I was offered this device untested for a price I couldn’t refuse. From a photo, I could see the TV part would power on but nothing else was displayed.
Having picked up the computer, I got it home and started testing, first I plugged the PC part into another monitor and apart from the CMOS battery is dead, it looked good. Then after a bit of research, I found you could switch the inputs by pushing the two volume buttons at the same time. Everything sprang into life and it all works!
These devices seem pretty rare these days, I can only find a few brief mentions of them on the internet. The device is from 1995 and was sold exclusively in Toys ‘r’ us. It’s basically a 486 DX2-66 based PC with a TV/Monitor built in and a TV Tuner on board.
The only issue I have is it didn’t come with a remote control, so currently, I am unable to switch the video input to the Scart or composite inputs on the back. On initial investigation, these seem to be controlled via a DOS executable on the PC combined with a Windows DLL file that sends commands internally via the I2C protocol. Maybe one day soon I’ll dig a little deeper and see if I can call some of the DLL routines without relying on the remote control to trigger them.
This is going to be a fun one to mess around with!
Hi. I just got a working unit, but the HDD is dead… so I don’t have the software for it, and I can’t find anything online… Do you have a clone of the HDD, and could you please share it? It would be awesome to have this working as it was…
I’m searching for the remote still, it was in a giant warehouse and there are boxes full of remotes, will have to spend a few hours digging for it, if its there…
Hi, Yes I took an image of the Hard Drive shortly after I received it, I may have made a few changes, but it has Windows 3.11 on it with the PCTV software and drivers etc so will be enough to get you up and running. I will chuck you an email so we can sort something out. If you ever find the remote, I really want to capture the codes from it so I can program it into a universal remote. My attempts to brute force it have not been successful so far 🙁
Many thanks. If the remote is found, I will capture it and share the codes, I understand that no one have it and it makes a huge diference in the use of the TV part. Sadly the keyboard is confirmed long gone… I would love that thing.