"Furby" Operating System? Chips? Specs?
Jeffrey Boulier
Hi y'all!
For those who have no contact with small American children, a
Furby is the latest craze in toys. It is basically a stuffed animal, with
all sorts of electronic doo-dads inside. Supposedly the big draw involves
its highly interactive nature - it starts out speaking "Furbish", the
child teaches it English and interacts with it, Furbies "talk" to each
other, and so forth. Internally it has a microprocessor, infrared port,
microphone, ROM, motors, and etcetera.
Pictures of all of the above components are on a "dissected Furby"
web page: http://www.phobe.com/furby/index.html
After all that long-winded introduction, my question is: what
actually is running those suckers? Are they advanced enough to be running
a real operating system, or is the Furby program running on bare
metal? How much ROM/RAM? What CPU?
Thanks for any help you can give!
--Jeffrey Boulier
Yehuda Rest
Jeffrey Boulier wrote in message <75cvme$f...@gwis2.circ.gwu.edu>...
This is from an article posted by Time Digital.
There is a pointer to it on Wired.
What makes the Furby so unique is its
ability to learn and change over time -- to
alter its preset behaviors in response to
the world around it. If you reward a Furby
by petting it after it does something, it’ll do
that thing more often. But there’s nothing
completely new about the technology in a
Furby; what’s innovative about it is the
cleverness with which it’s all put together.
The processor it runs on is the same one
that powered the Apple II and the popular
Atari 2600 game console. Furby’s other
electronic components -- and there’s
plenty of ‘em inside the little fella -- include
simple switches that tell it if it’s being
petted; a light sensor, so it knows when
it’s dark; a motion sensor that tells it if it’s
upside down; assorted speakers,
microphones, gears and cams; and a
central motor. It also has an infrared port,
similar to those found on Apple
PowerBooks, that allows it communicate
with other Furbys.
Fuboco
The Design New says Furby has a low cost 6502 microprocessor variant, like
those in the Apple II computer and was designed in the USA also..
Dan M.
FBC
Chris Hills
Fuboco <fub...@aol.com> writes
>The Design New says Furby has a low cost 6502 microprocessor variant, like
>those in the Apple II computer and was designed in the USA also..
Your mission for the new year reprogramming furbys.......
I can see this getting out of hand (with any luck :-)
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\/\ Chris Hills Staffs /\/\/\/\/\/
/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\ England /\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\
\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/\/
Wayne Holder
> The processor used is a 6509, the same one used in Apple II computers.
The Apple II used a 6502. Perhaps you are thinking of a 6809?
Wayne
Casey Carnahan
Casey Carnahan
>
>
> Wayne
Chuck McCown
an mcu. I would think that the furby would use an mcu probably mask
programmed.
Chuck
PyroLeo
new designs. A shame actually, it was the processor I first learned assembly
on.
The Apple II, II+, and //e all used the 6502 processor. On the Apple IIGS they
used the 65816 (pseudo 16-bit version of the 6502).
I wouldn't think that Furby would be using either one of those these days. Any
common MCU would be lower power, not need as many support chips, would probably
have enough I/O lines built-in, and wouldn't go out of production before the
end of the product life cycle. The same cannot be said for the 6502 or
compatibles.
Leo
...... Remember, two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do......
Mark Zenier
PyroLeo <pyr...@aol.comNOSPAM> wrote:
>The 6502 is quite dated at this point, and I doubt it gets much use anymore in
>new designs. A shame actually, it was the processor I first learned assembly
>on.
>I wouldn't think that Furby would be using either one of those these days. Any
>common MCU would be lower power, not need as many support chips, would probably
>have enough I/O lines built-in, and wouldn't go out of production before the
>end of the product life cycle. The same cannot be said for the 6502 or
>compatibles.
Mitsubishi makes MCUs that use a 65xx CPU (or close to it). Likewise,
it's a simple enough CPU design that somebody is bound to have a core
or HDL module so that it can be put into an ASIC.
Mark Zenier mze...@eskimo.com mze...@netcom.com Washington State resident
and...@unconfigured.xvnews.domain
rgds Andrew
Andrew Holt email: andre...@uk.sun.com
Technical ConsultantIn article <19990103032703...@ng103.aol.com>, pyr...@aol.comNOSPAM (PyroLeo) writes:
>The 6502 is quite dated at this point, and I doubt it gets much use anymore in
>new designs. A shame actually, it was the processor I first learned assembly
>on.
>
>The Apple II, II+, and //e all used the 6502 processor. On the Apple IIGS they
>used the 65816 (pseudo 16-bit version of the 6502).
>
>I wouldn't think that Furby would be using either one of those these days. Any
>common MCU would be lower power, not need as many support chips, would probably
>have enough I/O lines built-in, and wouldn't go out of production before the
>end of the product life cycle. The same cannot be said for the 6502 or
>compatibles.
>
>Leo
>
>
>....... Remember, two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do......
--
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
God put me on earth to accomplish a certain number of things
Right now I am so far behind I will never die
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
PyroLeo
6502?
Andrew wrote:
>
>Hmm what about the single chip 6502 variants such as the 6501Q & >6511Q
(acording to my ancient Rockwell databook:-) plus I think one of >the Japanese
(Mitsubishi ?) semiconductors manufacturers made some >single chip derivatives
also.
>
Anton Erasmus
>The 6502 is quite dated at this point, and I doubt it gets much use anymore in
>new designs. A shame actually, it was the processor I first learned assembly
>on.
>The Apple II, II+, and //e all used the 6502 processor. On the Apple IIGS they
>used the 65816 (pseudo 16-bit version of the 6502).
>I wouldn't think that Furby would be using either one of those these days. Any
>common MCU would be lower power, not need as many support chips, would probably
>have enough I/O lines built-in, and wouldn't go out of production before the
>end of the product life cycle. The same cannot be said for the 6502 or
>compatibles.
There are lots of MCUs based on the 6502. Many Japanese firms make
these 6502 based MCUs. Epson and Star Dot-Matrix printers are a huge
consumer of these 6502 based MCUs. They are not easy to get outside of
Japan though.
Regards Anton
Dave Hansen
<ch...@phaedsys.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>Your mission for the new year reprogramming furbys.......
>I can see this getting out of hand (with any luck :-)
You're too late. People are already using their TV remotes to control
Furby, "skinning" him and dying his fur in psychedelic colors, and
contemplating hacking into his hardware. "Reprogramming" is unlikely,
but there are rumors of people using desktops to control him.
See http://www.phobe.com/furby/ and
http://www.homestead.com/hackfurby/ for more info. Enjoy!
-=Dave
Just my (10-010) cents
I can barely speak for myself, so I certainly can't speak for B-Tree.
Change is inevitable. Progress is not.
Saddle
timer, lots of ports and in 64 (68?) legs QUIP package which was weird to
get into a socket. We used heaps of them (very reliable), but I really
wanted to purchase the 6529 dual processor. In the 6500 series, the
processor did the read/write work on one half of the oscillator cycle. They
were to produce this chip with two processors where each worked on opposite
halves of the cycle. With different boot vector locations and dual access to
all the peripherals/memory, you could assign one of the processors to do the
interrupts while the other ran the main code.
Regards,
Saddle (In the land of OZ)
PyroLeo wrote in message <19990104095223...@ng102.aol.com>...
Spehro Pefhany
> You don't have to be American to trip over a Furby everywhere you go.
> There are here in the UK also - the most sought after toy.
> The thing behaves in a seemingly random fashion, often ignoring all
> stimuli and then suddenly bursting with life, but never making any
> sense.
> I will refrain from speculating on the *sex* of the programmer...
> >> For those who have no contact with small American children, a
> >>Furby is the latest craze in toys. It is basically a stuffed animal, with
> >>all sorts of electronic doo-dads inside. Supposedly the big draw involves
> >>its highly interactive nature - it starts out speaking "Furbish", the
> >>child teaches it English and interacts with it, Furbies "talk" to each
> >>other, and so forth. Internally it has a microprocessor, infrared port,
> >>microphone, ROM, motors, and etcetera.
> --
> Peter.
> Return address is invalid to help stop junk mail.
> E-mail replies to zX...@digiYserve.com but
> remove the X and the Y.
--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
Spehro Pefhany "The Journey is the reward"
sp...@interlog.com
Fax:(905) 271-9838 (small micro system devt hw/sw + mfg)
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
PyroLeo
Leo
Tom Harrington
: > After all that long-winded introduction, my question is: what
: >actually is running those suckers? Are they advanced enough to be running
: >a real operating system, or is the Furby program running on bare
: >metal? How much ROM/RAM? What CPU?
: >
: > Thanks for any help you can give!
You may be interested in the "Hack Furby" page at
<http://www.homestead.com/hackfurby/>.
--
Tom Harrington --------- t...@rmii.com -------- http://rainbow.rmii.com/~tph
"The stupider it looks, the more important it probably is."
-J.R. "Bob" Dobbs, The Book of the SubGenius
Cookie's Revenge: ftp://ftp.rmi.net/pub2/tph/cookie/cookies-revenge.sit.hqx