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The Electronics Inside - What Would be Your Dream Teardown?

a531016

Suggestions

 

The community and YouTube have come up with some great suggestions for teardowns, and we always love to hear what you would like to see.

 

If you have an idea, a suggestion, or even have something electronic that you think others might find interesting, let us know in the comments here!

 

Dream Teardowns

 

I have a list of items that I'd love to tear down, but they are hard or impossible to find! If you know where I can find one, or have one you'd like to donate, let me know in the comments below:

 

Compaq Presario 3060

I first got into computers in 1996 when we got our first computer with Windows 95 (an IBM Aptiva if you're interested). Mostly through the use "Command and Conquer, Red Alert" and "Mech Warrior 2". But It was also about this time I found the Compaq Presario 3060 in a local shop. I can remember going to see it every time I went out to look at it. I never got to own one, but would love to see how they squeezed a full 1996 PC into this form factor:

 

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IBM Tape Drive

Something really old, and big like this! A PDP11, and HP tape drive with the vacuum tape feed. They are all seriously cool, and without modern electronics must have been a monster to design and engineer! I'd love to get hold of one for a tear down!

 

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AR Equipment

Ok, a little for vague for this one, and only because they are super expensive, or hard to come by: Augmented Reality equipment. Here I am thinking Google Glass or Microsoft HoloLens? Of course there are other options out there, and I bet anything that actually overlays digital graphics with human vision (i.e. not a screen / camera combination) should be pretty cool?

 

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Silent Scope Arcade Game

A long night on an overnight ferry back in 1998 started my love afair for this arcade game! Specifically, Silent Scope 2: Dark Silhouette. From then on, any time I have seen this machine, more time (and money) than I would like to admit had gone into it. If you have never played this game, the controller is a large weighted sniper rifle fitted to a pivot. This pivot works as the directional input, but the scope of the rifle houses a second screen that works as your zoomed scope, sometimes showing special views (thermal and night vision). As these are now ageing, they are less and less common, but I'd love to tear one down, if for no other reason, nostalgia (Also, Time Crysis 2).

 

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Electrical Vehicle

I know, I know, taking one apart may need some logistical thoughts about the space, tools and time required! But I'd be really interested and think it would make for a fantastic tear down to see how different manufacturers from different industries approach the situation. So anyone know of an old EV, anything really from a milk float to a Tesla let us know!

 

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Vintage Video Equipment

 

Back in January I visited The Sience Museum in London (I love it and have been many times). One thing in particular caught my eye, the CBS EVR Teleplayer from 1971. Looking more like a laying down reel to reel than a video recorder, it was incredible! Anything this old would be amazing, or if anyone knows what happened to V.E.R.A (see the camcorder teardown!) let me know!

 

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  • in reply to a531016

    The large full-sized (like freezer cabinet sized) PBXs are full of great stuff, it's like a miniaturized Radio Shack. Unfortunately most have likely been scrapped. They had cards with fancy LED modules, Pentium-era embedded PCs, CDROM, all sorts of connectors, memory, transformers and removable ICs.. I used to peek inside Nortel and Siemens PBXs. No idea where to get them now though, at least not the large ones. I've not looked inside the smaller 'key systems'.

  • in reply to colporteur

    I have a handful of telecoms items on my list, but nothing specific. I know that I'd like to do a mechanical phone and compare it to a ~90s touch tone comparison. But i'd also like to get into proper hardware - switchboards, PBX exchange, etc.

     

    Any advice on kit you'd like to see, or where we can get hold of something?

  • I would prefer a tear down of something I actually have knowledge about. "Hey there is the...." Tearing down sfuff I have no background on is just a task to make room for new stuff.

     

    When I worked for a national telco, tear downs were only done if the space was needed. Tax rules didn't permit claiming the expense of tear downs if it didn't directly relate to the project. The bean counters would not permit just cleanups for the sake of cleanup. I walked around a few racks of abandoned, obsolete equipment because it couldn't be cost justified.

  • in reply to dougw

    Wow, cool idea - but it opens up a tonne of questions:

    - Controller for what console, or an aftermarket compatible?

    - New consoles tend to use some variation of wifi direct, so that would be a software effort of decoding the wifi protocol? Not so much an electroncis project? Would that still be interesting?

    Just to start!

  • How about reverse engineering a game controller with enough detail that members could build a custom controller from the info.