________________________________________________ / \ | _________________________________________ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | DOS & Don'ts | | | | | | | | A Modern Newsletter | | | | for Vintage-minded Folks | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | C:\>Issue #8 June 2024_ | | | |_________________________________________| | | | \_________________________________________________/ \___________________________________/ ___________________________________________ _-' .-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-. --- `-_ _-'.-.-. .---.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.--. .-.-.`-_ _-'.-.-.-. .---.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-`__`. .-.-.-.`-_ :---------------------------------------------------------------: `---._.---------------------------------------------------._.---' ------------------ In this Issue... ------------------ Features ---------- Worlds of Wonder: An Incredible Legacy, BlueMSX A Retro Tandy Restore - Part 3, Joe Collett Album Review: Alice Cooper's Welcome to My Nightmare, Grizzly Adam Columns --------- The Latent Image, Jon Mullin Pokemon Corner, Yousef Retro Living in a Modern World, Grizzly Adam Bits & Bytes -------------- Our Readers' Retro Memories Unclassifieds Ads ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |\_____________________ ____|_|___________|____|||_|\___________ /__ \ WORLDS OF WONDER /__ | | | O============================ /_____=========================------------/ AN INCREDIBLE LEGACY \_,--------,,----------------,------' ) ( | ) _________/ BY / __\\ / / BLUEMSX / / ` / / / / / / ( /_____/ / `-_____________/ Worlds of Wonder. While you may not know their name, you likely have heard of their creations, such as Teddy Ruxpin and Lazer Tag. Our story begins in the 1970s with Earl Kenneth Forsse. A story creator and inventor, Forsse had worked on a variety of different projects for various companies. It would be after the closure of his Chuck E Cheese knock-off restaurant that Forsee would opt to move into the business of audio animatronics in a bold new way. For those who don't know, Audio Animatronics are audio directed robots whose movements are directed by unheard control signals on a stereo showtape. With one channel containing the control signals and the other containing the show audio. The systems needed to run these robots were often large, complex, and not something the average person could easily program and use. Forsse did not give up however, and using the knowledge gained would create animatronic costumes for a production Disney was working on at the time. These costumes were similar to traditional audio animatronics, but had their control signals transmitted wirelessly. The costumes themselves only contained mechanisms for animation within their heads, with the person wearing the costume being responsible for the rest of the character movements via small switches within the costumes themselves. The production Disney would use these new costumes for would be "Welcome to Pooh Corner," a series for television starring Winnie The Pooh and his friends. The show became a huge success for all involved. However, with high production costs and an oversaturation of puppet based entertainment at the time, the show wouldn't last long. After losing his wife Wendy Forsse a short time later, Forsse would use the skills learned from his prior work to create the next big thing in audio animatronic technology- miniaturization. Compared to prior models, Forsse's new prototype was smaller, did not require the massive control box, and was inexpensive enough for all to enjoy. While other companies, such as Aaron Fechter's Creative Engineering, had tried to downscale audio animatronic technology, the servo motors used in Creative's attempt at downscaling their own Rock-afire Explosion characters were prone to failure. Even after dozens of prototypes and attempts at correction, Creative couldn't get it working well enough for a mass production product. Forsee's design corrected these problems by reducing the number of motors used for animation to a bare minimum. He also chose to use readily available parts to ease manufacturing. Under the banner of Forsse's new Alchemy II company and using a character he had created for an earlier project, the Teddy Ruxpin animated story- teller was born. Like prior audio animatronics, he operated using a showtape. Unlike those that came before him, Ruxpin used standard audio cassettes for his tapes, albeit with measures to prevent copying. All that was left was to find a company to partner with that was willing to take a gamble producing a product unlike any seen prior. This company would wind up being Worlds of Wonder (WoW). Founded in 1985 by Don Kingsborough and former Atari employee Mark Robert Goldberg, Worlds of Wonder was created specifically to manufacture Teddy Ruxpin and to cash in on the bold new concept of animatronic toys. After some further refinement for mass production and the inclusion of read-along books, Teddy Ruxpin was released to the public in conjunction with a massive marketing campaign. Teddy Ruxpin would become a huge success, earning over 70 million dollars in sales. A live-action Teddy Ruxpin TV special would also be produced, reminiscent of Forsse's work with Disney on Welcome to Pooh Corner. High production costs prevented the special from becoming a series, and a traditionally animated show was produced by DIC Entertainment instead. This mainstream success would also net Worlds of Wonder new distribution channels and a trust with retailers that would prove to be invaluable as time went on. Competition was fierce as both Chuck E Cheese's Pizza Time Theater and AG (Almost Grown) Bear, both created by former Atari Inc employees- Nolan Bushnell and Ron Milner, respectively. AG Bear was similar to Ruxpin, but lacked the animation of Ruxpin, instead opting for interactivity between users and other AG Bears. Milner's AG Bear company would be acquired by Hasbro and would be the design inspiration for Hasbro and Tiger Electronics Furby toy line released over a decade later. Meanwhile other competitors like the 2-XL robot storyteller would also come onto the scene further saturating the market. Teddy would manage to remain on top, but Worlds of Wonder knew that a new product would have to be created to help keep the company afloat. Teddy Ruxpin companion toys such as Grubby, Teddy's octopede BFF, would be released in the interim while Worlds of Wonder developed their next major product- Lazer Tag. Similar to light gun technology, Laser Tag used low power lasers inside toy guns, in conjunction with photoconductive cells, to play a game of tag. This would become another massive hit for Worlds of Wonder. Between Lazer Tag, and continued sales of Teddy Ruxpin, Worlds of Wonder would continue to rake in millions of dollars in sales. It's here where our story takes an interesting turn. The video game market in North America had completely crashed in 1983 due to a combination of reasons ranging from too many consoles on the market to a flood of low quality games. Nintendo, who had recently moved into video game systems in Japan to huge success with their Famicom Family Computer, was hoping to bring that success to new markets. After multiple failed attempts to bring the Famicom to North America, including an ill-fated deal with Atari Inc, Nintendo would choose to market the Famicom not as a computer or game system, but as a toy. While it's unclear if other toy companies were approached, Nintendo would ultimately strike a deal with Worlds of Wonder to help get the redesigned Nintendo Entertainment System to market. Using their massive distribution channels, and leverage within the toy market, Worlds of Wonder would convince retailers to stock the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES). If stores wanted to continue stocking Teddy Ruxpins and Lazer Tag, they would need to get the NES as part of the deal. While underhanded, it did the job. After a successful test launch in New York City the NES would soon be brought to massive nationwide success, ultimately revitalizing the video game industry in the states. For Worlds of Wonder, this great success would not last for long after this point. With sales of Lazer Tag and Teddy Ruxpin peaking in 1986, by 1987 the company was in decline. However, Teddy Ruxpins and Lazer Tag were still being produced at peak volume, leading to warehouses of unsold stock. Other products they attempted to launch such as a VHS gaming system called the Action Max, and other Teddy Ruxpin adjacent products would be met with only minimal success. With WoW hemorrhaging money fast, Nintendo saw the writing on the wall and cut ties with Worlds of Wonder and took distri- bution in-house. Worlds of Wonder would close its doors for the final time in late 1990 due to bankruptcy. Their remaining assets were bought up by their old business rival Hasbro, while Teddy Ruxpin remained an asset of Ken Forsse's Alchemy II. Forsse would work with Playskool and eventually other companies for subsequent Teddy Ruxpin Products. As for Ken Forsse, he would live comfortably until his passing on March 19th, 2014. Nintendo, of course, would continue to be a leader in the video game industry around the world to this day. While they no longer exist as they once did, the impact left by Worlds of Wonder cannot be underesti- mated. Not just for producing Teddy Ruxpin and creating Lazer Tag, but for helping to bring life back to a dying industry when no other company had the guts to do so. So to Ken Forsse, and Worlds of Wonder, my heart goes out to all of you. Happy Gaming! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- About BlueMSX: BlueMSX, Blue for short, enjoys retro technologies, history, and learning for the sake of learning. She has been interested in retro electronics and media for nearly as long as she can remember. This fascination means that she has a lot of great stories to recount. Blue's philosophy can be summed up by the quote, "History is like a puzzle- the more pieces you have the more sense it makes." ------------------------------------------------------------------------- _____________________________________________________________ / \ | ________________________________________________ | | | | | | | A RETRO | | | | _______ ___ ______ ______ _ _ | | | | (__ __| / \ | ___ \| ___ \| | | | | | | | | | / /_\ \| | | | | \ | |___| | | | | | | | | ___ | | | | | | |_____ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |__/ / _____| | | | | | |_| |_| |_|_| |_|_____/ (_______| | | | | RESTORE - PART III | | | | | | | | BY JOE COLLETT | | | |________________________________________________| | | TANDY | | _________________________________________________________ | | ______ ______ | |___| |_______________________________________| |___| ___| | ________________ | | |___ | | | - [ ] |==[]============ | | | | |______|____________________|__________________|______| | Welcome to the third installment of my Tandy 1400 laptop restore. If you have not read the first 2 installments, please check those out so you know what is going on. Or don't, I'm not your dad. As mentioned in my previous piece, the power supply for the laptop has some issues. I had no idea what was wrong with it, but I did have an ace up my sleeve- none other than my friend and editor Grizzly Adam. Grizz and I have been in contact throughout the entire process so far, and he graciously offered to take a look at it in person. Since Grizz lives a few hundred miles away in another state I packaged up the power supply and sent it via the United States Post office to Grizz. I also sent him all the info I had found about the power supply online. On the day it was supposed to arrive, the power supply was nowhere to be found. USPS said it was delivered, but it was not in his mailbox. We were both very worried as this is not a common device. Grizz was eventually able to find the power supply- it had been delivered to a parcel locker, but the key to the locker was given to a different neighbor. With the disaster averted, Grizz soon found time to work on the power supply. Grizz was able to fix a few of my mistakes and managed to get some of the voltages back- but not all of them. Something else was wrong! Eventually Grizz was able to track it back to the transformer. But here is the problem- there is no writing on the transformer and the Tandy part number is useless without a manufacturer part number to go with it. With no way of getting a replacement transformer, we are stuck. (Editor's note- what I do know is that this is a multi-tap transformer that should be supplying voltages to be rectified into 12VDC and -22VDC. This is a very unusual part, indeed). Foiled again! Finding a working replacement power supply is hard due to the rarity of the machine. So, what am I going to do? Well, what every nerd and tinker person does- build a custom replacement. But that will take a while and I will be taking a break from this project until I can do more research, modify a power supply to produce all the correct voltages, and get the computer working again. That is, if nothing else is damaged on the motherboard. Hopefully I will be able to get back to this project sometime this year. I will give another update when I can. It sucks, but that's how it is working on retro machines. I said I would let you guys know good or bad, and this is the bad. As promised last month, let's take a moment to talk about math coprocessors. Early processors could not do floating point math very well. They could do the calculations but had to take a round-about way to get there. It would take a while to do and was slow. A math coprocessor, some- times called a Floating Point Unit (FPU), is a chip specially designed to calculate floating point numbers. This could speed up processing of certain math calculations on the computer, but only if the program actually sent these requests to the math co-processor. Most spreadsheet programs would utilize a coprocessor if one was found, but other program support was often hit and miss. So why don't we still have math coprocessors today? Beginning with the 486, the ability to perform floating point functions would begin being integrated into the main chip's instruction set. By the arrival of the Pentium 586, the math coprocessor was dead. Thanks to everyone who hung out with me on this little journey. Your kind words kept me going on this. Have a good one. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Joe Collett: Joe has been working with retro machines since he was a kid and the computers were new. He never lost his love of those early machines. His day job as a desktop support tech allows him to work with the newest machines, but he will always have a soft spot for the old machines and software that made the modern world possible. Joe's Website: comfortablynumb.atwebpages.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- _____________________________________________________________________ |\'-._( / | | \ .'-._\ Alice Cooper's , ,| |-.\' .-; Welcome to My Nightmare .'\`-' | | \ .' _.' \ | |.--.\' Album Review by ;-; \._| | ` Grizzly Adam \ `'-,_,-'\ | |_________________________________________________________/____)_`-._\| Released in February of 1975, almost a full year after the break-up of the Alice Cooper band, Welcome to My Nightmare is the first solo album of frontman Vincent Furnier, better known by his stage name Alice Cooper. Producer for the Alice Cooper band Bob Ezrin, also known for his work with Lou Reed, Pink Floyd, and Kiss was heavily involved not just in the sound, but also the lyrical composition and overall concept of the album. He even plays synthesizer, keyboards, and provided vocals for the album. Ezrin brought with him the Dick Wagner led band that had just toured with Lou Reed and recorded the Rock n Roll Animal with him. Along with Wagner in the band was fellow guitarist Steve Hunter, Parkash John on bass, and Pentti Glan on drums. The album opens with the title track. Cooper's initial vocals are a bit soft and childlike but turn on a dime to become like that of a ghoulish Jim Morrison. This gives us our first look at the main character's cracked psyche, which only further deteriorates as the album progresses. The song goes into funk-overdrive at the 2:30 mark when Tony Levin's bass and a bunch of synthesized horns kick in. I swear I heard a clarinet! This is a good lead-in for the album and makes the listener aware that they have entered a twisted dream world. The second track, "Devil's Food," seems to be about slow-cooking an unnamed woman post-poisoning. There is not a lot of substance here, though. The song is really just a snippet that flows into a Vincent Price monologue where he boasts the superiority of spiders, the black widow in particular. Alice himself agrees with Price on this point, stating that we should "pledge allegiance to the black widow." We are then launched into "Black Widow." The continued references to the black widows as a "he" seem to suggest that the dream has morphed our main character into some sort of human-spider evolution. The piano at the end of the track is surprisingly uplifting and almost heroic- echoing the character's warped sense of self. Next up is the vaudeville-styled "Some Folks." Cooper really stretches his vocal prowess here, using a deep baritone, a gravelly growl, and a vocal-strain during the chorus similar to what Kurt Cobain would later use. The guitars of Wagner and Hunter are particularly good in the middle portions of the song. The slow, deliberate guitar solo and the percussive piano are expertly orchestrated to build tension as the frantic climax of the song approaches and quickly resolves. One of the true standout tracks on this album is "Only Women Bleed," a track that Wagner had been working on for years. He and Cooper reworked the lyrics to spotlight the main character's neglected and domestically abused housewife, with lines like "(She's) begging me, 'Please, come watch me bleed.'" We catch a glimpse of the future as the theme from "The Awakening" is played during the track's guitar solo. A snippet of this same theme can also be heard in the album's opening track. Beautiful guitar notes rise to match and intertwine with the closing vocal flourishes, making for a haunting end. As the narrative of the album progresses, the listener can begin to see that the main character's real fear is becoming this aggressively violent version of himself. Next up is the cheeky "Department of Youth." This is one of only two songs that don't seem to progress the album's narrative, and this one really feels like a throwback to the Alice Cooper Band's "Under My Wheels." This is a heavy and fun anthem that features the Summerhill Children's Choir and some fantastic drumwork by Glan. "Cold Ethyl" tells the tale of the main character's love affair with a corpse that he keeps in the refrigerator, presumably that of his wife. Good use is made of the sonic space with instruments hitting the left and right tracks at different trajectories. The track features a lively guitar solo with good use of distortion and perhaps the first ever recording to feature the finger tapping technique. Track eight is the haunting waltz "Years Ago," which features a creepy calliope-like sound and some discordant whistling. The child-like vocals are back and we learn that the main character is named Steven. It is here that we see exactly how broken Steven's psyche has become, with the child and adult personalities struggling for control. This child desperately wants to stay little as the folk melody "This Old Man" fades into the chilling piano arpeggios of "Steven." This track is a highlight. It is by far the most dynamic track on the album, almost feeling like the orchestration meant to accompany a Hammer film. The vibrato-infused guitar during the middle eight has a rich, superb tone. As the song closes, we repeatedly hear the cries of "Steven! Steven!" "What do you want?" Steven shrieks back, having fully snapped at this point. This is what horror rock should sound like! Track ten, "The Awakening." This is the recurring theme that we have been hearing throughout this album. Steven has awoken from his dream to find his hands covered in dripping blood. The song unfolds nicely as we move towards Steven's realization that he has brutally murdered his beloved. As a parting shot, he admits that the despicable act "makes him feel like a man." That's it, story finished. The final track, "Escape" has nothing to do with the concept of the album and instead focuses on Cooper hiding his real self behind his stage persona. This is a fast rocker with some crunchy, funky guitars and a booming drum sound provided by Johnny Badanjek. The bridge features a nice wall-of-sound effect, a'la the Ronettes. A fun track to end on, but maybe it would have been best left for a single B-side or another album where it might mesh better. Verdict: 4/5 stars. The album is interesting, well-produced and unique amongst Cooper's catalog. The input of Ezrin and Wagner are vital to the album's sound and quality. "Department of Youth" and "Escape" are both good tunes, but feel like they don't really belong here. The dark nature of the album can make the music feel a little flat at some points, but "Cold Ethyl," "Only Women Bleed," "Years Ago" and "Steven" are all very dynamic. Overall, this is a true classic and I highly recommend you give it a listen. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Grizzly Adam: Grizz is one of those eccentrics that you read about. The type that people say marches to the beat of their own drum. His hobbies include writing, programming, computers, electronics, telephone systems, pyromania, and lawn care. Grizz's Website: grizz.atwebpages.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- | The Latent Image - with Jon Mullin | | | | This Month: | | When Film isn't Film | ----------------------------------------------------------------------- [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] [] ----------------------------------------------------------------------- We look at film photography as an old technology. If you ask many people in their 30s or 40s, they will probably think the first photographic processes were done on the film we know and love today. In reality, film didn't come about for almost 70 years after the first photograph. Let's have a look at photography before film and see how it evolved. The earliest cameras didn't use any type of film. They were rooms called Camera Obscuras. They used a pinhole in a pitch-dark room to project an image of actual objects and environments onto a wall. An artist could then trace and copy the image. There was no exposing the image for a set amount of time, development process, or fancy settings. It was just a box that projected the world around it (Editor's note: this is the same principle that pinhole projectors work off of, like the ones used to view solar eclipses). A man named Joseph Nicephore Niepce decided to take a camera obscura and use a pewter plate covered in Bitumen (which is light sensitive) and he was able to create an image. The oldest image we have is from 1926, and it used Bitumen's process. He worked with a man named Louis Daguerre, who continued his work after Bitumen's passing. In 1929, Daguerre created the Daguerreotype process. This used a silver coated metal plate that was highly polished covered in the fumes from chemicals like iodine or bromine. After exposing the plate, mercury fumes would be used to develop the plate to create an image. This process was very dangerous, but it was the 1800s and people didn't under- stand the dangers of mercury then. In the 1850s photographers transitioned to a process known as wet plate. They replaced the dangerous mercury with flammable chemicals mixed with collodion silver. This gave faster exposure times, but timing was also a lot more critical, so mistakes were not something you would want to make. You had only minutes to coat your plate, take the photo, and develop it. Missing your timings means you missed the whole shot. There are two common types of plates used, metal and glass. Metal plates are referred to as tintypes. Glass plates are referred to as ambrotypes. I've used the tintype process, and it creates a truly magical image. In the 1870s photographers moved on to a new process created by Richard Maddox: the dry plate. This process used plates just like the wet plate process, but these could be stored long term before exposing, and could continue to be stored until development. Remember my Kodak article from a while back? This is what Kodak used to get their photo business going. Dry plates made photography more accessible to the masses. Gone were having to deal with combusting photographs and volatile chemicals. Now anyone could buy a camera and some plates, send them in to Kodak for developing, and get back a perfect image. If you were feeling really sassy, you could even develop the plate yourself! Now I said when "film isn't film." The reason I said this is we often refer to plate processes as being film, even though all of these use some type of plate. Many of them still need to be developed just like film does, and the process of shooting is like using modern day films. If you ever get the chance to see one, take it while you can. These photos are stunning and have shown that photographs can really stand the test of time. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Jon Mullin: Jon has been photographing professionally since 2008, but has been surrounded all his life by the small and quirky point and shoot Kodaks that his father collected. Now he photographs pets and people in unique and interesting ways. Jon's Website: jonmullin.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- .-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-. | , _ / __ | | /|/ \ _ |) _ _ / () _ ,_ _ ,_ | ! |__// \_|/) |/ /|/|/| / \_/|/| | / \_/ | /|/| |/ / | ! : | \_/ | \/|_/ | | |_/\_/ | |_/ \___/\_/ |/ | |_/|_/ |/ : : ------------------------------------------------------------------ : ! ----- with Yousef ----- ! | ================================================================== | | This Month: The Breeding Mechanic | .-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-. Today we're gonna be talking about breeding Pokemon. Truth be told, I was never huge into the creature-raising mechanics in any creature-collecting series. I didn't like them in Digimon, I certainly wasn't a huge fan of Chao Garden in Sonic Adventure 1, and had a reasonable presumption that I would minimize my interactions with said mechanics during my time in Pokemon Ruby. But playing these games over and over eventually gets you wondering about the stones left unturned. To satisfy my curiosity, I took it upon myself to research this mechanic as much as I possibly could, document my findings, and share with others who may not have found the time to explore this side of the games. Pokemon breeding requires placing a male and female pair of pokemon in the same egg group together in daycare for a period of time. After receiving the egg, the egg will hatch, revealing a new pokemon with the appearance of the mother but with some moves inherited from the father. Pretty simple, right? Well, prepare to have your heart sink, because nothing from this point on will be as straightforward. The idea on its own is simple enough to grasp, but getting it to actually happen is the real headache. Eventually you will figure out that some egg groups breed slower with other groups. You will also find out how tricky it is to nail down a solid moveset to inherit. All this can leave you perplexed as to what good applications are to be found. A good example here is trying to breed a Piplup that knows Hydro Pump in Pokemon Diamond. Piplup, a starter Pokemon, is already difficult to breed because of the 12% chance of spawning the female starter of your choice at the lab. Even trickier is finding a decent water type pokemon who can learn the move, level it up all the way until it learns the move and then finally have it breed with your female Piplup. Don't forget the second pokemon has to be male as well. It also needs to be in the same egg group too in case that slipped your mind. Almost slipped mine while typing this very paragraph! So with this hard work, what's your reward? A good ol' pack of redundancy. Not only would you be carrying an additional water-type on your team, but if it's at a level where it knows hydro pump, there probably isn't any good reason to keep another one. But the real kicker here is that the Piplup line already has Hydro Pump in its learnset, leaving you further bewildered and essentially back to square zero. And sadly no matter how hard you scour through learnset after learnset, the same kind of redundancy keeps popping up. The one rare example is Skarmory being able to learn drill peck exclusively via breeding with a male Fearow. But it's not like drill peck will significantly affect your playthrough or anything. You may as well be drilling your head through a wall by now! Shiny breeding is a common use for breeding. Essentially, shiny pokemon are rare color variations of standard pokemon. To increase your odds of a shiny egg you can use the Masuda method to breed two Pokemon from different regions. Breeding is a standard gameplay mechanic, so it is somewhat odd to only use it as a way to obtain what is essentially a rare skin. I suppose this leaves me with my final hypothesis. Breeding seems to be more geared towards slower playthroughs, post-game content, or for people with a huge sense of curiosity. It does feel good to start your Pokemon Black play- through with a piplup that already knows hydro pump and won't disobey your commands because you lack the proper badges. I still wouldn't consider myself a breeding guy (editor's note: That's what she said), but after all this I can see why people find the aspect so intriguing. Breeding pokemon does serve practical purposes if you're creative about it, but I would still recommend Digimon: Next Order or even the Chao Garden in Sonic Adventure games for more robust and satisfying creature-raising mechanics. That said, I hope you enjoyed today's article. It was a little dense on details but stay tuned for the next article where I will (hopefully) tackle something that's less of a headache. Happy hunting, or err, raising. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Yousef: Yousef is an avid game completionist, languages nerd, and an all-around cuisine-nut. He is passionate about cooking, traveling, languages, and learning about other cultures. ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ,---. ,---. / /"`.\.--"""--./,'"\ \ \ \ _ _ / / `./ / __ __ \ \,' / /_O)_(_O\ \ | .-' ___ `-. | .--| \_/ |--. ,' \ \ | / / `. / `. `--^--' ,' \ .-"""""-. `--.___.--' .-"""""-. .-----/ \------------------/ \--------. | .---\ /----------------- \ /------. | | | `-`--`--' `--'--'-' | | | | Retro Living in a Modern World | | | | | | | | with Grizzly Adam | | | | | | | | This Installment: Come Dream With Me Tonight | | | |_________________________________________________| | |_____________________________________________________| As a child of the 1980s, the animated story-telling bear Teddy Ruxpin was perpetually at the top of my wishlist. I felt excitement at the thought of being entertained by my new robotic friend and all the adventures we would go on together. Alas, I never did get to go on any such adventures. I believe that the price point was a bit too high for my parents to afford at that point. Fast-forward to this past Chanukah when my spouse would make my childhood dream come true, giving me the original Worlds of Wonder Teddy Ruxpin I have wanted for so long. But, there was one small hiccup- Teddy was "untested," which is eBay speak for broken. For those not in the know, Teddy Ruxpin was released in 1985 by Worlds of Wonder as an animatronic storytelling bear. Cassette tapes were produced with Teddy's audio story on one track and the animation signals on the other. The story track plays over Teddy's internal speaker, while the animation track is decoded and used to control servo motors hidden. It's these servos that bring the bear to life. As BlueMSX pointed out, this is actually quite similar to the audio animatronics used for the Rock-afire Explosion. A single audio track would be decoded into multiple signals, allowing instruction to be sent to each servo independently (see BlueMSX's "Bushnell, Baer, Brock and Fechter: Pioneers of Entertainment" article in issue #3). I was surprised to find that although the entire catalog of stories is available online, not all of the animation tracks are. In fact, I had ordered a lot of eight story tapes and two of the tapes I received did not seem to be backed up online. This led to me purchasing a relatively high end tape deck and USB soundcard for my laptop to make my own MP3 backups, which I then shared with the Teddy Ruxpin community online. I have since been purchasing the missing tapes on eBay, creating backups, and reselling them. At this point, we are down to only one missing story and an additional few that are of poor quality. One story that I was really excited about was "Fire Safety with Teddy Ruxpin." Not finding it available online, I ordered that tape from eBay and converted it to MP3. While listening to the quality of the recording, my spouse quipped, "Learning fire safety from an animatronic bear might be the most GenX thing I have even seen." While first experimenting with creating backup tapes I found that most of the Worlds of Wonder Teddy Ruxpins have a copy protection circuit that disables the animation track if a backup tape is used (this was true of all but the first generation bears). Each story tape has two notches on the top edge of the tape, in addition to the ones found on standard cassettes to prevent accidentally recording over to contents. Inside the tape deck on a spring-loaded carriage is a nub meant to slip into one of the tape notches. If no notch is present, the carriage does not engage and neither does the animation track. Worlds of Wonder claimed that this switch was to keep the tape deck from running when no cassette was inserted. While this is technically true, a simple change in implementation where the switch felt for the spline of a tape instead of a notch could have done the same thing if that is what they were truly after. After realizing the sheer amount of stories published, I decided that instead of making each story its own individual tape I would instead put as many stories onto a single tape as possible. Most of the stories were in the 13-17 minute range, so with a bit of planning I was able to get six stories on each 45 minute tape. I would then record the longer side first, splice out any remaining blank tape, and then record the other side. I also custom printed some labels from the tapes that mimicked the design of the original official tape labels. After a bit of research, I determined that the main issue of my particular bear stemmed from the cassette deck's playback head being ill-aligned. I prepared my patient and scrubbed up for surgery. Once inside, I found that the adjustment screw and associated spring were both completely missing. While inside, I also chose to bypass the aforementioned copy-protection switch, so I could play my backup tapes without having to notch them. After the successful transplant and a brief recovery period, Teddy was up and talking, and even telling stories! Teddy and I have gone on many exciting adventures since that day and I couldn't be happier with how things turned out. Until next month, stay retro! ------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Grizzly Adam: Grizz is one of those eccentrics that you read about. The type that people say marches to the beat of their own drum. His hobbies include writing, programming, computers, electronics, telephone systems, pyromania, and lawn care. Grizz's Website: grizz.atwebpages.com ------------------------------------------------------------------------- ,------------------. ( Our Readers' ) > Retro < ( Memories ) `-----------(_)----' 0 o .-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-. Our own Grizzly Adam writes: This time of year always reminds me of flying kites. Summer vacations meant a lot of time spent in the abandoned lot on our block, which was a popular meeting ground and play area for us kids. Kites would often hit the stores by late March and I would always end up with at least one by my birthday. I would always save any of the high quality string I would get and would tie that on in addition to any that came with the kite. The higher you could get the kite, the more stable it would be. Once high enough, tricks like figure eights, giant circles, and dive-bombs became easy to execute and recover from. 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LEFT ============================ INTENTIONALLY || Call Nukem Alarms today! || BLANK || 555-1991 || ============================ ----------------------------(\/) (;,,;) (\/)----------------------------- (((_.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._.-=-._))) ))~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~(( (( > < )) )) EDITOR: Grizzly Adam (( (( > ASSISTANT EDITOR: Jon Mullin < )) )) ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Plendiful (( (( > PUBLISHER: Grizzly Adam < )) )) ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER: Joe Collett (( (( > < )) )) WRITERS (( (( > --------- < )) )) Grizzly Adam (( (( > Joe Collett < )) )) BlueMSX (( (( > Jon Mullin < )) )) Yousef (( (( > < )) )) http://dosanddonts.mywebcommunity.org (( (( > http://www.youtube.com/@DOSandDontsNewsletter < )) ))...............................................................(( (( > SHARE ME! 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