“My Tetris is a werewolf” or nostalgia from childhood

Dear Khabrovites, I want to tell you about the game console "BRICK GAME E 118 T" or, in common people, simply "Tetris". And about how I learned that he was a werewolf , miraculously, turned into "BRICK GAME E 1997 T". I don’t think I’ll tell you something completely new in the IT field, but if anyone is interested in hearing about werewolf tetris from the past, stock up on tomatoes and ask for a cut.


The article is more detailed, but for those who are too lazy to read a video review:


In the midst of a pile of trash of their belongings, a werewolf was sitting in one of the boxes , I could hardly escape, I found my old tetris. Once I talked about it to several of my friends and few of them believed me. And who would believe in a werewolf?
My acquaintance with tetris began with the fact that a classmate once gave me to play it when I came to him with a book (the school gave out several books for two, due to their shortage). Since then I have been a frequent guest with him (then they bought him a computer, and on it I also played Golden Ax with him, and a few more games, but that's another story).
When my dad raised the question, “Do we buy tetris or assemble it further, onto the console?”, I thought that before the console, I still have to assemble and assemble, he can change his mind, plus he needs a TV for the console. We had two televisions: color and black and white. I was not sure that I needed this. As you might imagine, it was precisely black and white that they gave me to “tear”. It is cheaper than color, and the prefix "sets the picture tube" (I think everyone remembers this myth, and this is really a myth). Without even thinking that it wouldn’t work out like a human being in black and white, I was worried by the question that these televisions were constantly breaking down (the televisions were lamp). If one breaks down, dad will watch his “news” and all the nonsense on the other, and I will only admire how beautiful my prefix looks on the shelf. And the TVs “ate” a lot of electricity and would constantly expel me with the words: "You will wind electricity, I will beat!" Given that with Tetris, I would get complete autonomy, I decided thatbuy a computer and buy it. So it was done.
We bought a Tetris, as I already mentioned, of the BRICK GAME E 118 T model and I immediately began to be disappointed in it.

Here is a list of shortcomings that all Tetris did not have with which I had before:

- After shutting down, the game was not saved. After you put the game on pause tetris and turn it off when you turn on, the start-up screen was played. And he also turned off himself, if you did not press anything on him for a long time. This all made me take him even to the kitchen and, excuse me, even to the toilet, so as not to lose all the game "achievements".
- In this model there were few games, many of them are just trash. By few games, I mean their variety (on the Tetris, that I played was even less, but the variety was much better).
- There were no games that I liked in all the tetris that I had seen before. This is a race with shooting and walls, this is a “building” in which there were specific figures (for example, a single-celled flashing cube that could go through the entire building and completed the construction from the very bottom) and rules (for example, a line with a flashing cube, filling in which led to level completion) and much more.
- The buttons wore out very quickly, despite the fact that I played it less than my friend’s tetris, and he undoubtedly played it, and before me and after me, nothing broke in him.

An example of an elastic band with a contact and buttons:


As we can see, the button in the middle has a stand for elastic.
As a result of poor construction, the gum was often torn, and there was nowhere to get new ones, except perhaps from a new Tetris, but in that case I would throw it away - what's the point of buying a new one and rearranging everything to the old one. So it was clever in different ways.

A typical gum gap (I would say that this was more or less “fate spared”):


The power on, sound on / off, and reset buttons were better. The logic of the Chinese is simply "iron" - because they are least often used. They are also smaller than the others (apparently these “racks” were invented to save plastic).


Surprisingly, the “rotate / shooting / select” button was just as poor-quality, but less likely to fail. All due to the fact that the contact area was larger, the button was pressed more easily and, of course, wore less. Other buttons, going awry, due to poor fastening, were pressed worse and worse and, as a result, the rubber “chewed” faster. Strong keystrokes, in addition to rubber bands, also tear off the keyboard board mounts (one foot of the board mount remained directly on the board - see the photo).


The board is screwed in (it is clear that screws of different "caliber" are my work):

The only self-tapping screw that holds more or less is, it is not strange, the lower right. All the rest can be removed without twisting.

Photo completely (the speaker is not his native, native, I once soldered to a small radio):


With poor-quality buttons, my torment began with its repair and all sorts of tricks that make them work. Than I just did not glue them. It’s not that it didn’t hold, it simply broke and broke very quickly. I disassembled it, probably more than a thousand times (several times a day for a year). It literally began to fall apart, the self-tapping screws ceased to hold, after which I replaced them several times, with more and more in size, and the latter simply scrolled through and through.



Once, on a warm sunny day with a bunch of half-dead batteries, I went outside to sunbathe, breathe fresh air and play Tetris. Laying a blanket on the grass, in the garden under a tree, I began to pick up batteries in Tetris. Sometimes Tetris hung with an incomprehensible pattern on the screen, but once it gave out something that plunged me into shock. The number 1997 was displayed on the screen, instead of 118, which meant the number of games.


After that, I could no longer sleep peacefully, the tetris turned into a terrible beast, howled at the moon and did not let me sleep , waiting for the next day to play new games for me again. But there was a problem - after turning it off and on, it became the same “E 118 T” and I had to switch on and off the batteries for a long time so that it would turn into a terrible beast"E 1997 T" and get the cherished 1997 games. Moreover, the tetris turned off itself if you did not press anything for several minutes and again became "E 118 T".
After the painful methods of re-contacting the batteries to get a super Tetris upgrade in E 1997 T, I thought, “Are there any other methods?” In search of the unknown, I once again opened the tetris and randomly closed, with something metallic, everything that could be on the board (because I understood that something had been connected to the tetris if it reacted to the battery contact). Not immediately, but only carefully examining the main board, I found three jumpers, two of them were closed. The jumpers looked like a place under the SMD resistor.


Unfortunately, there is no way to take a photo, because I filled everything with rosin when soldering, and then with nail polish to isolate. Do not judge strictly - I was 10 years old and although I was a little versed in electronics, I did not understand the differences between nail polish and insulation varnish. But I will say that he did an excellent job.
It began with the fact that I closed the last jumper. She was not the only one closed. Keeping her closed, he turned on the tetris and got "9 in one." I immediately realized that on the right track. Empirically, I realized that opening all the jumpers gives the effect of “1997 in 1”. In this form, I collected it back, but happiness did not last long. After several freezes, I realized that it’s not so simple ... When I achieved the “1997 in 1” effect by re-contacting the batteries, there were no freezes, but it was painful and inefficient, because I realized that if you disconnect all the jumpers (which If the “1997 in 1” mode were turned on), and then connected as it was from the factory, there would be no glitches. I did not dare to do this with a soldering iron (solder and solder), because all this had to be cranked up with the tetris turned on, and it would have burned down, almost certainly (more precisely, it was necessary to unsolder the two jumpers to turn on the tetris and to solder them back, without turning it off), and it was not a desire to do this. Whoever says anything, there is some voltage on the soldering iron and it could easily kill the microcircuit.
One could not understand then - why the price of different tetris was the same, because 1997 is better than 9? I think it’s not difficult to guess what idea came to my mind later - I decided to build three switches in Tetris and include the “Tetris” that I want. I searched for three identical switches for a long time, and when I found it, there was not much left of Tetris. I didn’t bother with it for a long time - I burned three sloppy holes with a soldering iron, installed three switches there, soldered them to the treasured jumpers, filled the soldering place with varnish and attached the switches to the tetris with a wire. In general, I did not regret the cruel work, Tetris, and what else could I do - I was about 10 years old then ... Well, it doesn’t matter, we look at the photo:




But the photo of the board with jumpers:

I slightly damaged the loop when I was oiling the case under the switches. Unfortunately, when I started writing, I didn’t yet know that the board was covered with varnish, so excuse me ... But I don’t know how to remove it without decreasing at the same time, and most importantly there is no desire to tinker with it.


Universal instruction from Tetris, and now Tetris is universal. Funny, isn't it?

Empirically, I found out which combination of switch positions belongs to which “Tetris” that I wrote in pencil on the same instructions. As it turns out, there are three switches, for each two positions (on, off): 2 to 3 degrees equals eight. A total of eight different combinations - eight “tetris”: “9 in 1”, “38 in 1”, “118 in 1”, “256 in 1”, “338 in 1”, “500 in 1”, “668 in 1” ”,“ 1997 in 1. ”


I think everyone knows where the jumpers are in Tetris: it’s cheaper to manufacture universal devices in production than to sharpen factories for each device. Then, by setting the necessary “jumpers” from the “universal” products to do “special”, it is also a good opportunity to write off the marriage, for example, in the “1997 in 1” mode does not work, but in the “9 in 1” it works. We have a marriage, set jumpers on “9 in 1” and, instead of a defective product, we have a “fully working” device (these are not only tetris, but also processors, video cards, etc.).

Well, that’s the whole story of the werewolf , thanks, to all readers, for the time spent. I hope it was interesting.