Hi I'm Jan. I tinker with electronics and enjoy vintage tech, mostly computers and consoles from the 80s and 90s. I also love to tinker with elderly hifi equipment and musical instruments from time to time.
I'm not responsible for anything you do to your electronics and/or yourself. Do all repairs at your own risk! I'm not a professional at all.
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An entertaining video, as always.
I love you Jan Beta! Thank you another great video!
I believe you're missing a space in the label on your monitor. POKE 53281,0 It's been a long time, but from memory, the keyword has to be space separated 🙂
The BASIC that Commodore used in their machines doesn’t require spaces. In fact, adding spaces even slowed down the interpretation of the code a bit. Which lead to people (including myself) writing code that was pretty difficult to read at times. 😅
@@JanBeta wow, all those years coding the commodore and I never knew that! I never did use the instruction abbreviations either.
lovely buttons and as you mention, no CBM is no more , after all they stuff they did from then until they went under- sad
Thanks for this video. I was wondering do they still work today? Just curious 🤷🏻♂️
Yup, they are still working fine and are more or less in daily use. :)
@@JanBeta ok cool so it really worked. I was thinking it maybe was just for short period. Last Saturday I found a pair of these in a second hand shop for just 10 euro. When I connected them to my stereo at first it sound good but the day after when I turned on the volume higher the foam was completely damaged making this prrr prrr noise 😅. Then I found this video, ordered some new foam rings. Yesterday evening they arrived, watched this video again and just tried it. Still drying now i wanted to wait for 24 Hours before I put them together and reconnect them. Will know tonight if it worked. But I only did just one to see how much work it really is. If its all good i'll change the foam on the other speaker too. If not I just buy 2 new woofers but last time I checked Yesterday it looks good so 🤞🏻🤞🏻🤞🏻 fingersss crossed. I know this ain't a real "tutorial" but it sure helped me a lot so thanks man 🙏🏻
Nice. I have a SR4148R. Very similar to yours, but i have extra buttons instead of needing an F key to access those functions. Mine is in good condition but keys have UV yellowing. I dont fancy taking it apart again to Retrobright. Your keys look very fresh.
Great video,i have the nad 3020i its running with no problems at all & sounds great,it has been serviced but not recapped. The guy who serviced it said there was no need to recap it,i just took his word for it. Your like share & subscribe sign really works.I nearly forgot to like already subbed.Im a new subscriber loving your channel.
11:45 Another method of removing a stripped screw is to take some needle nose pliers, grip it around the screwhead, and torque it. It sometimes works, sometimes not, dremeling a flathead like you did is also a good way to do that.
My walk down memory lane takes me back 50 years..to I think 1974..might possibly be late '73..my first pocket calculator the Commodore 776M..similar to your black one but in beige..I was an office lad about 17 years old and needed to share the desktop mains one with the lady several times a week..desk calculators cost a fortune then..way out of my price range..but then these were introduced about 1973..9volt battery pocket model..i saw in Selfridge's London west end only a few hundred yards away from the offices..and affordable £9.95 or 9.99 a tenner basically..it was very useful at work for a while..less competing for time on the desktop one..still needed that for printouts but most of my job was double checking for errors so the pocket one was ok for that..i still had mine in the 80's but i guess it got replaced and i didn't care where it went..pity
Very nice Commodore calculator :) Love that glowing red display, looks so futuristic. My dad had some calculator in the 70's - early 80's which had green glowing numbers, that too was quite fascinating as a kid :)
wo bekommst du das grosse sortiment an panasonic eklos her?
Die meisten Werte gibt es bei Reichelt, für die etwas seltsameren habe ich einen verlässlichen eBay-Store gefunden, der heißt "diyaudio4you" oder so ähnlich.
@@JanBeta und welche sind besser, die dunkle blauen, schwarze, oder graue?
@elektroolli5984 Kommt darauf an, wofür du sie benutzt. Für Audiokram sind die FC und FM Serie (die blauen, die ich hier benutze sind FC). Die anderen Serien haben häufig „low ESR“ und sind eher für modernere Schaltnetzteile etc geeignet. Im Zweifelsfall die Datenblätter lesen und mit den original verbauten vergleichen.
"Gription" "Hero side" Someone's been watching Adam Savage videos :p
Indeed. :D
We call that "leather" PLEATHER...as in (plastic)leather.
Makes sense! :D
Hey man. I discovered your channel not long ago, and now I am hooked on it. I grew up with Commodore computers (I still own an A500, and I've also owned a 2000 and a C64.) I'm really enjoying your content. Keep up the good work!
Hey, thanks! I focus on Commodore because that's what I grew up with, too. (C64s and Amigas, not so much their calculators). :)
2:06 hee-hee
I couldn't resist commenting on that... :D
It's interesting that Commodore, which was still a Canadian company in 1975, would use US Bicentennial marketing (Minuteman '76) on a calculator sold in Europe and manufactured in the UK.
Very international! I guess they were aiming high even at that point.
I hope you go into the math chip a bit and see what kind of accuracy you get out of it
😅 but, but, but why didn't you investigate the shrink wrapped dongle? What was it? Don't just ignore it! We need to know
I still don't know for sure (and I didn't want to rip it apart to not destroy it). Somebody commented that it was a voltage doubler circuit because the original battery didn't provide enough voltage for the calculator. Which totally makes sense. They probably added the little thing to the rechargeable models and left it out of the "disposable battery" ones.
Loving those retro hand-drawn PCBs.
Yes! They are absolutely magnificent. :)
A beautiful little scientific calc fully loaded with all the needed maths! The scratch on the display at center it is caused by the pouch itself from the push button of the lid. Sadly a mistake in the design of the protective case otherwise this thing seems that it was made to be used and last the usage, cheers from Greece!
That makes sense! I didn't realize that the scratch exactly matches the position of the pouch button. I might just add a little padding to the backside of that to prevent more scratches!
Recently I found TWO identical Commodores, branded Privileg SR80D-NC. Very similar to this one (and with the same CPU), but VFD instead of LED. One required VFD replacement (by a Soviet tube from Electronica MK-61).
Nice! I read somewhere that these were sold by different brands internationally. The VFD displays were marketed as the "green line" if I remember correctly. Very cutting edge technology at the time!
@@JanBeta Yep, "green line". But they did not put this name on their scientific devices.
Can you then use the Amiga RGB Out simultanously with the RGBtoHDMI to use two monitors on one machine?
Yes, the regular analog RGB out from the Amiga still works with the RGBtoHDMI installed. The little board just uses the digital signals provided by the Denise additionally. :)
@@JanBeta Thanks! That's cool!
Excellent Commodore Calcolator restoration! I Wanna one. What the model is it? 😊
This one is the SR-6140R. They had many other similar ones in the lineup, some with even more functions. :)
@@JanBeta thanks a lot!
Bubble Display. Ebenfalls, aber in grün. Und nicht von Commodore, sondern MBO. Wissenschaftlicher Taschenrechner, aber nur ein Speicherplatz, kein Punkt vor Strich, nur zwei Klammern möglich, Aber sonst... ebenfalls bunte, gefederte Einzeltasten, viel Plastik, aber die Oberseite hat das Tastenfeld in gebürstetem Aluminium eingefangen. Ein toller Rechner. Die 8 Zahlen bauen nicht von rechts auf, sondern von links. Man muss sich eben im Vorfeld Gedanken machen, wie man eine Rechnung angeht aufgrund der oben genannten Unzulänglichkeiten. Ach ja... 10 durch 3 mal 3 ergibt, natürlich, 9.9999999. 😅 Aber das Ding sollte ebenfalls frühe 70er sein. Erbstück meines Vaters. Halte ich absolut in Ehren.
Schön! Die grünen Displays waren VFDs, soviel ich weiß. Commodore hat die damals als "green line" verkauft. Das war zu der Zeit sehr "High End", glaube ich. :) Klingt ungewohnt, dass sich die Zahlen von der anderen Seite aufbauen, aber vermutlich gibt es aus der Zeit einiges an aus heutiger Sicht etwas seltsam wirkenden Geräten, bis sich da auf eine einheitliche Bedienung geeinigt wurde. :D
Another great video, and this time with my favourite era of calculator/ calculator display. The calculator uses a 14 digit display to display a 10 digit mantissa and 2 digit exponent, with the digit preceding the mantissa and exponent used to display the sign of each. Hoping to see more calculators in the future, and important part of the computer story. Also interesting from a manufacturing perspective to see how costs were cut over time.
Looks like the scratch in the display is from the press-stud of the case.
Yes! That makes sense! I might just add a bit of padding to prevent further scratches. Thanks for pointing that out. :)
I thought you were going to remove the electrical tape to see what was in that little pack.
I didn't want to destroy it. A commenter pointed out that it was probably a voltage doubler circuit or a step up converter to make up for the lack of voltage from the original rechargeable battery. Makes sense. They probably added the little pack to the rechargeable version and left it out for the "disposable battery" version.
Well done Jan. Great work. I couldn't help but notice (:)) that there is just a tiny bit of silver showing on the top front label. A tiny dab with some black enamel nail polish on the tip of a toothpick will cover that. Also could it be the inside of the press stud on the cover is what is burring the display?
Thanks! I didn't notice the little spot until you mentioned it. I'm going to try to fix it up. I think you are right about the stud causing the scratches. I am going to put some padding on the inside of the pouch I guess. :)
you are the operator with your pocket calculator...
I still remember in 75, we went to the shopping mall and saw "small" Texas Instrument calculators for the first time. People were crowded around the counter top where they were "mounted down" to prevent theft. It was incredible to see something like this do math so easily, and people were amazed. Luckily when I did tech school it was in an era when calculators were around, and I can't imagine going through it without one.
Nice! Thanks for sharing! I am slightly too young to have witnessed the revolution that these portable calculators must have been but I imagine they were a real game changer at the time. I used bland LCD models during my "career" at school and uni in the late 80's and 90's. Would have been a whole different experience without them being available (and really inexpensive by then) when I got to that point in my life. :)
Calculators can be problematic with some mathematics, all thanks to BODMAS, modern calculators 9aprticularly the apps on phones) calculate using BODMAS, but traditional ones, such as this, do not, and they can produce different answers due to the way they process the numbers entered, it confuses me, but there's smarter people out there who know how it all works!!! :P
If you look at 2:29, you will see a manual page that describes an error that this calculator had. For some arguments in trigonometric functions it wouldn't display an output and you had to circumvent it. On the bottom of the page to the right of it, I noted where it still worked and where it didn't.
The dangling thing with black shrink wrap is a step-up voltage converter. The rechargeable model was powered by 3 half-length NiCd cells in series, and the voltage from them was not enough for the calculator. The cells were configured physically as 2 + 1, with the step-up circuit in line with the single cell. The step-up circuit doubles the voltage by creating a negative voltage equal to the battery voltage. Red/black is battery plus/minus, and the blue is the negative voltage output.
Thanks for pointing that out! Makes complete sense! :D
good job.....and not a 5318008 to be seen 🤣🤣🤣
I try to resist using that. ;)
Very nice work, I like old calculators, especially the ones from Commodore. Good stuff! 👏
Thanks! I love them old calculators, too. The displays are just amazing compared to the bland LCDs we get these days. Keyboard feels awesome to type on, too. :D
Steve Jobs sold his early calculator to fund the starting of Apple - can imagine how much those really early ones were worth.
They were pretty costly at the time, I assume. This was very much cutting edge technology in the 70's. :D
Hi Jan, seeing that you are having fun with it! If you look closely on the registration on the back you can see that it has a different type number, I think it says SR6120R, which has a lower number of digits on its display.
Hey Gert! Thanks so much for sending me this piece of history! I am indeed having a lot of fun with it already. It's definitely going to be put to good use in the lab. :) Did you replace the back cover at some point or is the different model number just a Commodore mixup? Interesting anyway. :D
Why not make an adapter to let you run it off USB-C then you can use any modern battery bank?
I'm going to look into that! I tried running it from 5V but it didn't quite suffice to power it so a regular old-school USB adapter is not going to be enough. USB-C should be feasible though.
Did I miss it or did you never reveal what the shrinktube mystery thing dangling from the red and blue wire is?
I think it was the regulator for charging the NiCad batteries. I took the batteries out when they stopped charging.
A commenter pointed out that it is a step-up converter to slightly raise the voltage from the original rechargeable battery. Which makes sense. Probably they included the little circuit in the rechargeable models to make up for the slightly less powerful battery and left it out for the "disposable battery" models.
Hi, where can I find the support where you glued the HDMI output and then screwed it to the Amiga? Thank you
It's a custom piece that one of the project creators routed for me. I don't think it's available anywhere but it should be relatively easy to make something similar yourself.
@@JanBeta ah ok, thanks
See if it will run on 5 volt then you can do a usb to phono cable 👍🏻
I tried with the bench supply, but 5V don't seem to be enough unfortunately. It powers on but then instantly crashes. I guess the additional circuitry brings the voltage down enough so that the chips don't get enough juice. 6V seems to be the lowest voltage that makes it work although the chips are 5V. I guess it could be modified to run on 5V (by connecting the voltage to the spots where the original battery went) but I don't really want to modify this museum piece any more than absolutely necessary.
I wonder if painting the boards with nail polish would be a good idea or not.
I don't think it would hurt but given that the boards survived fine since 1975, I don't think it's necessary really.
Back in the day I used to live within bike riding distance of the UK Commodore factory where they made these things. A little bin diving on a weekend and some soldering work let me revive rejected models. I managed to get one of their SR-9000 series models working, which was hugely sophisticated for the time, with 10 memories and 90 odd functions covering trigonometry, statistics and a bunch of other stuff. It made teachers eyes bulge when I whipped it out to answer questions 😊
Very cool! I have a small collection of vintage calculators, and I especially like the displays. Much better than modern dull monochrome LCDs. Earlier electronic devices also just had more style to them.
Wow, that's awesome! Thanks for sharing! I can imagine that calculators were not a common thing back in those days. I am slightly too young to have witnessed that revolution first hand (I used bland LCD calculators in school and uni which were super inexpensive and readily available at the time already). :D
You mentioned it was made in the UK, so that will be the Stockton-on-Tees factory that's in the next town along from me. I've driven past it several times. I know 3 people who have been in it (one when it was CBM), but annoyingly I haven't.
Ah, that's unfortunate! I guess it's been repurposed or demolished by now? :/
@@JanBeta I think this is the original building. It's a community church now, though I think it was a chemical companies office at one point: www.google.com/maps/@54.5316292,-1.3596868,3a,75y,27.95h,88.3t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sRbEoCg9IvxZrdWu9czWgBQ!2e0!7i16384!8i8192?coh=205409&entry=ttu
A calculator with 11 digits plus an exponent is still considered professional today! I wonder how much something like that cost in the 70s
I can tell that exactly, because it belonged to me. It was 199 Dutch Guilders in 1976 of 1977. With correction for inflation it would be a little over 300 euros now. At the time I sent it to Jan I looked if I could still find the original sales slip, but I couldn't.
Never power this power jacks before you connect them to device, as they positive shorting on the gnd before fully seated, and destroy the transformer in power brick
Yeah, the phono connectors for power are generally not the smartest connector. :)
I was given one of these to service a few years ago. The on-off switch needed cleaning. After that it worked flawlessly.
The on-off switch seems to be the weak spot on these indeed. The ICs appear to be very resilient indeed. :)
Congrats Jan, Now you own a nice CBM. Years ago I found a SR-4148 at a local fleamarket. Sadly it still had the NiCads inside which, of course, leaked heavily... I needed to give it an depth cleaning and also rebuild some traces, replaced nearly all passives and that 'flex' cable as well. Also mine didn't come with any power supply (it had cost only 10 bucks, non working) I designed and built a regulated one myself with went in the space where that NiCad pack originally was located. Now I can run it from anything above 6 volts AC and 9 volts DC and no need to worry about polarity. But in the end I had, and still have, a nice golden C= age, scientific calculator. It's def. worth the time and effort. 👍😊
Nice! These old calculators are magnificent pieces of history indeed. I plan on using mine with a modern power supply that I'm going to put the correct connector on (already ordered a suitable one) which should be very convenient. :)
The scratches in the screen are from the pouche's button
Yes! Makes sense. I'm going to put some extra padding in the pouch to prevent further scratches, I guess.
Glad to see these old calculators get some love! You might check around, but on a lot of the old calculators with the "built in" nicad batteries, the battery was a buffer for in-rush current when the calculator was being charged/powered from the charger. Great video!
Good call! Maybe it would be a good idea to just put a capacitor on those battery connections to replicate that behavior to some extent. I guess putting a new battery in is probably not very wise (because leakage etc), I plan to use it with a power supply anyway.
That's a thing of beauty. CBM bubble display!
Gotta love those crisp little displays! :)