EEVblog #606 - Mailbag

[EEVblog]

Dave flips the bird.
A 1970's Mattel car racing game.
Sex on a stick multimeter probes.
Sagan, Mrs EEVblog, and a whole lot more in today's Mailbag Monday

Bob Widlar poster: http://www.theamphour.com/a-widlar-poster-for-the-ages/
Easy EDA: http://easyeda.com/
Channel Engineer: https://www.youtube.com/user/channelengineer
We Make Things: http://wemakethings.net/
http://felitek.de/
http://www.probemaster.com/

[8086]

Oh you absolute bastard, putting this up just as I'm going to bed!

Guess I will have to wait until after work tomorrow now...   

[TommyGunn]

Wow, Those probes are only $14.50

http://www.probemaster.com/product_info.php?cPath=2_36&products_id=296&CDpath=3

BUYING

[c4757p]

Wow, Those probes are only $14.50

http://www.probemaster.com/product_info.php?cPath=2_36&products_id=296&CDpath=3

BUYING

I don't think you want those, they're 2mm...

These look like the standard 4mm ones.

[TommyGunn]

I don't think you want those, they're 2mm...

These look like the standard 4mm ones.

yup. Thanks, good catch.

[Agent24]

But what did the letter in the last package say? I can't sleep until I know...   

[EEVblog]

But what did the letter in the last package say? I can't sleep until I know...   

The veroboard one?
He forgot what they were fr and wanted to know if I could figure it out.

[miguelvp]

But what did the letter in the last package say? I can't sleep until I know...   

Probably something like: this thing doesn't work what am I doing wrong?

Nevermind Dave answered it while I was typing

[99tito99]

Mr. Jones you better watch out, you might lose your job; you had a couple of co-hosts that could garner higher ratings.

[Lightages]

Many thanks to the whole family for sharing their time with us. Before anyone starts complaining about the family being involved here, too bad! I enjoyed it and it is nice to see a happy family. I don't usually comment on videos here but I want to make sure that you, Dave, are sure that I appreciate the more personal touch here.

[Impulse]

I played the Mattel Auto Race game for hours on end when it first came to our local radio electronics stores.

No offense (offence?), but Dave got the game's goal wrong.
The player's goal is to pass as many cars as possible in the 99 second time limit.
By not hitting other cars, the player's car moves forward until it gets to the top of the "screen".
Then, the next lap occurs, with the other cars coming faster and faster.

The player is rewarded with great fanfare upon success.

I didn't know it back then, but according to Wikipedia, the game that Dave has is considered rare in working condition...potentially the first handheld, all-digital electronic game.

This game is described in more detail there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel_Auto_Race

Oh, to be young again.

[vk3yedotcom]

Loved the cordless phone.

Old school analogue FM, crystal control.

Looks like a 30 / 39 MHz or similar - the older ones used 30 / 1.7 MHz.

No scrambling/encryption.

Transmitter on the right / superhet receiver on the left (maybe using a CA3089 or similar?).

Bit curious about the 3 position switch on the handset. Was thinking it's a channel change but there's not enough crystals for that.

So it looks like a single channel - if your neighbours had one you'd probably overhear all their calls.

[Excavatoree]

That game brought back memories of the fourth grade, when everyone wanted one of those "led blip" games.  The most popular was "football. (US)"   The "cool teacher" was playing one during recess duty. 

When one bought a piece of crap electronic item back then, one at least got a Nichicon cap!

Sagan's only three (almost) and I can already see "father and son" blogs in the future.  It was nice to see Sagan and "The missus" in a mailbag blog.  You're a lucky man, Dave.

[EEVblog]

Many thanks to the whole family for sharing their time with us. Before anyone starts complaining about the family being involved here, too bad! I enjoyed it and it is nice to see a happy family. I don't usually comment on videos here but I want to make sure that you, Dave, are sure that I appreciate the more personal touch here.

Thanks.
They happened to drop by, so just seemed fun to include them.

[EEVblog]

I didn't know it back then, but according to Wikipedia, the game that Dave has is considered rare in working condition...potentially the first handheld, all-digital electronic game.
This game is described in more detail there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel_Auto_Race

Oh, rare, nice!
I didn't even think to Google it, and had no idea it would be the first handheld electronic game, that's cool.
In hindsight deserving of it's own video! Perhaps there is something else I can do with it?

[Excavatoree]

Many thanks to the whole family for sharing their time with us. Before anyone starts complaining about the family being involved here, too bad! I enjoyed it and it is nice to see a happy family. I don't usually comment on videos here but I want to make sure that you, Dave, are sure that I appreciate the more personal touch here.

These are my sentiments as well.

[EEVblog]

So it looks like a single channel - if your neighbours had one you'd probably overhear all their calls.

I used a Tandy 200 channel scanner back in the day to listen in on analog cordless phones, as well as analog mobile phones.
The novelty soon wore off, boring as bat poo!

[Excavatoree]

So it looks like a single channel - if your neighbours had one you'd probably overhear all their calls.

I used a Tandy 200 channel scanner back in the day to listen in on analog cordless phones, as well as analog mobile phones.
The novelty soon wore off, boring as bat poo!

I had a scanner when I lived in a large apartment complex.  I guess I was lucky, because I heard some non boring stuff.  Yes, some of it was stuff I didn't want to hear, but at least it was interesting.

[station240]

Yeah oddly I was pulling apart a similar cordless phone a week or so ago.
Mine has a daughter board under the main PCB in the handset, which has a digital chip and contacts for the push buttons, connected via a set of SIL pins. Mine had a ball of solder stuck to the PCB by flux, just a hair's breadth from shorting the crystal that drives the chip.

[VK3DRB]

Widlarising components.

When did he invent that? I have been doing that since 1979, albeit on rare occasions.

A classic was a D-Link router  that was a complete piece of crap, both by design and after sales support.

My relationship with the router and D-Link ended when I SMASHED the entire router PCB into tiny pieces with a large hammer, put the particles into a zip lock bag, then into a box and mailed the entire mess to the Managing Director of D-Link Australia, with a letter detailing explaining what I thought of D-Link and their product.

[free_electron]

National advert according to widlar

[free_electron]

more goodies :

http://edn.com/electronics-blogs/anablog/4311277/Bob-Widlar-cherry-bombs-the-intercom-speaker-item-2

http://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/analog-computers/3/156/402

[mtdoc]

I didn't know it back then, but according to Wikipedia, the game that Dave has is considered rare in working condition...potentially the first handheld, all-digital electronic game.
This game is described in more detail there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mattel_Auto_Race

Oh, rare, nice!
I didn't even think to Google it, and had no idea it would be the first handheld electronic game, that's cool.
In hindsight deserving of it's own video! Perhaps there is something else I can do with it?

Oh the memories... My brother and I used to play with one of those for hours at a time....  I wonder what happened to it..

[koppadasao]

But what did the letter in the last package say? I can't sleep until I know...   

The veroboard one?
He forgot what they were fr and wanted to know if I could figure it out.

At least, that's what I said, but there was one more board in there.

[Tothwolf]

Oh, rare, nice!
I didn't even think to Google it, and had no idea it would be the first handheld electronic game, that's cool.
In hindsight deserving of it's own video! Perhaps there is something else I can do with it?

How does the custom led look under the Tagarno? Did you also notice the Rockwell logo on the pc board and processor? I guess Rockwell designed both?

I wonder if the cordless phone is a 49MHz model? I disassembled a lot of those when they were being tossed out in large numbers, and it looks very similar to the phones I disassembled. Now if I could only figure out what to do with all the NOS spare antennas I have still in a box somewhere...