CyberVision 2001: April Repair Effort and Demonstration.

[@mercedeslamb8359]

Thank you for these videos! I teach a game history course and love playing videos of consoles and games for my students!

[@MattPilz]

Glad you enjoyed, my repair efforts slowed way down this past year due to other commitments. I had the CyberVision 99% functional including the ability to read data from cassettes or modern inputs, but something got bumped at the last second while reassembling and fried a lot of components! They've become very fragile components. I did author the full Wikipedia article on this unique computer since almost nothing was known of it previously.

[@KevinPalivec]

i knew a guy who had one of these back in the day. I couldn't remember the name. just that it was a boxy computer with a built in cassette drive and those keypads connected with the ribbon cables. He only had the one cassette that came with it from Montgomery ward.

[@ballyalley]

That CyberVision 2001's controller sure looks, um, what's the right word for it? Overly complicated. There is no joystick at all, right? I need to watch your other CyberVision videos and completely read your work-in-progress article "Retro Fix: Montgomery Ward CyberVision 2001." Is there any example of a box for this computer/console/system?

[@MattPilz]

The controllers are reskinned 40-button calculator keypads from TI, as found in many scientific calculators in the 70s. It is clever in that it allowed the system to easily support a "full keyboard" with more one-press functionality than comparable keypads seen for Bally and Atari 2600 (BASIC). But you are right it's not too elegant for gaming, a directional pad would've been great for games like Sub Chase or Escape (breakout). The membranes also degrade easily so a lot of controllers will have faults in certain rows or columns. And the keypad wiring into the actual system is very complex, originally each individual wire was hard-soldered to the board. I have never seen a box nor do I know of their existence, it is possible these shipped in just an ordinary 1970s Montgomery Ward box, but that is a guess.