[HN Gopher] Gakken Ex-System
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Gakken Ex-System
Author : walterbell
Score : 59 points
Date : 2024-04-06 09:33 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (en.wikipedia.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (en.wikipedia.org)
| usr1106 wrote:
| I have never heard that name. Unfortunately the article does not
| seem to mention in what countries those kits were sold.
|
| Having grown up in Germany I remember the name Kosmos. They seem
| to still exist. Not sure whether they were the most common / best
| ones. There is even a forum dedicated to the topic of electronic
| experimenting kits (in German): https://www.experimentierkasten-
| board.de/
|
| Edit: Based on http://www.elektronik-
| labor.de/Lernpakete/Ebaukaesten.html I'd conclude that in the
| 1960s Kosmos was technically/didactically the leading one. In the
| 1970s probably surpassed by Philips. From the pictures I remember
| my friend had a Philips, the spring contact system was really
| good.
| borninakihabara wrote:
| Maybe, it's sold only in Japan. It's famous for family with
| scientific culture in Japan.
| cjk2 wrote:
| I bought one of these many years ago. Extremely unreliable and
| inflexible. Worse than even the springy Rat Shack ones.
|
| I really wish someone would put together a decent kit and guide
| these days. I did consider designing and marketing something
| myself for a couple of years but I never got past the conceptual
| stage. It wasn't going to be a "here's a load of instructions to
| follow" but experiments that lead to "why" through instruction
| rather than just mechanical reproduction of circuits verbatim.
| Even all the Make stuff is pretty lame shiny marketing crap with
| few explanations and intuition being developed.
|
| I have spoken to a lot of people who bought a load of stuff and
| learned how to plug things into things and copy and paste code.
| When it comes to "I want to solve problem X" there are too many
| gaps which leads to demotivation and large lots of arduino crap
| being sold in bulk on eBay.
| djmips wrote:
| Yeah it was disappointing. The 'springy' ones are easier to
| debug.
| ghgr wrote:
| Reminds me of Scatron (sold in Spain in the 90s)
|
| https://jvgavila-com.translate.goog/aypetronic.htm?_x_tr_sl=...
| makach wrote:
| I owned one of these. The experiments were so-so. The magic of
| building blocks this way inspired to creation, however as someone
| else wrote - they are extremely unreliable.
| 2sk21 wrote:
| I had this back in the 1980s and I learnt a lot about electronics
| from it. Was one of my favorite kits!
| theyinwhy wrote:
| So, what's a great kit to recommend today?
| Solvency wrote:
| There are none. We live in an era where anything remotely
| unique (like that new Knob keyboard) costs $500.
| theyinwhy wrote:
| Isn't the knob keyboard ... a keyboard? I was referring to
| electronic kits for learning.
| Cheer2171 wrote:
| The point is that this would cost the same or even more
| than a customized mechanical keyboard.
| evan_ wrote:
| My kids like snapcircuits but it's pretty basic- nothing
| approaching the 60-in-1 radio shack kits.
| brudgers wrote:
| A second hand Radio Shack kit.
|
| They are a great piece of product design and come with lots of
| things to do instead of lots of words to think about.
|
| They receive criticism for this. But normalizing the
| construction of circuits and deemphasizing theory is a feature
| not a bug...there are books for that (and these days websites
| and YouTubes for that too).
|
| For less than 100 eBay units -- often much less -- you can get
| a time tested educational tool.
| baumschubser wrote:
| 15 years ago I stumbled across Gakken, because they released a
| super cheap little synthesizer, controlled by a stylus. It sounds
| really cool and there exist even hacks to replace the stylus with
| a MIDI input. I bought one and it is the oldest item in my box of
| things that I will come back to when I have some free time :)
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALla261Zuo8
| 29athrowaway wrote:
| If you are looking for something like this try:
|
| - https://shop.elenco.com/consumers/brands/snap-circuits.html
|
| - https://upperstory.com/spintronics/
| ataylor284_ wrote:
| I own a Gakken GMC-4 microcomputer, which appears to be a remake
| of the FX-System. It's a fun little 4-bit computer with a hex
| keypad for input. For output, there's 7 LEDs, 1 7 segment digit
| lcd, and a speaker.
|
| It has 16 instructions, one of which is an escape code to a
| further 16 built-in IO routines. It has 96 4-bit words of actual
| memory plus some memory mapped registers. Loads and stores can
| only target the data segment, the top 16 words in memory; it has
| one 4-bit wide index register that allows indexed access as well.
|
| It's a fun challenge to do something interesting in that
| constrained environment, but since there's no non-volatile
| storage of any kind, you have to tediously key in (admittedly
| necessarily short) programs each time it's powered up.
| justsomehnguy wrote:
| Ah, so this is where Varmilo ste^W gets the inspiration for their
| hipster gear.
|
| https://varmilo.com/products/shurikey-hanzo-keyboard
| jldugger wrote:
| My dad picked one of these up at a garage sale in like 1990. It
| seemed like a great idea but I don't think I learned anything
| from it, other than that transistors broke my fundamental concept
| of electrical circuits.
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