Casio CA-501 Restoration

I think it's safe to say that I'm in love with Casio

Here's a little background. 

After WWII, Japan was able to rebuild and many new companies sprouted from the ashes. One of these companies was Casio, in 1946.

Their first invention was a ring that could hold a cigarette. 

After the success from the yubiwa pipe, the company used the profits to make a calculator that worked with solenoids instead of hand crank gears. The calculator had a single keypad (instead of a full keypad) 

and a single screen to display instead of three. This is basically what your modern day calculator looks like: you can thank Casio.

After that they built a bunch of other electronics like keyboards, PDAs, clocks, printers, etc etc and watches.

AND WATCHES.

I admire Casio for their true talent for their feats in electrical engineering. I'm a big fan of low level programming and not a huge fan of higher level things like Computer Science, so I really admire Casio for the cute gadgets that they make.

I also appreciate most of old technology, and watches, and 80s fashion. I stumbled upon an old Casio catalog

http://www.angelfire.com/80s/ron28/casio/index1.html
Nostalgia.

Scroll down and you'll find the CA-501.

I've been looking for a calculator watch for along time with certain features

• Solid single module (as compared to a Casio DBC610A, which you can see is sort of two parted)
• Flat band (this is very native to the 1980s. Look at Gerald Genta's design for the royal oak and other watches designed in the 80s. Flat bands are hard to find these days)
• Full metal
• Water resistant

And I stumbled upon the CA-501.

What a beauty.

Most of these watches are extremely damaged from wear and time. You can purchase a scratched up and beaten CA-501 for about $75 on eBay.

I really wanted one.

So I bought one for $30.

As you can see the watch doesn't work. The module itself is damaged.

While the module was damaged there were no signs of wear on the watch at all. No scratches, no stretch on the band.

I love the flat link band.

CA-501

In the past I have had experience with Casio watches. There are multiple models of watches but certain models can share the same electronic module on the inside.

What does that mean?

This watch, according to the 1984 catalog, uses the Module No. 437. I just need to obtain a working module and replace it in this watch, and I will have a CA-501 in almost brand new condition.

I'm not sure how valuable the watch would be, but probably greater than $75.

Luckily for me, Casio still sells watches that use the 437 module.

This is the CA-53, a calculator watch you can buy for $15 at your local Walmart.

The beauty of this is that if any parts break, or buttons get lost on the CA-501, most of them are interchangeable with teh CA-53

The bottom

First step of switching modules is removing the back cover. The CA-501 has an interesting case. I needed to remove the bands before I could remove the back.

I used a flathead screwdrived to pry open the case

The back cover is clip on...

The broken module, with battery removed.

Gently pry out the module.

Open up the CA-53 to access the working module.

A tiny comparison of the modules. The CA-53 seems to use a more updated module.

However both are 437 modules. They will fit if we switch them.

This is surgery.

The new module is inserted

Something you might notice different is that the modules seem to be flipped... You can notice some features on each module that seem like they're mirror images. This created a bit of the problem. The piezo buzzer was in the wrong place now.

As you can see on the CA-53, the buzzer is usually on the bottom of the caseback.

On the CA-501 the buzzer was on the top of the caseback.

Whatever, just rotate it 180.

And snap the case back on! Of course it's upside down now, but it works. No one will ever see under a watch.

It's alive!

A beautiful functioning CA-501.

I hope this was helpful. Use this knowledge to switch out Casio modules. For example, the Casio A159 uses the same module as the A158 and the ubiquitous F91.

Have fun!

Casio A159WGEA Review (my dream watch)

I've always wanted to do a review on my favorite watch of all time: particularly, the A159WGEA-5EF. This model has the maroon face:

I feel like the two colors compliment each other very well.

I'll talk a bit about my history with the watch.

I used to have a black Casio watch. I wore it since the 8th grade, and eventually the plastic band just decomposed on my wrist and fell apart.

You might see it featured in some of my past blog posts.

I replaced the band with a gold Timex expansion band. Eventually I got sort of tired of the color mismatch.

I bought a chepa $2 fake Casio online. It looked like this:

It worked well. It kept time. It wasnt bad. In the video below you will see the fake Casio's amazing ability to change colors:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4tKiIOe_qY

There was one problem with it: The construction of course was extremely poor. I dropped the watch once, and the piezo crystal shifted and shorted out the watch. The construction was pretty cheap that just by moving my arm, I could destroy the delicate arrangement of the circuitry inside the watch.

I did some research: this was a fake version of the legendary A159 Casio watch.

The A159 had the same internals as the even more legendary Casio F-91W:

Now THIS is a legendary watch with a long history.

Because it was one of the first inexpensive digital watches, people all over bought them. This watch was like a Honda Civic 1995 of watches. It was cheap, it worked, it was reliable, and it has quite a history.

That's Osama wearing the watch. If you're likely to be "randomly selected" by the TSA for security check, you really shouldn't wear one of these watches. Al Qaeda trains it's militants how to make time bombs using these watches.

For educational purposes only, I found these documents online:

http://cnqzu.com/library/Anarchy%20Folder/Guerrilla%20Warfare,%20Terrorism/Al%20Qaeda%20Training%20Manual%201.pdf

http://cnqzu.com/library/Anarchy%20Folder/Guerrilla%20Warfare,%20Terrorism/Al%20Qaeda%20Training%20Manual%202.pdf

http://cnqzu.com/library/Anarchy%20Folder/Guerrilla%20Warfare,%20Terrorism/Al%20Qaeda%20Training%20Manual%203.pdf

http://cnqzu.com/library/Anarchy%20Folder/Guerrilla%20Warfare,%20Terrorism/Al%20Qaeda%20Training%20Manual%204.pdf

These are archived and translated documents by the government. Somewhere in those documents it might tell you how to take advantage of the circuitry inside the watch.

Here is an article explaining why you should avoid the F-91W: http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-13194733

Tangent: 

I think it's extremely silly for airport security to flag this watch. Any person with basic electrical engineering knowledge would know how to make a time-trigger from ANY digital watch. I will not mention how to do this on this blog for the sake of safety of innocent people.

So what did I do with the fake watch?

I replaced the cheap internals of the fake A159 with the working ones of the F-91W.

And I got this:

That's my watch.

Ever since the band broke this summer, it never felt the same. I've been buying a lot of watches and learning a lot about different movements since I've abandoned this watch. It has been an expensive and time draining hobby, but I learned A LOT from it.

Recently it was my 18th birthday, and I decided to treat myself to my dream watch. It wasn't expensive at all compared to the other watches I owned: only about $40.

I also purchased another fake $2 "retro gold digital watch" for comparison

Here are the two side by side. The one on the left is authentic, the right is fake.

One obvious different is the band length and proportions

The authentic version is more finely detailed: brushed gold and gloss gold.

The fake version is a bit messy. The entire watch is gloss gold. I've tested this watch before and the gold wears off in a single day.

There is an obvious discrepancy in the band length and quality.

The fake watch has some discoloration and distortion on the LCD display.

One doesn't say "Casio"

The fake watch's band is ALL gold. The real one is only plated on the outside. The method of folding the links can is different and can be noticed.

The fake watch is unbranded.

When I opened up the internals of the fake watch, the piezo crystal is not attached to anything, and there is no gasket for waterproofing.

The buckles for each watch is different.

Holding down the START*STOP/12*24H button on the real casio will make the watch display CASIO.

There is no response for the fake watch

There are obvious quality discrepancies. 

The Casio A159 is just a gold version of the F-91W. If you get "randomly selected" often, you shouldn't wear the 159 or the 158 (silver version) to an airport.

I absolutely love this watch to the point that I don't wear it: its just for display.
It's simple: it tells the time, day and date, it has an alarm, and a stopwatch. If you're in the dark, it has a light.

You might find a lot more gold and silver Casios these days, particularly the Casio A168


These cheap gold watches have come into style these days among the hypebeasts and fuccbois. I'm honestly sort of sad about this because it ruins the sophistication of the watch, but I'm happy that people appreciate the style.

I bought a watch

So this is going to be one of those not-so-technical posts.
I bought a watch this week at Sears.

I love this picture.

The gold watch on the far left is the one I've been wearing for a while. I practically built the thing.

I bought a fake Casio A159W watch, then bought a Casio F-91W and replaced the fake A159W with the innards from the F-91W.

So that way I have a gold watch that won't break if I submerse it in water or drop it on the ground.

I bought the oyster watch band to fit onto the watch. It's a pretty much a unique watch because I custom built it.

The silver watch on the top is a classic Casio A168W. Nothing too special about it.

The watch that I bought this week is the two tone analog watch to the left. That's what I bought for 60% off of $35, so I bought it for $15.

Chain shows up in everything.

I didn't realize this when I bought it, but the Decade brand watch looks extremely similar to...

a Rolex Datejust

http://www.rolex.com/watches/datejust/m116233-0149.html

a $12,000 watch. I was thrilled to realize this because I love buying knockoffs. It's flashy in a sort of ironic way.

Here are some main similarities:

• Fluted bezel (that gold ring around the whole watchface)
• twotone 
• Jubilee bracelet
• Gold crown (that thing to adjust the time)

Some main differences

• One is 1000x more expensive
• Decade's bracelet is not solid metal
• Decade's watch does not have date
• Decade's watch is based on quartz movement, while Rolex is mechanical
• Decade is just really cheap in all aspects. It's actually a terrible watch.

It's so cheap and that's why I love it. This Friday I didn't want to write college essays so I took some time to engrave my watch.

As seen on my Snapchat story:

I engraved my initials TSJW on the flip clip. I usually wear my watch on the inside of the wrist, and there's nothing to show off on the outside if I do this. So I felt like engraving my initials on the outside makes it feel less wrong wearing my watch on the inside.

It's so embarrassing to wear now.

So that's just some background on the watch. 

Whenever I buy something, I always end up thinking about taking it apart and modifying it (its inevitable).

A few days ago I got the watch wet and had to take it apart to dry out the moisture.
I realized how spacious the inside of the watch was... the quartz movement mechanism took up only an eight of the total space inside the watch... That gave me ideas.

The idea:

I honestly really don't like wearing analog watches. They give me a good sense of how much time is left in the day, but I spend at least five seconds reading it in order to understand what time it is actually. On a digital watch the numbers would just show up in X:XX form, but on this watch I have to spend a good amount of time decoding the placement of the hands.

Plus, the gold hands blend in with the gold face and everything is just so shiny and it makes it IMPOSSIBLE to read the time.

I love wearing digital watches, but they aren't flashy enough.

The Casio watch I have right now isn't solid metal: It's metal plated and then gold plated, which means that after wearing it for a year the gold wears off (it already has).

Literally no one sells a solid metal gold-plated digital watch at an affordable price.

So here's the idea: replace the quartz movement in the watch with a digital watch module.

Sorry, I don't have any picture of this right now (because taking apart watches is actually the worst), but imagine the Decade watch with a display like this:

Right now there are a few problems, and a few solutions that I've been thinking of.

• Fitting the innards from another digital watch into the Decade watch
• find a small enough watch, and 3D print a holder that will make it fit snuggly so it doesn't shift around.
• What do you do about the four buttons on a digital watch when you only have a hole for one crown on an analog watch case?
• I still need to figure this out.

For now I need to put off this project to concentrate on college applications, but I think this is a worthwhile project to look into. It'll probably be more difficult than my Zippo remote project, because this time I'm dealing with something a little more expensive than a lighter.

Hopefully when I come back to this idea a few months later I would have made some progress.