When the kid started attacking the GPU with a screwdriver my heart stopped.

I know this video is old, but you have an absolutely adorable son. Thank you, so much, for showing that slice of your life. It really makes your videos that much more enjoyable.

I really love how you get Sagen involved with your videos as much as you do, between your job and making youtube videos it could easily be the case that he rarely gets to have time with you and vice versa. I bet when he looks back in 15 years at these videos that it brings a big smile to his face remembering all the great times he had with his awesome dad!

i sat here for 35 min to see and hear the plasma speaker.

I was like, "LEAVE THE GPU, NOOO!!!!"

I have to say, you're a natural born dad. I've seen so many guys who have such short patience for their young kids, snatching everything out of their hand that they want to pick up and look at. You let him pick up, look, poke, explore, and most importantly, learn. He's going to grow up to be a smart kid who's very curious to learn everything that catches his interest.

I used to have one of those TI calculators. The reason the battery compartment is so huge is because there was an optional rechargeable NICAD pack made for it. Notice the casing on the side, that's where the charging jack would poke through.

I love watching the current videos with your son and then go back to here 4 years ago and see how young but still interested he is with everything in your workshop! Bright lil guy there!

That kid will be the future EEVblog 2 host. :D

I cringed at the sight of his son poking a screwdriver into the graphics card.

He was just spinning the fan with a screwdriver, relax, really.

Aww, cute lil dude! Those one-slot Neo Geo boards are terrific. They're fully JAMMA-compliant, so for the most part, you can drop them unmodified right into a JAMMA cabinet. They're a piece of cake to consolize too; just stick a 100-ohm resistor on the video sync line, and a smoothing cap across the red, green and blue lines, and you can connect it to any 15 khz RGB monitor, line doubler, scan converter, etc. If you lift the stereo sound off the chip, bypassing the audio power amp, you only need 5 volts and about half an amp to power it.

"Buy your maple syrup from Canada" Those are some serious fighting words if you're from Vermont.

Dave reminds me so much of my father and uncle. They gave me so much hands on experience with everything from carpentry to car mechanics before I was 5. Little "Sagan" is very lucky.

"You are trying to put the screwdriver in the jack. Do you think that is where it goes?" Maybe you should start giving him HV screw drivers :P

Sagan is having a blast and learning,too.

Dave don’t worry about your son. Your videos always rock. Teaching him early. That is so cool.

In case if you still wondering about the stamp, it says: "Al-Manama" The capital of Arabian culture.. :) In Arabic: المنامة عاصمة الثقافة العربية

i want random people to send me free video cards plus watercooling stuff! someone get that sorted please :)

The kid is already hacking, even before he knows how to speak.

I think he's first word is going to be screwdriver.

This is so cute... but when your little one picks up that screwdriver and is stood on the bench my heart was in my mouth! he's adorable... stop standing him on benches with tools! lol! ;-) Love the blog and I have no idea about electronics but you make it so entertaining I have lost days watching these!

Your son is a genius! He cant really speak but he he knows how a waterblock works and he knows which machine to use on the cartridge

To see the little dude going all "woah" on the electronics makes me smile BIG ^^

You are an awesome teacher. Your enthusiasm puts some American teachers to shame.

Dave, with the post mark on Tom's parcel, and the handwriting in his letter, I think the State is VT for Vermont. You are correct that UT is Utah. Tom just makes his Vs and Us in a similar fashion. Great to see Sagan again. He was trying really hard to fit that hose to the pump! What a trooper!

Vermont makes some great syrup, tho a canadian would never admit it :P

Many years ago I built a plasma speaker using a microwave oven transformer. I did not use a bias arc, it was directly driven with a 100 watt amp. The arcs were about 1-2 inches apart and it was loud, especially around 5 kilohertz.

Hello from Athens mate,@31:10 that's a National Semiconductor bubble display, wow didn't know they exist! They have NS etched in a "robotic pcb trace style" logo next to their classic logo you pointed at. Thanks for all your videos, they should play them in colleges and universities electronics courses!

"No touching the lens" but jamming a screwdriver in sensitive electronics? "GO FOR IT!!" XD

What I would do to get my hands on one of those TI calculators. I had one of those in school. Wish I still had it, as they never die.

Relax, I'm a professional...

That lovely kid will be an electronics wizard, I can tell :)

Back in the 60s, I read an article in one of the electronics magazines about a FLAME speaker. The principle is very simple. Flames contain ionized gas. Ions, being charged, respond to an electric field. The speaker used a propane flame placed between two metal screens. A high-voltage audio signal was applied to the screens. It worked just like an electrostatic speaker, but with a flame instead of metal film. Because of the low mass of the flame, high end response was excellent.

I'm gonna send you a box full of half smoked cigars....

35:03 - The close-up on this arc is so good, that you can see a tiny little Faraday-gap in the plasma at the cathode end (on the right) even in this atmospheric pressure arc. I love how that TI calculator PCB is made. Texas Instruments, well, more like, Taiwan Instruments, haha!

making the kid into an apple fanboy from a young age. wonder if you got hate-mail for that.

Segan is lucky having you as his father, i just love how you let him invedtigate and learn with positive uplifting feedback. - good on you! ;-)

That's a fine looking Neo Geo MVS arcade board and game! Those games retail for about $400 USD, so you got an awesome batch of kit!

Very cool speaker there at the end. Thanks for the video :)

Sagan's face looks like 'Are you sure this screwdriver is the right tool for opening a box, Dad?'

That Neo-Geo is an MV-1FZ which would had been from the middle of production, which lasted from 1990 to 1997. The Neo-Geo MVS was probably the single most successful cartridge-based arcade system ever produced.

It's about time you got a helper! He will be king of "Show and Tell" when he starts school!

can't put into words how cool it is that you called your son Sagan

He's looking at you like "I don't know what you're talking about, I want to draw on something with this marker pen."

man...that guy sent you some top-notch gear with that video card...

Holy damn, he really sent you enthusiast grade hardware, 360mm rad with a good Swiftech pump and quite literally the best fans available for radiators (other than Delta fans), the fans are Noctua NF-F12's for anyone that's curious.

Same here, veery sensitive to the sound and unpredictable movements children make, they conflict with all my senses even when they are behind a TV screen :(

I see that you have some music as well! That's a hell of an idea! It be so cool to see something you sent be checked out :) We have some pretty crap weather at the moment. I'm excited for summer!

That kid is so adorable. He's going to be very smart like his old man when he gets older :)

You have an awesome kid! He's so curious and full of spirit. Keep that screwdriver in his hand, people's reactions to his prodding of electronics are hilarious.

In Australia, little kids wear apple t shirts. Mind Blown.

Man it's like christmas all over again when it's mailbag monday :D

agreed, the guy was nice enough to take his time out and send something in...kind of mean to do that to an obviously big fan

I got an almost identical Palm Pilot for $1 at a yard sale. I loved that for what it did.

Dave, your son is so smart and awesome.

Excellent work, always watching your blog. Videos entertaining and interesting at the same time. Greeting from Argentina!

HP created the original 7-segment bubble LEDs. That TI-300 Calculator was around $1,000.00 (US) at the time. I had one. As it happens, being an electronics designer, I love those little 7-segment bubble LEDs, and I have just _one_ of those. It's a DIP arrangement, no circuit board (the one I have).

Date mark on the NS LED display says 1971 week 20. So it was made 44(!) years ago or 42 when the video was made.

Every day is Christmas for Sagan (and Dave!) in the EEVblog lab

I might see if I can clean them up and use them in my new PC build I'm doing tomorrow.

This is the best mailbag video so far! :) Shame on ALL you folks who gave it a thumbs down for whatever reason.

3:23, my heart stopped when I thought you were gonna cut his fingers.

Wow, it's been that long since we've seen Sagan as a baby? Time flies doesn't it?

I love that Sagan has already learned one of the most important lessons for handy men, that screw drivers are for stabbing things and could maybe do some other things ;)

I'm sure someone has told you this, but I'm on my mobile and am too lazy to check. That video card will run any game on high. the heatsink is for the video card, the video card itself was chosen for its stock cooler so it would fit. All up worth $500ish

just so you know Dave, Noctua is one of the best fan brands out there! they have extremely good performance, and the ones you have there are probably for that heatsink you have. also, try and mount the fans in a pull configuration that way it makes it easyer to clean the heatsink when you have too. have a nice day!

I've been curious about this. Very nice choice and big ups to mrs. EEVblog. Not every mother would approve (:

Aww Sagan is so cute! :D

That kid will be a computer genius one day, but he almost made me cry attacking those things with a screwdriver

Don't throw away these Noctua fans. You might not have heard of them, but they're pretty much the best fans money can buy. That guy has sent you some great stuff!

I was so waiting for a plasma speaker on EEVblog

The level of tolerance Dave has is astronomical.

Nice to see he's well into the "take it apart" thing as well. Although watch out, one day you'll come home and find bits of TV all over the floor ;-) I was taking stuff apart when I was about 5. By about 8 I'd figured out how to put stuff back together again so that nobody noticed (sometimes it even still worked!) ;-)

Oh my gosh, this bit about the plasma speaker must be the most interesting video you've ever shown us! HOW does that even work?

I envy this kids childhood :) So much cool stuff to play with. He got an awesome name too.

"You could cool down the freakin' Saturn V booster with this thing" lmao

man he realy sent you some enthusiat grade equipment

0:45 Sagan has already perfected his Ready-For-Work stance! :D

OMG that is the worse case of child neglect I have ever seen. He's so deprived he's wearing an apple t-shirt! APPLE!

Awsome plasma action!

Your definition of "reasonable fidelity" seems generous.

36:10 If you look closely, when the plasma arc disappears, as the the contacts come close together again you can see small plasma "feelers" emitting from the pointy parts of the contact on the right. This is very similar to lightning where you see plasma "feelers" growing from the tops of power poles and such to meet a lightning strike.

Being old doesn't make it midrange. It's still high end. It's just dated. Seems like a silly distinction, but there's a big difference between a modern midrange card and an old high end card.

Nice to see an anti-static bag around the video card :P

I think you will have a lot of fun with this cooling system! this makes me totaly jealous...

I love the kid he was brave the tin,alloy,lead he never scared

oh shit small finger + small knife = bad combo 5:38

14:10 I AM DYING AT THAT SCREWDRIVER XD

Love the kid! Congratulations.

I hate cats and cigarettes too!!! Probably in that order until my daughter was born in September of 2013 then they switched places. Keep it up Dave love the channel!

The comments about smoking and god was good. Smoking is something that never should be shown in a good way. And he told him in a friendly way to stop smoking. God should have nothing to do with the government. About the kid, he is really cute! It is good that he get to explorer items first hand. But it was really painful when he attacked the graphic card with the screwdriver!

It looks like they wire-bonded the diodes directly to the PCB with the back of the diode fixed to the vias. I was unsure at first but it is much easier to see on your NS board in 1080p. Definitely something they don't do often nowadays! I imagine they only half wave-soldered it at an angle to keep that low-temperature 70's clear plastic (which protects the wire bonds) from melting!

There is a such word as"no", "stop", and "don't do that" when dealing with children, you should try it.

Ive got a smoking cat.

wondering what episode is that at the end for the Plasma speaker demo))

Kids are so funny at that age. I love how he has his own screwdriver, if you did that here in the UK someone would call social services

Dave check your video out at 36:08 you grew a whisker on the right copper wire you where arcing from. You can see it grow from the right side near the top. Pretty cool you caught that on camera.

I thought the same thing, but then remembered thinking in other videos that Dave should sharpen the knife. In one video it looked like he would have had a hard time cutting his way out of a wet paper bag.

Dave, I have a TI Calc much like the one you show in this vid. It looks to me like the 9v battery clip is more modern than the calc. I suspect it's been replaced. However... the 9v *IS* actually original, inspite of the large battery case. I actually had to replace the battery clip in mine. -Jason