Hi welcome to everyone's favorite segment mailbag And once again, there are some people watching me live on this one. there's my little uh LogiTech C920 webcam and I'm using uh I'm broadcasting to my second Channel EV blog uh 2 Link is down below if you below on the live camera. there we go. um on the recording camera and I'm uh, streaming this live.

There's a couple of dozen people watching me I think I just uh, tried it I'm using new Xsplit software. Anyway, here we go. continue with the regular M bag. I'm going to forget the live shows actually running, but if you do want to see me uh, shoot, these things live then you can, um, hang out.

It's going to take a couple of hours so people at home you could be there for a while. Anyway, here we go: Everyone's favorite segment: Mailbag I've got a ton of stuff again. look at this. Absolutely unbelievable I Don't think I'll be able to get through it all in the one video but hey, let's give it a go.

All right. First up, we got one from Albert won't try and pronounce his last name if from rapper Schwill in Switzerland And the thing I like about it yes I am sir Dave Jones the receptor that could be like a wrestling name or something like that. The receptor yes I am awesome so thank you very much Albert Let's uh, crack this one open. No idea what's in here? um nothing was marked on the outside bit High To all my Swiss viewers Um, this is how does this box open? Eh, here we go.

That's a way to do it. Oh look at this. lots of uh for Main's adapter look Main's adapters. oh come in handy.

Oh oh a butt load of them. Unbelievable. Look at this a bunch of uh, double adapters. these are Australian of course Australian uh double adapters.

They come in handy all the way from Switzerland I'm not uh exactly sure why is there a note in here? Uniden Telephone Australian Telephone I do need a corded phone? ah if it is and it works I do need one? Um so awesome. Yes I thought the name was familiar. um Albert yes he uh visited the lab uh here back in March and I think I tweeted a photo of him back then. um yeah.

if you want to visit the lab, um yeah. I do uh, let people drop by. you just have to give me a uh a heads up. so yes, thank you very much Albert and he's included uh yeah.

Main's double adapters uh and a Show view device which so it's not a speaker phone thing I Do need a speaker phone by the way cuz I got a new Viip thing about to be set up here I'm ditching bloody Telra and I need a uh, like a handsfree um phone? I've got a VoIP uh adapter, but nice handsfree phone would be good anyway. uh Uniden I've also included Uniden telephone only available in a oh okay, so we has included that and a quick search into the show view. Dev I'm not sure what's show view Anyway, there is no show view device unless it's in the box as well. so let's have a look.

No, no got myself the Uniden telephone which is absolutely awesome thank you very much. Albert But uh, where is this show Show View device? I Got no idea. Well I couldn't find it in the box and it just dawned on me that's right. Albert left it with me.

He physically hand delivered it when we were, uh, when he was here and uh, visited the lab and uh, it's some sort of um, VCR recording uh, you know? device I don't know Niche sort of uh recording device? No idea. We'll do a very quick tear down 1990 to 1993 Gemster. woohoo and it's one of those annoying, uh pressfit cases I'm I'm just going to be brutal with this thing I'll come back in a sec and I finally got the Bastard open. That was a real effort, let me tell you.

But ah, look at this classic look at the bodge solding on that. They've converted that, um, looks like it was a through hole tack switch into a surface mount tack switch there. Oh, look at the flux residue around that and the amount of solder that they got on that. That is just truly awful.

They got a couple of infrared leads up the top corner here just poking out and uh, who knows, is that some sort of custom Pro processor need to get in there and have a look but look end end on resistors. This looks like it could have come out of the early 80s, not the '90s I Mean this was early '90s Unbelievable. Oh, that's just like classic, sort of. you know, made in Singapore made in Singapore early 80s? Uh, kind of computer construction? Oh awful.

There you go. Custom Gemstar Asic Whatever it is. Pro: It could just be a macro controller or something like that, that's most likely. But yeah, they branded it themselves.

One of the interesting things to note: Good. back in the good old days. you used to use the Uh color burst frequency Crystal 3.57 95445 I Still remember that off the top of my head because you know crystals were expensive back in the day. so you'd uh Salvage them out of uh, you know TVs and um, and you would reuse the things and they were just like the common, uh, the cheapest common available Crystal frequency.

either the Pal or the Ntsc color burst frequency. anyway. um, this thing's uh yeah, you know it's designed to be used with uh, some gemstar TV uh system some remote control thing. They've got quite a few leads in here poking out the corners.

I Guess they wanted to, um, get the thing you know all over the basically reception anywhere they could. Why? this one is mounted vertically and this one's mounted at right angles? I'm not sure but anyway, interesting. So there you go. Thank you.

very much. Out but not terribly interesting but that that is not 1990s construction that is like early 80s that is horrid. makes my skin crawl. All right this one I forgot uh I had this one.

the wife opened it so we'll just do it very quick. It's from um. Hacker Day because um. Hacker Day Have: um I am a judge in the hacker Day contest the Hacker Day prize.

There it is. They've sent me a couple of small size t-shirts Awesome! If you are going to send me t-shirts small size please I Got whole bunch of Hacker Day IO Prize stickers. Um Sean's already taken some of those. The wife opened it and I got the uh um, there's a name for this uh symbol the yeah, the you know, skull and spanner or something like that.

Awesome. Lots of excellent um hackaday stickers. coers, lots of Swag We're going to send you to Space Pigs in Space no engineers in space to whoever wins the prize. Anyway, it does close.

um August or something like that. We got a poster. I think the I think the first round of entries or something. Clos in August So you've got like a month.

Tada Here we go. So these are just some uh, posters that? well this is a pack. um that they send out to hacker spaces and stuff like that. So if you do have a hacker space, you're involved.

do you run a hacker space? contact UM Hacker day and they'll probably send you one of these packs so you can put up the posters and stickers and everything else for the Hacker Day prize. Remember enter and I'm a judge so you know who you have to suck up to and the next one right off the top of the pile is from Christy flaws from Tetronics. There you go! Thank you very much Tectronics! Let's see what uh they have sent I think it might be just some uh wag of some description I Don't think it's a uh, it's not like a new Tetronics product. so I don't get uh too excited folks.

Okay, wanted to send you and Sean a couple of Mdo 3000 t-shirts Awesome! I wasn't sure Sean size so I sent two also included mini USB drive and Mdo of the Mdo 3000. sincerely Amy Oh excellent. Oh right. okay it was actually Amy she's my um, she's the marketing person at Tectronics I thought SE might enjoy some American treats too.

Look, oh look what we have, look what we have we have Oreo cookies. um I think you can buy Oreos here? I'm not 100% Uh sure though. but I do like the Oreo cookie everyone loves Oreos And oh milk chalk four peanut butter cups M Let's give that a I I've never had one of those so I'm going to give that a B. Hang on here we go.

Peanut Butter Cup: H Do like peanut butter but I don't know. Sounds a bit A it's a little. yeah, it's a little cup which is melted in the oops. um smells like peanut butter.

Unusual. Not sure what to make of that, but it it's pretty much exactly as claimed. It's s of peanut butter. sort of wafy biscuit.

kind of not quite a wafy biscuit, but a and then CH coated in milk chocolate. thanks Amy Oh my goodness, Check this out! That is so cute! Tectronics Mdo 3000 Little Mini 3000 That is great. They've even got like the like. the The end connector is bigger than the Bncs.

They've all got it right. and it's a USB stick. Tada Oh that's just fantastic. Really, that is great.

Never seen something like that before, especially in that sort of format. I Mean you know that is absolutely enormous, but that's cute just to sit on your desk I Love it. Nice bit of Swag look at that. It looks just like the real thing.

Terrific. well done and a Sean sized t-shirt Awesome! And I got one for me too. Beauty Check it out. I Like it.

Nice shirt and on the back if you can see it. probably. Uh, zero compromise. Where does it? does it? Say it there? somewhere.

Zero compromise. Don't know about that. The Mdo 3000 was a bit of compromise compared to the MD 4000 because you uh don't allow the integration with the with the mix domain timing. uh trigger integration and next up I got one from Greg Corville and I know what this is.

Um, it's a crowdfunding uh campaign do dad. So thank you very much Greg for sending it in I think hopefully um I don't know it could it could even be finished I Hope not. Um, cuz I didn't do a mail bag last week. uh or the week before.

Hope not. Anyway, this should be really useful for me. What is it I hear I'm glad you asked. it is I can get out of the wrapper? it is.

It is an Oh button. Look at this. Oh, press it. Fantastic.

It's a USB uh button and um I Need one of these for my uh, the Amp hour radio show to have as a microphone mute button or otherwise known as a uh you know in the industry as a cough button. So if you're about to cough Wham it down and that's a bit noisy though unfortunately. maybe I can uh have it under the desk on, you know, a foot switch or something. and if I'm about to cough or I need to clear my throat or something like that, just hold it down and it will mute the mic.

but this is more than that. It'll do any you know, anything you can program it to uh, do anything you want. so it's an oh shoot button. Let's take a look inside and yes, unfortunately, campaign is finished.

but I'm glad to hear that he actually uh made the target. so I'm sure if you want one, I'm sure Greg will still sell you one. The unit is running early firmware that just acts one button USB gain controller and can be dfu with the production firmware once that comes out. uh, both firmware and the optional Configuration utility will be P Published open source of course.

PCB is a first test run. the packaging material chosen to test the ESD protection nice. And there you go. That's a really quite interesting Construction Two large pads down there that just contact these Springs which then go up into the main switch up there so you don't have to wire the sucker in.

That's rather not neat and it's got, of course this case, uh, chosen. it's just an off-the-shelf uh case. It's one of these uh uh, waterproof. uh, surround ones.

weatherproof anyway. Um, so there you go. It's just yeah. there's a USB micro in there and not much else.

Bob's your uncle and I love it. There you go. Hi Dave he's personalized the copper down in there. Brilliant good on you Greg And yes, that's a Um at Mega Uh, you know something or other some sort of processor down in there USB interface And that's all she wrote and yeah I'm going to be I Found some uh software online that allows me to mute the microphone when you get a certain uh when you hit a key on the keyboard and this can simulate a key on the keyboard.

So Bingo it should work. A treat for um as my cough button for the Amp radio show. Thank you very much! Great if you want one of these puppies I'll link it in down below. Next up, we got one from Meritz Zimik if I'm pronouncing that one correctly I don't want to hear that one wrong.

uh from Stutgart in Dland hi to all my German viewers which is uh uh, I think the third most or second most uh popular country for the Evev blog. So let's see what is sent. Let's have a look. All right, it's oh oh hello.

We got a note. let's not read the note yet. What is this? This looks J it's a pulse processor. What on? Earth is a pulse process? Oh 80, 80 KV 80k electron volts 20K 40K Electron volts H Interesting, Um, some sort of one of these.

um uh, you know, something custom designed for physic PHS uh processing or something like that. That's generally why you would, uh, need something like this. bias out power. Let's take a look inside.

Aha, yes, it's from a scanning electron microscope. Uh, the Edx system. The signal is pre-amplified directly at the detector and then processed by the pulse processor and computer is used to analyze the elements. Old school circuit design.

Hopefully a lot more interesting than the typical phones you get. Well, I did get a phone didn't I which I didn't uh, tear down cuz I'm going to use that sucker. Um, yeah, let's just take the cover off and have a quick poke inside. All right, let's crack this thing open.

Only four screws on the top and oh oh, we've been mooned. We're on the bottom side. I should have wire wrap though. Check it out! Oh, look at all the U all the trim pods, all the 10 turn trimmers on the front panel.

Uh so yeah, I thought they were I don't know I just assumed that they were leads or something like that I didn't notice that they were trimmer holes and oh, you can see the residue on the hand. Sold. Somebody's actually had a go at these cuz it's different. Sold is different and the the flux residue is different to these.

So this has obviously been repaired at some stage and somebody's just, uh, hasn't haven't bothered to, uh, clean the stuff off. made in the United States of America USA USA USA All right, let's have a look at the top side here. I Need to. Oh there we go.

Mooned again. More wire wrapping? Look at that. Jeez, it's very interesting. It's almost yeah.

They've got like a prototype area over here. so there's you know, the boards. Properly laid out. It looks like a, you know, a half decent tape layout for the day.

and uh, by tape layout I mean like the curved uh traces you can see on here, these are it's obviously done on uh, on tape and film with uh Bishop Graphics or something like that. but this is clearly like a prototype area and they've well, they've really made use of it. Check that out. That's a bit of a Rat's Nest but that's what wire wrapping looks like for you youngsters out there who are used to get in your $5 prototype double-sided solder.

M Silk screen PCB these days. Uh, well. wire wrap was, uh, quite big back in the day. still is for certain applications and things like that.

but yeah. I don't know, we got something down here. It's almost like it's poking up. Is that like a little pin diode or something like that? I Don't know, you can see the wall coming out of that sucker.

I should get my macro lens up on that. but yeah, interesting. I Have never seen a right angle? uh, spacer like that? PCB Spacer. It's like one of those you know, antenna? uh, you know, joint uh things.

and they've used that to screw into the back panel and just hold it freestanding in the middle of the board like that. Awesome. All right, let's pop this top board out and there's a like a big huge profile dip socket up there. I Don't know what? Hey there we go.

look at that look. We got ourselves some re reays whole bunch of like 74 series logic by the looks of it and some read reays in these massive sockets. They're Absol look at the look at the height of these bloody sockets. Unbelievable.

Look at the size of those sockets. Oh man. I've rarely seen those and look at the date code: 7 20 something weeks 19 79 This thing is ancient by the way. This is from a company called Uh KX Ray I have to check if they're still around.

probably not. I don't know. Who knows, never know you're luck in the big city. But Uh 4529 is the model number and uh, serial number 47- 91? Yeah, I think they made 91 of these.

Um, they haven't made 47,000 of these suckers. I don't think there's 47,000 electron scanning microscopes in existence in the world? Are there probably not. But yeah. Classic, sort of.

you know. Basically low volume late '70s construction technique. Every most things are socketed, not everything. uh well.

on this board. actually it looks like everything's socketed. but on this, like um I don't know. it's like a preamp.

It's probably not a preamp cuz the preamp is the other box which we got which we have to have a look at, but these two are solded in for example. don't know what that package there? No, that package is hilarious I might have to get the macro lens up on that, but yeah, um, basically nothing fancy. LM 311 Comparators 7 all 74 LS uh series logic. There's even some 74 uh o stuff, not even low power shock key.

and then we got some Sigma re relays in. you can still get this form factor read relay of course in the dip package like that. Absolutely classic and uh yeah, late '70s design and all you know, hand wide wired. everything you know, just look, they're loomed and cable tied and everything else.

but yeah, this is what you get in these sort of custom, not quite one-off jobs, but very low volume purpose design things for these scanning electron microscopes. So you know the scan electron microscope is probably more work goes into the you know the physics uh, side of it and the mechanical side of it than the electronics so they don't. You know they're not going to produce a thousand or 10,000 of these things, so you know this is certainly adequate. Construction Technique for um, its purpose.

look at that puppy. What is that? That is hilarious. It's like the old you know, the round can package but it's some sort of just potted uh you know cylinder I Got no idea and these things here. they were just the mini uh coax is uh screwed, you know, screwed and then solded down into the board and then just the center of the coax is coming out like that.

Nothing fancy. And there's our preamp. Check it out. It just slid out of the uh aluminium case like that and just nice.

You know? nice little preamp. nothing fancy. It's like a discrete transistor that's just an LM 311 comparator and uh That's All She Wrote inside that thing. so some just some sort of discret transistor front end.

I'm not going to look at individual uh Parts but there you go. That's what you got for one of these special purpose devices back then. So thank you very much Meritz. that made for very interesting little tear down.

If people do have like a data sheet on this thing or a schematic or something like that, please leave it in the comments for this particular Uh model. Anyway, and uh yeah, thank you very much Meritz, that does make certainly for more interest in tear down than a phone that's for sure. Awesome! Next up: Max Brur from Germany Again, jeez you Germans are uh, really having a couple of sucks of the Sav at the mail bag? that's for sure I don't mind I Love German Love Germany Do want to go back one day. Haven't I've only been to uh Hamburg and luck haven't been anywhere else Hamburg and luck, that's it.

So let's uh, have a look at what we got in here. beld if I'm pronouncing correctly. Nice little town in Oh very lovely, nice little town in uh, well, it's nice little town in Germany Let's have a look here. Lots of padding.

We've got a parts list and all right. Oh, look at this. Look at this. Oh NE Oh, it's a Metro What? It's a Metro What An log multimeter? A? Isn't that a thing of beauty? A joy? forever? Look at that.

Look at that. Ah, Beautiful. Metro I've never uni Gore a43 I've never seen it nor heard of it. but ah, that is a very nice.

And the parts list I Assume that we've have. We got a parts list. We got a schematic. We do.

We have a schematic. look at that. I can't pronounce that I Got no chance in hell of pronouncing that. There's not much in an analog uh.

meter at all. I Mean there's the meter movement there. We've got Diod protection across the meter movement. Then we've got uh.

switching. Nanofarads. It measures um, measures capar capacitance. No.

N I Don't know what's going on there. but uh yeah. look, Nanofarads times: 1 time 10. It does capacitance.

Are you kidding me? Unbelievable. We got ourselves a ganged switch here. that's just beautiful. Oh look at that.

Could play with that all day long. Really? Could Fant look at that that that's a reset Is it? We got a thermal. Um, we got an overload in there. perhaps? Well, I'll tell you what.

this thing weighs a ton and it's built like the proverbial brick dny it really is and got ourselves a cheat sheet on the back and it's in fantastic condition as well. apart from the number five painted on it for you know, whoever owned this, uh, previously that's in fantastic condition. it really is I might maybe I should save that for a separate tear down. What do you think? H and check it out.

that's 100K ohms per volt. That was a kickass anal anog meter. It really was very high sensitivity meter at 100K ohms per Vol they didn't get much higher than that, really. You had to go to a fet input one if you wanted that.

but yeah, oh, this thing just reeks of quality. It really does. I Love it. Oh hi.

Dave I Had this old puppy collecting dust on my shelf since you're obsessed with multimeters just a bit and vintage electronics. I Thought you might like it? Yes. I do I think it's worthy of just a separate nice little Tear Down video cuz I Think this mail bag's going to be long enough? so I'm going to leave it bugger it I'll do it in tomorrow's tear down. He was learned how to use a Multimeter at Vocational School Seven years ago, they thinks he thinks they're still using them to teach how to read an analog scale.

I'm surprised they still teaching to read analog scales. That's fantastic, thank you very much! Max That is awesome and he's provided some links here as well for the user manual and stuff which I'll provide down below. All right, Is it still within spec? What I'm going to do is, of course, if you change the orientation of these things, you should, uh, tweak the zero so correct tongue angle? Oh sorry, there we go. Zeroed that and plug it in.

Oh, pretty close. pretty close. Now of course you just got to get the mirror there to avoid parallx error on this thing. So this shot is I think it's pretty close.

but look at that. I mean that's as close to bang on. There's a needle width in that. Unbelievable.

This is a beauty. Ah, and of course, the good thing about analog meters is that you don't need the battery in them to uh, read DC Volts like that? You only need it for the Uh Ohms range and in this case, the capacitor range. Absolutely fascinated by the capacitor range. Looks like it takes a Cc size battery.

I'm not sure if I've actually got one little HRC fuse, two little fuse holders in there. Beautiful. And the cover plate? Uh, of course, look at that. It slips under there so it can't Just a single screw to hold it in place and all the info you need is on there.

Look, we're talking about a spec of 1% there. That's pretty darn good for an analog meter. Uh, 1. 12% over the AC for the AC 1% on Ohms 2% on capacitance.

There looks like we're talking 100 MTS up to 1,000 Vol uh range there. And of course the 100 K per volt is going to give you 100 uh Mega Ohms input impedance there up at the Uh 1000 Volt range. So there you go. Very impressive meter.

There's the nanofarad ranges there there. We go from one nanofarad to 100 goes up to 10 mik. Three usable ranges there. beautiful so thank you very much.

Max that is just awesome. and yeah I think I Love vintage stuff like this so even though it'll be quick, it deserves its own tear down video. I think so I'll do that one tomorrow. Thanks! Max And here's a name you should be familiar with.

If you don't, well I'll put the link in down below. Ben Heck Andor Who uh runs the Ben Hex show on um, we know what this is. This is no surprise to anyone who follows me on Twitter or uh or watches the Ben H Hex show that's for sure. But uh.

anyway, this was his one of his latest Uh projects. He did and he sent it to me so that I could give away to someone in the evev blog audience. So we I'll give it away and Taada look beautiful Look at this. It is my own personalized um speaking game thing or whatever they're called.

Does it just work? No. I think he's no, he's taped in the battery separate. Let's put it in Anyway, he's uh, modified one of these uh, kids games to speak my uh, phrases and stuff like that. Oh no, that's coming off there.

But anyway, let's P this puppy up. All right. let's see if it works here. We go put the batteries in I I Don't know if there's a onoff switch on this.

oh oh no. hang on so you you select a uh a, let's let's do my hand thing down here. There's contacts inside if you want to see how this thing is built and how Ben modified it, then I'll link in his video here. So oh yeah, there we go.

Leads on, turn it on, taken apart, your head off. be very. The only annoying thing about that is that um, there's no DeLay So you hear the thing, it starts playing. uh, just as it's pulling back so you get the noise from that thing.

Um, so that's the only play with sucker all day long. This is great. Ben's done a great job with this. It's pure engineering, evil, ancient, average 30 old technology that is great That is awesome.

Thank you very much Ben for letting me give this thing away. So I guess? um I don't know what's the fair fairest thing? I don't know do I pick someone at random? Oh any yeah. all right. I'll just pick someone at random if you'll want this thing.

leave it in the comments and uh I'll pick somebody. Tell me why you want it and the person with the best story why you want it in my opinion will get it. Thank you very much Ben I Won't bother taking it apart because there is a whole video. Ben's done a whole video on how he modified and built this thing and it is quite comprehensive.

so go check it out. thank you very much and check out the Ben hex show. I'll link it in down below but wait, we've got extra look at this FNA start the damn thing and this one's a local one from Paul Henderson Thank you very much. he's from Mor Field In Queensland He's a bloody Queenslander.

We kicked your ass in the state of origin. absolutely kicked it. Yes, broke the hoodoo. Sorry for all my non-australian view viewers, you'll have no idea what I'm talking about I'm sure Po will though.

My cat says hello. oh iPhone iPhone that looks like one of those older ones. It feels quite small and quite heavy. I've never had an iPhone uh before.

Yeah, it's a 16 gig. Is that like the original? Cuz I assume that they printed the like you know iPhone 5 on the back or whatever. it is an original? um iPhone see I don't know anything about I all the Apple Fanboys going. Of course it's an original model.

blah blah blah blah blah like yeah, tell someone who cares H Bloody iPhone hi Dave I know the number of mobile phones you've been getting in the mailbag. thought I contribute my old phone. Enjoy! Thank you very much. Um yeah I do have a whole bunch of old phones so that will be a tear down one day of just a whole bunch of retro phones.

and I guess the iPhone is now ancient go figure and another local one from Josh thank you very much Josh he's from Sleepy South Australia and uh, let's crack it open and uh, see what? Oh more more phones Got a bunch of phones. Jeez I got more F Crossw puzzle. Oh right yeah I think my mom used to have one of these little things. it's just going to have like one ASC in it.

um I got no shortage of phone. oh man that is crusty as oh look at that that has seen better days Cy look at that. All right, let's crack this one open just to have like a single uh chip on board. Asic that's about it.

Oh I was completely off the mark. Look at this. It's got two chip on board devices of course the main Asic plus an LCD controller for the uh, custom or dot matrix or what. It wouldn't be off the shelf.

Um LCD is it even powered up? It's got a battery in it on off on no no. De is a dodo. but uh yeah, these things are. Yeah, there's just nothing in them, just a purpose design.

Asic And that's it. They churn out a million of these things and Bob's your uncle and there you go. There's our uh cust Asic just a bare diey there uh chip on board. It's called Coob technology because the Uh chip is mounted directly onto the board and then the bond wires.

They just uh uh wire in the bond wire. So they stick down the D with glue and then they just wire the bond, weld the bond wires over to the individual uh tracers on there. There's not much to it at all. It's a very cheap technique.

and check out all the test points. I mean they got test points on practically every line here. There would have been a big uh bed of nails uh, tester for this thing and look at some of the shy so that's not reflow. These are hand solded.

some poor sucker is hand solded those and that's pretty awful. It was late on a Friday afternoon. they couldn't wait to get home. We got one from Indie Griffus sorry I had to whistle it h from dun Eden in New Zealand Hi to all my New Zealand viewers don't get many from mailbags from New Zealand anyway Indie very cool name that was actually one of my um choices for Sean's Name by the way Indie And there was no way she who must be obeyed would uh allow Indie It was hard enough to get her to uh, accept, say so.

Anyway, thank you very much Indie that is an awesome name. Oh 4D Systems Okay 4D Systems Stuff 4D Systems are a local company here in uh Sydney and uh they so I don't know why they coming from New Zealand but uh well. I'll read the note, hope all is well across the ditch. It is indeed included the 4D Systems Up Micro LCD 43 LCD Mod yes, they are an Aussie company they are here in uh Sydney they're out in the western suburbs there I know exactly where they are.

Um, he originally bought this uh, but the project fell through. It's a resistive Touch version. If you once you have hooked it up to a raspberry prior Adino, you can listen to The Screen through your code for when action occurs. Oh okay.

interesting. um yeah. 4D Systems there are makers of um uh, pretty awesome little uh LCD They started out as just one LCD module but now, um, gez, that's wow. Look at that.

that one that is enormous that is Huge. Look at that. I might have fun playing with that now. Well I don't have enough time for the mail bag now, but uh, that's going to be fun.

Got a little card reader and uh, a little um. header interface. nice look at that. Beautiful.

Anyway, check out 4D systems, but more importantly, check out Indy's website Indy Griffith.edu.au Systems have their own uh chipset that handles all the graphics and uh, stuff like that and their own uh uh language and uh codes for actually displaying information on the LCD modules easily. and it's called the Picasso uh chipset. And there you go. They've got their own Picasso chipset.

I mean I Don't think they've spun custom silicon for it, but obviously. um, you know it could be a Repro fixed, uh programmed micro or Fpga or something like that. So this really is a sweet look. Module I mean it's 480 by 272 RGB full color RGB module 4.3 in uh tftt look at this hardware version 7.01 Jeez, they're serious there and it's got a little onboard speaker and a little micro SD card and that can play out wave files and can do all sorts of weird and wonderful stuff.

There is a Touch version this yes, this is a Touch version It's You can see the uh touch screen on top there coming out and it's available not not touch and non-touch in various things. and they got a whole 4D Systems have a whole ton of these different boards. um this are ones you know, not uh, cheap. I Think it's retails about um, $99 or something like that, but fully integrated.

just works off the shell. So I'm really going to look forward to playing around with one of these puppies. I've been meaning to get um some of these from Atilla actually I think he did actually approached me uh once and said do I want some I think I said said send him into the mail bag and I don't think he followed up anyway a tiller I've got one a if you want to send some more, that'd be cool too. And lucky last I Can't believe we got through them all.

This is from Uh Lassie Jorgenson in Denmark quite all my Danish viewers, let's crack it open Be very ah, it's calculator. It's calculator. It's a TI I'm not a TI man I'm a CIO man or a HP man. Oh, it doesn't even work there.

you go. Once again, we can crack it open but there's nothing in there. There's going to just be a single chip on board. hi I search for something different in a box of old electronic stuff.

Found this calculat. Did you think it? uh did think of you right away. So here it is I hope you test I have not tested it. Well, there you go.

Thank you very much Um hassy. if I'm pronouncing that correctly, let's crack it open and that would be why she doesn't work there. We go. We don't have our LR44 batteries in there and we've got ourselves a um Flex uh m membrane uh battery contact there which means most likely uh, entire.

There won't even be a printed circuit uh board in here. a regular rigid PCB and maybe just one big Flex uh PCB but there's no screws on. this. Looks like it's a it's a welded shut job.

I Can fix that. Oops, It just completely fell apart and it wasn't welded shut. it was just, uh, press fit and uh, there's our rubber matting on the top and Tada I was right. complete.

Flex membrane. Oh look at that. Oo, get seasick watching that. Look at that and they've just got a dip.

uh, package just solded directly under there through hole dip and Bob's your uncle? Look at that. Nothing else in these things. That's all they are. Single chip solution.

Practically every calculator is exactly the same. and it's interesting to note how they've bent those pins over on that dip package before. they were presumably Reflow solded on that sucker. So there you go.

And the LCD here. This is interesting. It's just got a clipon connector like that. This will just, uh.

this whole thing will just slide off and the LCD will just come out. That's a very nice novel little way to, uh, just retain the LCD onto that flat. Flex The contacts will be on this side over here. underneath there, there'll be a uh, zebra strip under there, of course.

and uh, just well may not. It may even just be pressing against the glass. I'm not sure. look at that.

they've just stuck it down to the LCD Like that. there you go. No zebra strip at all. Look at that too easy.

and that's actually a classic example of cost reduction in, you know, mass produced products. Oh, we got a date code there. um 6. we 91, so 991 vintage there and they've done absolutely everything to get the price down on this.

You know PCB are too expensive. No, we'll just do a couple of sheets of membrane there too easy and we won't. Uh, we'll just Reflow the solder pins on there. That's it.

I Mean there's no passives at all. There's not nothing else. There's just a single custom Asic chip which they turn out for peanuts once they've got their Um once they've paid for the Um engineering on that, and uh, and then just this retaining clip for the LCD Like that's it's just ridiculous. So there's what.

uh, five parts. There's two sheets of me membrane here. so there's two sheets of membrane, the chip, uh, the LCD and a retaining clip. Unbelievable.

No wonder they can. uh, get these things down to peanuts. And we've got a postcard Siberian Tigers here from Tristan thank you very much Tristan And we had this one saved over for a future mail bag from GTO Electronics in Santa Clara California Let's rip it open. Lucky last, this is it.

God I Don't know how long this mail bag's been, but it's been a 2 or three hour shoot. People still hanging in there in the live show. Ah, it's just a letter and of course it is from Nick who's been from Gapo Electronics if I'm pronouncing that correctly. um and he's just uh talking about uh, a um charging and electric vehicle charging station uh cable and plug set that he's done in.

he says it's not as easy as you think and well, yeah, I think he's right. Anyway, um I'll post the link in for the code there's no interest in Hardware just sells the boards. But for those into electric cars, check out his Hydra project. So there you go.

That's it for the mailbag. and thanks to all my viewers who uh joined in. not sure how many um, there was like 50 or 60 or something last time I looked So there you go. Um, sign up to my Eev blog 2 live page if this is probably where I'll put uh, live mailbag videos and other stuff like that.

which I if you want to actually watch me spend a couple of hours shooting this thing live and see what happens behind the scenes, then go over to Eev blog do Eev blog 2 so it's Youtube.com/ Eevblog to catch you next time.