap the case back together, and have something that looks pretty much stock without shrink wrap on the cable 👍
A lot of eighties stuff (if not all) uses centre negative DC plugs. Surprised that 8 bit guy doesn't have a stack of compatible adapters.
I love this channel, cant wait to see how the new studio turns out. Keep up the great work.
I have NEVER EVER seen that machine. Thanks immensely for sharing. It's kind of adorable
Well, what a machine.
So much out there. Always interesting to dive into the history of these things.
That windex swipe on the keyboard was the single most satisfying thing I’ve seen today.
Much better restoration work in this one, you were very careful with everything. Props.
"pur-SELL"
That's just going to keep happening.
What does that mean?
@@paco3523 He misprounounced the last name of the advertising spokeswoman. (I was about to make the same comment since I remember seeing her on TV back in the 80's also.)
It seems that it's going to be a thing that he accidentally mispronounces names that he's only ever seen in print before. :D
Same. I used to love that show when i was a kid. :/
Your restoration videos brings me calmness in difficult times. Thank you!
3:00 I can’t believe the plague of reality TV has been around since the early 80s.
It's been around much longer than that. _Candid Camera_ started airing in the '40s.
I don't know why but I find it so satisfying watching the grime come off.
I was born fifteen years too late to be the right age for this machine when it came out and would have indeed been put off by the kid-friendly marketing by the time I was eight or so, but I think if I lived in that time and my parents had given me one right around age eight, I probably would have used it to death. The manual seems just awesome, and as much as the Commodore 64 had the advantage in the graphics department, you've got to remember that most developers weren't really using it to anywhere near the full of its potential during the first year its lifecycle.
Great video! Love the restorations. They may not be the most innovative content every time, but they're still fun to watch.
Never knew Tomy Tutor was an actual computer. I had, and still have, a little kid's toy, Tomy Tutor Play Computer.
Haven't seen one of your videos in a good bit (thanks youtube recommendations). Great to see your still active.
May I suggest, for cleaning those crevices, you go to Hobby Lobby or Michael's, and look at their bamboo clay carving tools. The edges can be sanded down for closer work, and you are guaranteed not to scratch anything, unless you secretly turn into the Hulk.
Working for Boeing during the late 70's thru 2004 we experimented with dozens of microprocessors that were out. I don't remember the problem our design group was having with the TI9900 and support chips, but it was significant enough to drop it from the list.
Time to show the Tomy Tutone (A.k.a. The Jenny) on 8-Bit Keys.
Hey David. Is there going to be an episode of Commodore History on the Amiga?
Since the topic of future videos was brought up, are there still plans to cover the Amiga in your Commodore History series? I hope this isn't asked too often.
Speaking of which, we're also still waiting for the follow-up to the ZX81/Timex-Sinclair 1000 video, which he promised ages ago.
@@BertGrink And also episode 2 of Apple and Steve Jobs' biggest mistakes :)
Well, he is known as *8* - bit guy after all... kidding- I would be interested in this as well. I seem to remember mention of a Laser computer video as well once he got more Laser brand computers. I was interested to hear what he had to say about the Laser 3000, a cheap Apple ][ clone that wasn't 100% compatible I used to own.
I love the sound effects for the cleaning segments. Such dedication!
That connector for the recorder is VERY appropriate. It is a DIN connector used heavily for audio equipment int the 70’s. Using them for anything else was not the custom.
I wish “canned air” was canned air but it’s a hfc.
electric dusters as well as hand pumpable air dusters are readily available in compact packaging. Alternately, for folks that use it fairly often, a small air compressor can be had pretty cheap.
I like to use an old oxygen tank that I fill with a dual stage compressor. It's more like bottled air, though.
While there are reasonable and conscientious alternatives out there (as Mike and John pointed out), I'm hoping that manufacturers eventually produce something in the same form factor that's equally effective, but clean. I'm sure it will happen eventually, if the demand is out there.
While I'll probably get a compressor eventually, it's definitely not as convenient.
A strong recommendation for Rust clean up -- Harbor Freight carries an Enzymatic Oxide remover called Vapo-Rust. Its fairly cheap and can be diluted with water so it can be put in all sort of odd shaped containers to level up and cover larger or weird shaped objects. It works best at body temperature and its environmentally safe.. except for the de-oxified particles that fall off the object being de-rusted. It works well on Not only Iron but Stainless Steel, Aluminum and other metals. Be sure to dry, and oil or cover up any de-rusted metals since they can "flash rust" after the old oxides are removed and then exposed to moist air.
"This is a rare machine"
Everyone who has seen his IBM 7496 video: **having vietnam war flashbacks**
Awesome as always,
Very excited about the new 8-bit Studio David!
So, the name is "Tomy", not "Tomy". Reminded me the Art Dealers SNL sketch :)
NUUUNI
My dad bought me this. I believe it was on clearance as it had the tape player and several cartridges. I remember the games being fairly simple and not that interesting. The most fun was programming games from the manual and saving them to cassette.
Your restoration videos help me to see meaning in life
Great. he went from 'The 8 Bit Guy' to 'The Diapie Guy' in the space of 3 seconds.
We're DOOMED!!!
Or just have some funny diaper videos
when I heard "retrobrighting" I felt like in the old good days ;)
Sarah’s last name is pronounced “Per-CELL”.
That's Incredible!
I had never heard of this machine until now. How interesting!
i gotta admit..love how good you clean stuff up... easy look 30 years younger!
that tomy had really seen some sticky fingers over the years!
them carts need a retro-bright... use them to experiment with some sort of gel you can paint on and put under uv light!
Great video, I liked how you mentioned what cleaning products you used.
"i would say it has the same cpu and video chip as the ti-99 4 but it doesnt"
I see.
For some reason looking at the preview I thought it looked like a ti99
Very similar design, it's based on the TMS9900 chip and a variation of the 9918A video chip
@@AiOinc1 The 9995 integrates the heart of the TI99/4A into a single chip: the 9900 processor, the two 6810 SRAMs and the circuit for 16 to 8 bit I/O conversion. It also uses more reasonable voltages than the 9900 and can be clocked faster. For the software there is no difference at all.
Does anyone know anything about Tomy Tutor's data bus?
On a TI-99, 256 bytes of RAM were connected to the CPU via a 16-bit bus. But the 32KB memory expansion was connected via an 8-bit bus. Operations manipulating 16 bits of data took just as long as if the CPU had been 8-bit. If your program was designed to use the 32KB memory expansion, it was still important to work in the 256-byte area when possible for better speed. Was all 16 KB on the Tomy Tutor on a 16-bit bus?
@@benjaminkrug7423 the 16 bit bus is only inside the 9995. Everything connected to the pins is 8 bits. The internal 128 words (256 bytes) are where the virtual registers live. The 9900 only has an accumulator, a program counter and a workspace pointer which indicates where in RAM the "registers" mentioned in the instructions actually live. That can be anywhere in the address space but have W point outside the 128 internal words would really hurt performance
Your Retro brightening is a lot more successful now than back in the days when you were spreading cream and wrapping them up in plastic hahaha, the thing looks new! I am sure he will proudly display it.
I was trying to remember WHY I had such vivid memories of this particular system.....and then you gave me the answer....it was heavily promoted by Sarah Purcell on the show "Real People".....just like teaching me how to pronounce "Tomy"....cause i made the exact same mistake...let me respectfully teach you that Ms Purcell's name was pronounced "per-CELL"..How would I know this? I was a "Real People" JUNKIE....watched every episode growing up :)
absolutely LOVE your channel...and subscribed tonite as I type this...my GOD the memories you bring back!!!! :)
That tape connector is a 5 pin DIN connector and quite common on old reel to reel, cassette decks and receivers here in Europe later ones just had RCA connectors.
IIRC, I saw a textbook in the vertical format once before. It was for learning how to touch type. (for typewriters; it predated typing tutor software or home computers). I found it in the public library in the mid 70's.
I started programming on this computer in 1986 at the tender age of 6. I'm 41 now and still coding!
The 8-bit Guy doing an episode on a 16-bit computer? That's just not right ;)
I had a TI994a as a kid and you're right - it wasn't as desirable as an Atari or Commodore. But I will see youtube vids of people playing Monkey Island or Dragon's Lair on a TI99 ... And I don't know how they can do it on such a primitive system!
You might not have heard of it, but Scramble (as shown at 17:12) has a more famous offspring in the form of the Gradius/Parodious series. The only way I knew it was connected was the GBA Gradius Galaxies game.
I missed those restoration videos so much! Thanks David.
'Produced by Matsushita, the computer was released in Japan in 1982 under the name Pyūta.... The Pyūta Jr. was a console version of the Pyūta, released in April 1983[5], and similarly was only sold in Japan.'
If only they released it in Spain as the 'hijo de Pyūta'....
For Christmas I want 10+ more restoration videos!
I at first misread the title as “Tomy Tumor”
It's not a tooomah
"... a strange use of that connector."
Laughs in DIN 41524 standard specification for audio use.
Yeah but he should have spent 5 minutes of googling to discover that.
Those Vic20s look amazing! Can't wait to see all that jazz in a coming video!
The toothbrush cleaning timelapses are incredibly satisfying.
Remember all that loads of computer stuff he received and shown in his mail unboxing videos in passed years? Where them are? Yet he borrowed *another* computer to make this video. Aghh
5-pin DIN plugs were a popular bidirectional port for tape players and stereo systems in the 70's and early 80's: stereo-in, stereo-out, plus ground
I watched a bit of My Mechanics (The best restoration youtuber) before this and I was 100% expecting him to put the computer in a sandblaster
"tomy" vs. "tomy": I... don't hear the difference.
Me neither. As a Brazilian it makes me wonder how "bad" my pronunciation actually is.
TOMMY (as in the mans name) Vs TOE-ME
Toe-me versus Tom-ee
Daah! But when'll the Amiga series come out?! I've waited for your Amiga docuseries for almost as long as my actual three bit cybernetic memory bank goes back before a hard, but not quite factory, reset.
I really don't want to have to wait to watch it past December Thirty First Of Twenty Twenty, whereafter my extremely high tech for cyborgs of my time, somewhat extensive, short term memory resets to Zero, and I'll have to rewatch all of the videos of my RUclips subscriptions all over, again.
Love your cleaning videos. Strangely satisfying. Your resilience is commendable.