Fisher Price re-released their Music Box Record Player

Friday, December 10th, 2021

In 2010 Fisher Price re-released their Music Box Record Player, in a new version that does not work like the original:

So, starting in 2010 Fisher Price re-released their Music Box Record Player, in a classic-toy version that doesn’t work like the original. I got one, so I’m gonna take it apart pic.twitter.com/DytUrgzlCj

— foone (@Foone) October 29, 2021

The original one was made from 1971-1983, and didn’t require batteries.
You wound up the knob, and a releasing spring would drive the record under the head. pic.twitter.com/uoaI4tSq5C

— foone (@Foone) October 29, 2021

the original discs were a bunch of concentric circles with little indents on them. I’m not 100% sure but I think this basically worked like a standard music box, just with a disc instead of a cylinder pic.twitter.com/Ny764HvCks

— foone (@Foone) October 29, 2021

The first hint it’s 1000% different is the instructions which tell you to put batteries in it.
The original toy did not take batteries: it didn’t need them. pic.twitter.com/bDS18NwNLI

— foone (@Foone) October 29, 2021

So the original had a knob you used to wind the spring, right? But this one shouldn’t need that, it has batteries, so it must be electronic!

Well… Kinda. pic.twitter.com/W4WVEn6Fcb

— foone (@Foone) October 29, 2021

it turns out that knob is still used to wind a spring, which makes the disc spin.
And the spring has to be wound for the music to play, so here it is: pic.twitter.com/YijjUsihiJ

— foone (@Foone) October 29, 2021

So I went and got some duct tape and taped down the disc. It cannot spin at all. I tested by cranking up the spring and yep, no disc spinnage happens. Obviously if the disc can’t spin, there should be no music! pic.twitter.com/70GMObIvJT

— foone (@Foone) October 29, 2021

So first of all, the only smarts in this thing is this one blobbed chip.
This PC is labeled 1697-04, 2020.5.26 Rev:00
This presumably handles detecting which song to play, when to play it, and generates all the audio off some internal ROM pic.twitter.com/wDIpceyk6F

— foone (@Foone) October 30, 2021

This thing is connected to two “is it spinning?” sensors.
First, there’s 3 blobs on the wind-up knob, so the CPU can tell when you’re cranking it up. So it knows to wake up and start playing when that happens.
But how does it know when to stop? pic.twitter.com/jbc32390q0

— foone (@Foone) October 30, 2021

ok so they need a spring that can be wound up, and it can’t go too fast. They’ll need some kind of speed limiter on that, and unlike the ones used in things like toaster ovens, it needs to be relatively silent, and not make a ticking noise.

— foone (@Foone) October 30, 2021

SURPRISE! IT’S A FUCKING MUSIC BOX pic.twitter.com/mIqhLXOJ5V

— foone (@Foone) October 30, 2021

(Hat tip to commenter Chedolf.)

Posted in Business, Technology | 1 Comment »

Comments

Gavin Longmuir says:

December 10, 2021 at 10:06 am

“SURPRISE! IT’S A ####### MUSIC BOX”

Whenever I see something like that, I recall Tolkien’s comment about Orcs in the Lord of the Rings — their degenerate language, lacking any power or originality.

But then, this did come from Twitter — the epicenter of the lack of power or originality in language. Why does anyone bother with Twitter?

Roo_ster: Echoes of Jerry Pournell and his sci-fi buds from the 1960s through the 1980s.
Jim: Heheh.
Phileas_Frogg: …or rather, they are his, “Chosen People?”
Phileas_Frogg: Capitalism- A cult predicated on the fanciful notion that Private Property is God and Banker’s are his priests.
Jim: *whereto reasonably capable
Jim: Here’s a real policy proposal derivative of your real-life example of Governor William Bradford, “English Puritan Separatist originally from the West Riding of Yorkshire in Northern England”, émigré to the Plymouth Colony aboard the Mayflower: Let there be an office whereto reasonable capable young men shall fill out and send an application form for the purpose of obtaining arable land. The land will simply be reassigned, with the stroke of a pen, from its current...
Jim: “Socialism” and “capitalism” are hot-button words from the late-nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. From your own citation: “At length, after much debate of things, the Governor … gave way that they should set corn every man for his own particular, and in that regard trust to themselves … And so assigned to every family a parcel of land, according to the proportion of their number, for that end.” If every family were assigned a parcel of land today you would cry...
Bob Sykes: In 1972. the US agreed that Taiwan was the 23rd province of China; that is the essence of the One China policy. That was done to separate China from the Soviet Union. It was a smart policy, and it worked to our very great advantage. Nowadays, our lunatic neocons, not satisfied with wars in Ukraine, Iraq, Lebanon, Libya, Mali, Palestine, Somalia, Syria, Yemen…, want wars in the China Seas, Georgia, Serbia… Marshall does not seem to realize the deep malaise and corruption that...
Gaikokumaniakku: “I didn’t come here to be bored.” Where do you usually go to be bored? I really want to get bored and I need help finding some really boring sites to visit.
T. Beholder: (there weren’t both IN that one) I enjoy a humble shitpost, it must be admitted, but the truth really is… Not what the actual participants plainly admitted? Here’s a less-humble shitpost by Itchy Bacca, compiling more (from this article and others).
Jim: I enjoy a humble shitpost, it must be admitted, but the truth really is that Thanksgiving really is a naked celebration of the White Anglo Native American’s bounty in North America taken and held by greater commitment and superior virtue. Anything else is ethnocultural erasure.
Phileas Frogg: The Manson murders are just another shuffling intimation at, “The Man Behind the Curtain,” so to speak, which are always fascinating when viewed beyond the mere brute facts of the case and placed in that context. I suppose one could consider it boring for anyone who’s already pulled the curtain back and taken a gander, but I still appreciate adding to the tally of the sheer number of milestones.
Michael van der Riet: The Manson murders are fundamentally boring and I didn’t come here to be bored.
T. Beholder: Finders and their keepers. So “mystery solved”, yes. The curiously persistent details spammed around and laughingtrack.jpg were due to focused application of smoke and mirrors.
T. Beholder: Quotes from the actual participants suffice, to be honest. William Bradford and Ralph Hamor summarized it well enough in The Real Meaning of Thanksgiving: The Triumph of Capitalism over Collectivism.
Jim: Thanksgiving is the wholesome, inclusive day that many tawny Central, Southern, and Eastern European wannabes join all white British Isles-descended Americans in celebration of our glorious supremacy in the total war of all against all that was the North American continent before the Englishman sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to dominate the Indian savage and make this Side of our Globe reflect a brighter Light to the Eyes of Inhabitants in Mars or Venus. Observations Concerning the Increase of...
Jim: T. Beholder: “And then there were the ‘finders’.&# 8221; Finders, keepers?
Jim: Polanski seems like a Rosemary’s Baby sort of guy.
Jim: “Espera denied this claim until he passed away in 1999, despite his family producing a baptismal certificate with his real name.” What a stud. Notwithstanding his Italian origin, he went out like a true American.
Jim: This is one of the rare JREs whose full and complete viewing is mandatory.

Isegoria

Fisher Price re-released their Music Box Record Player

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