That was a realistic episode. After he opened it I was like "No way he's fixing that rat's nest." I laughed after the part where you were like nope, too much, and put it all back together. I like that you're down to earth about it all. Good vid!
When I got mine used, it was about $100, and was told that price was not even half the original MSRP. I believed all of that after hearing the tape player sound quality (the best I've ever had).
Not uncommon when packed to tight space, other boomboex even without a keyboard are a pain to work in ... AIWAS are a nice example. Top notch sound but a nightmare when it comes to maintenance. And microsystems in general, from Aiwa or Sony were insane packed with many boards stacked. Not service friendly at all. But this was the effort for this era to pack all of this features. Have a closer look, the PCB is two layer with carbon traces on top and difused resistors too. At this time some small portables like JVC turned their units to SMD to avoid that. This was pretty advance for mid 80s. Using SMD enabled high densitiy without being the Casio thing.
According to TableHooters about 1200DM. weltenschule.de/TableHooters/Casio_KX-101.html Allowin for inflation. that is over 1000 Euros today. There was a simple combined Casio Keyboard Radio cassette in the Argos catalogue that at £400 was significantly more than the price of an equivalent Casio Keyboard AND a mid range boombox.
Yeah...David, I know someone who has one of these, and has the same issue with the tape player, whom has tried to repair the damn thing for *THREE YEARS*. In other words, no disappointment on my end. In fact, I'm glad you got it back together without issue, unlike the person I know... I also owned (well, co-owned) one of these things, and it rarely ever got used except for the radio/CD Player to Tape converter thingy. Yeah, the tape player worked on the one I had. The keyboard portion did not though. Anyway, I imagine someone might know how to aid you in repairing it, and if so, I hope we all get to see the tape player working in a future episode because to be honest, I've never had a better working tape player than that one. That was fourteen years ago, too.
Those old disk drives huh. XD Fairly sure my 1050 drive is both heavier, AND larger than the Atari 800XL it's paired with. I wouldn't be surprised if it's almost as powerful of a computer in it's own right too. The 1541 certainly is pretty close to being one... XD Kinda weird when you think about it huh. You basically need a whole second computer just to be able to read floppy disks.
The whole reason the disk drives contain a processor is that the economies of scale have got their prices way down, and mask ROM was cheap too, and the 6502's structures in particular were insanely well optimised for the number of transistors they were implemented with. Add a tiny bit of SRAM, just a page or so, and a cheap mask ROM, and you've got just about any peripheral. Avoids making the custom peripherals, which are expensive to both engineer and source or manufacture, which is what makes up most of the complexity and cost of a microcomputer, not the processor. Oh by the way, TRI Beta Disk for ZX Spectrum was a dumb floppy drive, it only contained FDC1793 as its sole functional component, but 1541 has one of these ICs too. The performance was perfectly reasonable, arguably better than any of the competitors, especially Commodore. However, it had to sit directly on the processor bus and couldn't run a long cable, so if you tried anything in that regard you would be met with terrible reliability, while Commodore used a convenient serial interface for their disk devices.
Aw, little bummed that it was in such poor condition. The seller said it was better than this, but anyway, it made for an interesting episode though. Would have thought it had better sounds too... :D Great job as always! 👍🏼
Roy van der Lee Well, firstly I really don’t do well in front of the camera (I would need several years of training myself up to be comfortable enough to make it naturally), then secondly I actually don’t have David’s expertise in electronics and such. I’m happy with just helping out where I can and just collaborate. :)
Hi there and greetings, Anders! :) Fun news this time. Your suberb awesome remix of the 8-Bit Keys Theme is being used as the background music by Ziona in her live shows on SlayRadio (AKA "The Home of Commodore 64 Remixes") ever since I've send her your track. :) In case anyone's interested - www.slayradio.org for more details on when the show is and stream's URL.
When you transpose it down an octave, the keyboard it sounds very similar to the Hing Hon EK-001, a cheap Chinese toy square wave keyboard that may actually still be in production today. And a tip to remove knobs with less risk of damage is to wrap some dental floss around them and then pull, rather than prying them off with a screwdriver.
VWestlife Great little tip about the dental floss. Gotta try that one myself. I suppose if it's really stubborn, or if the floss is just too thin, then fishing line could do the job as well.
Why do I torture myself when I already know he's going to say the Casio sounds "aren't good". "Here we have a Minimoog, and as you can hear, the piano sound is just terrible! It sounds nothing like a piano!"
Saw a recommendation video a little while back about a Korg 800 repair that ranted about not bothering with the restoration. But if David here could pull it off...
It is important to show the failures as well as the successes because for us, in finding and repairing gadgets we have our failures too and it’s nice to see that it happens to the best of them. Thanks for a great video 8bit Guy.
A cheap little Casio MT40 keyboard forever changed reggae when Wayne Smith wrote Under Mi Sleng Teng on one. It's widely considered the song that started dancehall reggae. And the Sleng Teng riddum is still used to this day in dancehall songs.
Wow - that cassette mechanism was *ridiculously* complex. Clearly they wanted soft-touch electronic buttons to control it instead of mechanical ones... But it seems like they could’ve done it in a less complex way...
This is actually the simple way to do a logic-controlled mechanism, with discrete solenoids for each mechanical function. The complex way would be to add a transport control gear and rotary encoder or discrete switches for sensing current position, and either a separate function control motor or a system of clutches that would use the capstan motor to drive the transport control gear through the different modes. At that point, you also need more complex logic to detect and switch modes, and a microcontroller starts to become more attractive for controlling it. All of this could reduce the bulk and the number of wires needed, but would technically be much more complex.
It is not for the soft touch convenience, because by this time soft touch mechanism become pretty simpler (I dont recall if the most common ones where by tohiba or hitachi). This tape deck RECORDS DATA, probably there is a lot more going into it. It is a datasette unit and music player both at the same time. Probably need sensors to help counting time or position ... or position is recorded together with data ..... Anyways mechanism can get far more complicated than this ones in two ways. The good quality way with tons of parts and and stacked levels ... AIWAS and the cheap ones that, because the dont want to spent money on motors so, they use the main motor for everything, even opening the door, reversing the head etc .... by doing that, they save money, but then need very precise timming to trigger the levers that direct each function As belt streches, they start to jerk bad. A good example are the ones for Panasonic used in some boomboxes and bottom of the line technics deck, they are very slow and clunk all over the place just to activate play.
38911bytefree That does make sense - the fact that it records data in addition to audio would increase complexity by a good bit, I would imagine. Good point.
Well, dont ask Technics bottom of the line logic decks on early 90s or boomboxes with logic decks, They use only a motor for even opening the cass door and not even use encoder, the rely on time and one or more solenoid actions to achieve a certain function. The main control wheel is very complicated and manages all the functions and you wont need more thant 2 solenoids to do ALL functions, even cue and review. Prices you pay, the transports are insane slow, and to get a function they tend to exceute another first as a consecuence, example, FF can lift the head a bit lice cue, then put down them again, then engage FF. The BEST solenoid implementations I have seen is sharp RT250 or bigger .... 3 solenoid, one motor. It is pretty fast and more or less quiet. Any two motor deck will improve that for sure since you dont need to engage play, RR or FF as they rely on the second motor to do that.
Loved my KX-101 as a kid. One of the great features was that you could enter notes and assign them length (quarter, half, whole, etc). It was a great tool being able to hear my beginner band music as it should be played. I spent countless hours on all the features. What finally doomed mine was that a sibling forced a tape in and bent/broke one of the guide pins. It was a sad day indeed. Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
What a neat little device. I will admit some of those sounds that incorporate all the different wave forms are awesome! I’d never expect that kind of customization on something like this. Nor would I have expected Casio to give a pseudo-Pro feature to someone who buys a boom box hybrid! I love these odd pieces of electronics. The kind of stuff the LGR crew ogles over! Glad you were able to share the stuff that is working.
+Verbatim The metric system is SUPERIOR and it is been used all over the world,except USA,which wouldnt exist without EUROPEAN heritage and Myanmar,Liberia(those dont count^ ^),so....
At the the opening of that device i figured we were not going to get a “full” restoration, i don’t think RU-vid would have enough storage for the complete tear down/rebuild....Glad to see the review! Keep them coming
@@Shred_The_Weapon Casio had a device for just about every price range, from the VL-Tone to the FZ1. Unfortunately they never manged to shake off their image as a toy keyboard company. p.s The SK-1 does additive synthesis. Had it come from Roland or Korg, with a full size keyboard it would have cost £hundreds.
I had a Fisher SC-300 Keyboard boombox that had a detachable keyboard when I was a kid. It was amazing having it in the 80's and really enjoyed it then.
it amused me when you played a few notes on the keyboard and then switched to the radio :-P what a bizarre combination!!! function selector: "line in, radio, tape, keyboard" 🤣
I remember seeing most, if not all these keyboards back in the day at various local dept. stores. I remember seeing this particular model and thinking, _"Oh wow! It has a cassette player on it! I wonder if you could pop in a cassette with your favorite music and play along with it! Maybe it could even show you the notes being played by the keyboards on the songs you like!"_ ... I know, but hey I was just a kid and back then, this stuff was new to almost everyone and *_THAT_* was the "magic" of the 80's - the fact that much of this tech was new and exciting to us - as opposed to now, where most things are just "upgrades" of previous things and not really "new" tech. This is why I suspect many people nowadays seem to be "bored" with almost everything, regardless of it being new... cause it's not *_REALLY_* new, just an "upgraded" version of an older model. Everything is basically "been there, done that" now. Back then in the 80's, there were so many new things coming out, I was simply enthralled as a kid. From movies to TV to music and other entertainment (video games, toys, electronic gadgets) - it was like being in Wonderland. I'm so glad I grew up back then. Sure the stuff may seem crude and clunky now but, back then, it was awe inspiring. It really made you feel like you were seeing/hearing the future being made right in front of you...
I came across one of these in my workshop and agree that unless you have a very boring day with nothing important to do, don't start taking one of these apart! Then there's getting spares for it!
I have fond memories of visiting out-of-state relatives growing up and playing on one of these keyboards. I particularly loved adding organ chords to the Ballad rhythm. Now, I know the exact model number...and that it's far too expensive for me to ever own one myself :-\
Adam Carr But why? We Americans find the metric system confusing as heck. It's the same thing as the whole world using Celsius while only the United States of America uses Fahrenheit.
*Ronaldo Rodriguez* Have empathy. Put yourself in the shoes of others. Let people from other countries appreciate (and love) the video as you do when he uses miles, pounds or Fahrenheit. By the way, the _International System of Units_ uses Celsius, meters and kilograms as default scientific units. Any way, I wish all the best for you.
Yeah, so why are You Americans the stubborn odd ones out anyway? I mean, lots of places had systems comparable to the measures America still uses, and pretty much all of them dumped that system in favour of Metric. That even includes countries changing tens of thousands of road signs overnight. No easy feat by any means... Metric is far more coherent. Too bad it's in base 10 though, but I guess so is our number system. (ten has terrible factors; 1,2,5 and 10? That it? 12 has 1,2,3,4, 6 and 12. Which would have been more convenient. And WAS in fact more convenient, hence why older systems seem to have 12's all over the place. Too bad they were otherwise a hodge-podge of completely inconsistent and seemingly arbitrary conversions though.) Anyway, you can't find metric THAT confusing. You use a metric currency every single day. 100 cents in a dollar? why is it called a cent anyway? Oh wait. That's the same 'cent' as you find in 'centimetre'. Eg. centi- prefix; 1/100th XD
Victor Campos You guys always complain about us using the Imperial System, but when we watch other people who use the Metric System we just convert it over! Stop being lazy
*Verbatim* What do you mean when you say _"you guys"_ ? The whole world? Because I never complained about the imperial system. I just said no one is going to die if David shows both of the measurement system in his video. Either you did not interpret my previous comment, or you're implying with me. Cheers.
I still have, to this day, my first-ever 1985 Kenwwood CD player. Only thing I ever did was replace the belt. I think it needs that again. I remember back then, before over sampling and other CD issues with scratched surfaces, that no seller had, at that point, had any idea how long the lasers would last. Apparently, 30 years?
With the lasers it's more of the case of what sort of environment the CD player lives in, with the cleaner the air the longer it continues to function properly. The lens is usually simple to clean even if you have to disassemble the unit's case, however the glass prisms that reflect/split the beam can deteriorate with acidic grime or fungal growth! Doubt that it's even worth trying to access the prisms as I'm sure any crucial alignments will be lost if you unscrew anything on the laser assembly!
I spent all night debugging Open Firmware code on a beige G3 and thought nothing could be quite so badly bodged while still being designed by engineers. Then you opened this thing up...
It is 80s technology. So many functions trying to keep the case thin. Have a look at any microsystem from Sony, Aiwa or Aurex in early 90s, all of the modules have many boards stacked all of the place because they wanted small size but big performance. You can say, well C64 was complex and clean board. Right, but commodore tailored many of the ICs to keep this clean and easy. Try to do a C64 with of the self parts .... sure you will end with a Casio like mess
Great Review! It would take a long time to dissemble that entire cassette mechanism, clean or replace parts, lubricate it and put it back together. Still I miss the 80's when Japanese and Korean electronic manufacturers had a battle over who could put the most or most unique features in a boombox. It made for some really strange ones like your Casio.
I met this thing as a kid, maybe 1986 (12-13yrs old). It was international exhibition in my, at the time, comunistic Czechoslovakia. I did crush to this thing imediately (silver keys!), allowed to play a few minutes with it and i never seen it again until now. It's like an elementary school love, which get lost over time. Still feeling that spark of light, seen as miracle in dark reality what we have back there. And i still feel the frustration how impossible was to get it. Luckily two years later i got my first atari 130xe at the very end of this horrible era in our life here, when the comunist block finaly fell apart. Thank you for this video.
You shouldn't have had your phone out and looking at it in the first place. But, I'm glad you pulled over to watch at least. I drive for a living and if you only knew what I see day to day...
I've been watching my phone while I drive for years. I watch whole movies while I drive for trips, binge watch series all the time, and watch RU-vid. A lot of the time I'm just listening. It's typing a message or comment that's the most dangerous, because you have to look at the screen the entire time, whereas with something like a sitcom I can just listen.
That still falls uneasy with me. I'm a trucker and we have very strict laws against using a phone while driving. But whenever I see someone do something stupid, they're on a phone. Listening to RU-vid for music or like a book or something is fine but watching something, I guess that's better than texting but still. Just be safe.
I have a vivid memory from around 87 of a gang of punks (literal punks) sat around on the grass in one of the local parks, with one laid on the grass on his front, playing one of these keyboards.
You need to learn the Ocarina of Time tunes from Zelda games... they are the perfect match for these 8 bit sounds hahahha . I felt nostalgic listening to this thing.
Just found my way here... having grown up with these sounds (my first computer was a Vic 20, I graduated *up* to the C64) I *_love_* the square/sawtooth/triangle wave sounds, yet my nephews laugh at it... c’est la vie...
I used to work at a second hand/ pawn shop. I was helping the "TV mechanic". He didnt like combo systems. Such as TV/dvd. He said they might make a tv with a toaster.....or other random thing. As there seldom a good quality product. If one part goes duff. its more difficult to repair the unit. as stuffs cramed in there
Drawing the line of not going further is one the hardest things on this planet. - Good luck finding one of these today, they are rare and go for an insane price nowadays
That's the kind of electronics I absolutely love! :) It's not overcomplicated, it's just that in modern electronics all this "jammed" into integrated circuits and we don't see it. but you probably already knew that.
Ah. PT-80. I don't know if that's the exact model we had, but that was probably the very first keyboard I ever owned. After that we moved on to things with full size keys. I still have two of those. A Casio from the early 90's... And a Cheap Yamaha from 1998. Technically has midi functionality, but it's barely compliant, and has a weird instrument set. Does work perfectly fine in conjunction with a MU-128 tone generator - a much more expensive piece of kit, but actually from the same year. Surprisingly, the actual grand piano sounds on the keyboard aren't vastly far off from the MU-128's Piano samples; Every other instrument is much worse though. I do remember those little modules with songs on them. Those were amusing...
Could the problem with the tape functions be the idler tire? It's a rubber tire that controls the take up spindle on the right. This tire often gets gunked up over the years and won't grip anymore, rubbing it with sandpaper usually does the trick
Seems odd but some quick and dirty things to try are knocking it around a bit, tapping it with a hammer just hard enough not to destroy it from various angles, spraying some lubricant around any moving pieces you can get to, and finally swishing the whole tape deck assembly around in a tub of alcohol.
Tires rarely go that bad. but they can turn into a plastic and have almost no traction, but still able to rotate though. Also the other belts look "good" Probably was serviced once ?. Even the counter belt is nice.
Some solenoids happen to engage just for a small time at a very precise moment to jump from one function to another. Some deck used the solenoids always on to secure a function. Others not. Boomboxes need to save power, would make sense that solenoids actuate for a small amount of time and then release. Issue with them is sometimes they require precise timming and sensor tell the board when it is the time to do it. IMHO take up sppindle for FWD is ONLY used on PLAYBACK so pushing the head and pinch roller assembly should bring traction to the spindle mechanically. There is no posible state that requires capstan pulling tape and spindle not moving. Yes Pause takes the pinch roller out and cut the spindle, but again is a complete operation. if the deck was a 2 motor design, is ANOTHER story.
Whoa, those 4-voice-detuned-stacked sounds kinda remind me of the incredibly fat sounds you can get out of a Moog Model D ("Minimoog") by detuning the oscillators slightly from each other.
Casio made another cassette player / keyboard hybrid: The DJ-1. This was far less complicated but the cassette unit was just a mechanical design and the keyboard section was pretty limited.
Was there a mode where you could play the keyboard over a tape or the radio ? It doesnt seam to . That would be the real good reason for a combo /hybrid machine like that.
The clarinet sounded cool to me. It's a shame the keys are so small and the sound waves aren't that great, as the unit looks pretty awesome! Great showcase as usual, David!
I didn't mean to be offensive, but you kinda were. Anyways you're right, but 1) english is not my first language; 2) I'm not familiar with its proper name because I've never used it here in Europe, nor I've never knew anyone who uses it; 3) it's used in America, so it's not such a mistake calling it "American system": it's like correcting someone who calls the main language called in US "American" by saying "it's called American English, you uneducated peasant!". Anyways, Irepeat myself, you're right, it's the (nonsense) Imperial System.
American System is a heck of a lot closer than Imperial. The funny thing is here, is that the Kilogram is still a thing, just like a pound. So to say it "makes sense" doesn't make sense. It's like America lives in a world gone mad with using decimals in a world of imprecision and fractions. The only good measurment in SI is the meter. Not even the kilometer, that's too short. if only there was a measurment for 5000 decimeters, oh wait, that's a mile =)
I have one Casio KX-101 myself. When I got it it was in quite good shape, but the tape belt had went off, just like in your case. This got me wondering how it's possible? What I did was to order a new belt, due I felt it might happened again. Also the amp. department had some issues for me, it popped and made some hissing noises. I actually managed to take it apart(followed some repair tips I found online, also managed to get hold of the service manual. This step took AGES! I almost gave up after I had spent about 10hours to trace down everything. Anyhow, what I ended up doing was to replace the capacitors and this was one heck of time consuming part! I think I spent a bit too much time ;) I also cleaned all the trim potentiometers, button and sliders before I even attempted to recap the darn thing. Anyhow, I got it working but the tapedeck part is still not stable. I had to adjust the tension too (without messing things up such as speed/record and playback). Also the speakerwires were worn out, so I had to replace them, as well :) Like said... I spent way much time to make it work. Happy to see your take on this device.
Well done! I have a small collection of some interesting Casio vintage watches, calculators and VL keyboards, some of it is on my YT channel. So the best thing when you have repaired it, is to just place it on a shelf as a trophy or a decorative item, since it looks incredible, and enjoy it in knowledge that is working even if you almost never turn it on, except sometimes, to remember the magic of good old days... Would you sell your one, by the way? ha ha
I’m so glad David did this one. Plenty of people have asked me to test out the various cassette keyboard boomboxes, but since I can’t play the keyboard at all, I always suggest it would be a much better project for 8-Bit keys. So now I can send them a link to this video.
I like watching your videos and I mean this in the best way possible but you show that failure is always an option, but rarely for you it's a failure because you always find the silver lining! Thank you!
