I love when you put out videos that have some research put into them and extra text added in editing as you find out more information. I remember having trouble with those buttons when I was little.
I still have mine! This was probably the first electronic gadget I ever opened up to see how it worked. I remember being surprised that there was just a single chip in there, and I could not figure out how they could have fit all those games in that tiny, plastic block.
I worked in the IC department at Texas Instruments that developed the TMS1000 from 1980-1983. This was one of TI's best selling devices and we were always in the process of designing new versions. It was an amazing design in regard to getting the most with the fewest transistors. One unique thing about the TMS1000 processor was the program counter. Rather than having a normal up counter, they used a pseudo random number generator which can be made with a simple shift register and a single exclusive OR gate. By tapping two points of the shift register into the inputs of the exclusive OR gate and feeding that back into the first shift latch the circuit would generate a repeating sequence of what appeared as random numbers. This circuit was extremely simple and required far fewer transistors than a standard counter, but it resulted in instructions being what appeared as random locations in memory. A normal counter will count in order from 0 to 2 raised to the power equal to the number of registers in the counter. A pseudo-random number generator will pass through all the numbers between 1 and 2 raised to the power equal to the number of latches in the shift register without repeating any number in what appears to be a random order until all numbers (except zero) have been passed. Because the Pseudo-random number can never output a zero it will always repeat one cycle sooner than a standard counter. This meant that each line of machine code could not be place in sequence in memory but scattered randomly throughout the memory making hand coding almost impossible. Because the pseudo-random sequence is the same each time (meaning it is not truly random) TI built into the macro assembler they provided with the product a converter that let the program code like a normal machine with conventional sequential addresses. Once the code was written, the assembler would lookup from a table and modified the written code locations to match actual pseudo-random locations.
I did too after seeing a friend's at college. I received the "Wizard " a Christmas or two later, it was more the size of the Simon but did multiple games like the Merlin. Regifted to my nephews, probably long gone now...
You admit to being a penguin but you say you have no feathers. Are you a naked bird? ...you are a bird - an avian critter. right? So many questions I have for you. Take this, you'll need it.
Holy moly I must have been a lucky kid having one, The program I loved was the music sequencer, you could even program the rests. Man your awesome for posting this.
Holy crap this takes me back. I played the hell out my Merlin many many years ago. I just realized by how familiar this looks that I ripped my apart a few times as a kid.
LOL, I was cleaning the basement for new construction and found this exact toy of mine in a box hidden away for decades.... IT STILL WORKS... now Dave does a blog on one. How awesome is that? Good thing they are not FLASH memory, or probably would not work.
These were a huge cash cow for TI who supplied both the microcontroller and the LEDs. Reportedly there were more LEDs used in the production of the Merlin than in every product orderrd by the US DoD during it's production run.
L.E.D.s did last much, much longer than regular bulbs, never needing changed, and were cooler. (L.E.D. Light Emitting Diode). But, yeah, in the 1970s they were prone to dim or burn out over time. Why do you call them crap? Just because 40 years later, (...holy crap!), some are dim? That they still light up at all is actually pretty amazing.
Most early games went through batteries. Spent many an hour adding power supplies to handheld games. Most of the time it was soldering iron to make hole in battery cover, knotted wire strain, and Lincoln logs used for spacers with brass tacks to hold the wires. Fast and easy for a 14 year old...
I had one of those Merlin games. I believe the Intel 4004 went on the market in 1971 followed by the 8008 in 1973. One source I looked at said that the TMS1000 was developed in 1971 but was not commercially available until 1974. I designed my first project using a microcontroller, the Signetics 2650, in 1976. None of this really matters to your video, but "who's first" is always interesting. *NOTE:* Watching the rest of your video, I stand corrected. The 4004 did require quite a few support chips, including RAM & ROM. The TMS1000 was a complete single chip microcontroller. You make a good point about how this made very inexpensive electronic devices possible.
Thanks Dave!..great bit of nostalgia..that thing is as old as me!...reminds me of the old '79 version of electronic battleship board game (that would make an interesting, nostaligic tear down!)
These being back so many happy childhood memories. I think it's time to go hunting for 3d models of the case. I've got to make some of these for my (college aged) kids! If someone hasn't made them already for arduino then I've just found my fall project!
Hi! I am from Brazil and I had my Merlin until today! They were produced in here under Parker Brother license by a Brazilian former giant toymaker named ESTRELA (STAR) in 1981. I've noticed the joke with Star Wars in 14:50 of the video... But, when I was run out of batteries (most of time, since this little guy was a battery eater and the Brazilian version doesn't had the AC power option) I used to play with it pretending it was the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ! LOL! ! The shape resembles a lot the old ship! LOL !
Still have mine, and it still works. Dug it out of a box a few years ago. By some miracle, I must have removed the batteries the last time I played with it - probably around 1985.
Fun Fact - I had a Merlin as a kid. At some point I didn't have access to batteries so I used my dad's 120v 3-prong plug with bare ends to power it. Seemed logical at the time. Blue smoke was released and never worked again.
Pretty cool video; it certainly brought many memories. When I was a kid, the Merlin only arrived much later in Brazil (1981) and at a very steep price. The other game (Simon) was sold in Brazil as "Genius" but arrived in the previous year. At the time my impression was the same as yours: the Genius (Simon) was somewhat boring while the Merlin was much more interesting.
Brilliant Review of a toy made in the early 80's. Reminds me of the good old days as a kid. I played with merlin in the bus on the way to school. Mostly i played "senso" and mastermind. Finally the keypad broke. It payed around 50 DM (25 Euros) for this.
Love it! had one in 1980, and remember trying to see if I could nest loops or do recursion on it :) What can I say, I was home on break after taking a hardcore CS class...
Wow nostalgia overload, merlin was my greatest 11yo Xmas desire. Seem to remember due to cost my other presents were a bit light on that Christmas hahaha.
I had a merlin as a kid! I loved playing Magic square, and being able to beat the game with just a glance at the pads was insanely satisfying for young me.
Oh boy, the feels are strong with this one. I got this for christmas when it came out and thought it was super cool. If I recall though, all the Mattel games were coming out around that time as well (football especially) so I don't really remember feeling like it was that advanced. Parents weren't to fond of it...
I guess the reason the power switch isn't labeled might be the molding technology used. The bright red part of the body has a geometry that is constant along one axis. Even the grooves on the side are basically a 3D extrusion of a 2D shape. Labeling the power button would have required additional effort.
It may not have interrupts but it even has programmable microcode! Which means reverse engineering might be a bit harder since instructions may not be what they seem.
The Merlin was the best toy I ever owned back then. I got one the Christmas of 1978, I was 9 years old. My dad always said take care of it, it wasn't cheap... too bad it didn't talk.
In 1979 I persuaded the games shop I was working at to open the basement so we could demonstrate the electronic games that were coming on to the market. Merlin was hugely popular but we got such a bad discount from the suppliers it was cheaper for us to get them from Argos.
My parents had one and I used to play with the thing when I was younger. Of course, by time I got ahold of it the instructions were long gone and I had no idea how it worked, I just pressed buttons and made it beep. I was 6 or 7 at the time, so this was mid-80s.
Looking at the datasheet, the TMS1100 was really advanced at the time, and also working on a very large voltage range. Intel unhooked the grall though, with their 8048 range integrated in so many keyboard !
Great video! I was born in '72 so would have been about six or seven years old when these things got to the UK. I don't specifically remember it but damn, it seems incredibly familiar. I guess maybe a friend must have had one but the conscious memory of it has gone, leaving this feeling of familiarity. Very weird!
I was born in '71 and remember doing what most kids did back then, which was to flick through mum's mail order catalogue drooling over the kids electronic toys and games.
co-inventor, Bob Doyle built Merlin together with his wife Holly Thomis Doyle and her brother Wendl Thomis. Simon, meanwhile, was invented by video game pioneer Ralph Baer and toy designer Howard Morrison. The two games came out simultaneously and had similar price tags of $25, or about $90 in today’s dollars. Alongside the first-generation video game consoles from Magnavox and Atari, which had reached the market a few years earlier, they helped introduce millions of people to the idea that computers could be fun to use, and maybe even educational.
Nice video! However a few changes: The first microcontroller was actually the 4-bit Texas Instruments TMS0100, with first use in 1971. TMS0100 was heavily used in calculators but also for a few other products. The same team then designed the TMS1000 family with enhanced features and more RAM/ROM. Also the Merlin designers could not have used an Intel development system as those were only useful for Intel micros. Instead they must have relied on the TI simulator, which ran on IBM 360 as I recall.
I probably spent a solid year playing on Simon as a kid, it seemed like magic at the time. Also made a great play phone. Thats the first one I've ever seen that didn't have the color rubbed off the buttons.
Great stuff! I remember playing with one around the time they came out, however my family wasn’t rich enough to own one, $25 in 1978 money was a fair amount, over $95 in 2017 money! They were fun, though I recall that I only was interested in two of the six games since they weren’t all quite as amusing.
I had Code Name Sector and the Merlin. I remember taking it apart and I too was amazed on how they made the switches. I would do a show and tell on it to anybody who would listen. I used to do a show and tell on the hot glue gun which I think came out about the same time.
18:50 and i am here getting an error from atmel studio because i managed to write a programm (for a kitchen timer) that was too big for an attiny 44 (4k ram).
Came here to figure out how to disconnect the keypad ribbon cable but not only is your board different than mine, but yours doesn't have the weird locking plastic piece mine has (despite your ribbon having the cut outs for it...)
11:37 I believe somebody used a screenshot of this to add as a picture on the wiki page for the TMS-1000. Doesn't seem to credit you at all but the date it was posted was the same date that this video was posted, August 6 2018. I don't know if you care, but I thought I would let you know. The user who posted it is called Binarysequence.
I believe Milton Bradley’s Electronic Battleship (1977) was another game to use the TMS1000. Had the Merlin too as a kid - flashing LEDs and electronic noises, what was there not to like!
And a friend of mine had the submarine game as well as Electronic Battleship The submarine game was quite educational. Around that time I also had a board game with a handheld electronic console where you had to find and chase a crook. That soon failed on me.
I was born in 46. Never heard of it, I do remember the Simon Says however. I once made a tick tack toe machine. We called it noughts and crosses in the old dart. It was made with just switches and bulbs, none of your led rubbish:) This was about 1958.
I remember the Merlin and Simon - Our family was too poor to afford either of them but my best friends had them, so I spent a lot of time at their place... 👍😊
AWESOME.. It would be cool to have the original source for that somehow. I got both a merlin and a simon that year, when I was 10.. Very cool and played them a lot! Good to see the detail on what was inside!
My step dad had one when I was a kid in the mid 80s, it was pretty amazing to my little brain...hadnt seen one or even thought about it in years, good times!
If you let the batteries (6 AAs) almost die, Merlin would sometimes go into a weird parallel reality: e.g. making up its own random tunes and using a different number sequence than usual. This wouldn't happen every time, though.
Dave, can you do a teardown on the coleco head to head baseball ? I owned one of those in 1984 but never had the balls to open it up. I was probably thinking the electrons would fall out...
Cool! Never saw one of those, I guess I heard the name, but my kids wanted the Simon, so that's what they got for Christmas back then, my daughter got the Simon, my son one that was a bit more complicated, as he was a wiz with math and was drooling over computers at Radio Shack a few years later. At long last we got a family Commodore that the kids let me use when I worked the night shift, and they were at school. Ah yes those were indeed the good old days.
I owned one in junior high/intermediate school. My dad helped me add an earphone jack so I could play it after finishing tests in class I actually had two. First one was stolen when i inadvertently left it in my desk in class.
555K subs 1111 video
Didn't notice, nice!
Now that's what I call good timing!
Timing!
I'll see myself out.
Better... 556 now. DUAL!!
I love when you put out videos that have some research put into them and extra text added in editing as you find out more information.
I remember having trouble with those buttons when I was little.
Thanks. I do try and do this more. And as my videos aren't scripted it's not easy to go and re-do clips, so overlays are the go.
I still have mine! This was probably the first electronic gadget I ever opened up to see how it worked. I remember being surprised that there was just a single chip in there, and I could not figure out how they could have fit all those games in that tiny, plastic block.
Magic!
I worked in the IC department at Texas Instruments that developed the TMS1000 from 1980-1983. This was one of TI's best selling devices and we were always in the process of designing new versions. It was an amazing design in regard to getting the most with the fewest transistors. One unique thing about the TMS1000 processor was the program counter. Rather than having a normal up counter, they used a pseudo random number generator which can be made with a simple shift register and a single exclusive OR gate. By tapping two points of the shift register into the inputs of the exclusive OR gate and feeding that back into the first shift latch the circuit would generate a repeating sequence of what appeared as random numbers. This circuit was extremely simple and required far fewer transistors than a standard counter, but it resulted in instructions being what appeared as random locations in memory. A normal counter will count in order from 0 to 2 raised to the power equal to the number of registers in the counter. A pseudo-random number generator will pass through all the numbers between 1 and 2 raised to the power equal to the number of latches in the shift register without repeating any number in what appears to be a random order until all numbers (except zero) have been passed. Because the Pseudo-random number can never output a zero it will always repeat one cycle sooner than a standard counter. This meant that each line of machine code could not be place in sequence in memory but scattered randomly throughout the memory making hand coding almost impossible. Because the pseudo-random sequence is the same each time (meaning it is not truly random) TI built into the macro assembler they provided with the product a converter that let the program code like a normal machine with conventional sequential addresses. Once the code was written, the assembler would lookup from a table and modified the written code locations to match actual pseudo-random locations.
I really wanted a Merlin when I was a kid. But alas it was not to be.
I still have mine from 79 I think, so I now feel very old but going to get 6 AA's and see if it still works!
Mykael Frances and?? 🤞🏻
did it still work or were there still 1980's batteries in it?
It works! OK after a bit of cleaning but it works 😁
I did too after seeing a friend's at college. I received the "Wizard " a Christmas or two later, it was more the size of the Simon but did multiple games like the Merlin. Regifted to my nephews, probably long gone now...
I was totally obsessed with Magic Square! That game has never been duplicated again to my knowledge. I would love to find another one. Great video!
I received one of those around 81-83 from Santa. I enjoyed it for a few years before it succumbed to leaky batteries and finally, The Screwdriver.
E2qNX8btraQ3zRD6J7fc This is exactly what happened to mine too. Lol.
Sergals :D
word my feathery brother; much werd11
I'm a penguin I have no feathers ;-;
You admit to being a penguin but you say you have no feathers. Are you a naked bird? ...you are a bird - an avian critter. right? So many questions I have for you. Take this, you'll need it.
Holy moly I must have been a lucky kid having one, The program I loved was the music sequencer, you could even program the rests. Man your awesome for posting this.
Begged for one for Christmas, and still have it. Not sure my parents would be pleased that it taught me blackjack.
Holy crap this takes me back. I played the hell out my Merlin many many years ago.
I just realized by how familiar this looks that I ripped my apart a few times as a kid.
LOL, I was cleaning the basement for new construction and found this exact toy of mine in a box hidden away for decades.... IT STILL WORKS... now Dave does a blog on one. How awesome is that? Good thing they are not FLASH memory, or probably would not work.
Small speakers are only possible because of rare-earth magnetics, and the Nd magnet was about a 1980 invention (that has quietly changed the world)
THE MERLIN! I loved that thing when I was a kid.
These were a huge cash cow for TI who supplied both the microcontroller and the LEDs. Reportedly there were more LEDs used in the production of the Merlin than in every product orderrd by the US DoD during it's production run.
I had that in a text overlay. TI got a contract for 55 million LED's!
That's nothing today, but back then it was insane. They are crap LEDs though.
L.E.D.s did last much, much longer than regular bulbs, never needing changed, and were cooler. (L.E.D. Light Emitting Diode). But, yeah, in the 1970s they were prone to dim or burn out over time. Why do you call them crap? Just because 40 years later, (...holy crap!), some are dim? That they still light up at all is actually pretty amazing.
I remember actually replacing one of the LEDs many years ago on a Merlin, so they must have really been bad
I used to have one of those. It was a great toy for the 70's.
My sister had one and i loved it! I was born in 1970 so i remember this well! We played the memory game the most.
Eek!
I had one of those. I'm old. Thanks for reminding me.
where are the JTAG pins ?
You missed them, right next to the BGA package
JTAG was invented in 1990. This game is from 1978.
#germansdontlaugh
They used a mask rom were the firmware was burned into the chip during manufacture.
It's right next to the HDMI port...
Most early games went through batteries. Spent many an hour adding power supplies to handheld games. Most of the time it was soldering iron to make hole in battery cover, knotted wire strain, and Lincoln logs used for spacers with brass tacks to hold the wires.
Fast and easy for a 14 year old...
Hey I had lincoln logs, until my brother burned down the cabin I built. Dad was pissed !
i am amazed how new it looks ..how well you took care of it ... great stuff
I had one of those Merlin games. I believe the Intel 4004 went on the market in 1971 followed by the 8008 in 1973. One source I looked at said that the TMS1000 was developed in 1971 but was not commercially available until 1974. I designed my first project using a microcontroller, the Signetics 2650, in 1976. None of this really matters to your video, but "who's first" is always interesting.
*NOTE:* Watching the rest of your video, I stand corrected. The 4004 did require quite a few support chips, including RAM & ROM. The TMS1000 was a complete single chip microcontroller. You make a good point about how this made very inexpensive electronic devices possible.
The 4004, 8008, and 2650 weren't microcontrollers.
Yeah. I figured that out. Since I worked with both microcontrollers and microprocessors, I never differentiated between them.
4004 and 8008 needed about eight support chips while the TMS1000 was a single chip solution.
Found one of these like a year ago while thrifting! Knew it was an early one, but didn't realize it used the processor it did! Neat!
Thanks Dave!..great bit of nostalgia..that thing is as old as me!...reminds me of the old '79 version of electronic battleship board game (that would make an interesting, nostaligic tear down!)
Had one of these they were great
These being back so many happy childhood memories. I think it's time to go hunting for 3d models of the case. I've got to make some of these for my (college aged) kids! If someone hasn't made them already for arduino then I've just found my fall project!
I got a Merlin for xmas in 1979 and I loved it so much!! a superb little machine!
What a blast from the past! I had a Simon as a kid, and my sister had a Merlin. We both got a lot of fun out of them.
I love these old electronic games! I've got a bunch in various stages of repair and restoration that I'm messing around with :)
I bought one for my sister's kid. it was an amazing toy for 1979.
Hi! I am from Brazil and I had my Merlin until today! They were produced in here under Parker Brother license by a Brazilian former giant toymaker named ESTRELA (STAR) in 1981. I've noticed the joke with Star Wars in 14:50 of the video... But, when I was run out of batteries (most of time, since this little guy was a battery eater and the Brazilian version doesn't had the AC power option) I used to play with it pretending it was the BATTLESTAR GALACTICA ! LOL! !
The shape resembles a lot the old ship! LOL !
Wow! I had a Merlin back in the day!
Still have mine, and it still works. Dug it out of a box a few years ago. By some miracle, I must have removed the batteries the last time I played with it - probably around 1985.
I had one of these when I was just a little fellow. I had forgotten what it was called - now I know! Thanks.
Fun Fact - I had a Merlin as a kid. At some point I didn't have access to batteries so I used my dad's 120v 3-prong plug with bare ends to power it. Seemed logical at the time. Blue smoke was released and never worked again.
Pretty cool video; it certainly brought many memories. When I was a kid, the Merlin only arrived much later in Brazil (1981) and at a very steep price. The other game (Simon) was sold in Brazil as "Genius" but arrived in the previous year. At the time my impression was the same as yours: the Genius (Simon) was somewhat boring while the Merlin was much more interesting.
Vbe I believe I had my Merlin by 79 or 80 , in BR.
I still have my one! Loved tic tac toe and the memory game. I need to play it again now! Memories.
Brilliant Review of a toy made in the early 80's.
Reminds me of the good old days as a kid. I played with merlin in the bus on the way to school. Mostly i played "senso" and mastermind. Finally the keypad broke. It payed around 50 DM (25 Euros) for this.
Love it! had one in 1980, and remember trying to see if I could nest loops or do recursion on it :) What can I say, I was home on break after taking a hardcore CS class...
Sweet teardown!!! Hadn't seen one of these since i was a kid. Just bought one on ebay for $15 to show my young'ns.
Wow nostalgia overload, merlin was my greatest 11yo Xmas desire. Seem to remember due to cost my other presents were a bit light on that Christmas hahaha.
I had a merlin as a kid!
I loved playing Magic square, and being able to beat the game with just a glance at the pads was insanely satisfying for young me.
Do you still remember the patterns/rules?
If a triangle was showing, press the unlit diagonal = WIN!
And many more.
Still have two of those from back in the days…
Oh boy, the feels are strong with this one. I got this for christmas when it came out and thought it was super cool. If I recall though, all the Mattel games were coming out around that time as well (football especially) so I don't really remember feeling like it was that advanced. Parents weren't to fond of it...
I had a to 4004 in my electronics class to learn assy on. this takes me back.
I guess the reason the power switch isn't labeled might be the molding technology used. The bright red part of the body has a geometry that is constant along one axis. Even the grooves on the side are basically a 3D extrusion of a 2D shape. Labeling the power button would have required additional effort.
Yep, almost certainly the reason.
It wasn't too difficult to work out - even for a 7-year old!
media.giphy.com/media/XreQmk7ETCak0/giphy.gif
I saved for 4 months to buy Merlin myself, The absolute first computer I owned! I still have "most of him somewhere"
great memory!!!
It may not have interrupts but it even has programmable microcode! Which means reverse engineering might be a bit harder since instructions may not be what they seem.
I had a Merlin also when i was about 13 or so, and I called the Diode the same as how you said it.
I remember when I had to repair my sister's Merlin I put in a 9 volt jack instead of having 6 of those AA batteries. Simon was a fun game, too.
The Merlin was the best toy I ever owned back then. I got one the Christmas of 1978, I was 9 years old. My dad always said take care of it, it wasn't cheap... too bad it didn't talk.
holy shit that thumbnail brought back a flood of memories
In 1979 I persuaded the games shop I was working at to open the basement so we could demonstrate the electronic games that were coming on to the market. Merlin was hugely popular but we got such a bad discount from the suppliers it was cheaper for us to get them from Argos.
My parents had one and I used to play with the thing when I was younger. Of course, by time I got ahold of it the instructions were long gone and I had no idea how it worked, I just pressed buttons and made it beep. I was 6 or 7 at the time, so this was mid-80s.
I have one of these! Still works good as new.
My first music sequencer! Which considering the RAM limit is even more impressive. Still got it!
Wow! Memories! I had one of these. Had forgot all about it.
Looking at the datasheet, the TMS1100 was really advanced at the time, and also working on a very large voltage range. Intel unhooked the grall though, with their 8048 range integrated in so many keyboard !
Great video! I was born in '72 so would have been about six or seven years old when these things got to the UK. I don't specifically remember it but damn, it seems incredibly familiar. I guess maybe a friend must have had one but the conscious memory of it has gone, leaving this feeling of familiarity. Very weird!
I was born in '71 and remember doing what most kids did back then, which was to flick through mum's mail order catalogue drooling over the kids electronic toys and games.
yep. good days. normal people.
I still have my Merlin, and it still works!
still have mine. loved it.
Still got mine from '83. It's so loud, I put a vol pot on the side so I can play at night in bed! (with the lights out, of course) LOL
co-inventor, Bob Doyle built Merlin together with his wife Holly Thomis Doyle and her brother Wendl Thomis. Simon, meanwhile, was invented by video game pioneer Ralph Baer and toy designer Howard Morrison. The two games came out simultaneously and had similar price tags of $25, or about $90 in today’s dollars. Alongside the first-generation video game consoles from Magnavox and Atari, which had reached the market a few years earlier, they helped introduce millions of people to the idea that computers could be fun to use, and maybe even educational.
Nice video! However a few changes: The first microcontroller was actually the 4-bit Texas Instruments TMS0100, with first use in 1971. TMS0100 was heavily used in calculators but also for a few other products. The same team then designed the TMS1000 family with enhanced features and more RAM/ROM. Also the Merlin designers could not have used an Intel development system as those were only useful for Intel micros. Instead they must have relied on the TI simulator, which ran on IBM 360 as I recall.
I still have my Merlin, still working :)
I probably spent a solid year playing on Simon as a kid, it seemed like magic at the time. Also made a great play phone. Thats the first one I've ever seen that didn't have the color rubbed off the buttons.
Great stuff! I remember playing with one around the time they came out, however my family wasn’t rich enough to own one, $25 in 1978 money was a fair amount, over $95 in 2017 money! They were fun, though I recall that I only was interested in two of the six games since they weren’t all quite as amusing.
I had a Merlin when I was a kid. It was awesome!
I had Code Name Sector and the Merlin. I remember taking it apart and I too was amazed on how they made the switches. I would do a show and tell on it to anybody who would listen. I used to do a show and tell on the hot glue gun which I think came out about the same time.
The membrane keys were also a cost cutting measure even though they had the ironic benefit of seeming futuristic.
18:50 and i am here getting an error from atmel studio because i managed to write a programm (for a kitchen timer) that was too big for an attiny 44 (4k ram).
PLA in a microcontroller. Way ahead of their time! Nice video.
AWESOME. I had one of these when I was a kid
Great video Dave, enjoyed it as always. Any plans to do a teardown of the classic Texas Instruments Speak and Spell?
Came here to figure out how to disconnect the keypad ribbon cable but not only is your board different than mine, but yours doesn't have the weird locking plastic piece mine has (despite your ribbon having the cut outs for it...)
Merlin, Mattel Microvision with Breakout, and Milton. "You turned me on!" My favorite 3 electronic games of that era.
Did TI also (partially) assemble those? It looks like a TI logo on the PCB.
11:37 I believe somebody used a screenshot of this to add as a picture on the wiki page for the TMS-1000. Doesn't seem to credit you at all but the date it was posted was the same date that this video was posted, August 6 2018. I don't know if you care, but I thought I would let you know. The user who posted it is called Binarysequence.
If you click on that username you'll read "This account belongs to Dave L. Jones (EEVBlog)".
I remember the Merlin, my friend had one at school. They were pretty fun.
Yea, the Merlin... Still have one in it's original packaging:)
I believe Milton Bradley’s Electronic Battleship (1977) was another game to use the TMS1000. Had the Merlin too as a kid - flashing LEDs and electronic noises, what was there not to like!
And a friend of mine had the submarine game as well as Electronic Battleship
The submarine game was quite educational.
Around that time I also had a board game with a handheld electronic console where you had to find and chase a crook. That soon failed on me.
I loved that game!
I was born in 46. Never heard of it, I do remember the Simon Says however. I once made a tick tack toe machine. We called it noughts and crosses in the old dart. It was made with just switches and bulbs, none of your led rubbish:) This was about 1958.
If it worked, that's very impressive.
The big speaker also provided a sort of incidental haptic feedback, if I recall.
I saw the thumbnail and just had to say that I have one of these from when I was a kid (like 12 years ago) and the tic tac toe game was awesome
I remember the Merlin and Simon - Our family was too poor to afford either of them but my best friends had them, so I spent a lot of time at their place... 👍😊
AWESOME.. It would be cool to have the original source for that somehow. I got both a merlin and a simon that year, when I was 10.. Very cool and played them a lot! Good to see the detail on what was inside!
Awesome! I still have mine, but it is not working anymore! Will check it out
Modern computer keyboards use the same type of key switches as this does, just with a rubber dome on top of them
I love vintage handheld electronic games!
I haven’t seen Merlins since the 70s. Lots of head to head games then.
I remember it eats lots of batteries.
My step dad had one when I was a kid in the mid 80s, it was pretty amazing to my little brain...hadnt seen one or even thought about it in years, good times!
I had one of these as a kid. I really liked it but yeah it chewed through batteries.
If you let the batteries (6 AAs) almost die, Merlin would sometimes go into a weird parallel reality: e.g. making up its own random tunes and using a different number sequence than usual. This wouldn't happen every time, though.
Don't forget that telephones with clear plastic cases were popular at the same time. Also clear TVs were around. It was a different time.
Bit before my time but I remember the Simon says. Thanks Dave
Wow, thats a blast from the past. Mostly I programed the 6502..... a bit different deal...
My cousin had a Merlin it was totally BRILLIANT!
Wish I still had my Merlin...I put LOTS of hours on that thing...and yea...I took it apart more than once.
Dave, can you do a teardown on the coleco head to head baseball ? I owned one of those in 1984 but never had the balls to open it up. I was probably thinking the electrons would fall out...
loved that game as a kid
Cool! Never saw one of those, I guess I heard the name, but my kids wanted the Simon, so that's what they got for Christmas back then, my daughter got the Simon, my son one that was a bit more complicated, as he was a wiz with math and was drooling over computers at Radio Shack a few years later. At long last we got a family Commodore that the kids let me use when I worked the night shift, and they were at school. Ah yes those were indeed the good old days.
I owned one in junior high/intermediate school. My dad helped me add an earphone jack so I could play it after finishing tests in class
I actually had two. First one was stolen when i inadvertently left it in my desk in class.