Things I found interesting, that you didn't mention: • at 5:53 you can see that the top film is also the polarizer for the LCD • around 17:46 there is the (old) NEC logo on the back of the board

Top tip for peeling off films without tearing - roll it round a cylindrical object ( pen etc.), so pull is even across the width, avoiding stress points that initiate a tear

@profpylons

6 жыл бұрын

mikeselectricstuff How about putting the chip in your x-ray machine?

I couldn't stop seeing that main chip as just a 2D printout of a photo of a normal chip.

@EEVblog

6 жыл бұрын

Yeah, looked totally weird.

@jonathancook4022

6 жыл бұрын

It would be considered remarkable even today, But back in 1983, people must have assumed that Casio employed witches!

@johnfrancisdoe1563

6 жыл бұрын

No One In Particular At 1983 tech, that's actual chip layers. Dave probably scraped off part of the uppermost metal layer of the chip.

@RemcoStoutjesdijk

6 жыл бұрын

This IS a normal chip. Casio have shaved it down just right down to the lead frame.

@Knight_Astolfo

6 жыл бұрын

yeah, it's really messing with me Dx xD

I am really looking forward to the reassembly video

@bhoot1702

11 ай бұрын

Aah haa

I remember a visit to the Hannover Messe (Germany) with my dad, where CASIO showed all the layers of the SL-800 in a showcase. Back then it looks like SciFi to me. I was very impressed!

I also can't help feeling sorry for that calculator. It lived a faithful life, always willing to calculate, for about 35 years... until it met a certain Aussie. At-least you made it's autopsy worth it, honestly worth seeing it. :) But lets just hope we can forget you cut it open while still functioning. Maybe next time, cover the solar-cell. Like using a blindfold. ;)

@johnfrancisdoe1563

6 жыл бұрын

Gert Nutterts Vivisection, not autopsy. Test subject was alive during the procedure.

@AureliusR

2 жыл бұрын

Dave doesn't give a toss. He's just completely out of touch with his original audience. The KZread algorithm is all he cares about.

@KG5IF

Жыл бұрын

Me too, felt bad for the old calc... Wonder how many more years it would have remained operational.

The buttons may not be dome "clickers" but resistive pads that sit on the conductor fingers. Changes in resistance will occur with pressure is applied to the carbon. Dave, great video! Thanks.

@what-uc

6 жыл бұрын

Of course, like Edison's carbon microphone

Just one of them moments when you feel like crying but find you are overcome with utter excitement all at the same time. Utterly awesome :)

@EEVblog

6 жыл бұрын

Indeed

Damn, these things working go for well over 100 bucks. That teardown was great. I can't imagine it would be possible to make anything thinner even today.

"I had to find out" - the curse of the engineer!

At 00:54 he say that it is a four function calculator. It has obviously square root function and memory. It is a part of calculator war between Sharp and Casio during 70's and early 80's for the thinnest calculator. At the end Casio won. Check a video about this war in KZread with the name: Japanology Calculator.

do you remember clear calculators that could sit ontop of a overhead projector?

@Sparks52

4 жыл бұрын

They're still being made - but my question would be who's buying them as the overhead projector is a long dead and buried conference room device - replaced by digital projectors years ago.

Bought one in 1982. Dark blue with pink stripes. A couple of judiciously placed pinholes to assure contact in certain places on the keyboard were the only giveaways to construction. Carried it in my business card case for two decades before it finally wore out from daily use! Couldn't throw it away even then, still in a drawer somewhere. Cheap and good! Great job, Casio!!!

The square-root would make it a 5-banger I suppose, or a 6-banger if you count the percentage function.

@qwertykeyboard5901

5 жыл бұрын

dont forget the extra functions under */- like 6*= is 1/6

Thanks for tearing that down Dave, I know you didn't want to, but that was pretty damn neat!

I can't keep on watching you murdering this poor and unique calculator. It's like you slaughtering the last living Dodo!

@DanHaiduc

5 жыл бұрын

Entropy gets us all anyway. My old high school chemistry professor had a saying: "Smile. Tomorrow it will be worse." No point fighting it; instead, make use of and enjoy what time you have on this world!

The µWatch and the µCalc were THE original projects that brought me here. I never even knew about the KZread channel, only the forum. I discovered the KZread channel independently of the forum in 2012 when KZread recommended your teardown of the world's most expensive hard drive (#395). I'd LOVE to see the µWatch and µCalc resurrected. Wish I could get the boards, the chips, the bits, and throw them together!

Just truly love all of your videos and banter. I have zero electronics background, but I’m already planning a basic lab to dive in and repair and attempt some simple projects. Thank you for all of the crazy informative interviews.

Impressive for 1983! Thank you for taking apart and sharing!

Really amazing technology and engineering for one quarter of a century ago. Also, very impressive teardown skills, Dave. You have the steady hands of a neurosurgeon!

1983 guys. These engineers were probably ancient aliens, how could they ever produce that.

@EEVblog

6 жыл бұрын

Yep, I'll go with ancient alien tech.

@gustavrsh

6 жыл бұрын

This is incredible even for today's standards

@AstralS7orm

6 жыл бұрын

Come on, nowadays you can have a calculator, smartcard running Javacard with a cryptographic engine, 4 banger buttons, RF receiver, display, all in a credit card. With some flash to spare for applications. Just look up OTP cards. Granted, I haven't yet seen one with a solar panel and more buttons together, but it's definitely not out of question. (Internally, most of them are 8-bit AVRs...)

@joshuarosen6242

6 жыл бұрын

AstralStorm Whoosh. That's the sound of the joke going waaay over your head.

@pentachronic

6 жыл бұрын

I have to admit Japanese engineering is incredible when it comes to micro machines and small scale stuff. The whole bond-out to leadframe and SMT technology that they did in the early 80’s is still spectacular.

Great teardown of an awesomely engineered price of hardware many took for granted. Thumbs up

Amazing tear down Dave. Thx

Hi Dave, have you heard of Robert Baruch? He is doing some brilliant work removing dies from chips, archiving high res digital photos of them and then reverse engineering the circuitry. It's very impressive. Seeing that die circuitry just reminded me of it. Worth a look for anyone into that sort of thing :-)

Every time I see a chip under magnification I'm amazed that we can both create that level of detail and see it magnified to viewable level.

I agree with you. Casio used to build some of the most incredible, best looking, best designs and very reliable calculators ever built. I became nuts for calculators as a young boy because of CASIO. THANKS! Great video.

i don't get why these are not produced anymore today. As a kid i had a "creditcard" sized solar calculator but it was a bit thicker. Still thin enough though and it came with a nice metal back to keep it stable and also had a name-stripe where you could write your name on it. Sadly the ones you get nowdays are all plastic and feel very very cheap and i would not trust them to survive everyday carrying in your wallet. This Casio Model would sell like crazy today and would be great as practical giveaway. These things still feel super futuristic.

Wow! That's a truly impressive piece of tech from the early 1980s. Thanks for the video!

Your videos are always fun and nice to watch

back in 90' after soviet union collapse, having credit card form factor calculator meant you were instanty one of coolest guys in school. I wanted it so bad back then.. now I even want to get one. Better later than never :p

this video is nuts, your content is fantastic!

Casio are the best at calculators, I loved their VFD ones, they were so vivid in any ambient light, and seemed to do every calculation, even fractions and Degrees Minute and Second conversion.

At 24:55 under the memory array you can see NE what might also be C

@thejavaman53

6 жыл бұрын

Gaming With Kendirk but looks more like R or P

@movax20h

6 жыл бұрын

Indeed it looks to be NEC. Manufactured or designed by NEC.

Very cool to see that chip! Great video.

Loved all what I see here. Just is amazed with the great engineering. Well done, #Casio.

While tearing down I felt like my life was going away :(

@luloian

6 жыл бұрын

dave, my mind ins going away.....dave stop doing that. daaaave.... lets sing a song.... daaasy daaasy give me an answer too.. im half crazy.......

@EDGARDOUX1701

6 жыл бұрын

LOL !!!!!!!

@Bodragon

6 жыл бұрын

"...give me an answer, do" , not "...too"

@AttilaAsztalos

6 жыл бұрын

Stopped watching as soon as I heard "teardown". No. Just, no.

@GRBtutorials

6 жыл бұрын

Dave is the only person in the world mad enough to tear it down!

Dave, great job as always, I really enjoyed the teardown. Years ago I integrated a basic parallel-plate capacitor into one of my PCB designs at work as an experiment, I think it measured out around 60pf with 8 mils of FR4 between the plates, which was relatively close to the value that I had calculated.

@goamarty

6 жыл бұрын

Long time ago I asked a colleague at the university who worked in a PCB factory if he could make me a PCB capacitor: 10 layers, square, 12cm edge length and a little more than 8mm thick (the maximum he could do) for high voltage experiments. The thing has about 5nF and is good for >25kV. It is probably the thickest PCB he ever made.

AND IT WAS MADE 35 YEARS AGO! HOLY COW. Really quite remarkable.

Was curious though about what is inside of such thin calculator. Thanks about demonstration :) Got this calculator in mid-eighties as gift from distant relatives living at other side of globe. Used it in school for two years then sold it.

I saw the thumbnail and thought to myself "that looks so familiar... I bet I have one of these someplace" and now I see the date they were made and it makes total sense. 1983 is my birth year. Of course one floated through my childhood and got stuck in my memory. :) Cool nostalgia item.

Fantastic engineering thanks for letting us see that. The custom capacitors were just cool

Thank you for this.

Thanks for sharing 😀👍

That is the most beautiful thing I've seen.

This video really is a teardown. I'm not disappointed.

I used to have several of these. Back when I was in high school, it was always in my notebook. I also had one in my Dungeons & Dragons notebook. They were cheap, easy to carry and they came in handy.

@LemonRush7777

6 жыл бұрын

BlackburnBigdragon They are worth a lot now. Sell them.

@BlackburnBigdragon

6 жыл бұрын

Oh, I no longer have them any more. They either long ago broke and got thrown in the trash or lost to the ages. Haha! They were cheap. It's so funny how this cheap, crap, thing that was pretty much everywhere back then (all my friends had these things because they were cheap.), and now they're worth $$$$.

Dave: Genius at tracing out circuits & identifying components Also Dave: Takes 5 minutes to realize the carbon pads are slightly lifted off the contacts xD

A fast way to get into it's innerds is thinners will dissolve the casing and give you access to the inside.

the calculator may be rare, but the teardown is one of a kind!! thanks Dave!

Very cool. Sometime around 1981, I bought a Casio calculator watch that had small tactile aluminum buttons and full scientific capabilities. It had everything including x^y, trig functions - you name it. The extra functions were accessed through shift combinations, and there were so many built into the chip that I kept finding hidden ones. I’m pretty sure it’s still around here, somewhere. Now I’m motivated to find it...

@grumich4084

6 жыл бұрын

NJ, I have one that sounds similar to a small, folding calc I bought in the early 80's. The thing did EVERYTHING and folded it was about two credit cards thick and (I believe) smaller in footprint than a CC. I still have it ... "somewhere." I gotta dig it out now ... :)

@AdamTheAd-vanc3d

6 жыл бұрын

Grumich I remember them. There was a black plastic type . A gold and, a silver one . Lovely watches , think i may have to treat myself to one again.

@AdamTheAd-vanc3d

6 жыл бұрын

Btw can you remember if there was a version that displayed the diffrent world time zones ?

@grumich4084

6 жыл бұрын

Ah pal, you wanna buy the "HP01" watch, in gold, of course. It was HP's only foray into making a watch and it was pretty darn cool. At the time I wanted to get one, but couldn't dig up the coin. Later, when I graduated from college and joined HP I worked with a guy who had one. Along with telling the time, it also was a calculator and a whole lotta things more. I found some on eBay, but haven't taken the dive.

@InfernosReaper

6 жыл бұрын

I feel kinda sad because my casio is just a watch with janky memo function and international clock.

This is 1984 technology. Japanese precision manufacturing is amazing. Great tear-down. Imagine if Casio were to build a 2 mm thick flexible smart phone today !

Can't wait for the "repair" video. :)

I enjoyed this video. This casio will stay much longer in internet than it would on its own.

Wow! That's an incredible calculator. I really wonder what we could do today with the same sort of size -- achieving something like this back than is truly insane.

In good old "Haynes manual" tradition, reassembly is a reversal of dismantling.

Casio also makes the best electronic dictionaries. I wanted to work there when I lived in Japan but I heard the corporate culture could be pretty strenuous.

that gunk isn't transparent on top and black elsewhere, it is slightly translucent and just due to thickness appears blacker, which can be seen quite good where the frame vanishes into it.

I had one of these when I was a kid and loads of the casino calculator watches that I wore all the way up my arm :D

This is one of your best! I'm fascinated by the backside of the flex PCB, as it looks like you partially uncovered some writing - Looks a lot like an NEC logo and something else. Outsourcing? I looked but didn't see a direct relationship between NEC and Casio. Could you remove more of the black material to see?

@karlStuefer

6 жыл бұрын

24:55 also has some "NEC" written on the chip

@sloth0jr

6 жыл бұрын

Good eyes!

@kashiokyoiku9981

6 жыл бұрын

Casio would almost always use NEC or Hitachi microcontrollers on their products, as they never had their own chip fabrication plant. (usually on the most innovative products NEC would manufacture the custom chips). Casio did have their own thin-film /PCB on film plant however so these products were perhaps just to show off what they could do. Most Japanese businesses have long term "alliances" with suppliers and contractors...the last thing they did was a mobile phone joint venture between NEC, Hitachi and Casio before everyone sold off the chip manufacturing divisions.

+EEVblog *hey dave, got a tip that might help with your windows 10 issues.* don't know if you'll ever read this, but here goes. *1)* go to device manager. *2)* go to to "universal serial bus controllers" *3)* see if you can spot your "high speed usb 3 card". if not just do the following steps to all usb 3 devices. *4)* you must make sure the usb device is selected for the next step. *5)* go to "view" and select "view device by connection". *6)* you should now see a tree showing a "USB 3 root hub". right click and uninstall it. if prompted to remove drivers for disk select 'yes'. *7)* reboot, and this should fix the issue. if you actually did this and it work, i would be chuffed!! good luck.

you should finish that calculator Dave if only for completeness, i would buy one. if you made them or got them made cheap enough you could print the back of the calculator as your business card, that would be cool.

@londospark7813

6 жыл бұрын

I'd love one too Dave - please please please finish the uCalc off!

@Darieee

6 жыл бұрын

I sure would love one too

@balaclava351

6 жыл бұрын

Based on what he said I think he did finish and even sell them. Just not any more .

@Darieee

6 жыл бұрын

Nah, he said that about the calculator watch

@sirtoby2727

6 жыл бұрын

C'mon Dave, I'd love to have one uCalc. Or two. Or more PLEEEEEAAAASSSSE

at 21:00 the green film appears to be what we used when screen printing circuit boards, it is a dielectric ink that would insulate different layers of silver doped conductive inks creating a multi layered circuit entirely of inks. The black layer would probably be a carbon based ink. In a past life, I designed interfaces for membrane switches using printed circuits and formed metal domes

I had to go buy one on ebay while I was watching! Very cool!!!

totally cool. i remember having one of these...

At 26:30, I don't think what you're seeing is different layers on the chip. You're seeing the structures at different focal points because some were under the coating and some weren't. The transparent coating blobs create different focal points like magnifiying lenses.

I am currently studying the field of microelectronics at VUT Brno and this video made me feel i have made good decision to come here.

My nephew works for a major credit card company. a few years ago, he showed me a prototype for a new credit card. it was a fully functional calculator With a credit card chip built into it. And it may have had a few other bells and whistles built in. He wouldn't talk much about it. But it was an amazing piece of engineering. And yes you could put it in your wallet. We have the technology, we can build it, but do people really need it ?. Especially since it's built into your smart phone. Joe.

@johnfrancisdoe1563

6 жыл бұрын

Joe A A few years back another company made a fully functional credit card that had keypad for pin entry, LCD and battery. It also had electromagnets in the magstripe so it could dynamically change the content, thus allowing a chip based card design to work securely with existing magstripe payment terminals. They were hoping to sell millions to credit card companies, but the banks instead forced shops to upgrade to true chip terminals,while retaining the insecure magstripe for backward compatibility. I wonder if it's still possible to extract the pin from the magstripe for offline payments or if they at least blanked out that.

good work eev

Awesome little calculator.

I had a bunch of these and the SL-750 as a kid. They were great but the darn solar cell often cracked. It usually still worked with one crack, depending where it was, but it always got worse. Sometimes the LCD displays would go leaky as well. That said, I had a heap of them because they were just cool. It would break, and you'd just buy another one. Perfect business model.

Can't believe this was engineered in 1983. Amazing.

From what I’ve found heat does work much better when separating adhesive layers, as you suggested, especially if you want to get them apart intact. Of course that makes it harder to handle. I think you “got her done” though! Interesting. I saw a broken one on eBay for >$100.

@EEVblog

6 жыл бұрын

I would have used the heat if I wasn't making progress.

@timthompson468

6 жыл бұрын

EEVblog Yeah, I didn’t mean to sound critical. I was just affirming your comment about applying heat in the video. That was mainly for anyone who wasn’t aware how much easier it things come apart with a little heat. I got one of those 858D hot air stations after I saw your demo, and I use it for that, in addition to SMT soldering. I work in high voltage, and sometimes have to do failure analysis on potted modules. It’s amazing how a rock hard epoxy will just flake away like soft clay after the application of heat. The 858D is great for that. In a previous job, I had to remove safety labels when reworking old weather equipment. The labels were sunbaked for years, so they’d just flake off in tiny pieces when I tried to scrape them off, but hitting them with a heat gun, the adhesive would soften up, and they’d peal right off. Great trick.

Haha, I remember having one of those. Had another, Casio I think, that was slightly thicker - but the keypad was transparent.

Thanks

Dave, you could've shown more of the back side of the board in the video. _Please upload hi-res photos of the board at least._ I'm curious what is there behind "capacitor" things, and what's with the way they connected to steel sheet(s).

Reminds me of the Radio Shack EC-4016 I had at one time. I loved that calculator, it was super thin and light powered. I don't remember the Casio number for the original...oh, yeah, the Casio FX-995. Like the Film Card but the width and height of a regular pocket calculator. Same thinness, though.

I have a Film Card SL-760 from about that time. 3.1mm thick (about 4 credit cards). Was a promo item for Maxell Corp. of America.

My dad had that Casio calculator-watch for the longest time... that thing was amazing, but the buttons were way too small to be realistically usable with a finger. Even as a kid I couldn't use it with my fingers.

It's funny, yesterday I measured the thickness of my (rfid) credit card and it is actually thicker that this calculator: from 1mm and up to 1.35mm on the chip

Brings back memories.

For 1983 that's pretty impressive.

Don't knock the HP calculators. That said, I can certainly appreciate the engineering that went into this super thin Casio calculator.

Aaaah I remember that calculator, my Dad always had unusual calculators hanging around his wine shop.

That chip looks quite 3D, very remarkable.

Those button pads look like force sensing resistors, which are quite cheap. I imagine the bottom pads don't actually need to sit above the pad but rather the pads are just for overall feel and to more equally distribute the force of your finger to not warp/damage the pad overtime which will cause the button to fail on. There's probably a threshold resistance that triggers a 'touch' of the button. A lot of digital scales use the same thing. www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/adafruit-industries-llc/166/1528-2335-ND/7393589

Impressive! I also remember to disass a card with steel layer ...

I´m still traumatized from watching this poor little calculator dying. I clearly remember seeing them arranged in an electronics shop back in that days. When I saw them I could not believe that they can work with that skinny form factor. I can not really remember the pricetag, but they were not displayed in the department for cheap things, but prominently placed in the premium section. Rather than acquiring one of them I was more in for getting my first radio tape recorder, which I still have in working condition after all that decades.

I have my vintage CASIO calculator, with boxing game included ‘80. It works. Pre-Atari / ARM

for science! thanks Dave :)

The initial part you removed also had the polarizing filter for the LCD.

I once took one of these apart when I was a child. Not very scientifically done though with a pair of nail scissors and tweezers. Obviously I couldn't see much but the things were almost magical in how slight and thin they were.

How exciting! I havn't finished watching yet, but might the buttons work like carbon mics - in that pressure would reduce the resistance?

Very interesting design. Everything about it was very 1980s. Like this was the pinnacle of engineering for its day.

at 12:28 it appears that the screen printed ink has de-laminated from the front film carrier and is stuck to the pressure sensitive adhesive used to stick it all together.

Apple: *furiously taking notes*

I can't believe they had LCD screens that thin in the early eighties. That's impressive how that was engineered.

The green stuff on the back of the upper metal film is probably an insulation to keep the IC contacts from shorting.

great show good tear down very clever back in the day , I have a unbranded similar card type but mine is 2.5mm thick not as thin as your model

31:11 Your money not mine ... as long as this video is preserved ... I count it as preserving this type of calculator

Great vid