Team Concepts Electronic Talking Super Laptop Technical Information

TOC

1. What is the Super Laptop?

The Electronic Talking Super Laptop is a primitive product made by Team Concepts to help kids learn. It features an LCD display, a colored keyboard, and a loud talking voice. This document is about my attempt at reverse engineering it, mainly to find the protocol of the expansion port so I can write my own programs for it.

2. What Hardware does Super Laptop use?

Below are known hardware specs of the Super Laptop, which should help in somewhat in discovering the protocol of the expansion port.

2.1 Keyboard

[TODO: insert photo here]

The keyboard, along with the two yellow answer keys, is Super Laptop's only source of user input. The keyboard approximately looks like this:

Missing letters Spelling Word Jumble 2 Player Word Jumble Guess What 2 Player Guess What Anagrams Tense Synonyms Antonyms Program
Addition Subtraction Multiplication Division Fractions Number Dictation Any Number Music Trivia Data Bank Animation
Off1! 3# 4$5% 6?7& 8*9( 0)On
QWERTYU IOP- Skill
Reverse
New Game
Run
ASDFGHJ KL:",|\ ^/|
ShiftZXCVB NM,Move
.
Enter <Draw
Erase
>
Save(Next)
do
Prev
re
Insert(Page)
mi
Delete(Page)
fa
Space - Repeat
so
Invert/la Copy/tiAnswerClear |\v/|

The top row of orange keys -- activity keys -- are used to select an activity upon boot up. These keys actually share their scancodes with other keys, and the shared key and activity key indistinquishable from each other. The activity keys share scancodes with the following keys, in order:

1234567 890Prg or arrow
QWETYU OP-RunDatabase

It is safe to assume that the scancodes for the activity keys are sequential; from that we can predict a few scancodes. Of course, I could be completely wrong, but here goes:

There are a total of 64 keys excluding the activity keys, on, off, and the two answer keys. 64=26, so six bits could represent one scancode.

2.2 Liquid Crystal Display

One bit per pixel.

      (P1)=1           (P2)=1
        \/ =16           \/
(time1) 188 +----------+ 188=16 (time 2)
(skill- ==  | 24x48=   |  8=7 
level 6)==  | 1152     |
        ==  +----------+
            ||||||||||
             8x5x10=400
        48+1152=1600 pixels total
        1600 bits=200 bytes

The screen is probably represented as a bitmap, and operated on in 8x48 sections. An individual address ranging from 0 to 1600 can be represented in x bits where 1600 = 2x. x = log(1600)/log(2) which is approximately 10.6439 bits, so one address probably does not address anywhere in the screen. It's likely to be done in four 48x8 chunks.

2.3 Speaker

Another output device. Note: Super Laptop's electronic voice is very loud, and can become annoying. The speaker volume switch on my unit did not work, so I attached a PC voltage switch selector in series with the speaker. The resistance was enough to make the built-in speaker switch function. If your speaker switch doesn't work, try adding a resistor.

3. How do expansion carts interface with a Super Laptop?

DISCLAIMER: I take no responsibility.

The Super Laptop has a double-sided 10-pin (giving 20 pins) male expansion slot. I interfaced to this easily via an old 5.25" floppy disk drive cable, with wires coming out of the expansion cartridge insertion area. Note that in order to fit a floppy cable in the case, you'll need to plug it in the middle of the slot.

Each wire experiences some interference when the laptop is speaking, some more than others. Some wires also receive a different wave when a key is depressed, or video changes. However, I hypothesize the expansion port is mainly used for programming the unit, rather than output; though it's possible that carts contain processors that read input.

I'll name the twenty expansion slot wires 1-20, odd being a top wire, even being bottom. Here is everything I know about all the wires:

1
Screen garbled when connected to negative ground. Loads various pixels. Fun to ground when playing the guess game animation; loads wrong graphics.
2
Similar to 1. Data pointer to memory to read? Sometimes loads other scenes when grounding during an animation.
3
Similar to 1 and 2.
4
When negative voltage is applied takes power away from screen slowly, like On, and then when released laptop reboots. +5V.
5
Garbled screen when connected to neg during animation. +5V.
6
Prevents laptop from turning on when connected to neg. Pulses. Freezes, copies, or garbles screen. Write buffer? Currently selected row?
7
Large waves.
8
Small waves
9
Large waves.
10
Changes screen rows when connected to neg. ground. Pulses. Fills certain rows.
11
Parallel lines on an oscilliscope. Pulses.
12
Parallel lines.
13
14
Reboots, like On and 4.
15
Power? Fuzzy.
16
+5V
17
Glitches and reboots when grounded.
18
+5V. Fuzzy pulses. Garbles animation when grounded.
19
+5V. Garbles animation when grounded.
20
+5V.
21
wave
22
wave
23
wave
24
wave

As you can see, it's not much. I don't have any carts to test. If anyone has a cart they would like to draw a schematic for, photo, or sell, please contact me.

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Modified Sun Mar 25 08:48:47 2007 generated Sun Mar 25 08:56:33 2007
http://jeff.tk/suplap/