[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!
