Had one of these when I was 12 loved it and was thinking about it for sone reason the other day. Next I’m on RU-vid saw your clip and ended up purchasing one of eBay for £50. It’s here now and has taken me back. Thank you for bringing a bit of my younger self back 😊
I know well all the problems you describe, and managed one way or another to nurse it through all of them. A quick squirt of switch cleaner into the master switch aperture was often the solution. It was so very useful to me, as I have since the mid-70s kept a colossal private archive of audio and video recordings of British radio and TV
I had one at the time. Then somebody at work stole it. I drove across Australia in my 1966 ford falcon to my new job, with that calculator, used to calculate my speed for fun, by stop watching the time between road markers. 43 years later, I still now live in that same city, I loved that calculator...remembering, just out of Matric high school, we used slide rules and log books, no calculators allowed, in fact you hardly saw them anywhere.
Seul 2020, January. I have this one. Amazing day when I just figured out how it's works. The power supply came from BUTTON CELLS, the AA batteries just turn on the display. The vaccum displays consume large amount of energy. This kind of calculators (1970) usually, in that period of time... The users used external power source, that was normal in 1978. If I'm not wrong, in 1979 CASIO introduced LCD display and then everything changed.
I have one of those. Works perfectly. The glass bezel over the VFD fell out and was lost, but the blue filter over the tube is still there. Mine was the radio shack branded unit and it has a royal blue display.
Message flagged Wednesday, 31 October 2012, 16:58 How lovely to see this comprehensive demonstration of such a familiar and trusted old friend on YT. I bought one of these here in the UK in 1978, and it was my constant electronic companion for 33 years - and as I had (and still have) the mains power unit, it was connected continuously throughout that entire period, only being disconnected when absolutely necessary, and for the shortest time possible.
I have this very same unit. Purchased it when it first came out and used it to calculate total time of LPs (I used to review records for Stereo Review). That feature alone made it well worth having. I stumbled upon it in a drawer this morning, which brought me here, Now I will buy the two SR44w batteries and see if it still works.
and very much 'of its time', but back in the day, it was state-of-the-art, and made a cultural link between the growing green movement and the low-powered technology in the palm of your hand. This machine cost almost nothing to run, yet glowed and sounded as well as anything that used 50 times the power. Sadly, my dear friend finally lost its battle for life last year, and despite all attempts to revive it, nothing could be done. How I wish I could find another comparable unit now!!
hi i bought a Casio Computer Quartz CQ-1 today in its original plastic red lined box with all its instructions in near mint condition and thanks to you we have now tried it and it is fully working and if you are interested we are going to put it on ebay tomorrow. kind regards
It's interesting to hear you say that the display was a kind of bluey colour - mine was bright green, and was endeared to me further by the fact that shortly before I bought it, the album 'Green' by Steve Hillage was released. One of my all-time firm favourites, the sleeve was a very simple graphic line-mandala on a black background, with title and artiste lettering in exactly the same style as the numbers on the CQ-1 display! This may seem old hat nowadays,
Good point, and of course the display on that thing will light up the whole room because it points upwards towards the ceiling when the unit's lying flat as it normally does when operating, and I take it there's no display brightness control. Even though my clock radio uses a crappy LCD screen with an orange backlight it does have a brightness knob on it, that's good. But yeah I see your point, that bright display could keep someone awake for hours.
The various segments of my comments seem to have been split non-sequentially -hope you managed to make sense of them eventually! Yes, I had no problem with pointing the end of the plastic tube into the gap where the slider switch sits - but use as little as possible, as it can take a while to evaporate. When you've done that, sweep the slider from side to side a few times to ensure the stuff gets spread evenly over the contacts underneath.
Excepting the few occasions when the contacts rendered the unit inoperative, or the battery ran out, it never let me down, and was as reliable as my care in setting the alarms (i.e. not always - but I'm only human!!). To hear that alarm again today brought back fond memories of the countless times I was alerted by its fairly shrill bleep from wherever I happened to be in the flat, telling me to cue up the next recording. Without this device, my collection would have many more gaps than it has.
I have one of these too. The buzzing that it can sometimes do and glitch is caused by poor contact of the small watch batteries. I had this issue too. You can pull out those springy metal tabs out a bit to make better contact. When you do this it will be harder to force in the watch batteries, this extra pressure will keep it from glitching. If you slide the mode switch back and forth several times it will wear off the oxidation and work better.
my 1984 Zenith VCR lights up my whole basement at night....I turned the brightness to low through a knob on the front panel. VFDs do wear out, and although mine is bright, its not as bright as the less used channel indicator numbers.
(which I still do - but I now have to use several alarm devices, as there seems to be nothing available nowadays which has 4 alarms), and when you're scheduling 4 video recordings and a couple of radios at the same time, things can get complicated (since 1984, I have also had a Casio digital watch, which is still in good working condition, and has been used to double-up on settings whenever 2 recordings required the same setting).
BTW, I've tried e-Bay, and all the CQ-1s I've found have been going for silly prices. Final comment: Whenever I grumble and grizzle about another failed device - TV, VCR, radio, CD player, etc. - people always say to me "Well, you can't expect things to last forever". To which I always respond "No, you can't - but I see no reason why I shouldn't expect them to last as long as I do!" We have the technology... but built-in obsolescence and the desire to have the latest model are the profitmakers.
OK, it's just that I've not from memory seen a universal AC Adaptor that goes down to 1.5 volts, but oh well if they exist I just don't know of any. Still I think this calculator is cool, and having the time constantly showing under AC power would make this a very good bedside digital clock if you don't mind the fact that it doesn't have a radio in it. If you just want a basic clock beside your bed without a radio, this would be pretty good.
This is the first calculator in the word with clock and other functions. Like today the companies try to add new functions on new model of smartphones.
Wow, that's impressive, I love those VFD readouts on things like this, I always have, I know uxwbill is a big fan of them too. I've got a few really cheap multifunction calculators made in China with musical alarms, I once had one that even had a touch screen and an FM radio. If you can, get yourself a Sharp Elsi-Mate EL-640 talking voice synthesiser calculator from 1982, they are awesome, they only have one alarm though and an LCD readout.
I'm surprised this calculator only uses 1 AA battery for its main functions, I would have expected it to maybe use say 4 AA's or even perhaps a 9 volt transistor radio battery like some early calculators did, I mean you think about electronics in the late 70's compared to what's around now and electrical power requirements etc.
I have one! I managed to purchase one on eBay from someone in Sweden. When it arrived, I had trouble with it coming on, so I missed around with removing and inserting the batteries a few times, and it worked! I'm still gonna replace the batteries with new ones when I can. It is complete with battery covers and in good working order. But no carrying case. Even if it didn't work I would keep it for sentimental value. Have you done anything with yours, find an adapter, etc.?
Perktube1 Nah, mine's practically unusable, sadly. It's missing the large battery cover, the small battery cover is broken, the stopwatch part of the switch doesn't work, and when it's just sitting in the clock mode doing nothing, it will randomly set alarms that you never know about until they go off at 4 in the morning. I'd try to fix it, except I'm afraid I'll destroy the case in trying to get it open, so I'm going to put it on eBay.
I also find it interesting that the unit uses a 1.5 volt AC Adaptor and not say a 3 volt or even 4.5 or 6 volt AC Adaptor, most universal AC Adaptors I've seen usually only go down to 3 volts minimum. I wonder if the display stays illuminated in time mode when the unit is powered by the AC Adaptor. I suspect trying to find the AC Adaptor that was made for this unit wouldn't be too easy, would it?
I don't recall how much it cost, but I think I bought it at 47th St. Photo or Radio Shack, in New York City. I got the two little batteries yesterday, but had to stretch the spring (spiral) contact to make it connect with the AAA. So far, I have been able to calculate, but haven't set the time yet. Do you want it? It has the battery cover, but no pouch, and I can't find the AC adaptor, which is somewhere around here.
I subbed just because you own one. I want one because my brother owned one and I used to mess with it as a kid. Good times. Do you know of any modern equivalent sold today with those functions, Casio or otherwise??
Perktube1 Well, you can get many wristwatches, from Casio and other manufacturers, that include all the functionality of this thing. There was also the Casio CQ-2, which is basically a larger desktop version of the CQ-1. Casio made several later LCD-based devices like this, under the AQ and CQ designations, as well. And for sure there are other devices with this functionality and in this form factor, although they just use LCD displays. The Casio CQ-1 was also sold under the Radio Shack brand name, as well as one or two other brand names. I forget the model numbers, though.
My question is how the hell do you stop the alarm from going off once it is set! I accidentally set the alarm and now it goes off every day and I can't figure out how to disable it! (other then pulling the batteries and setting everything all over again). That part is not too intuitive and kind of irritating. I downloaded the only "manual" I could find on the net and it was too low res and poor quality to actually read (why did they even bother?).
