The GameSphere is REAL (aka Boomball) - Krazy Ken’s Tech Talk
- It's SPHERICAL!!! That's right, the famous GameSphere from "Drake & Josh" and internet memes is a real product. But it's not a game console. Yet.
With some modding, it can be. So let's dive into this orb and the history of the brand behind it, Memorex. (upbeat music) Hey, everyone, how are you all doing? If you're new here, welcome. My name is Krazy Ken. And the famous GameSphere is actually a Memorex Boomball, which is a CD player and AM/FM radio.
Memorex was founded in 1961 by former engineers at Ampex, Laurence, Arnold, Donald, and Lawrence, spelled differently. Memorex is a portmanteau of memory excellence, almost as good as chef excellence. You've probably heard of Memorex from those blank CDs lying around your house at one point in time. But before CDs were a thing, Memorex produced magnetic computer tape in Silicon Valley, before it was called Silicon Valley.
In 1966, they expanded into disk packs, followed by IBM-plug-compatible peripherals for IBM mainframes. And in 1970, IBM sued them. Oh my gosh, seriously, we're like 15 seconds into the story, and already somebody is suing someone else? God bless America.
What happened was IBM accused Memorex of wrongful appropriation and use of trade secrets. Memorex was like, "Man, that's uncool," so they countersued, accusing IBM of crowding out competitors. Countersuits can make a civil case much more complex, and that's likely what happened here because this case lasted for eight years.
Meanwhile, in 1971, Memorex is gonna continue doing business, right? They're not just gonna give up. So they entered the consumer media business with some new products and a new marketing campaign which launched the famous slogan, Is it live, or is it Memorex? Lawsuit aside, through the '70s, Memorex was one of the largest independent suppliers of disk drives and communication controllers for IBM mainframe users, and on the consumer side, audio and video cassettes. These guys were a big deal. In 1978, the lawsuit finally went to trial, for 96 days. And the deliberation lasted 19 more days on top of that. Ultimately, the jury could not reach a verdict, so it was declared a mistrial.
Now it was down to a judge's decision. - [Announcer] And the winner of the 1970 lawsuit is IBM! (audience cheering) - (beep), Memorex said. So they appealed, but they couldn't prove that IBM was engaging in anti-competitive practices, so they lost the appeal too. So now they were down to their last resort, the Supreme Court, which is like a regular court but with extra toppings. And SCOTUS was like, "Eh, no."
The full settlement details must have happened behind closed doors because I cannot find a concrete outcome. But I do know IBM did not have to pay the damages Memorex sought, which, according to the New York Times, was $306 million. At this point, Memorex was struggling financially. In 1980, they had a loss of $29 million, a stark contrast to the $31.5 million profit in 1979. But the problems ran deeper than that. In fact, some would argue that the true financial troubles at Memorex started several years earlier.
As competition grew in the early '70s and IBM lowered prices of its own disk storage equipment, Memorex struggled to keep up. And in 1973, they lost $90 million, leading to significant reorganization. Thanks to that reorg and Memorex's focus on the consumer market, they were able to stay afloat. But in 1980, they needed to sell. Okay, so this is where the story starts breaking up a little bit. So let's play a drinking game.
Every time a company trademark or other asset is sold, take a drink. Spoiler alert, you will die. Memorex sold to Burroughs in December, 1981 for $105 million. Then Burroughs sold the consumer portion of Memorex to RadioShack's parent, Tandy Corporation.
Burroughs kept the OEM and enterprise business and then merged in November, 1986 with Sperry Corporation, forming Unisys. Then they spun off most of Memorex into a separate business one month later, Memorex International. Then that company acquired Telex and they formed Memorex Telex, but that went bankrupt in 1996.
And in December, 1989, Unisys completed the sale of its hard disk assembly, manufacturing, and refurbishment operations, which were previously used by Memorex, to a group of managers who formed a new company, Sequel. Okay, that was a lot. I'm a teetotal, so I don't drink alcohol, so I'm okay to keep going, but hopefully you're doing okay out there. How many fingers am I holding up? So everything I just mentioned was the non-consumer side of the structure. So what about the consumer focuses? In 1993, Tandy RadioShack sold the Memorex consumer brand to private Hong Kong firm Hanny Holdings, who licensed the name and brand recognition to another company named Memcorp.
And Memcorp used the Memorex name on consumer electronics such as television sets and CD players. And that brings us to July, 2002 and Memcorp's unique Sphere product line. And before I dive into that product line, I know this mod is going to take a while, so I'm gonna get a headstart. I'm gonna bring it to my friend Delicious Damian and see what he can do. Let's go pay him a visit.
Hey, Damian, I want you to turn this CD player into an actual working GameSphere. - The one from "South Park" or "Drake & Josh?" - Crap, I forgot there was one from "South Park." "Drake & Josh." - Alrighty, I'll do my best.
- Thanks. What are you writing? (iMac shattering) - None of your business, Ken. - That computer costs $3,000. - Is that including depreciation? - All right, well, I'm kind of sad about my smashed iMac. That seemed completely unnecessary. But I can't wait to see what Damian cooks up.
And don't worry, I had a second Boomball we can preserve in all its glory, and I'd love to show it to you. But now I think would be a good time to get everyone up to speed on the whole GameSphere reference because if it weren't for that joke, there's no way I would've bought two of these things in the first place. The GameSphere has achieved a meme status.
And it originates from the Nickelodeon sitcom "Drake & Josh," which first aired on January 11th, 2004. The first episode of season 2 was called "The Bet." And as the title suggests, Drake and Josh make bets with each other. Josh bets Drake he can't live without junk food, and Drake bets Josh he can't live without video games.
And as punishment, the loser dyes... - His hair pink. (audience laughing) - [Josh and Drake] Oh. - Josh is doing great in this contest until his grammy sends him a GameSphere. And he really wants to play it. Why? Because it's spherical.
- SPHERICAL! (audience laughing) - [Ken] And Drake and Josh wasn't the only TV show with a GameSphere. In fact, several years earlier, "South Park" featured a GameSphere console in season 5, episode 8. - [Japanese Speaker] Okama, GameSphere! - Despite the GameSphere being fictional, the Boomball's appearance is still a head turner. But the Boomball wasn't Memorex's only spherical product.
There was a whole line of sphere products. Memcorps' Sphere product line was launched in July, 2002 as a Target exclusive. Oh, that explains the red spherical nature of the products. Now I get it. This line consisted of Timeball, Teleball, Videoball, and of course Boomball.
Timeball is an alarm clock with a built-in AM/FM radio. And thanks to its spherical nature, if you lose your softball, you can always use the Timeball for your sport activities. It's got a nice grip. Timeball uses AC power, but it also has a nine-volt battery compartment for backup.
To tune the radio and change other settings, all the controls are on the bottom, except snooze and the sleep timer. And on the back is this BoomerangIt sticker? And that got me curious because it was on all of the SPHERE products I own. I had no idea what this company was, so I looked them up, and apparently, they're still active. They're an international lost and found service. And Memorex, or Memcorp I suppose, teamed up with BoomerangIt to offer this service to customers. So I thought that was kind of nice.
It's like an early version of Apple's Find My network, except in 2002. (phone ringing) One second. Sorry about that. Ooh, (chuckles) I gotta take this. This is the Teleball. And to me, it looks kind of sus.
Teleball is a cordless phone which is very roundish, and the dock itself is definitely spherical. Like the Timeball, the red color is striking and it stands out. It also has the usual phone features, like call waiting for placing an existing call on hold and accepting another call, and caller ID with a 40-number memory.
And it has a detachable belt clip. So, guys, if you need to dazzle your lady, pop one of these bad boys on. It's gonna be the next fashion trend. I guarantee it. So I hooked up my landline, which is something I haven't used since my CIDCO iPhone episode.
It certainly has been a while. And let's go ahead and test it out. Let's give ourselves a call. (phone ringing) A call! I wonder who it's for. Hello? Oh, yes, thank you for reminding me that there's no battery in this phone, and I'm not actually taking a call right now. Yes, the battery that arrived with this thing, as you can imagine, was corroded.
And I ordered a replacement, and it's still not here, so we just have to go with the dock for now. Up next, Videoball. In terms of surface area, the Videoball TV is the most spherical of them all. And it features a 13-inch CRT with a movable translucent hood that covers the screen.
The front bezel has all your control buttons, and the back has an F-type connector for your antenna. And there's plenty of jacks, a composite video jack, a mono audio jack, a headphone jack, and "Samurai Jack." Videoball also comes with a red, rounded remote, but it's pretty elusive.
I've been able to track down every single SPHERE product, except for the remote. But, I mean, with a little imagination, we can just pretend the Teleball phone is a remote. Wow. Now I saved the best for last, the MSP-BX1600, aka Boomball. And I'll show it right after I show some other products first. Introducing the Laifen Wave.
I'll talk about the features in a moment, but first just look at that design. I love how it's inspired by Apple, even down to the packaging. Heck, it even has motion-activated lights with soft pulsating rhythms. It's just a really attractive toothbrush. Wave's proprietary servo system helps clean deeply without hurting your gums. This is the world's first 60-degree oscillation and vibration toothbrush.
Its unique side to side sweeping motion covers a wider area and removes six times more plaque than a regular electric toothbrush. It's also IPX7 water resistant. And if you really want to customize your experience, you can use the Laifen app to adjust the vibration strength and the oscillation range and speed.
You can also set a two-minute timer and a 30-second zone change reminder to tell you when to brush a different part of your mouth. And the icing on the cake, magnetic charging. It really is like an Apple product, isn't it? Laifen Wave comes in a variety of colors. But if you want that pure Apple style white color, go for the white, just like your teeth will be. So search Laifen on Amazon or Google or click the links in my description to get your own Laifen Wave. And you can get up to 40% off with Laifen's Black Friday sale, so jump on that discount while you can.
And one more thing, replacement heads are only 15.99 for a three-pack, so keeping your bristles fresh is easy. Go ahead and click the links in the description to get your own Laifen Wave. And when you do that, you're also supporting the Computer Clan. So thank you very much. Alright, let's get spherical.
The Boomball is a spherical CD player with stereo speakers and an AM/FM radio. And to this day, 22 years later, I still think it looks stunning. Move over Sonic the Hedgehog Boombox.
The Boomball is my favorite now. With its vibrant red colors and glossy and matte finishes, it's a beautiful ball. And I'm blessed to have one in such great condition. And I'm also grateful to have the original box and manual, which are also in good condition for their age.
And they both bear the Memorex branding, but they also mention Memcorp Incorporated, located in Weston, Florida. The Boomball's translucent hood slides up, letting you access the CD compartment and the controls. The function button switches between the CD player and the radio. And the band button switches between AM and FM.
- Would you like AM or FM? - You can power the Boomball with the included AC power cord, or if you hate the environment, you can use eight C batteries. I guess that makes it portable. But yeah, you know, whatever you wanna do.
It also has a headphone jack and a built-in handle. The crazy thing is this thing originally sold for 50 bucks, but they're going for more than double that on eBay right now. And that's for non-fully functioning units. So if you have one of these lying around and you need a little extra dinero, sell it.
They have appreciated pretty well. Thanks, Nickelodeon. All right, I have a CD with me, let's pop it in. Very nice.
And power it up. (announcement beeping) Power. (static, radio host speaking indistinctly) - That's the radio. CD. (button clicking) (button clicking) Uh-oh.
(lighthearted music) Okay, so I'm making the hypothesis that one or more capacitors has gone bad or something else is shorting internally, because not only does the CD drive not spin, but the radio signal is also pretty staticky and the LCD doesn't display numbers or letters correctly. I'm not stupid usually. I know I'm 10 stories underground and that's not gonna help with the radio signal. So I escaped to the surface, and it was still pretty staticky. However, there were some moments where the signal was somewhat clear.
But overall, it was kind of bad. But I'm not gonna blame the Boomball's design for that. It's aging circuitry that's the problem. So that's a bit of a bummer, but I'm not fully surprised because when I was looking for these on eBay, every listing I saw said the CD drive doesn't work. So I guess these components just didn't age well.
But with a little movie magic, I can simulate how it should look and sound. (upbeat rock music with '80s brass synth lead) Let's check in with Damian and see how the mod is doing. Speed dial. (phone ringing) - [Damian] Hey, Ken, what's up? - Hey, Damian, can you bring me up to speed on the GameSphere mod? - [Damian] Yeah, definitely.
(frenzied music) - Whoa, I have no idea how you did that over the phone, but thank you. Alright, so here's the situation. Delicious Damian and his friend have teamed up to literally fit a square peg into a round hole.
And the first step is all the guts need to be removed from the Boomball. Then Damien et al took the internals out of this GameCube, de-soldered one of the memory card slots, and soldered an external HDMI port. Then they wired up some fans to keep the system cool and de-soldered wires from an old parallel cable. These wires will connect to the recently de-soldered memory card slot, so now it can reside outside the Boomball's case. Let's give it a test.
And bingo. External memory card is working. Up next, they soldered a Raspberry Pi Pico computer to the GameCube motherboard.
This Pico is running the PicoBoot firmware, which lets us bypass the GameCube's default bios and load the Swiss homebrew utility from a microSD card. Swiss gives us several features, including the ability to launch games from microSD, but we can still use the optical drive if we choose. And then Damian had to stop for a while because it turns out they need some 3D printed parts to continue the mod. I volunteered to help, which was a stupid idea because I know nothing about 3D printing.
But I'm willing to learn. I know how to 2D print, so I tried that first, but that was utterly useless. In the end, I couldn't nail this 3D printing thing, but I know who can, BigRig Creates. Let's pay him a visit. (upbeat rock music) Alright, I've infiltrated BigRig's studio lab.
How you doing today? - Doing pretty good. - Fantastic. Now I don't know anything about 3D printing, so you're gonna teach me things. So what's going on here? - [BigRig] Yeah, so right here is some FDM printing, which means that it's melting plastic layer by layer that's being fed into it based on a 3D model that I sent over.
- [Ken] What are you printing with this right now? - This is going to be a Porygon from "Pokemon" housing a Wii. - I see we're both doing some Nintendo stuff right now. So for the GameSphere, how long is the print job gonna take? - Yeah, I just sliced it up a little while ago. It's gonna take about an hour and a half or so. - Is there any way we can speed that up a little bit? - That's why they invented time lapses.
- Ooh, I love time lapses. (calm music) Whoa, hey, that was fast. So what kind of material is this made of? I see, like, there's a bunch of lines here. - Yeah, so layer by layer, this is all PLA, which is kind of the go-to material for hobbyists and stuff. There's other materials you technically could use, but this is kind of the standard.
- Alright, awesome. Well, Damian, I'm gonna get these right to you and we can finish the GameSphere. - Thanks very much for helping up.
Appreciate it. - Sounds good, Ken, thanks. - I won't break into your lab anymore. - Yeeeaaaahhhhh... - Just to be safe, I asked BigRig to print all the parts from MattTheGamer's list, but in the end Damian only needed four, two pieces to hold the GameCube up so it doesn't sink into the ball, one piece to hold the power button in place, and a guide so they can trace and cut out a hole for the GameCube's optical drive.
The cut wound up being kind of crude, but, hey, it works. So Delicious Damian and his friend need a little more time to complete the GameSphere mod. In the meantime, I think we should take another look at Memorex because as cool as the Boomball is, it came out in 2002, 22 years ago from today.
Memorex had plenty of other stuff going on. On May 1st, 2006, Memorex was acquired by another company you've probably seen on CDs, Imation, or maybe it's Imation, I don't know. The jury is out on that one. They bought Memorex for $330 million. Okay, they definitely recovered from the '80s. But they wanted more.
On July 10th, 2007, Imation acquired Memcorp's assets for $60 million, giving them full control over the Memorex brand. Unfortunately, as we enter 2013, Imation's profits were down and the company wanted to strengthen its focus on data storage and security and optical media retail products. So on October 15th, 2013, Imation divested Memorex's consumer electronics business to an unknown buyer. About two years later, Imation was in the middle of a restructure, and they sold their corporate headquarters. They sold the Memorex brand too, which included the Memorex trademark and two other related trademarks for $9.4 million. And the new owner was DPI, Digital Products International.
After the sale, Imation shifted into strategic investments and asset management. And on February 21st, 2017, they rebranded themselves as GlassBridge Enterprises. But they still held on to the Imation trademark until they sold it to Korean company O-JIN on December 1st, 2017.
DPI continued to own the Memorex brand until January, 2024, when they sold it for an undisclosed amount to Finest Brands Incorporated, making them the new holding company. And the largest official licensee is Mizari Enterprises, which is why you'll see their name on the Memorex website today. CES Daily dropped some hints at the future, saying Memorex is seeking global partners and their upcoming products will honor the brand's heritage with a plethora of new products. As of today, I haven't seen any of these new products yet, but it has only been 10 months, to be fair, so maybe there's more coming soon. The Memorex website gives us a glimpse of what's coming, saying they have a vision to renew and transform the once famous company using its heritage and brand recognition.
But the rest of the website is pretty nebulous in regards to the actual product offerings. But hopefully, the website will be more polished soon because it feels really unfinished right now. Heck, even the products button in the nav bar doesn't go anywhere.
Also, should I be concerned the office photos on their contact page show a Smartworks coworking space? Which is not even on the same continent as their business address. I mean, heck, I'll give them the benefit of the doubt. Maybe they're just using them as stock photos. For grins and giggles, I emailed Mizari, asking if they can give me any juicy nuggets about Memorex's future.
And I actually got a reply from the president and founder himself, Alan Mizrahi. But just like the website, the reply was vague. "We are expanding the brand." But in a follow up email, he did say they will be at CES 2025, so maybe we'll get some new updates then. Nothing would delight me more than to see a historic brand spring back to life and become relevant again in the mainstream markets. That'd be pretty cool.
Alright, let's check in with Damian and the GameSphere. Before installing the 3D printed parts, the team wired the Boomball's program button to the GameCube's motherboard, where the reset button would typically connect, effectively turning this program button into a reset button. They did the same thing with the power button too.
And normally, the GameCube's lid will tell the system, "Hey, it's closed, feel free to spin up that disk," but that won't work with our Boomball lid. Instead, Damian and team wired a manual switch to tell the GameCube that this drive is closed. And let's test it. Boom, it works. Next, the 3D printed parts were screwed and glued into place. A little more wiring and some taping to make sure things don't short and ta-da! Here's the inner workings of our lovely Boomball, well, GameSphere now.
And when all closed up, it mostly looks like an original Boomball from the front, but the back definitely has some spaghetti going on. But, hey, we need ports. Before I test the GameSphere myself, I need to give a special thanks to Delicious Damian and BigRig Creates for helping us make this mod. And I have to give a huge shout out to Matt Passarelli for making the 3D files and videos on this mod because he was super helpful. Alright, time to test the GameSphere.
And what better way than to use the Videoball, two beautiful balls coming together. The Videoball is RCA-in, so I'll have to use some conversion technology for the HDMI. But that's no problem. Let's take this thing for a spin. (GameCube startup sound, xylophone) (upbeat rock music) (buttons rattling) (buttons rattling) (buttons rattling) - Ken, it's not even plugged in. - What do you mean? - It's in demo mode? - Oh, I thought I was doing better than I usually do.
It's pretty freaking cool to be playing games on a, quote, unquote, real GameSphere, especially with the spherical Videoball as my TV. I was never huge into video games growing up, and when I did play I usually played on a PC, but I do have some fond memories with the GameCube. Lots of Pac-Man World and Mario Kart: Double Dash, and Star Fox: Assault.
But holy (beep) did I suck at that game. Oh yeah, and those Tiger Woods intros. Who could forget those? Man, I think I could just spend all day playing on this thing. And, you know, it would be pretty cool if Josh Peck saw this one day. I hope we made you proud.
Now if I wanna listen to radio or play games, I have enough balls for the job. That sounded weird. Let's just say spheres.
Before I sign off, just a quick reminder that my signed 2025 calendars are still available for pre-order, but I have to close the pre-order soon because I wanna deliver them to everyone before the holidays. So go ahead and grab one while you can, and I'm sure you'll love it. Thanks for sticking with me. Catch the crazy and pass it on. (upbeat music) Now we just have to track down the GamePod.
It's podular! - Podular!
2024-12-04 21:45
