Digital archeology is an unofficial direction in IT, which helps to find and save many interesting inventions of the past years from oblivion. Games, laptops, PDAs, accessories - many gadgets are accidentally or intentionally lost immediately after the announcement. The task of digital archaeologists is to "unearth" such a device or software and tell the world about it.
It happened a couple of days ago. One of the "archaeologists" managed to find an extremely rare device. This is the WorkBoy, an accessory for Nintendo's GameBoy handheld game console. It is a specialized keyboard that turns a gaming device into a kind of PDA with additional software.
Last weekend, video game specialist Liam Robertson posted a video detailing his find. He managed to find a prototype, part of a very small batch of the released WorkBoy.
Some of his colleagues had heard of the WorkBoy, but believed that all the prototypes were lost. Moreover, many experts thought that this device never saw the light of day. Fortunately, all these people were mistaken - in fact, the Japanese company nevertheless developed and released a limited batch of prototypes, of which at least one survived, and in working order.
Why a keyboard for a game console? In fact, she opened access to 12 applications, including a weekly planner, currency converter, calendar, reminder. So the portable device turned into a fairly convenient PDA with basic capabilities. And, of course, the console remained a console, so you could play at any time - even with a connected keyboard, even without it. A special cartridge was needed to gain access to the applications.
Robertson stated that the first prototype keyboard for the GameBoy was presented at CES electronics in 1992, in May. This exhibition was successful for the company, which presented a number of new products, but the keyboard went almost unnoticed by journalists. Most likely, simply because it had nothing to do with the gaming world, so the specialized media did not want to write about such a device. Moreover, one of the publications that did mention the device called it “ridiculous”.
Robertson contacted a representative from the company that developed the device for Nintendo, who shared a number of details. So, for example, it became known that the cost of the keyboard was $ 79- $ 89, which was a lot. The high price is one of the reasons that prevented the accessory from entering the market.
Robertson managed to access the device and test it. At first, nothing happened precisely because of the absence of the very cartridge mentioned above. But then the researcher was lucky - in the summer, a whole bunch of files that were related to Nintendo's development got on the Internet , and one of these files turned out to be a working image of the WorkBoy software.
As it turned out, the software worked great. The address book even had a telephone tone line simulator, which made it possible to automatically dial the subscriber's number from the book by holding the receiver to the speaker of the gadget. But, first, the functionality of the programs was limited: the GameBoy simply did not have enough memory to expand the capabilities of the keyboard and applications for it. Secondly, the device did not have an Internet connection, which also greatly limited the capabilities of the device. And finally, the high cost, which we have already written about.
All this led to a lack of interest from users and the company itself to a small keyboard that turns the GameBoy into a PDA. If the price were lower, then it is quite possible that the fate of WorkBoy would have been completely different. But it's good that this device received its moment of fame, albeit 28 years after its release.
