Nice Pulsar P4 Ladies Display Mod

[abem]

Hi.

Today I got a nice little P4 ladies oval. At first glance, the module looks pretty standard:



Until it lights up. Lo and behold... dots!:



Whoever did this display mod did an extraordinarily good job. There are no blobs of solder, scratches on the module from prying up a display, it almost looks "factory". Amazing! I didn't know that other displays were swapable for Pulsar Litronix displays. The size, spacing, and pitch of the digits is almost identical to the segment style displays. I almost prefer the dots.

This seems like a stretch, but I thought I'd ask: there isn't any chance that this was a factor variation, is there?

-abe.

[Kasper]

maybe there are more, but you never noticed it...or maybe it's a sasm module from germany?

[bruce wegmann]

This is NOT a modified or "modern" module, but a vintage, 100% original Time Computer product. These "dot-segment" displays are found only on very early modules, and as you might guess, they are quite scarce (perhaps one in fifty might have this display). I have three of them, and they are all living comfortably in 18K cases. It is a shame Time Computer went with the standard "line-segment" displays; these are much more attractive and easy to read. Over time, Pulsar used LED displays from Litronix, Monsanto, and Sanyo. There are also the rare dot-segment displays used on some of the early 18K Limited Edition Calculators. Given the similarity to displays used on some P3s, I'd guess these were made by Monsanto (the other type is sometimes actually signed "Litronix" on the LED die itself). Oh, and don't get me started on the whole "dot-matrix" thing; Time Computer NEVER made a production watch with a true DM display (the six E/D prototypes used what could be called a DM, but some dots were left out of the matrix)...how that term got attached to the Pulsar watches is a complete mystery to me, but its' use should be discontinued, as it is neither correct nor accurate.

[Ade51]

An excellent find Abe, well done

[abem]

Wow, neat.

Thanks for the info, Bruce. I would have liked it as a mod, but I like it even more as a factor variation. Since you have 8 P1s and only 3 of these, I prefer to think of it as almost 3 times rarer than a P1.

I think it's ok to use the phrase "dot display" for the P2/P3 displays, since the display segments are actually little disks. "Dot matrix" is clearly wrong since they are not arranged in a matrix unless you are talking about modern OLED watches (Fossil, APUS etc). For the 70s Hughes displays, "dot segment" seems more correct since the display elements are little rounded rectangles rather than little round dots.

People tend to glom onto whatever term they are used to hearing and since "dot matrix" has become part of the vernacular, it will continue to be misapplied. Good luck stamping it out. People can't even keep "LED" and "LCD" straight even though they look totally different.

-abe.