Quartz time

Remember your teen years...

Could've overwound an automatic

Some of those old Casios are total nerd catnip. An FM voice transmitter is crazy shit. The IR remote is heaps cool too, might even still be useful.

The camera one @sacredhart posted an eBay link to is bananas! Pity the time display is so blocky and didn't use more of that resolution... And I bet it chews through the big 2032s, given the well-used quick-change battery cover.

So I was looking at various ways to polish the crystal, and sniffing around for spares, when I found a NOS example on eBay. The buttons have deteriorated somehow (demoing it?) and it has worse screen bleed than mine, but the case is of course pristine.

I found a thread on a watch forum where some folks were discussing screen bleed, and apparently it's from poor edge sealing and is just air working its way in from the edge, and with a bit of luck can be reversed with some careful squeezing. And can possibly be prevented from recurring by sealing the edge with something...

Also there's someone who sells decals to replace the button mush. It's a bit crap compared to proper buttons, but maybe I can mold some clear plastic over the top somehow...

I ummed and ahhed for a few hours and then slept on it. This morning I was like fuck it, NOS is hen's teeth. Maybe I can wind up with two fully repaired examples, and then I can sell the beat up one.

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I like that, what model no?

Question to all as i been thinking about getting an early G-shock black edition, is the negative display (white digits on black background) much harder to read than the traditional black digits on pearl background? Feel like i read somewhere that the legibility of the black screens is harder to read at a quick glance.

GBX-100 I believe. It has Bluetooth too and can give you notifications from your phone but it’s clunky so I don’t bother.

In my opinion the black screen is not any less clear to read at a glance though I don’t have a white screen digital to wear back to back to compare. It’s a non issue though imo

Cor that’s a pretty thing…

Innit. I could see myself swapping a nice bike for one

I have one that I wear daily. Will take some photos in various lights. But, for me, it is definitely harder to read overall. You sometimes have to catch the light to read it. I often have to use the backlight. My smaller baby G is almost always legible.

Saying that, I do wear it daily, so it's not a big issue.

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Nagged my parents for a week for one of these on holiday in Cornwall when I was little, must have been less than 8. Just looked it up for the purpose of this thread and someone is trying to sell one on eBay for £400 lol. I thought all these sorts of casios had been reissued and weren’t worth anything. I probably just chucked it out.

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@jono84 the GBX-100 has an LCD display so it's not the same as e47's G-Shock, I find it readable in all lights and only use the backlight when it's actually too dark to read any colour screen.

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Much better

Hey, that's a fancy display... Is that just a standard watch rather than a smartwatch which needs frequent charging?

And if so, any idea what module is in it? Got the instruction booklet?

Yep it's just a standard watch, doesn't require charging. It does have Bluetooth as I said above so it can give you your text messages which I imagine will reduce battery life but probably still lasts years.
The display turns off entirely when the watch isn't being worn.

I like the MIPS display, as featured above and would like to see it on a bare bones square G Shock (of which I have a few).

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Casio fans not that hard to come by.

Never even heard of a MIPS display before; seems pretty cool. Maybe it'll drive an old-skool digital watch resurgence...

I was never a fan of the G-Shock, and always somewhat aghast at the unending fad of chunky watches; it seems like a cop-out to push a fashion which forsakes the core concept of a wristwatch - miniaturisation. Can't understand how so very many folks didn't get annoyed with their watch fouling their sleeve...

Kinda like I can't understand why people keep buying huge SUVs despite the fuel bills, but each to their own I guess

The G Shocks are a bit of a hobby; the early ones can get quite pricey on ebay, and I like the challenge of sourcing parts and getting them going again. The 5610 gets the most wrist time, solar power and time signal means the only button that gets pressed is the light. I've got a couple of Citizen quartz divers in my basket, for future projects and the Casio analogue homages are simple and fun to work on. I'm planning to use a Seiko VH31 movement in one (MTD 1010) to have a sweep hand and the benefit of a quartz.

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Nice one! Do you know of any online resources to help me learn how to get hacking with this stuff?

I was wondering what the little adjustment screw I see in quartz watches is about, and went googling, but only came up with superficial junk. Then I happened to chance upon a forum comment which mentioned an adjustable capacitor...

But surely there's somewhere I can glean more than a single random snippet at a time...?

Casio analogue homage

What's the one in the pic? A Casio? Or a frankenstein?

I've yet to find a single resource for info; calibre corner gives technical information on analogue movements (quartz and mechanical), shockbase for G Shocks (good for checking part compatibility), watchUseek often crops up on searches, even if it's others asking the same question. If there's a code to interpreting Casio module numbers, I've not cracked it yet

A completely original Casio, the model is MTD 1010 - they did some watches which were undoubtedly inspired by more expensive ones such as this, the MTD 1051 and the MTD 1043.

So the donor watch for the keypad for the DBX-100 turned up, and the contacts on the ribbon wire were a different pitch. Tried sorting it with some conductive paint, but it just flakes off... Someone recommended getting new flex PCBs made, looking into that.

In the meantime, to verify I've understood the circuit, I bodged an array of buttons, and they all work, but I hit a fairly major snag... Seems like you're meant to long-press the top left one to get into adjustment mode, but when I do that it just says THIS WEEK like I've short-pressed it, and the watch freezes. Only pulling the battery does anything from there. Even worse, while trying to figure out what the upper two side buttons do, which is apparently nothing, I noticed the time pauses while they're pressed, and doesn't jump forward when they're released.

Bad bad. So much for just working around the problem by powering it up come the stroke of midnight on new year's eve :(

Super weird, how it nearly works but not quite.

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Okay, some good news - I was reluctant to short the AC pad because I wasn't sure what to short it to, but after watching a couple of repair vids I gather the done thing is to short it to battery negative. After doing that, the freezing and pausing behaviour is gone, thankfully...

Although I still can't figure out how to adjust it or what the upper two side buttons are for...

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... Anybody have a clue what these jumpers are about? 3/6 of them bridged.

Inside a DB-31, I find one of four.

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Don’t know anything about watches, but to me these look like some kind of calibration. They can easily be jumped in manufacturing.
All go to the same potential (gnd?) so the microcontroller can read these out and adjust accordingly.