Gakken Ex-System

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gakken_EX-System

by walterbell • 2 years ago

70 22 2 years ago

en.wikipedia.org

usr1106• 2 years ago

I have never heard that name. Unfortunately the article does not seem to mention in what countries those kits were sold.

Having grown up in Germany I remember the name Kosmos. They seem to still exist. Not sure whether they were the most common / best ones. There is even a forum dedicated to the topic of electronic experimenting kits (in German): https://www.experimentierkasten-board.de/

Edit: Based on http://www.elektronik-labor.de/Lernpakete/Ebaukaesten.html I'd conclude that in the 1960s Kosmos was technically/didactically the leading one. In the 1970s probably surpassed by Philips. From the pictures I remember my friend had a Philips, the spring contact system was really good.

borninakihabara• 2 years ago

Maybe, it's sold only in Japan. It's famous for family with scientific culture in Japan.

cjk2• 2 years ago

I bought one of these many years ago. Extremely unreliable and inflexible. Worse than even the springy Rat Shack ones.

I really wish someone would put together a decent kit and guide these days. I did consider designing and marketing something myself for a couple of years but I never got past the conceptual stage. It wasn't going to be a "here's a load of instructions to follow" but experiments that lead to "why" through instruction rather than just mechanical reproduction of circuits verbatim. Even all the Make stuff is pretty lame shiny marketing crap with few explanations and intuition being developed.

I have spoken to a lot of people who bought a load of stuff and learned how to plug things into things and copy and paste code. When it comes to "I want to solve problem X" there are too many gaps which leads to demotivation and large lots of arduino crap being sold in bulk on eBay.

djmips• 2 years ago

Yeah it was disappointing. The 'springy' ones are easier to debug.

kazinator3• 2 years ago

The 200-in-one thing I had with coil spring contacts was also pretty unreliable for complex circuits.

kazinator3• 2 years ago

Extremely unreliable and inflexible.

I can see from the Wikipedia photos that the metal contacts are not of great quality, tarnished and all.

If you polished the contacts (e.g. with Brasso) and the coated with a thin layer of grease (dielectric grease, vaseline, ...) it would probably quite a bit more reliable.

ghgr• 2 years ago

Reminds me of Scatron (sold in Spain in the 90s)

https://jvgavila-com.translate.goog/aypetronic.htm?_x_tr_sl=...

makach• 2 years ago

I owned one of these. The experiments were so-so. The magic of building blocks this way inspired to creation, however as someone else wrote - they are extremely unreliable.

2sk21• 2 years ago

I had this back in the 1980s and I learnt a lot about electronics from it. Was one of my favorite kits!

theyinwhy2• 2 years ago

So, what's a great kit to recommend today?

Solvency• 2 years ago

There are none. We live in an era where anything remotely unique (like that new Knob keyboard) costs $500.

theyinwhy2• 2 years ago

Isn't the knob keyboard ... a keyboard? I was referring to electronic kits for learning.

evan_• 2 years ago

My kids like snapcircuits but it’s pretty basic- nothing approaching the 60-in-1 radio shack kits.

brudgers• 2 years ago

A second hand Radio Shack kit.

They are a great piece of product design and come with lots of things to do instead of lots of words to think about.

They receive criticism for this. But normalizing the construction of circuits and deemphasizing theory is a feature not a bug…there are books for that (and these days websites and YouTubes for that too).

For less than 100 eBay units — often much less — you can get a time tested educational tool.

snvzz• 2 years ago

One of the many "Arduino" breadboard kits.

Great value from China (e.g. aliexpress).

baumschubser• 2 years ago

15 years ago I stumbled across Gakken, because they released a super cheap little synthesizer, controlled by a stylus. It sounds really cool and there exist even hacks to replace the stylus with a MIDI input. I bought one and it is the oldest item in my box of things that I will come back to when I have some free time :)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALla261Zuo8

29athrowaway• 2 years ago

If you are looking for something like this try:

- https://shop.elenco.com/consumers/brands/snap-circuits.html

- https://upperstory.com/spintronics/

ataylor284_• 2 years ago

I own a Gakken GMC-4 microcomputer, which appears to be a remake of the FX-System. It's a fun little 4-bit computer with a hex keypad for input. For output, there's 7 LEDs, 1 7 segment digit lcd, and a speaker.

It has 16 instructions, one of which is an escape code to a further 16 built-in IO routines. It has 96 4-bit words of actual memory plus some memory mapped registers. Loads and stores can only target the data segment, the top 16 words in memory; it has one 4-bit wide index register that allows indexed access as well.

It's a fun challenge to do something interesting in that constrained environment, but since there's no non-volatile storage of any kind, you have to tediously key in (admittedly necessarily short) programs each time it's powered up.

justsomehnguy• 2 years ago

Ah, so this is where Varmilo ste^W gets the inspiration for their hipster gear.

https://varmilo.com/products/shurikey-hanzo-keyboard

jldugger• 2 years ago

My dad picked one of these up at a garage sale in like 1990. It seemed like a great idea but I don't think I learned anything from it, other than that transistors broke my fundamental concept of electrical circuits.

kazinator3• 2 years ago

Some circuits require apparatus which are unsuitable for putting inside blocks, for example, a crystal earpiece. These have wires which terminate in flat metal contacts, and they are connected to the circuit by sliding the contacts between the metal strips of two neighbouring blocks.

Surely, it is not impossible to produce a block that houses a 1/8" jack???

Gakken Ex-System

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