[HN Gopher] Seiko Originals: The UC-2000, A Smartwatch from 1984
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Seiko Originals: The UC-2000, A Smartwatch from 1984
Author : segasaturn
Score : 130 points
Date : 2024-07-15 17:30 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.namokimods.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.namokimods.com)
| pimlottc wrote:
| > Imagine a smart watch, but from 1984. That sounds like
| something straight out of a scifi film since the 80s is not
| exactly known for great advances in personal computing.
|
| Now that's a ridiculous statement, especially when you're
| specifically talking about the year 1984...
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErwS24cBZPc
| andrelaszlo wrote:
| Interesting, but weirdly written article.
|
| > The Mac, before it was cool.
|
| That caption (of an image of the original Macintosh) also made
| me wonder. I wasn't born, but I had the impression that there
| was a lot of hype around the Mac, with the iconic Superbowl ad
| and everything?
|
| > While the UC-2000 apparently played video games, we can't
| imagine how it would have looked like with such a tiny and
| colorless display.
|
| This was immediately followed by an image of Tetris being
| played on the watch. No need to imagine, haha.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Not hype like the iPod or iPhone. Computers hadn't become a
| household item yet. The internet didn't exist yet, software
| companies were barely a thing, and for the price there just
| wasn't really a justifiable use at home yet. It was an
| expensive video game console and word processor. Neat sure,
| but it wasn't flying off the shelves. Rich person toy. Early
| and mid 90s is when home computers really took off.
| raffraffraff wrote:
| Very rich person toy!
|
| Not only had computers not become a household item, but for
| those who were interested enough to buy a home computer,
| there were many different brands and models to choose from,
| most at a fraction of the price of the Apple. The computers
| I actually saw in the 80s were Timex, Toshiba, Sinclair,
| Commodore, Tandy, BBC, Amstrad, Archimedes. These were
| pretty much all separate ecosystems, with different models
| from the same manufacturer frequently being incompatible
| with their stable mates. Considering how capable machines
| like the Amiga and Archimedes were at a fraction of the
| cost of the Apple, and considering the fact that Apple was
| just another expensive ecosystem, you had to be
| particularly loaded to buy into it. Was there a must-have
| piece of software that only existed for the Mac back then?
| Computer graphics was arguably better on the Amiga, and
| even desktop publishing wasn't a done deal.
|
| I know of only one person who had a Mac, and it was loaned
| to him by the company he worked for (as a software
| developer). No idea why they chose Apple.
|
| The first "PC" I ever saw in real life was a Wang (unknown
| model) some time in the very late 80s. that was purchased
| for our school tech drawing class. It ran DOS and AutoCAD
| (unknown version) and also had Prince of Persia.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| _> The first "PC" I ever saw in real life was a Wang_
|
| Anyone got a history on why Wang Computers didn't take
| off?
| defrost wrote:
| The succint answer would be they were choked out of
| existence in the office market by IBM.
|
| They had an early lead and captured word processing, IBM
| had big iron and expanded down to personal computers
| suitable for office word processing and had the big
| government | military | banking contracts to force
| through sweeter deals on the desktop range as a "one
| shop" solution for everything computing related.
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Does that mean the trademark is now free and I can start
| selling Wangs to people?
| defrost wrote:
| Hmm, dunno, we've got those in town:
| https://youtu.be/a64XBWtGuGc?t=39
| FuriouslyAdrift wrote:
| Founder Dr. An Wang set up the company to have tight
| control of the stock via his family. He elevated his son,
| Fred, to president.
|
| While Dr. An Wang (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Wang)
| was a genius and pioneer in computing, his son was not up
| to the task of running the company and the coming PC
| revolution caught him flat footed. The company never
| really recovered.
|
| https://tedium.co/2017/02/14/wang-computers-history-
| demise/
| wkat4242 wrote:
| They kinda did, they sold some minicomputer stuff and
| also standalone wordprocessors even in the Netherlands. I
| played games on the one at my dad's work. They just
| didn't pivot to the PC age as others have mentioned.
| englishrookie wrote:
| > Rich person toy.
|
| The Mac, yes. But my father was a construction worker
| earning a below median wage (definitely not middle class)
| in 1988 when we bought our Atari 1040 ST. This was in the
| Netherlands, Europe.
|
| (Although admittedly we were rich by world standards.)
| Tepix wrote:
| I agree. The Mac was already cool in 1984, in particular
| because of Ridley Scott's epic ad.
| mjhagen wrote:
| I certainly wasn't cool for being into the Mac back then.
| PCs, but mostly Commodores and Amigas was where it was at.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > This was immediately followed by an image of Tetris being
| played on the watch. No need to imagine, haha.
|
| That tetris game was written recently (2010s IIRC) by a guy
| who reverse engineered the watch. It was most definitely not
| available back then.
| rob74 wrote:
| Yeah, I almost stopped reading the article after that phrase.
| If I had to pick a decade with the greatest advances in
| personal computing, I would pick the 80s! The first
| personal/home computers appeared in the 70s, but they were
| mostly for hobbyists, even sold as PCBs like the Apple I. The
| 80s began with the first home computers being available in
| larger numbers (C64, Atari 800, Apple ][, Sinclair Spectrum
| etc.), continued with the more powerful 16-bit machines (Apple
| Mac, Amiga, Atari ST) and ended (sadly, I think) with IBM PC
| clones becoming cheap enough to wipe out almost all of these
| (except the Mac, which survived just barely).
| psczvnadfjk wrote:
| > 16-bit machines (Apple Mac, Amiga, Atari ST)
|
| (small nitpick) These platforms all began with Motorola 68000
| which has a 32-bit ISA.
| flir wrote:
| While we're nitpicking... "it can't technically be called a
| computer until you dock it on an external keyboard"
| Max-q wrote:
| I came here with that exact quote copied, but expected to find
| it posted already
|
| It's easy to forget that the 80s took us from Apple II, TRS-80,
| PET, via C64, Amiga, Atari ST and Macintosh to SuperVGA and 486
| when we entered the 90s.
| billforsternz wrote:
| I did an absolute double take. The 1980s saw the emergence of
| personal computing. From niche hobby to ubiquitous agent of
| societal change.
| bamboozled wrote:
| Damn I wish Japan was still making cool tech, I loved their
| Aesthetic
| keyle wrote:
| They still do cool tech, every day
|
| e.g. https://tokyoflash.com
|
| I used to collect these until I got robbed and they stole my
| entire collection :(
| bamboozled wrote:
| What I mean is, Japan was not only producing cool looking
| tech, but it was actual "tech", like new things the world
| didn't have before. Remember Sony in the 90s?
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| Yeah I've always wondered what happened to Japan. They seem
| to have really fallen behind in consumer technology where
| they used to lead. Now the top consumer tech brands are
| Apple and Samsung, which are American and Korean brands. I
| think the move to "smart" technology was too different for
| the existing Japanese brands which pioneered single-purpose
| devices. Also Japan's economy suffered over the last 3
| decades in which technology rapidly advanced.
|
| It's sad because consumer technology today almost
| universally looks like shit as everyone tries to copy
| Apple's boring and uninspired designs
| xiande04 wrote:
| Japan has been living in the year 2000 since the 1980s.
| tecleandor wrote:
| OMG, what a flashback. I remember buying a bunch of them for
| gifts on their physical store in Odaiba (I think) in 2006.
| Back them were almost cheap, at least there. I guess that
| around USD50.
|
| I still have one, the JLr7 [0], that I really used for years
| back in the day. I have it with the original metal bracelet,
| but it seems like they've done a brief re-release of the
| watch this past spring but with a leather strap [1]. But they
| sold it at USD199 ! 0: http://bochup-
| japanwatch.blogspot.com/2006/12/jlr7-by-e35.html 1:
| https://tokyoflash.com/collections/watch-
| museum/products/jlr7-led-watch
| Rinzler89 wrote:
| Nintendo Switch?
|
| Casio watches?
| wvenable wrote:
| This watch is actually capable of running custom software and
| there was a single cartridge of software available for it at
| launch. No other software was ever made for it until 2017 when a
| developer reverse engineered the whole thing:
|
| https://github.com/azya52/seiko
|
| https://www.hackster.io/news/reverse-engineering-the-world-s...
|
| Everything about the watch had to be figured out from scratch
| from the communications protocol to the CPU instructions. It's
| pretty cool to see a device from 1984 actually getting some "new
| life" in this way.
| phrop wrote:
| I sold one of these on eBay a while back, I bought it new in the
| 80s and only got it to work as expected once. The person I sold
| it too was able to get it working and said they are having a
| blast with it.
| mellosouls wrote:
| From a couple of years earlier, the Seiko TV watch (yes,
| wristwatch you could watch TV on):
|
| https://www.ablogtowatch.com/no-longer-made-seiko-tv-watch-f...
| ekianjo wrote:
| > During the dawn of the computing age, western companies focused
| on making their hardware more powerful and more complex. This is
| how you got massive computers - it didn't matter how big a
| computer became as long as it was more powerful than the last.
|
| erm no, thats not true at all.
| hengheng wrote:
| Semi off-topic, but this site has auto-translate on. And reading
| an automatic translation of something without knowing, I will
| quite easily get the impression that the site authors are
| careless morons.
|
| Have auto translate switched off if you value those visitors who
| actually read stuff, even if the metrics give it a 20% advantage.
| _fat_santa wrote:
| Slightly off topic but Seiko is probably my favorite watch brand
| period. It's hard to describe exactly why but if you look at
| other brands like say Rolex, Omega, Tag, etc, a big part of why
| people buy those is the prestige of that watch. Seiko on the
| other hand has virtually none of that prestige and you buy it
| simply because it's a freaking great watch. And with their sub-
| brand of Grand Seiko, you feel like you're in a special club
| wearing one of those because almost no one outside of watch
| people know what a GS is and even spending thousands you still
| feel like you pay for the technology (spring drive) versus just
| the prestige of "Grand Seiko". And they also make fantastic
| watches at the lower end, my first mechanical watch was a Seiko 5
| which I got for ~$60. I've since given that one away to someone
| who got into watch collecting and I always recommend the Seiko 5
| to anyone trying to get into watches.
| Aaronstotle wrote:
| That is true, I myself hadn't heard of Grand Seiko until I got
| into watches, I went to the Seiko museum in Tokyo and that was
| a really amazing experience.
| mauvehaus wrote:
| My grandfather was a watchmaker and jeweler. He worked on
| mechanical watches ranging from the everyday to moderately high
| end. Despite this, he was as into gizmosity as you could possibly
| get.
|
| He had a Casio Databank and would talk about how it was a
| calculator and could store phone numbers. The buttons on that
| thing were microscopic, and I can't imagine how it was actually
| worth the effort to program phone numbers into it or use it as a
| calculator. Nonetheless, he did. When the strap lugs broke, he
| fixed them with JB Weld. He usually had on two or three watches
| at any given time: his own, a customer's watch that he was
| testing after a repair, and that damned Casio, grey JB Weld and
| all.
|
| I'm absolutely astonished that he didn't own one of these. It
| would have been right up his alley. If he was still alive, I'd
| call him and ask him about this. For that matter, I'd have loved
| to hear his take on the Apple Watch as well.
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