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Video: Speak & Spell boombox mod

CNET Senior editor shows off his modified Speak & Spell portable speaker system.

Donald Bell Senior Editor / How To
Donald Bell has spent more than five years as a CNET senior editor, reviewing everything from MP3 players to the first three generations of the Apple iPad. He currently devotes his time to producing How To content for CNET, as well as weekly episodes of CNET's Top 5 video series.
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Donald Bell

This whole thing started weeks ago when fellow Craver Tim Moynihan posted a story on a vintage NES game controller and cartridge that had been modded into an MP3 player and portable speaker. Not to be outdone, I realized that my homebrew MP3 player, the Little Professor, needed an equally nostalgic portable speaker system. A quick look through my closet produced the most worthy candidate imaginable--a malfunctioning vintage Texas Instruments Speak & Spell, manufactured the same year as the Little Professor--the year of my birth, 1978. Excellent.

Photo of modified Texas instruments Speak & Spell toy.
If E.T. can use one to phone home, surely we can hack it to work with our iPod. Click the photo to launch the Crave slide show. Donald Bell / CNET Networks

Transforming the Speak & Spell into a portable speaker system wasn't nearly as elegant as I had hoped, but by performing a quick and dirty transplant of the broken Speak & Spell guts with an eviscerated iMainGo iPod speaker system, I was able to get a kick-ass system in just a few hours.

Here's a slide show of the Speak & Spell surgery.