Circuitbenders Forum
Circuitbenders Forum => Circuitbending discussion => Toys => Topic started by: iqoruvuc on March 28, 2007, 06:18:15 PM
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I recently found one of these in a carboot sale. There are schematics on the sailormouth site though the circuit board on mine was different. Anyway I fried mine; it only cosy me a few pence and I was not that bowled over by what I found so I wasn't very careful. Apart from a couple of distortions (which made the voice quite funny) most of the bends just caused it to re-trigger sounds really fast, although there were two glitches which were funny too, although they produced the same results each time.
Here is a board scan with some points marker penned on, although a couple won't do anything at all since I was also marking where certain components were. Basically you need to use (+) connection for the speaker and connect it to any of the solderpoints marked in black. The two crosses are glitches.
(http://i48.photobucket.com/albums/f206/bendables/V-Techalphabetdeskcircuitwithbends.jpg)
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Hmm, i bent a vetech letter fun pc recently and that was amazing, seriously wierd noises and drones.
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i bent one of these - they are AMAZING :) - just bring the battery power down a bit with a 1k pot and u have some super crashes hehe and weird loops... also if u ever think u have fried it - remove the resistor in the plastic shielding (just bypass it) and it'll work fine again heh
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Hi - I replaced the resistor all certain that I hadn't fried it but it didn't work again. I was using a DC power supply and turning the voltage down didn't do anything exciting, however a 1K pot may have created better results but I never got that far before I broke it ;)
Did you have the same version as this? If you have a look on the squarewave website he appears to have bent the a desk that sounded like the one I had http://thesquarewaveparade.com/litphabet-dek.html
It only cost me 50p, had no battery cover, so I was abit heavy-handed with it! I have another one anyway, so I will open that one up and see I have any more luck. :)
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ah :) my one is read and says "little phonics" under the alphabet desk writing...
hrm - have you tried shifting the + connector from the battery around the board? i found this worked on another vtech machine that blew up :)
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I opened up the other alphabet desk I have last night and had a play-around inside. Bizarrely the circuit borad is exactly the same but it behaves completely different.
Some of the bends that worked on the other one have absolutely no effect whatsoever, I can't get the same excorcist-like distortion the other one did, this one glitches much more, and hardly does the trigger-repeat thing which was pretty much all my other on did. I have only tried connecting points from the speakers (+) side so far, but I am surprised it behaves so differently. Also doesn't seem to respond to power crash either. Strange.
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One of my first bendz and probably one of the most minamilist.
I only managed to find one bend but it's really good. It's just spewz forwardz a mix of letterz, numberz and soundz like a bat outta hell.
Meatloaf would be proud.
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yes this does that too :)
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My g/f's just bought a little smart alphabet desk for me to mod, by the sounds of it, it''ll be a beast.
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I got bored, I wired up my little smart letter fun pc (which i'm guessing is pretty close to teh alphabet desk) to my rx17.
(http://a196.ac-images.myspacecdn.com/images01/3/l_b3eed8e2215d2fa8c66c816a7154b383.jpg)
here's what it sounds like
http://www.soundclick.com/bands/songInfo.cfm?bandID=549081&songID=5191312
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that's awesome, I like it! My Vtech "talking whiz kid plus" sounds very similar.
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I actually got the same one. It even has the same serial number. I have messed around for a long time in but I can only get cycles of noises already on it. how do I get the great distortions I that guy made. This is actually the first time I have circuit bent so don't flame.
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This is actually the first time I have circuit bent so don't flame.
Anyone getting involved in flame wars on this board will suddenly find themselves without an account.
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I have messed around for a long time in but I can only get cycles of noises already on it. how do I get the great distortions I that guy made.
Are talking about the alphabet desk? I only cycles on mine and a few glitches nothing as interesting as V-tech PC :(
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Yeah, I#m quite dissapointed with teh alphabet desk, only a couple of useable bends.
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Aw, I might go back to value village and get a different one to get better affects. What did your glitches sound like. Also here's a picture I found on-line for a different looking circuit board but It's an alphabet desk. I don't know if anyone can figure this out and use it to help with this one. (http://experimentalistsanonymous.com/diy/Schematics/Circuit%20Bending%20and%20Modifications/VTech%20Alphabet%20Desk.jpg)
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aha, the one above ^ is what i have, i've been playing with it for about an hour and its full of hilarious loops, i'm fairly new to all this so i'm going to carefully poke about with some of the ideas above i think. i'll let you know what i find.
silly question: i've got the glitch mentioned above in red to work, but what component would i use to control it? i mean, what kind of switch.
any help would be smashing.
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I think this machine is unbendable. (Well, bendable, just not very good IMO)
Unless I have a different model (which unlikely because the CB looks exactly the same), the glitches I find are pretty shit. Actually, some of the ones on the schematics up there ^ all lead to the same bend. If the machine stops when you connect the two points, you are always doing the same thing, stopping the clock.
All the glitches I've seen are either just the machine going through everything (normally goes "a b c d e f g h.. 1 2 3 .. <cow sound> <monkey sound> .. music .. CRASH" or it will give out a short burst and then stop, or it will just pause the current sound. However, it's interesting how it produces static.
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silly question: i've got the glitch mentioned above in red to work, but what component would i use to control it? i mean, what kind of switch.
I'd imagine that by this late date you've got it figured out, but if not an single pole single throw switch would be easiest for that, or any glitch. A single pole double throw switch would work as well, just leave one of the solder tabs empty.
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i've just killed one of these off too :'(
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Still got my Alphabet desk with the one bend and the obscure combinations it comes up with still amaze me.
Maybe I'm just easily amused. : P
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The alphabet desk was my very first bend, and I only got a few things out of it, but I remember being pleased as punch, too.
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So I've been bending off of that fishtape schematic too. My first desk was fried almost instantaneously, don't even consider bridging the “hiss/loop (crashes)” with a wire. After that I stayed away from the other glitch labeled "sensitive/momentary". My second desktop includes the key press looper, distortion and the main glitch (red dots), and a power led pilot light running off the toys battery. I was actually blown away by the results of the single glitch. A lot of time it crashes the toy and needs a reboot with the green on/off switch, but other times it creates unbelievable on going patterns and streams. The most common streams consisted of a “run through” of sound that was random, alphabetical or categorical. Another common find was compositions containing one or a mix of the following: word, sound, number, letter or music. The most typical glitch fit was the stuttering and garbled speech. The best finds are definitely the drones (yes a few good ones), ambient noise, and a few “hidden” streams with aleatoric music and glitchy compositions. The most awesome streams I’ve found are like nothing I've seen on you tube or heard anywhere else on the web!
This is definitely worthwhile project. My tests revealed its very fragile but has several some streams worth finding. If your thinking of approaching this project have a 1/4 output installed and a recorder handy, because once this is freshly bent it becomes very delicate. Btw I also brought this desk back to life after an insane session that ended in one of the deepest crashes I’ve dealt with.
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I'm working with a "newer" alphabet desk that has a black blob IC "stacked" under the main board. I can get a lot of various glitches and streams out of it with two of the pins (crazy static modulations, streams of words, and very slow speech that isn't pitch shifted that much) but they're all totally random and always result in a crash. There's a body pitch bend as well. I'll post a pick of the board tonight, maybe.
But, I've also got an Alphabet Picture Desk and it falls under the "everything to everything" bend. I've got a 5 bolt bay on it so far but there's a total of 12 that I'll eventually wire up. The annoying thing here is that the component side of the board is "up" and the other side is what holds the LCD in place. Kind of a pain in the soldering department but the most fun I have so far. ;D