This comment is especially funny to me as someone familiar with their first attempt at making an electronic keyboard, the 1970s Optigan. That too was a disaster due to awful engineering and build quality, despite having some pretty clever and original ideas behind it.
@@jamesbennettmusic Neat. And great to know there's at least one of them in the UK; crossing my fingers that Techmoan gets a chance to borrow it someday, because it seems right up his alley and would make for a fascinating video.
The funny part is that this statement is coming from someone who is dealing with crappy toy keyboard mechanisms on a regular basis. So that means that is the mechanical design of this device is up there with the worst keyboards, or down there, well how ever you want to put it. ;)
When we were kids (circa 2002) my brother and I were playing the army tank game on Intellivision. We put it down switched off the tv and went to eat or something and forgot to turn the intellivision off. We had several game consoles and only 1 tv so some time later we decided to play n64 or playstation or whatever and swapped the video input to the other console. A year or 2 later we decided to play intellivision again, we reached under the cabinet to get it out and noticed it was warm... We plugged the video back in to the tv, and the 2 army tanks were still sitting right there where we left them!!! So we resumed our game! Haha!
@@jcdowen must live under an unreliable power grid if you're resetting your microwave clock more than once a year... I can't remember the last time I had to set mine outside of daylight savings.
@@timothy2830 while personally I do live on an island 30 miles off the coast of Scotland where we have powercuts 30+ times a year, but even in a major city the likely-hood of a completely stable electrical supply are quite slim, even if it isn't a wide outage, surely a trip-switch (circuit breaker) would be tripped once in that amount of time, especially in America with the awful plug/socket design there
Well... oldcomputers.net/pics/ti994-sidecars.jpg And Apple has only dongle hell because you aren't upgrading your stuff in tune with technology. You see everyone else comes after half a decade later.
@@GeirEivindMork : Yup. The great Apple gets to decide when people should throw out their older but perfectly usable technology. How dare people not throw out something that works for them!
You know, I was thinking about this. I could totally re-engineer this thing with a 3D printed mechanism and some bubble contacts or something. It would of course never be worth the trouble but it could be done! On the other hand, that exact foam is sold at Home Depot in the cabinet area for padding. I have some of it in my shop storage bin. You should have called me!
I had also thought about 3D printing something that could be epoxied into the back side of the keys, which would then have some sort of rubberized carbon contact or something on the bottom. This would eliminate the need for the foam completely. But, didn't have the desire to undertake that.
8-Bit Keys Just big standard bubble contacts and some mechanical padding to hold up the board. Not as authentic as keeping the original plastic strip, but no custom manufacturing needed.
Radio Shack used to have the exact foam you need. It was a 1/4"-thick closed-cell foam that was used to prevent air-leaks in speaker cabinets -- you'd put it on the edge of the cabinet, and then screw the back onto the cabinet, compressing the foam and sealing the cabinet to the back. It would've been perfect for this project -- if only Radio Shack was still in business. :-(
The Color Computer community, where 8-Bit Guy actually did an interview recently, also did a remote at the first full-on Radio Shack store that's reopened, AIUI. It's in Keller, Texas, north of Forth Worth and hence in his neighborhood. (No promises that they have that particular foam in stock.)
I had one when I was a kid. It was awefull for programming. It had one really good game called "mind strike". The word was they made the computer add on because they were being fined for showing a keyboard adapter for years as "coming soon" in ads, and were starting to be fined for not actually having one.
12:57 you could have sprayed the non-conductive side of the whole sheet with some sparse pale paint before punching circles. This would saved you a lot of multimeter testing time
I think it was more of a case of getting frustrated with the project, and sometimes it's best to just walk away for a while, and come back when you are not, plus it could be eating into time needing to be spent on other videos.
"So, I'm going to have to test eeeach individual one with a multimeter to figure out which side to put them on.." Why didn't you just blanket mark/color the non-coated side /before/ punching them out..? o_O
I had a good laugh at the vlc joke, I laughed even more at that part of the video XD I bet just didnt think of it before... like when remembering heat shrink after wire is soldered :D
@@YyXblu thanks, I must've been reading the comments or something because if it were real it would've slapped me right in the face with how obvious it was 😂
@@enjibkk6850 : Except that you can get this vinyl paint-on "heat shrink" stuff (they actually call it liquid electrical tape), so _that_ one you can easily (even if messily) fix.
When I saw that I wondered if the color coding was because BASIC was storing the commands themselves as tokens and the rest as plain text. I seem to recall a number of different BASIC versions doing that, and you could save the program as "tokenized" or all text.
It's amazing to me how you're able to get these old mass-produced machines working again with clever usage of repair store parts. The face that you're memorializing these machines while essentially giving a repair tutorial for something that likely never had a service manual is awesome. Keep up the great work, your channel is a gem.
if you run into difficultly finding foam again, hit me up, we have place here in Australia called Clark Rubber, that has a large range of foam rubber and foams in multiple sizes, as they are a specialist in stocking foam rubbers
I grew up with the Intellivision 2 but I didn't know they were offering all these things!!!! I watched your video and I'm not sad that it didn't know keyboard and shit existed! Back in 1980, my parents bought the intellivision 2 for me as a xmas gift and I had so much fun with it!!!!
2:58 Wow, I’ve never expected syntax highlighting on machine that is over 30 years old. Syntax highlighting is very common these days, but I’m pretty sure it was very uncommon back then.
@Lassi Kinnunen I replied to a different comment before seeing this one; I remember a number of BASICs doing that, storing commands as "tokens" of a byte or two. Since these were interpreted BASICs back then (not compiled into a pure executable binary) using tokens saved space like you said, and was faster, sort of like pre-interpreted a bit.
Foam and foil keys like this were pretty common on computer/terminal keyboards from that era, so I'm not surprised Mattel went with that mechanism for the keyboard, and that it failed
I've been thinking about fixing my Intellivision Synthesizer for years, but could never find any kind of tutorial. Thank you so much for this video! It's not a great keyboard, but as far as I know it's the first one for a game console. That's worth something, right?
Absolutely do an ECS video. Retro Man Cave just did an Aquarius series (And it's fantastic by the way, check it out), He mentioned these in the history of that machine and now I'm intrigued by these little weird computer add ons I've never heard of.
There's also a BASIC adapter for the Atari 2600, believe it or not. Yes, please do a video (or two) on the Matell ECS! I would love to see just what's in the box and how it works!
I believe every console from the 80's had a BASIC computer available for it. Even the NES did, but wasn't as easy to start due to the fact that it doesn't have the same expansion ports its Japanese counterpart, the Famicom, have.
I think part of the stiffness might be because of the paper strip on the foam. Removing the paper should help, though you'd need to do something about the adhesive. Either use something that can remove the adhesive without degrading the foam, or using a thin layer of something else that will keep the adhesive away from the keys without adding stiffness like the paper. Maybe one of those balloons they make balloon animals from?
I can’t help thinking that the preview thumbnail pic you’ve chosen for the video makes it look like you’ve got a Fairlight CMI... Please say it’s not just me? Now that’s a video I’d love to see...retrobrighting and repairing an old Fairlight...
I repaired the connectors on my keyboard with a pencil. I literally just scribbled on the connectors and its graphite was conductive enough to fix my dead keys. I am cheap.
Looks like entire groups of keys were being connected to shared rails with some gaps in between (such as 8:44) These gaps were probably row/column scanning. Point being, you could have used a single strip of conductive material per section instead of circles.
I took one look at that old foam and I cringed hard. Nasty. I mean, it may of not been crumbling away like in that one old Commodore calculator, but it certainly looked like it could. Yech. lolz Mattel should of stuck to dolls. Oh, wait, they still make dolls. xD
Much too late to this show, but foam weather-stripping in a roll like the foam tape likely would have been an optimal solution, since it is intended to have a good deal of rebound since it's intended to be compressed and decompress fairly frequently. I'd probably just use a hole punch from the craft store of an appropriate size to punch out pieces of a suitable metallic foil and just stick that to the underside of the weather-stripping through the holes in the spacer. I think I'd just use some thin double-sided tape along the edges to hold everything down where it's supposed to go and call it a day there. I'm not sure that aluminum foil would work, since aluminum tends to oxidize pretty easily and aluminum oxide is closer to an insulator than a conductor. If you wanted to splurge, some silver leaf could just be applied directly to the adhesive and any excess brushed off of the spacer. Gold leaf would also work, but would be a needless additional expense. Copper leaf could also work, though it is harder to find in craft stores.
Foam deteriorates over time, should had just used silicone. Automotive silicone at the dollar store, make a mold using wax paper, let it cure for 24+ hours. Put the same conductive bits between the spacer. Use a strategic dabs of rubber cement to hold it together... done. Better yet, send it to me, I'll do it.
I wonder if just figuring out a better repair solution of just using little springs or membrane domes might have worked better? I get that he's keeping the repair as faithful to the original design as possible, but I'd have drawn the line at punching out mylar chads! Lol
Wow, well done on that repair. Can you imagine the design review for that keyboard. Guys, we got the cost down to 3c per key. No not good enough we need it to be 0.5 cents per key. Honestly ive never seen anything that cheaply made before.
As to solve which side was conducted and what wasnt i would draw a sharpie line on the side that wasnt conductive and punch the circles out within that line. That way all you would have to to is look at the punched circles and if you see the sharpie on one side you would know the other side is conductive. Still though awesome video as always ^^
If you need to punch out conducting pads from Mylar again, use some steel wool to scuff the non-conductive side. That way it will look different from the conducting side and you won’t need to test each one.
Hey it sounds almost like when he was testing it. the first key with double-sided foam tape idea. It sounded like that key was playing 60 hertz AC line noise. AKA 60 hertz hum. Bu be for eney one commits on this or replies to this. t I know that was the note that was supposed to sound like that.
Can you do a video on the Bally Astrocade? It's a game console released back in 1977 that was also marketed as a home computer. It was very advanced for time that it was released, it had 4 built in programs, you can pause games, and a lot more features. But if you do get one please go to BallyAlley because these consoles have major problems (overheating, shorting out, bad capacitors, etc.). They helped me out with fixing one of my Bally Astrocades.
Yup, the keyboard foam strip in these are horrible. Ran into this myself on the original brown model. But I love that fix. I simply cleaned up the existing strip as best I could, but it was still terrible. I might have to do a Part 2 on my original video. Nice work David.
Lost count of the number of times you called it a 48 note keyboard when in fact it's 49: four octaves plus the extra top C, same as most other keyboards. Great restoration well done.
Too late now I'm sure...but what I woulda done is some sort of solution involving putting the contact on the plastic nub on the keys themselves instead of remaking that original design. backseat 3rd person hindsight is 20/20 :-D
Quality show that I enjoy. Maybe the foam/keys will loosen up a bit after playing it over time. The determination is appreciated! A few breath holding moments! I could almost smell the spray adhesive.
