I gutted a spare Leader Prime I had sitting around, just to see what made him tick. The results:



This photo should be pretty self-explanatory. Unfortunately, as many of you modders have figured out by now, it's impossible to cleanly disassemble this figure, i.e., this was a one-way process. If I have the time, I might try to hook the speaker up to a mic and record the three sounds he makes.

If anyone has question about anything related, post 'em here.

 

you should totally make it say GIVE ME YOU'RE FACE!, that would be the best custom prime i will have ever seen

 

Maybe instead of a mic to the speaker, maybe you could solder up a 1/8" Mini plug and record it into the input of your computer, and save the audio that way, it'd be way cleaner and not subject to the tinny crap sound of the toy speaker.

 

I'm afraid writing data to this circuit is a little out of my league, especially given it's size and the fact that the chip is covered up with black goop on the other side of the circuit board. The most I can do is manipulate the outputs (lights & sounds).

That's the idea. I just need to find a sacrificial mic first.  

 

The Black epoxy won't prohibit you from reprogramming the chip per se, but it covers the identifying numbers so we don't know what type of chipcorder it is (Winbond brand I'm guessing) We can't fully determine the pinouts as is.

The best bet is to start with a new IC, but you need a PicProgrammer to write data. Workin' on custom chips slowly, It's a bit of a learning curve but I hope to nail it down in a month or so. Other than those cheesy message recorder circuits you can get at Radio Shack, a Pic Programmer is the way to go! 

That may or may not work, depending on the gain structure of the outputs on the chip. If the gain isn't high enough you'll have to crank your computer's gain, introducing noice and hiss to the audio. It may work for demonstration purposes though!  

And hey!!! My ROTF Prime doesn't have truck sound!!!!!!! 

 

Well, I played with it a little more today and met some success and some failure.

Unfortunately the circuit's output is not nearly strong enough to register a decent input signal to my computer. I've been working on this pocket op-amp for a little while now (for my ipod Shuffle + giant cans), so I might revisit this project in the near future.

The good news is that I replaced the small green speaker with a 3" speaker I had laying around. Not-so-surprisingly, the output sound is a lot more detailed with better articulation. Surprisingly, the volume went up. The small speaker is rated at 8 ohm (7.6 to be exact) and .25 W, while the larger speaker is 8 ohm (7.9 actual) and 2 W/4 W (?). My short answer would be that the larger speaker is more sensitive, but that's without thinking about it too hard. Maybe big hank can field this one.

Also, I went ahead and recorded some sounds the old fashioned way, with a few equalizer tweaks. I hope the mods are okay with this:

 

I'd say the rating on the speaker equates to 2w program output and 4w peak output, just a guess though really.

The op-amp project sounds awesome! 

I just ordered some enamel coated wire, mini ferrite beads and a couple transisters so I can wind up some mini toroids. I want to make a circuit for the LED projects I do where you can run multiple 3v LEDs from a single 1.5v battery 

 

I have one of these in pieces at the moment. When you say its impossible to cleanly disassemble him I assume thats because of the right shoulder being pinned across the front of one of the body screws with no obvious way to remove the pin.

I was thinking of drilling a hole from inside the battery pack to give access to the other end of that pin so i can tap it out.

Can you tell me if this is the only thing preventing disassembly, or is there something else that I can't see yet.

Hakka.

 

Here's a thought. For some of us who are going to customize prime into Ultra Magnus and Nemesis Prime. Is there a way to eliminate the "I am Optimus Prime" sound and keep the others with out messing the whole thing up?

 

It's certainly difficult, but it's not impossible.

The trick is getting to the screw behind the hinge.

The solution is basically to go in with a long thin file, and slowly but surely go through the plastic collum into which the screw is inserted.

I can cough up pics if people want to see it, but it's really not that interesting to look at.

 

You guys are right; what I was getting at is that it requires some modification to get to that screw, unless you're somehow able to pull that pin out.

Hakka- that would probably work, you'd just have to be careful where you're drilling. Once you get that screw out it's smooth sailing.