[smooth jazz music] [keyboard clacking]
[drive buzzes] [computer beeps]
- Oh, yeah!
Look at this LGR Thing. Greetings!
It's a bit of a different thing here,
but, you know, still within the realm of my interest.
You know, I love old computers and the calculators
that really preceded the personal computer revolution.
I like collecting certain older calculators
and this certainly counts
as a pretty fascinating one in my book.
This is a Dictaphone Model 1680,
from 1971! Yeah, this was also known
as the Sanyo Mini electronic calculator, the ICC-82D.
"ICC" standing for "integrated circuit calculator."
So yeah, this is one of the earlier ones
to use integrated circuits.
But it's still not quite as integrated as things...
[lid flops off] Whoops. There goes that...
Not even as integrated as things even got
just a couple of years after this was introduced in '71.
But still a pretty impressive example nonetheless.
And even the one that came before this
was pretty awesome, I think.
The predecessor to this was the ICC-0081 from Sanyo in 1969.
Nice!
That one was a little bit larger
and it was made of plastic instead of metal,
so yeah, believe it or not,
this is actually the sleeker, fancier, more advanced one.
But, uh...
[chuckles] It's still a bit of a chunky beast.
I rather enjoy it.
I like the "Physical Testing Laboratory" writing
there on the bottom.
I don't know exactly where this came from originally,
but it was found over in the, I think,
Research Triangle-ish area by my brother.
He was out thrifting, sent me a text when he saw it,
and he was like, "Hey, do you want this thing?
Looks awesome, it's a good price," and I said yes.
Especially knowing what they go for now,
which is a lot more.
But yeah, this right here was, when it was introduced,
the smallest portable electronic calculator
with a built-in display on the market at the time.
And yeah, there is a built-in display. [cackles]
How awesome is that?
Certainly one of the things that drew me to this the most.
Oh, man.
I think it's gonna look great when it's turned on.
But I've never been able to get it turned on
because, uh, a few different things.
The battery is dead,
and I did not have an AC adapter,
and it requires funky pins and connections and things.
Turns out that was really hard to find.
But anyway.
So here's the thing.
This right here, when it was introduced,
not only was it one of the first hand-holdable
battery-powered calculators, period,
but it was also just a bit expensive for its time.
So the 1680 here cost $495 in 1971,
and that is around $3,500 with inflation, give or take.
You know, whatever inflation means anymore.
It depends on how you calculate it.
But either way, this was costly enough
that you could actually lease this thing
for 70 cents a day at one point,
or around five bucks to lease a calculator.
I mean, like it's a car or something.
I think that is just phenomenal.
But I mean, look at this thing.
Wouldn't you wanna lease it if you were a scientific
Physical Testing Laboratory person in 1971?
I don't know, I think I might.
I mean, it's got all kinds of fantastic functionality.
You know, it's a four-function calculator,
a fixed decimal point,
algebraic logic arithmetic going on and all that good stuff.
That is an eight-digit display there.
If we can get it going. Hopefully we can.
And there's a maximum 16-digit capacity that it can handle.
This was originally introduced in Japan,
as the Sanyo model that we mentioned earlier,
in May of 1970.
But in the US, that September it launched here.
And it had a Nixie tube display,
which I think would have been fantastic to get one of those.
I was really hoping that this
was one of those earlier models.
Unfortunately, it's not.
This later, more common version came in 1971
and features an amber gas discharge tube display,
rather VFD-like.
Actually, you can kinda see it here.
Again, hopefully we can get this going.
I don't know [laughs in troubleshooting] the functionality yet.
But yeah, 18 keys. A decimal point selector knob over here.
It's got a little battery charge indicator right there.
So I guess that just wheels around,
showing your current status of the battery.
Got a power button.
And of course, the hood button up here.
I love that.
We'll open this up here in a sec, but inside,
yeah, there is a battery, a rechargeable battery pack.
Like this one, a 6-volt, 1200-milliamp-hour
sealed rechargeable Cadnica battery, so Nickel-Cadmium.
I hope that it hasn't leaked or done any weird damage,
the one that's in there, I'm assuming is still in there.
It weighs enough to still be in there.
You've got a one kilogram weight with the battery,
or about two pounds, three ounces.
And then you can also just power it
straight up off the power supply.
Which, this took even longer to find than the battery.
At least this particular one, the CU-1680 AC adapter.
Yeah, these 120-volt ones seem to be a lot harder to find
than the European 220-volt versions, for whatever reason.
I don't know, maybe they just sold more of them over there
or more people held onto them or whatever.
But yeah, that took me a while to get hold of.
And I just wanted to get these accessories, components,
and things going so I can have a more complete setup
before I did anything with it.
I mean, that also includes
this lovely official carrying case deal.
Kind of a crushed velvety thing going on inside.
It's got a little place for the AC adapter
to plug in in the back there.
And we've also got a little pocket here
to keep the instructions, which I do not have.
Physically, anyway.
There is a PDF that I've been referring to.
This is just such a neat calculator on its own,
for the historical value alone, the design,
the components that are in there
that we're gonna see here in a sec.
But it's also just
there aren't a lot of these left for another reason,
and it's because they've been sacrificed over the years
to make Ghostbusters "belt gizmo" props, as they're known.
You know, for cosplay and just recreations of movie things.
I think that's cool, but uh.
Perhaps don't destroy an increasingly rare
and valuable historical calculator
to make your movie prop replicas.
I mean, unless...
I don't know, whatever. I don't know.
Different priorities, but *I* wouldn't do that.
Maybe just make a nice lookalike instead.
Does have a little stand there for some ergonomic angling.
Really hope that display works, man.
Even though it's not Nixie tubes, it should be awesome.
So yeah, we'll see if we can get this thing apart,
see what's inside.
Really, my first question here is how easy it will be
to actually get inside.
It's got these little feet which I think were rubber.
More rubbery than they are now.
They're very hard and plasticky-feeling.
A little bit rubbery, but...
This one's already kinda broken off
and it just looks like it's adhered in there,
or maybe it degraded and got stuck in there.
Either way, the screws are down in there.
Yeah.
Aha!
Okay.
And neither one of them are coming out fully,
so maybe they're just supposed to stay inside the case.
Yeah, look at that little foot.
It's like it just almost melted into the top of the screw.
Gosh, it's like caked-in... clay, almost, at this point.
Yeah, certainly gonna be replacing these
with some modern rubbers.
Okay. Well, those two came out.
Well.
Success!
-Oh-ho-ho-ho!
Oh, wow.
Oh, it's gorgeous!
Look at all of this!
Man, these switches.
So I believe this is supposed to be a hand-wired,
wrapped keypad with reed switches.
Or reed contacts, I suppose.
I don't have too many calculators that use this mechanism,
but yeah, that's awesome.
I've never actually opened one up to see that.
That's magnificent!
That just looks so cool.
Course, over here we have our Sanyo Cadnica battery,
just like our modern day rebuilt one.
Hopefully that's easy to replace.
This looks like it's just a couple of wires
and connections up in there.
And then, of course, right down here we have
our integrated chipset. Or really, it's an LSI large-scale integrated chipset.
So you've got four different ICs working together in tandem.
I believe it's clocked at 70 kilohertz, so 0.07 megahertz.
And yeah, just beautiful-looking,
especially up against that amber orange PCB it's on too,
also with the hand-laid traces and everything.
But yeah, just ceramic and gold chips.
I love the way those look, always have,
but especially these early ICs like this.
They're just fantastic-looking
and pieces of art, in my opinion.
And the fact that there are so many of them
but so little of them, relatively speaking.
I mean, it's just a fascinating time
in calculator/early computing history,
where this was actually significantly impressive
for a couple years, but then just a couple years after this,
they were replaced with other things.
You know, the calculator-on-a-chip processors
that came along in just, really, 1971
from Mostek and Texas Instruments and others.
And in fact, this particular chipset was manufactured
under license of General Instruments by Sanyo.
So this is "Sanyo" labeled,
but not exactly their chips, so to speak.
I mean, you know, there were just different companies
doing all kinds of fascinating things.
Yeah, just see my history of portable pocket calculator wars
video that I did a while back
if you'd like more information on this whole era.
I'm a really big fan of it and I love seeing this stuff.
[happy vintage chuckle]
So we've got a little polarizer here, it looks like.
Considering what it's doing to the light and all that.
And of course, there's the mechanism for opening it up.
Just a little cutout there, some springs.
Yeah dude. [mechanism clicking]
It's that satisfying click though that you get.
[soft, supple mechanisms]
Yeah, and the mechanism going...
Aw, just... [grunts] Love this!
And then, of course, there is the display itself,
with our eight little tubes which are not Nixie tubes,
but they kinda look lie 'em at first glance.
And they're, like I said, more VFD-like. I don't know.
Maybe? Do you even qualify these as like an early VFD?
You might wanna say that.
I mean, it's amber colored
instead of the normal greenish-teal,
but it is still gas discharge, it's just they're in tubes.
I don't know, I-- [groans impatiently]
Okay. Can't wait to see if this thing works!
Let me get this old battery outta here though.
[smooth jazz fades out smoothly]
Oh man.
Yeah, actually, I see a little bit of bulging right there,
almost like a burn mark,
so I'm glad that didn't do any more damage than it did,
and also why I haven't powered this on.
Really hope this isn't glued in.
It kinda looks like it just...
There we go. So it's just clipped in place.
Thank goodness for that.
Oh man, there's a couple little slight burn marks
from some of the chips.
Or maybe a capacitor getting hot.
Oh, man.
That is immediately turning to sand.
Ooh, arts and crafts.
All right!
Old nasty battery removed.
Yeah, just gotta take a moment
to admire the handiwork, the craftsmanship, the design.
Ah, it's a wonderful mixture
of handcrafted and high tech and...
Oh, there's so many delightful details.
Yeah. I mean, that's just... Look at that. Isn't it great?
It's great.
All right, let's get this sucker in here.
Red goes up top.
And black just below that.
All right!
Well. Heh!
I think that's that for the battery install.
Cool!
Well, I guess I'm just gonna...
Yeah, make sure everything is in its place and plug it in.
Not all screwed back together yet, but...
Yeah. [light chuckle]
Moment of truth.
[power switch clicks]
Ooh!
We have at least a partial display.
Oh, and the battery indicator does a thing.
[laughs] The ones look fine.
But obviously the zeroes...
And pretty much every other character, or number,
has a bit of a problem.
Yeah, that battery wheel is pretty neat though.
Look at that.
[slightly disappointed chuckle]
Aw man! Shame about the display.
I wonder what's going on there?
If it's something loose?
Something wrong with the chip?
Let's take another look.
And hey, the battery is totally working. [laughs]
Just plugged in there for that quick about of time.
Yeah, look at that.
Little dial there goes up to pretty much...
Like, it's almost dead it looks like.
I mean, that would make sense.
Neat!
Genuinely don't know where to start with this. [laughs]
This is well beyond my area of expertise.
Hmm.
Interesting, sometimes the left side of each number
doesn't light up at all, like that right there.
And then other times it's just the top-left.
Well, I have been dickin' around
and poking and prodding for the better part of an hour here,
looking some stuff up online,
checking all the connections that I know to check
and how to...
I don't know. Everything looks like it's fine.
Nothing seems to be busted.
On occasion though, there is a little blip in logic
and it doesn't know what it's doing,
so that leads me to believe
that maybe one of those ICs is failing.
I don't know.
It just will power on and it's inconsistent.
You know, those digits over there,
I don't know why those don't light up at all.
Again, all the connections that I can see seem okay.
But that doesn't mean anything.
And it's not like there's much to mess with inside
in terms of connections.
Really, just the battery
and one or two little things along the bottom there.
Everything else is straight up soldered in place.
I mean, it's 50-year-old solder, who knows.
The stuff in here is much older
than what I ever work with normally so, uh,
there is that.
You know, you can try to do things, but...
Yeah.
I wish I knew what to do from here.
[laughs] But I don't!
So if you do, or know someone who does, let me know.
I would be,
oh, really happy to get this thing working fully.
Yeah.
Crap!
Crap, crap, crap.
I really hoped to get this working,
at least just a little bit more.
But it's so wildly inconsistent,
and I don't have the knowledge base
and the information available
to really do much more with this at this point.
I mean, thankfully it's getting power,
both from the wall and from the battery
in a way that seems fine voltage-wise.
It's doing what it needs to there.
Yeah, I'm really just not seeing anything totally obvious,
but that doesn't mean much.
No, but all kidding aside,
the lapses in logic and random startup weirdness,
both with the display and the addition, subtraction,
division, multiplication, and all that
leads me to believe that there is something going on
with those four ICs in there.
I just don't know what.
Like, when it comes to chipsets
and especially weird old chipsets like this, [laughs] I...
Yeah, I'm just out of my depth.
Schematics would certainly be useful.
And I did find some for older models,
but that's like the 0081, the one that came before this,
and some stuff for the version 1,
but not this version 2, 82D,
which is the Dictaphone 1680 from 1971.
So I'm sure that information's out there,
but I haven't found it yet.
If you can find some for this specific model,
do let me know, that would be useful.
But isn't it just so super cool though?
I think it is!
I mean, you know, even if it's not fully working,
I love the way it looks sitting on my desk.
I'm gonna have it in my Retro Room
with the other '70s stuff, just hanging around.
And you know, if I do get it working I'll do a follow-up
or a Blerb or, I don't know,
a history of calculators from this era.
I have some more, a couple of which actually do work.
And a couple others that don't.
Stuff from Commodore and Texas Instruments
and some other stuff like that.
But anyway, I hope that you enjoyed
this episode of LGR anyway.
I'm sorry to cut it off here,
but I don't really have anywhere to go
at this point with this and, you know,
it's time to post a video, so here we are.
But if you did enjoy, then thank you very much.
Perhaps you'd like to check out some of my other videos
on other things, whether it be calculator history
or retro computers, which I actually usually know
more of what to do with.
But yeah, either way, thank you very much for watching!