[HN Gopher] The VTech Socratic Method
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       The VTech Socratic Method
        
       Author : zdw
       Score  : 63 points
       Date   : 2025-04-24 05:05 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.leadedsolder.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.leadedsolder.com)
        
       | nubinetwork wrote:
       | This thing was slow as balls, but as a kid I didn't really know
       | any better... I could be wrong, but I really feel like
       | edutainment really fell away once everyone could get a real
       | computer with an internet connection.
        
       | v64 wrote:
       | I had one of these as a kid; the slow way it drew the graphics
       | onto the screen [1] for a new activity was an aesthetic in
       | itself, like a coloring book being drawn and colored in before
       | your eyes, a perfect loading screen for kids.
       | 
       | Wikipedia notes: The system will "draw" images by filling in
       | areas of the screen with color one line at a time; it is not
       | known whether this is an effect employed for the student's
       | enjoyment or if it is due to the slow processing time of the
       | system.
       | 
       | [1] https://youtu.be/r71ejYkkmDY?t=64
        
         | ndiddy wrote:
         | That does look cool, I'm assuming they stored a lot of the
         | graphics as a series of drawing and flood fill commands as a
         | way to save ROM space, similar to how the old Sierra DOS
         | adventure games did their graphics.
        
         | gyomu wrote:
         | That's cool.
         | 
         | Similar to how Pixar made their first movie about toys because
         | CG made everything look plasticky back then and they realized
         | they couldn't get away with making a movie with humans or
         | animals on screen for the whole movie.
         | 
         | The best creative people lean into the limitations of
         | technology.
        
       | pixelatedindex wrote:
       | Holy shit, blast from the past! My dad had got one of this and
       | when I was born my family had already moved back to India. I
       | booted this up when I was about 10 years old and I was so
       | mesmerized. It was impossible to afford any game consoles for my
       | family so this took a lot of my time. I was so impressed with how
       | everything fit together, the robot was cute... I loved it.
       | 
       | My dad also had got a Tatung Einstein which never worked. Last
       | time I went back to India (I moved to the US for higher ed) I
       | opened it up and was excited to see that they are a bunch of
       | chips that they taught me in Comp 101 (they were basic TTL flip
       | flops). I brought it back with me.
       | 
       | I still have it, and one day I hope to have enough time and space
       | to open it up and translate it into an FPGA as a way to brush up
       | on my basic digital signal knowledge.
        
       | eru wrote:
       | I had a look at some VTech computers at the local Toysrus (or
       | something like that) recently, and amazingly they don't look much
       | more advanced now than what they offered in the mid 1990s. That's
       | pretty hard to pull off, but I think today it's a deliberate
       | choice.
        
       | MrsPeaches wrote:
       | Why is the copper routing so funky? Were the PCBs drawn by hand?
        
         | nom wrote:
         | That is correct.
        
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       (page generated 2025-04-25 23:00 UTC)