The 1994 Smartwatch That Syncs with a CRT - LGR Oddware
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You could play real simple games on it like a simple version of Space Invaders. It was neat how you could create custom alarm sounds and even the hourly beep chime.
Date: 2022-04-14
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Comments and reviews: 9
joshuadramsey
Haha. The green band with the light brown leather accents takes me back. Timex used the same band on a standard -Indiglo- model in the same period, and I had one. I wore it throughout -band camp- and subsequent practices throughout summer, and at about the second week's start, I started noticing a smell that was unbelievable. It was like a rotting carcass on the road! However, I would only ever smell it when I'd put my trumpet in playing position. So, I assumed something had grown in the pipes of my instrument. I gave the trumpet an intense cleaning the first night after I'd noticed it, and the smell of the trumpet was then fine. Except the next day at practice, I put the horn up for the first time and the smell was just as bad as it had been! So, I washed it again. Again it smelled fine at home. And again, the smell was back.
I then went beyond my assumption and started checking other sources. I checked my armpits, but it seemed to be the normal BO you expect for someone doing strenuous physical activity for hours in 80-100 degree heat. Finally, I found the culprit. The watch band had been soaking up sweat for over a week, and bacteria were very happy about that. I never noticed it at home because I was taking the watch off to wash my trumpet in the sink.
Eh, not exactly relevant, but seeing one of those style bands in that color scheme for the first time in over 25 years really brought the memories back.
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Haha. The green band with the light brown leather accents takes me back. Timex used the same band on a standard -Indiglo- model in the same period, and I had one. I wore it throughout -band camp- and subsequent practices throughout summer, and at about the second week's start, I started noticing a smell that was unbelievable. It was like a rotting carcass on the road! However, I would only ever smell it when I'd put my trumpet in playing position. So, I assumed something had grown in the pipes of my instrument. I gave the trumpet an intense cleaning the first night after I'd noticed it, and the smell of the trumpet was then fine. Except the next day at practice, I put the horn up for the first time and the smell was just as bad as it had been! So, I washed it again. Again it smelled fine at home. And again, the smell was back.
I then went beyond my assumption and started checking other sources. I checked my armpits, but it seemed to be the normal BO you expect for someone doing strenuous physical activity for hours in 80-100 degree heat. Finally, I found the culprit. The watch band had been soaking up sweat for over a week, and bacteria were very happy about that. I never noticed it at home because I was taking the watch off to wash my trumpet in the sink.
Eh, not exactly relevant, but seeing one of those style bands in that color scheme for the first time in over 25 years really brought the memories back.
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Rusty's
The one thing that I can think of that would be useful for this to be bi-directional would be to be able to carry data back and forth between home and work. Granted there's not a lot of space for that data, this comment would probably blow through the capacity of at least the early watches, but it might be faster than reading off the watch and typing into your calendar or note file, or whatever. The thing is, you very possibly could do something like that with some of the later watches, and a modern web cam with appropriate OCR software, if one of the apps you put on the watch would cycle through the records, say one every half a second, and you'd have it uploaded in a minute or two (depending on the number of records, later models presumably with more than even the 140 mentioned)
I did have one, and I think I even got it to work in OS/2's Windows 3. 1 or 3. 11 mode, but I'm not sure at this point. Don't recall what happened to it.
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The one thing that I can think of that would be useful for this to be bi-directional would be to be able to carry data back and forth between home and work. Granted there's not a lot of space for that data, this comment would probably blow through the capacity of at least the early watches, but it might be faster than reading off the watch and typing into your calendar or note file, or whatever. The thing is, you very possibly could do something like that with some of the later watches, and a modern web cam with appropriate OCR software, if one of the apps you put on the watch would cycle through the records, say one every half a second, and you'd have it uploaded in a minute or two (depending on the number of records, later models presumably with more than even the 140 mentioned)
I did have one, and I think I even got it to work in OS/2's Windows 3. 1 or 3. 11 mode, but I'm not sure at this point. Don't recall what happened to it.
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Bronson
Nice video! This brings back memories for me. My dad had ones of the basic 70 models (it might have even been the color combo you used in this video with the green and tan band) back in the late 90s (98, 99) and remember him syncing it for the first time with our family Windows 95 computer. Him holding up the watch to the weird flashing lines on our CRT is burned into my memory. :)
Since it was rather late for one of those base models I'm pretty sure he got it on clearance or something since he rarely used the syncing features and wouldn't have paid extra for it. After the first time I think the only time he ever synced it again was for the DST time changes. He worked on our city's groundskeeping crew at the time so I'm sure it didn't last long before dying a painful death by being smashed in some way; that job was really hard on watches.
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Nice video! This brings back memories for me. My dad had ones of the basic 70 models (it might have even been the color combo you used in this video with the green and tan band) back in the late 90s (98, 99) and remember him syncing it for the first time with our family Windows 95 computer. Him holding up the watch to the weird flashing lines on our CRT is burned into my memory. :)
Since it was rather late for one of those base models I'm pretty sure he got it on clearance or something since he rarely used the syncing features and wouldn't have paid extra for it. After the first time I think the only time he ever synced it again was for the DST time changes. He worked on our city's groundskeeping crew at the time so I'm sure it didn't last long before dying a painful death by being smashed in some way; that job was really hard on watches.
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LoftBits
One of my faviourite watches, ever. I still use it sometimes, I kept a CRT monitor especially for it (never managed to source the so called -laptop adapter- at reasonable price. I also have a collection of mini-apps for it, including rudimentary Space Invaders -
Oh, and it's official: it's the most accurate watch in my collection (and I have about 80, excluding those with radio sync, of course. I look at it right now and it's off 4 seconds - 2 years after I've last set it up.
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One of my faviourite watches, ever. I still use it sometimes, I kept a CRT monitor especially for it (never managed to source the so called -laptop adapter- at reasonable price. I also have a collection of mini-apps for it, including rudimentary Space Invaders -
Oh, and it's official: it's the most accurate watch in my collection (and I have about 80, excluding those with radio sync, of course. I look at it right now and it's off 4 seconds - 2 years after I've last set it up.
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lazygamereviews
Really curious about the E-Brain.
Also, have you ever seen a computer inside a PEN?
I just remembered there was this gadget which was a pen you would write with which would actually track your writing and act on what you wrote.
You could write a math problem and it a tiny speaker would tell you the answer.
It used paper with barely visible dot pattern which was easy for the tiny camera to track.
PS
FLy pentop computer and later the Livescribe.
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Really curious about the E-Brain.
Also, have you ever seen a computer inside a PEN?
I just remembered there was this gadget which was a pen you would write with which would actually track your writing and act on what you wrote.
You could write a math problem and it a tiny speaker would tell you the answer.
It used paper with barely visible dot pattern which was easy for the tiny camera to track.
PS
FLy pentop computer and later the Livescribe.
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Sunny
I did own it when I was a kid (and still have it somewhere in my home. It's really mind blowing in that days when they announced this product. So I saved bulk of money in ordered to buy it at launch. Eventually it's fun to play with but after some short days you'll find you got nothing else to update. I did try to use it to cheat in the exam by putting short text/formula into the task list but you know it didn't work really well due to limitation of the displayable chars.
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I did own it when I was a kid (and still have it somewhere in my home. It's really mind blowing in that days when they announced this product. So I saved bulk of money in ordered to buy it at launch. Eventually it's fun to play with but after some short days you'll find you got nothing else to update. I did try to use it to cheat in the exam by putting short text/formula into the task list but you know it didn't work really well due to limitation of the displayable chars.
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jamie
I can-t believe I think I had this watch because I remember that thing on the top and I thought it was a camera and I was wondering why I could never activate it when I was a kid I was thinking it was something really neat in there I had no idea that she had a hook that thing up it-s a computer or a C a monitor because I remember Microsoft on that thing on our cool it-s made by Microsoft oh I was an idiot when I was a kid damn
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I can-t believe I think I had this watch because I remember that thing on the top and I thought it was a camera and I was wondering why I could never activate it when I was a kid I was thinking it was something really neat in there I had no idea that she had a hook that thing up it-s a computer or a C a monitor because I remember Microsoft on that thing on our cool it-s made by Microsoft oh I was an idiot when I was a kid damn
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Karl
I got the Ironman version. It worked pretty well for the times. Sometimes you 'd have to do the transfer over if you moved your wrist too much during the flashing. But it was about the best tech that we had at the time. I'd ask about someone's schedule and while they were dragging out there paper calendar, I would pull up my schedule on the phone. Yeah, I liked to show up in those days.
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I got the Ironman version. It worked pretty well for the times. Sometimes you 'd have to do the transfer over if you moved your wrist too much during the flashing. But it was about the best tech that we had at the time. I'd ask about someone's schedule and while they were dragging out there paper calendar, I would pull up my schedule on the phone. Yeah, I liked to show up in those days.
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Zesty
I had two of these. I started with the cheap nylon strap one, and then moved up to the metal bracelet when the price came down about a year or two later. The later integration with Outlook added a whole new level of amazing voodoo magic Even when I was a dedicated PDA devotee, it was still convenient to have access to my contacts and calendar without having to carry anything else.
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I had two of these. I started with the cheap nylon strap one, and then moved up to the metal bracelet when the price came down about a year or two later. The later integration with Outlook added a whole new level of amazing voodoo magic Even when I was a dedicated PDA devotee, it was still convenient to have access to my contacts and calendar without having to carry anything else.
reply
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