Hi, it's tear down Tuesday again and we've got some vintage computer tech tear down for you. It's the Handy FAA 1,000 Check it out! It is a PDA personal digital assistant. If you remember those SL fax machine. um yes, it's an actual fax machine that you hook up to your phone and we'll take a look at it.

It's about1 1995 vintage I think mid90s right in the era when those Pdas like the Palm pilots and that were just starting to take off and you know they were going to be the next big thing. Before you know smartphones and stuff like that everyone had a PDA but they gone the way of the dodo. The smartphones absolutely killed them and this is one of the relics from the era. The Handy Fact 1000 I think it's also sold as a Smith Corona something brother and it had a very short life I Don't think it actually sold at all.

don't ask me how I got it I have no idea um but I've had it uh ly around since then and I thought it'd be interesting to see what's inside it I'm expecting some um, ancient, uh processor technology and stuff like that could be interesting. Let's check it out. Let's have a look at the box. It's a cordless fax organizer 256k of memory which was huge uh, back in the mid 90s for one of these, uh, pocket organizer/ pdas.

it's compact pocket size H don't know about that. lightweight 370 G could hold 5,000 names in its phone look uh B It's got a chronological fax log wo you can search. It's got the build-in acoustic coupler modem there which goes directly over your phone. It's also got an Rj11 uh Jack on it I believe so you can plug directly in powerful 90 600 board transmission.

Oh now we're talking auto dialer. None of this having to dial your own number. rubbish. And it built-in fax cover sheet fantastic and it connects to your PC I Have no idea why you would want to send a fax on the go like that.

That's probably why the thing didn't uh sell at all I don't think it was just a you know, sounded great on paper in the marketing meeting. Oh yeah. Portable fax machine. great.

We can put the acoustic coupler it's a Triumph of uh you know, engineering over practicality and an instructional video cassette. This is fantastic. Oh brilliant. We get a quick start, guide, operation manual.

oh oh I don't know about you I'm excited to quote big Kev Let's unbox this thing. hate unboxings but woohoo What do we got here? Tada There it is and check it out. We still have the sealed VHS video cassette Handy Fact: 1000 operating instructions 22 minutes worth in Pal format. That would be absolutely hilarious to watch I'm sure I Love it all right let's get pop this sucker out and e um I wish you had uh tcho vision on this thing cuz that is sticky.

No I can't quite lift it. but trust me, that rubber on that has really gone all sticky and yucky. Let me give it a smell. it really does have that old sort of rotted product.

rubbery smell awful. Handy Ax HF 106v DC draws 150 milliamps from the external Supply Pton pending. of course you got a pton the thing and uh, serial number. There it is there's our uh AAA batteries runs off four AAA batteries and uh I guess I could put some batteries in and see if it Powers up and that's probably the Cr23 32 uh replacement cell so let's pop it open.

Oh look at that handy 1, 256k. Fantastic! Put some batteries in this thing, see if it powers on. Does it? No, no, it's completely dead I'm afraid it's a loser. Oh well, who cares.

We want to see what's inside this sucker, so let's crack it open. Fingers are all sticky. This is really the most disgusting product I've ever handled. Look A All right, let's crack this thing open are taking the screws off and W yep holy look at that.

Oh we have some bodess. This is absolutely incredible. Check out the bodge board in there and all the mod wiring. Look at that.

Absolutely horrid. Oh my goodness, this is a consumer bit of gear. Unbelievable! This company obviously you know, rushed this thing to Market Looks like they've put in this second board here with the insulation tape on the back there as has a complete bodge and I love it how there's a past sticker on there sort of underneath all the other bodge wies like it ped and then they thought, oh no, look we, we've got to got to bdge this thing up. maybe to meet some sort of a local telecom's requirement or uh, something to that effect because um, really, you know it looks like it connects into the Rj11 there directly into the phone socket.

straight into this this board which has what looks like a Bridge rectifier there with those dodes. and then we've got some opto couplers and all this bodge stuff going over to these surface mount pads down in here. I've I Don't think I've ever seen anything that horrible in a bit of consumer gear before. Wow, look at this.

Really? We got a couple of tantalums mounted Edge on there so they can't even they couldn't even get the you know the bodge PCB right? So they've bodged the bodge PCB Go figure. And they've got this mod wire going out over here directly onto these surface mount pads over here. It's just. ah, what a horror show Really? that is awful.

And to all you young whipper snappers out there wondering what is One of These Acoustic couplers, acoustic coupler modem. Well look, you flip this, you pop it out and we've got a speaker there and we've got a microphone there and what do you do? You hook it up to your phone. This is a phone kids. before we had mobile phones, you had to go to a phone booth.

You remember those You know that Superman changed in and uh, you could actually um hook up your computer via an acoustic coupler without having to have a direct phone line. Um, hookup? It's It was very slow. it was horribly unreliable. but it you know if you only wanted to send things at 300 bits per second or something it would do the job.

So it go across the the speaker, would go across the uh mouthpiece here and this microphone would go onto this speaker so it would sit on there like that. and you could transmit and receive data via any phone without having to have a data connection. Magic! That's how it was done in the old days. So what we've got here on this uh top board is clearly the um, just the interface uh, circuitry for the faxphone acoustic coupler modem interface and you'll notice we' got a got a micro switch here.

I'm uh, not sure what that's doing. I think it's to detect that the Uh case has been opened. Perhaps I can't see? Oh no, it probably detects that the uh I think that's just about where the uh battery cover comes in. so maybe that's designed to.

Yeah yeah, that cover's got a little that notch on on the cover there. It has a little tab on it so it looks like it detects whether or not that is closed. Don't know why they're gonna bother why they bothered to do that, but hey, go figure. And uh, we got some of the uh, just the battery terminals here.

Crusy, solded on. We've got looks like, you know, a couple of Dodes another Bodge Diode on there. Oh man, this is. this is really quite horrid.

Don't like it at all. Bit of electrical tape here? maybe? Is that? no, What's that? That's just. you know. I Thought there was some sort of maybe some sort of connection ribbon cable or something.

but no, there's not. It's just a uh, metal bracket. They just folded that some electrical tape over that. It's hilarious.

Oh man. Anyway, there's got to be a uh processor board in here. In fact, given that it's uh, under the keys that there, there's not much thickness left there on the keyboard I think the uh, and the there's a lot of thickness left in there. All the processor is, um, clearly under the display here.

which, uh, makes sense. And then they only have to have some uh, uh, some small connections going over for that uh keypad on this other side, which no doubt goes through the hinge here somewhere. Actually, it just occurred to me what that micro switch might be. It might, uh, disable all the phone uh stuff.

If you once you, uh, once you remove that battery cover and then uh, disconnect those batteries cuz techn te if you got this thing hooked up to the phone line up there, you don't want people replacing the batteries while it's hooked into the phone line and they can potentially Get Zapped or you know, lightning could strike them, you know goodness. oh what? It's probably some you know um, safety interlock thing to ensure that uh, it's disconnected from the phone when you're replacing the batteries and there it is. You can see the flat Flex cable there about 20 odd ways or something like that connecting uh mostly the keyboard but also o did the uh data uh, fax lines as well through to all the processor which is up in the top half in here and it's all. it's the oh, the hinge is all really badly designed, clumsy, very clumsy and H it's it.

got all the Hallmarks of being rushed to Market this thing, it really does. You can just you know, imagine that marketing meeting you know, or they did or it's a startup or something like that and they got their Venture Capital funding and they have to really push something out the door within uh, you know, 9 months from uh from getting all their capital investment to something out the door because it's by handy fact uh Corporation I think it is. What is it handy Fact: Yeah, handy Fact: Corp So obviously they uh I think they probably just uh set up that company probably a startup just to do this uh, fax machine. I'm sure there's a lot of people who lost their money on that one because you've got to remember that around that mid90s there.

That's when the web uh, started to, uh, take off an email and things like that. So really designing a fax machine around that point, and you know PDA only lasted oh M you know, 5 years tops or something in terms of uh, Pdaas? Maybe it was a little bit, uh, longer than that. but really, um, you know, email just you know, took over once once the web came along and everyone started to get a proper internet connection and an email address. It's just, you know, old-fashioned fax machines were still.

You know, people still use fax machines these days. Of course, it's still a valuable, um, well, not valuable as it used to be, but still. um, you know, an essential, uh, business tool for a lot of businesses to send that paper facts? but uh, probably no window there at all. with uh, hindsight.

Not sure how many of these things were, um, actually sold and used. but I believe, uh through here say that it. It basically was a a complete flop and uh, didn't do anything at all. Anyway, that's not terribly.

um, surprising because you know, wear a Pdas these days, let alone a handheld fax machine. Go figure. Anyway, I reckon we're going to get some uh screws under those little rubber plugs there and we'll be able to take off that uh front panel that'll just lift right off and we'll find a processor board. and I'm expecting.

you know, maybe one of the Intel processors like an 800c 88 or something. It'll be one of those Seos uh versions, Perhaps something like that. Um, I Don't expect anything fancy. It would have used just off-the-shelf uh stuff.

And by the way, our date code on the board here. That's the manufacturing date that would have been put on there by the Uh Bear board manufacturer. So the 32nd week in 1994. So uh, you know there would have been several weeks on top of that before they load the components and ship it out.

So you know we're probably talking in the uh, you know, the 40th week, uh, 94 vintage. So we're almost 95 there. but who knows, this may have been sold in 95 96? You just don't know. Probably Old Stock Maybe they only did the one run of them and uh, you know, based on the bodge and things like that, that's um, not surprising.

Maybe you know it's an early board. They couldn't be bother resp spinning it. So oh yeah, 6 months later, let's just hack it together with this mod board and get the thing to Mark at 6 or9 months later and here we have the LCD PCB it tells you. So we've got a Uh a chip on board.

uh device here. got some Ram there and another bodge. Look at that. a dip with the legs splade out.

This is brilliant stuff. Oh well. If you're going to bdge it, bdge it all the way. Don't go.

don't go by halves. This is terrific. and there you go. There's some quality bodging right there that's just brilliant.

I Love it. And what is it? It's a uh, it's a pal. It's a 16 V8 pal device there. go.

Not only is it a power device, but they SPL it onto the board like that. Ah, that is just a trous. you got to be kidding me. Bodge wire in there of course and uh oh man man, this is terrible.

There's a 32 khz Crystal which isn't uh solded or uh, held down with any Gunk and they've done that uh, not once, but uh, twice. over here. it's a cardinal sin that one. I Love to see how long these things would have, uh survived out there.

I'll peel off that sticker and see what's under there. There you go. It's a Yamaha YTM 401. Your guess is as good as mine and quite frankly I couldn't care less what it is.

Well, it looks like there's actually not going to be anything on the bottom of this uh board because that's uh. they're going to have the membrane for the uh keys under there and they're going to have the LCD as well. Well, our chip on board, our black uh blob. there is clearly the processor cuz it is hooked up to 228k srams which gives us our advertised 256k and it's also hooked up to a once.

You can see all the parallel buses going straight through there, so they're obviously sharing the common address and uh data lines and you can see the 27c 256 uh ROM there. So that would, uh, that would be the program memory and uh, that's it. So I'm quite disappointed at that. I'm really considering the um, the bodess and the off-the-shelf um nness of the rest of it.

if that's a word, off the shelf. um, then this uh chip on board is um, I'm a little bit, uh, surprised that they've gone with that there. You want to know what the funny thing is? This steaming pile of modified dog turd is Ostel approved. It's got the big tick.

No worries, nothing escapes the WFT of modification in this thing. Look at that 0805 resistor there, just propped up on its side and bridged across those two things there. Hilarious bastard. I Took the black electrical tape along the top off and here we go.

Copyright of: Capricorn Electronics H Hang your head in shame. This is terrible. So unfortunately with that process, your guess is as good as mine. Not that it uh matters at all much really.

So there you go that's inside the handy fax. 1,000 a uh, very unusual. Relic from the Uh 19, mid 1990s or 95 or thereabouts. It did a quick uh Google on handy fact Corp and handy fact Australia actually uh, popped up on some database somewhere and it was delisted in January of 95.

Um, go figures. So this is I Not sure how many of these they sold if anyone ever used the damn things. If you do know any uh, further info on this thing, let me know. But yeah, what a pile of dog crap.

Really. look at it. It's a dog's breakfast. It is just that is terrible terrible murial and uh, as Australians will get that one.

So this is a real hilarious example of uh, a product that's been bodged to Market to uh, meet the market cuz probably you know the shareholders were probably screaming oh, we need this product to Market we need it this month. We're going to miss our marketing window and blah blah blah and H well I think a lot of people lost their money on that TD I hope you like tear down Tuesday and if you do, please give it a thumbs up. Catch you next time.