The Omni
The Omni from Milton Bradley is a product that straddles 70s and 80s tech. At it’s core, it’s just a game, an electronic quiz machine. However if you delve deeper it could be described as an interactive computer that reads program data from tapes, 8-track tapes. In the video above I demonstrate what it does and how it does it…but first I have to get it working.
You may be interested to know that I’ve been shooting behind the scenes footage while I’ve been making this video. I promised a full behind the scenes patreon only special, but my earlier attempts failed when the products being filmed didn't pan out.
However this time is different, the main video has been completed, so now it’s just a matter of looking through the hours of behind the scenes footage and editing it down into something a bit more coherent. Expect to see the BTS video in a couple of weeks time exclusively here on patreon.
Comments (52)
Great video about an ancient game system I had never heard about. I usually don't read YouTube comments for obvious reasons, but I did in this case because they were mentioned here. There are two kinds of people. Those who create things and those who argue about glue. There's probably some kind of "glue forum" somewhere where people are flaming each other over their preferences in glue :-)
Their obsession with glue quantities has prompted an idea for a future outro section.
Why is it that you've disabled Community Contributions? I remember adding subtitles to the Vinyl-Disc video a couple of months back, and I'd like to contribute more, but they've been disabled
I didn't know I had - someone contributed some subtitles only last week. I'll have a look.
That was really interesting, I've never heard of this machine. And I never realised you worked for the Open University in the 70's! (Just a bit concerned you found that shirt and tie somewhere!)
Wait until you see that in colour - that's a sight for closed eyes.
I understand the camera videos make more money, but I especially like the videos that focus on other technology. You became the first person I have supported on Patreon mostly because no one else I watch has puppets. This was a great video, I thoroughly enjoyed it.
The camera videos get a lot less views than the retro videos now...but when a camera is worth buying they bring in affiliate sales revenue. I'm not doing them as often now though as that sector seems to have stagnated quite a bit and isn't as interesting any more.
Another great video. I really enjoyed this one!
I work in a second hand shop and we had a couple of 78 rpm records for sale that would give different outcomes depending on where the needle fell. From what I remember a cardboard overlay sits on top of the record which causes the needle fall into a particular groove, and would give differing results dpending on the groove. There was a horse racing one, and a football pools one. Here's a link to the football one: <a href="http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/78-RPM-Record-Magic-Disc-Magi-Trak-Football-Pools-Record-Game-/271491733326?hash=item3f362b174e:g:KmAAAOxy7vJTdLqW" rel="nofollow noopener" target="_blank">http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/78-RPM-Record-Magic-Disc-Magi-Trak-Football-Pools-Record-Game-/271491733326?hash=item3f362b174e:g:KmAAAOxy7vJTdLqW</a>
I got a baseball one at a record store day a couple of years ago. I still haven't tried it out.
Wow.. I can't believe I just finished watching this and it was 35 minutes long!
I was really concerned that this one would be a bit boring in places...glad that hasn't proven to be the case for everyone.
Interesting! I had never heard of this thing, but now I'm in love with it. I think you answered all the questions I would have come up with. As a kid in the 80s, one of my favorite toys was the Mattel Teach and Learn Computer. It used a spinning plastic disc played with a stylus for audio responses and had truly random access since the disc position was locked relative to the turntable and it had dozens of interlaced spiral grooves, any of which the computer could select to play by dropping the stylus as the correct lead-in groove was passing under it. In this case, all the programs (sequences) were stored in a ROM in the unit instead of on the media. Each program consisted of a disc and a mylar sheet that you slid in front of a touch-sensitive panel. The position of the "Start button" you pressed to start the game would select which program sequence to use for the disc that was loaded. This is another one of those toys that is hard to find much information on. EDIT: Well now that I've claimed how rare it seemed to be, the Internet is starting to prove me wrong. 10 years ago, there was barely enough information out there to prove it ever existed.
That sounds really interesting - I'm especially intrigued about the way the record achieved random access. I love these ingenious solutions they came up with back then. Far more interesting than a computer program on a chip.
From the circuit board shots there's no CPU on there, and very little circuitry whatsoever, just some simple logic and op-amps. I can only imagine most of the game logic is encoded in the bleeps and bloops. It certainly doesn't look like there's anything on there sophisticated enough to store a whole typed-in word. I wonder if it'll give you points if you just type the last letter of the word?
Great video! What you said about old electronic toys is right on though. A lot of them were very gimmicky and hard to play for more than a few minutes today.
I'm expecting quite a few people to bring up a specific device that they think is still fun today...but on the whole, the majority of home electronic games from 1980 just can't hold the interest for long. There are quite a few arcade classics from that era though that I'm happy to play today.
Very cool! Would be interesting to decode the tones on the tape to see what the programming is. Also nostalgia about the Big Trak tank. I used to have one of those!
Oh, Mat! II had to stop six minutes in to react to the "Hippie Mat" 8 track video. Bravo. I laughed myself dizzy! Now, I'll watch the rest. LOL
Eileen Bilton! Obscure reference for those that grew up watching TV in the 80s in the North west of England. Great video on yet another product I have never seen before. I had to make do with a Pocket Simon - kept me occupied for a while!
I'm glad someone else remembered Eileen.
I wonder if "none of the above" is ever an answer?
Oh it was on a couple that I listened to...it was on the really difficult movie questions..."which of these long forgotten dead actresses starred in the rarely seen and never spoken about 1930s b-movie The Train to Boringville".
Nice on Mat. That 8-track expert in the video looks strangely familiar... ? ;)
Yes I'm sure I've seen him somewhere. It might have been in the Daily Mirror.
Great video, as always! And, wow, for someone who was 10 in 1980, and pretty up on the state of electronic toys when I was a kid, I don't remember the OMNI at all. What an interesting system, straddling two eras of electronics, and making use of an 8-track for data no less. Also, I feel like I've been learning from your previous videos, as I began troubleshooting in my head what the issues with the 8-tracks might be ("hmmn, I wonder if he'll have to change the foam piece in the cartright," "yeah, that head is misaligned," etc). Now you just need to reverse-engineer how the data works, and record a Techmoan Edition Quiz 8-track to play on the OMNI! "What was the Tefifon? 1) It was a commercial background music system, 2) It was a post-war German audio format, 3) It was an electronic visualization unit made by Atari, 4) None of the above." I'd play that (if I had an OMNI and it existed)! :)
I really like that idea. Finally a quiz I stand a good chance of winning.
Very interesting video with a thorough analysis. You realize that the level of technology in the OMNI game is about the same as NASA deployed to get men to the moon....! Techmoan, you'd best watch out that some Chinese firm does not kidnap you, and put you in charge of reverse-engineering illegal copies of western products!
The idea of loading data off an 8-track is especially fun, because one piece of tech is firmly 70s whereas home computers only really took off in the 80s. Of course I suppose the Sinclair QL came pretty close to achieving this with the Microdrives.
Bloody marvellous. I've thought about buying one of these in the past, but this has probably quenched my curiosity for it now. The closest I had as a kid in the UK was the Pailtoy Masterquiz (?) electronic game, where the questions were in books. And you've reminded me that I've got Simon, Merlin and Microvision somewhere. Must dig them out
You seem to have the set. My brother had a load of the electro mechanical type handheld games from the early 80s. A racing game would involve the road on a conveyor belt - the other cars would physically move in and out of the screen on arms and a collision would light up a bulb behind an explosion cut-out. They were very clever and at the time better than the simpler LED games. I'll have to ask him if he still has them.
the "old" video explaining how 8-track works is a really fun idea, the voice sounds a bit deamon like though ^^
Yes the voice didn't really work out - I tried speaking at a higher pitch than normal - but it just sounded weird, so then I reduced the pitch in editing and that sounded even weirder....but it sounded just weird enough to leave it in.
Most enjoyable! That would have been fun to try out in real life, indeed. One little thing though, your chap in the garage said the tape direction is going towards the right... but wouldn't it be more correctly if it actually moves to the left as the playhead is static? I think you'll be getting a lot of comments on that bit once it's public. :)
Yes, of course you are correct. I spotted this in editing - you'll see in the upcoming behind the scenes episode that this section was a very last minute addition. I think I'll have to re-edit the video to add a section of text and re-upload it. EDIT - I've figured out how to snip a couple of the spoken words out of this section in order to avoid this becoming an issue. I've applied the edit and whilst it will jump a bit, it also means I won't have to spend a day re-uploading it again. I'll have to wait for youtube to apply the edit now, which can take quite a few hours.
I want to see you playing against your muppets.
That was one of my earliest ideas....but the logistics would be an absolute nightmare....I'd still be shooting it at Christmas.
Don't get me wrong, but you are nuts in a good way. I've laughed so hard when that 70's segment started :D What an entertaining video again, thank you! Made my Saturday! :)
Thanks. I think I may be spending a bit too much time on my own. ;-)
I remember a toy i saw once in a store that used a similar idea with ordinary cassettes. It was a choose your own path story system. Don't remember the name, tough.
It doesn't ring a bell - but I'm sure someone here will remember it. There's really no reason that the Omni couldn't have used cassettes...but I suspect MB chose 8-tracks for their endless loop system.
Great video, I loved your 70's throwback segment!
If I do that again, I hope to be able to shoot it with some 70s video equipment...but that's currently all still in boxes and as-yet untested.
That was an epic video, Matt! An instant favorite. I never heard of this, but like you, I find it incredibly impressive for its day. Looking forward to the BTS edition as well. Cheers, S.
Thanks...I'm glad you didn't find it too long. I was worried about the amount of time spent looking at a static object. A few flashing lights wouldn't have gone amiss.
Incredible video! Never knew anything like this existed!! I imagine most kids of the era were far more excited by the Atari and Intellivision consoles to blow this much money on an audio game system.
I remember seeing a few things back in the day and all you got was a picture in a catalogue, the name of the product and a brief description like 'electronic game'. It was often really hard to figure out what some of these things were. The game Merlin is an example...I really couldn't imagine what it did from the picture. Now all these years later and it turns out that some of the weirder products of the time were actually the more interesting ones...but few people bought them because their function wasn't obvious.
Another great review of 80's technology. Considering I collect and repair 70's and 80's electronic games, I was pleasantly surprised to see yet another electronic game that I'd never heard of; so thank you...
I can't remember where I first heard of it...it might even have been when I saw one for sale. Funnily enough just as I was setting this video live this morning someone emailed me and offered me an Omni with half a dozen games. Now that's a coincidence.
Have you gotten Another of those HP watches? I remeber yours being gold :)
Yes, shortly after making the video about the gold one, I managed to find a good deal on the steel version. The silver one is my daily watch and the gold one is for dressing up occasions. ;-)