V-tech Alphabet Desk

[mcguinty]

Aw, I might go back to value village and get a different one to get better affects. What did your glitches sound like. Also here's a picture I found on-line for a different looking circuit board but It's an alphabet desk. I don't know if anyone can figure this out and use it to help with this one.

[cubs]

aha, the one above ^ is what i have, i've been playing with it for about an hour and its full of hilarious loops, i'm fairly new to all this so i'm going to carefully poke about with some of the ideas above i think. i'll let you know what i find.

silly question: i've got the glitch mentioned above in red to work, but what component would i use to control it? i mean, what kind of switch.

any help would be smashing.

[kick52]

I think this machine is unbendable. (Well, bendable, just not very good IMO)

Unless I have a different model (which unlikely because the CB looks exactly the same), the glitches I find are pretty shit. Actually, some of the ones on the schematics up there ^ all lead to the same bend. If the machine stops when you connect the two points, you are always doing the same thing, stopping the clock.

All the glitches I've seen are either just the machine going through everything (normally goes "a b c d e f g h.. 1 2 3 .. <cow sound> <monkey sound> .. music .. CRASH" or it will give out a short burst and then stop, or it will just pause the current sound. However, it's interesting how it produces static.

[computer at sea]

silly question: i've got the glitch mentioned above in red to work, but what component would i use to control it? i mean, what kind of switch.

I'd imagine that by this late date you've got it figured out, but if not an single pole single throw switch would be easiest for that, or any glitch.  A single pole double throw switch would work as well, just leave one of the solder tabs empty.

[doctea]

i've just killed one of these off too 

[damientheomen]

Still got my Alphabet desk with the one bend and the obscure combinations it comes up with still amaze me.

Maybe I'm just easily amused. : P

[computer at sea]

The alphabet desk was my very first bend, and I only got a few things out of it, but I remember being pleased as punch, too.

[JEMZ818]

So I've been bending off of that fishtape schematic too. My first desk was fried almost instantaneously, don't even consider bridging the "hiss/loop (crashes)" with a wire. After that I stayed away from the other glitch labeled "sensitive/momentary". My second desktop includes the key press looper, distortion and the main glitch (red dots), and a power led pilot light running off the toys battery. I was actually blown away by the results of the single glitch. A lot of time it crashes the toy and needs a reboot with the green on/off switch, but other times it creates unbelievable on going patterns and streams. The most common streams consisted of a "run through" of sound that was random, alphabetical or categorical. Another common find was compositions containing one or a mix of the following: word, sound, number, letter or music. The most typical glitch fit was the stuttering and garbled speech. The best finds are definitely the drones (yes a few good ones), ambient noise, and a few "hidden" streams with aleatoric music and glitchy compositions. The most awesome streams I've found are like nothing I've seen on you tube or heard anywhere else on the web!
This is definitely worthwhile project. My tests revealed its very fragile but has several some streams worth finding. If your thinking of approaching this project have a 1/4 output installed and a recorder handy, because once this is freshly bent it becomes very delicate. Btw I also brought this desk back to life after an insane session that ended in one of the deepest crashes I've dealt with.

[egr]

I'm working with a "newer" alphabet desk that has a black blob IC "stacked" under the main board.  I can get a lot of various glitches and streams out of it with two of the pins (crazy static modulations, streams of words, and very slow speech that isn't pitch shifted that much) but they're all totally random and always result in a crash.  There's a body pitch bend as well.  I'll post a pick of the board tonight, maybe.

But, I've also got an Alphabet Picture Desk and it falls under the "everything to everything" bend.  I've got a 5 bolt bay on it so far but there's a total of 12 that I'll eventually wire up.  The annoying thing here is that the component side of the board is "up" and the other side is what holds the LCD in place.  Kind of a pain in the soldering department but the most fun I have so far.