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This blog serves as an information repository for myself, and the information is posted for consumption by the circuit bending community at large. Feel free to use any information gleaned herein for your own bending purposes.

Warning: I make no guarantees of my methods as I know next to nothing about electronics. I will however guarantee that you will end up destroying a toy or two in your circuit bending endeavors and if you do so, it is your own fault.

You can send your questions, tips, news, ideas, et. al. to octatone@gmail.com.

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Sunday, November 25, 2007

Octatone's Bends: Vtech Talking Whiz Kid Plus Documented



The Vtech Talking Whiz Kid Plus is a fairly stable benders playground. there are more than a dozen bends that will yield similar results of the toy crashing and spewing out random bits and pieces of words. The tough part is finding bends that do not sound too much the same.

From the top of the piece, you can see I paid a paltry $1.99. The toggles trigger bends from left to right as follows: random spew A, rhythmic loop slow, rhythmic loop medium, rhythmic loop fast, "tremolo" warble slow, "tremolo" warble fast, sample freeze, random spew B.



From inside, you can see the cavernous amount of unused space where the main board resides. There is more than enough room for 20 or more toggle switches if one so dared.





To get to the main board you must detach the keyboard by either unscrewing the connection between to the main logic board and keyboard, or breaking off the excess plastic holding the keyboard in place (the three red dots in the lower area of the above photo).



Now for the bend points:

Random spew A: brown with white stripe to red with white stripe
Rhythmic loop slow: pink to light green with white stripe
Rhythmic loop medium: red to light green with white stripe
Rhythmic loop fast: green to light green with white stripe
"Tremolo" warble slow: pink to gray with black stripe
"Tremolo" warble fast: yellow to red
Sample freeze: yellow to pink with black sripe
Random spew B: blue with white stripe to red with white stripe

4 comments:

Chris said...

Hey there,

This looks fun! When I started getting into electronics and bending, this is the first toy that I thought of - my brother had one years and years ago, and it looks like it's ripe for the picking.

I'll be following your work for really. :-D

dave said...

i just picked one of these up tonight for $2 but when i put batteries in it from another toy nothing happened. i'm gonna try brand new batteries. i really hope i can take advantage of your bend points!

dave said...

IT WORKS! thanks again for posting your bend points!

Sergio said...

thanks friend!