![]() It would seem for an easy upgrade you could drop in a new LCD with a backlight, though you’d need to wire up the power for the LEDs separately since the pins aren’t connected on the Writer’s PCB.Īlternately, if you come across a stack of Writers and don’t know what to do with them, you could just salvage the LCDs. The dimensions, mounting hole positions, and even pinout match eBay listings for contemporary modules. From the looks of it, this is a common 40×4 character LCD. But occasionally you run into components that lowly tinkerers and hackers like us would not only recognize, but know how to interface with.Ĭase in point, the display used on the Writer. When building tens or hundreds of thousands of units, it makes sense to spin up custom sub-assemblies that will save time and money in the long run. When taking apart mass produced hardware, you will more often than not run into bespoke components that were built specifically for that application. It’s by no means unusable for fully grown fingers, but it does feel a bit cramped. Incidentally, it should be said that the Writer’s overall dimensions are somewhat smaller than what the adult novelist might expect designed primarily for use by pre-teens, the keyboard is approximately 90% scale. Beyond the aforementioned LCD and keyboard, all of the electronic components fit on a single 75 by 180 millimeter PCB. So it’s not much of a surprise to see how empty the gadget’s plastic case is. All of your work is saved to battery-backed memory, and when it comes time to upload your literary masterpieces to something a bit more capable, the Writer is designed to send the text out over infrared. You put three AA batteries into the back of it, hit the power button, and within a few seconds you’re writing. There’s no removable storage, no rechargeable battery, there isn’t even a backlight for the display. So what’s inside one of these educational word processors, and just as importantly, is it worth carrying one around to bang out the Great American Novel? Let’s take one apart and find out.Īt the most basic level, the Writer is nothing more than a keyboard, an LCD, and some simple electronics to glue them together. With a battery life measured in weeks and no chance that your writing session will get interrupted by an ill-timed system update, it’s not hard to see why. Easily obtainable on the second hand market, devices like the Alphasmart Neo are prized as a reliable way to capture thoughts on the go. It turns out many writers, professional or otherwise, have come to swear by this style of word processor. But interestingly, the story didn’t end there. When computers became cheap enough, devices like this naturally fell to the wayside. It offered ways to check and improve the student’s typing speed, and even featured a simplistic file management system that allowed students to organize their assignments in custom directories. To that end, the Writer took the concept even farther. A device that was simple enough for a child to use, but had enough similarities with a real computer that it has value as a training tool. In many ways, the Writer could be thought of as the successor to educational toys like the VTech preComputer 1000. Sure they couldn’t get on the Internet or even run any software, but they would give students a chance to hone their keyboarding skills. They ran for hundreds of hours on a standard AA batteries, and didn’t require schools to have any IT staff to manage them. Not only was the initial price low, but the maintenance costs were almost negligible. ![]() ![]() In comparison, these small electronic word processors could be purchased for as little as $150. Back then, five years before the first netbooks hit the market, you’d be hard pressed to find a laptop cheap enough to give to a grade school student. While some might question the wisdom of moving away from the pencil and pad at such a young age, there’s little question that all the kids stuck at home right now due to COVID-19 would have had a much harder time transitioning to remote learning otherwise.īut that certainly wasn’t the case when Advanced Keyboard Technologies released the Writer in 2003. ![]() Today, the education of even grade school children is intrinsically linked with technology. We’re not just talking about high school and college, either. For modern students, the spiral notebook has given way to the laptop and the pocket calculator has been supplanted by the smart phone.
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