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What's this, you ask? Why, only the coolest remote control you've

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never seen before.

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But, Linus, you might say, "It looks like you stole

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that from a hospital." Well, that's actually a funny story. But,

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we'll get to that later. First, did you know that this bad boy is in the

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Guinness Book of World Records? How many TV remotes can say that?

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Four. >> Four. Really? Oh, that's more than I

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expected. But, those other three are not

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the world's very first programmable

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universal remote, and none of them were made by Steve freaking Wozniak. Oh, Woz

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is pretty cool. Yeah. And did I mention that it still works all these years

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later with many modern devices? I heard Woz plays polo on a Segway.

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We'll have that down below. When Woz, the great and powerful, left Apple for

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the final time in 1985, the new company

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he founded, called CL9, had a simple,

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reliable mission: to eliminate the army

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of remotes threatening the sovereignty of your living room once and for all.

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And just 2 years later, he unveiled this, the CORE Master Programmable

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Universal Remote Control. To say that this thing was

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mind-blowingly ahead of its time would be a serious understatement. Now, remote

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controls themselves weren't a new thing. Even wireless remotes had existed since

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about the mid-1950s. But, the ones that most people were

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actually using back in the '80s looked more like this. So, when the Core rolled

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onto the scene with its dual microcontroller architecture, 36 KB of

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memory, a 100-page spiral-bound manual,

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and an interface that only a programmer could love,

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the public didn't even know what they were looking at. And, honestly, I can't

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really blame them. What are these buttons? A, B, and C minus, P, and then we've got

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these 16 ones that are labeled with hexadecimal digits? Clear as mud. But,

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as you would expect from the Woz, there's an elegant logic beneath its

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obtuse surface. The interface is organized into 16 pages

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that you select by pressing the page button and then one of the 16 buttons

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below. If you don't want to do all of that, your most frequently accessed pages can

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be bound to the three quick page buttons here, A, B, or C.

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Each page can store up to 16 commands,

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or, and this is the really cool part, 16

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sequences of commands, as long as those

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commands are somewhere in the remote's memory. So, page 15, or

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F. Wait, is F 15? Yeah. It's the last

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one. That wouldn't be 16? So, 16 options, they're numbered 0 to 15.

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Yes. Very programmer words. Oh my god. Start counting at zero. So,

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page 15, which is of course the 16th

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page since it starts at zero and uh numbered F,

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could be full of just random single commands, but then page 11 could have a

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Blockbuster and chill sequence that dims the lights, fires up the CRT projector,

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and tunes the hi-fi, all with a single button press.

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But wait, what's that? You're worried about remembering what you've programmed

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into each button? Well, don't worry. Woz has you covered. The Core Master

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included a handy paper journal where you could write down what you've programmed

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into each button for your own reference. Okay. That's pretty janky.

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But come on, guys. This was an era where your VCR could, at best, be programmed

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to start and stop at a specific time of day. The Core, by contrast, had the

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potential to be a game changer. Let's say you wanted to record several

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programs on different channels while you were away on vacation. You could set the

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Core to turn on your cable box, wait a couple of seconds for it to warm up,

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change the channel, turn on the VCR, record the first program, then turn

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everything off until the next program you wanted to record was scheduled.

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Rinse and repeat. You could even program it to adjust for daylight savings time

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changing while you were away, thanks to its built-in timers.

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You can even modify the frequency and the repeat rates of your captured IR

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signals to make sure that those automated sequences don't get messed up

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if you accidentally hold the button on your source remote a little too long

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while you're training the Core Master. And if that wasn't enough, those stored

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sequences could also include the programming buttons cleverly hidden

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under this little slider. That's right, you guys. Woz made a

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universal remote control that could literally be programmed to reprogram

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itself in 1987.

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Genius. Mostly.

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See, one glaring omission from the Core Master is the absence of any

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non-volatile memory. I mean, in fairness, that had barely been invented,

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but it does cause significant usability issues. See, if the batteries ever go

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flat, you lose not only whatever you've programmed into the device, but also its

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entire firmware.

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To overcome that weakness, the core includes a secondary lithium battery

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that's designed to keep the memory alive in the event that the

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primary bank of AAA batteries is dead or removed.

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The bad news is that it only lasts for about 40 hours. So, this has a very

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similar issue to early pocket PCs where if you let them go flat,

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you're starting from scratch. Now, in fairness, the CoreMaster

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retailed for something like $200 back in

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1987. So, it's not an unfair assumption that you

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would be using it so frequently that you would notice the low battery warning

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with plenty of time. But,

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nowadays, when you're buying one of these off eBay,

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it's a big problem. Luckily, Digi-Key still stocks the

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appropriate battery, and you can download both the tools to flash the

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firmware and the firmware itself from this website.

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So far, so good. Unfortunately, you also

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need to have or make the serial interface unit and snap that into place

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where the IR interface usually lives in order to reprogram the remote, which

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takes about 15 minutes. By the way, did we even mention that it has a modular

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interface at the front yet? Like, how cool is this?

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Anyway, that's a little bit off topic right now. Shout out our new pal Ray,

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the guy behind this awesome website, who took care of the battery replacement and

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the reprogramming for us. Which means that all I need to do

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is try it out. Come on out here, pancrats. We're going

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to start with something easy. We're going to learn the power command for our

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device, and then we're going to program it into our CoreMaster.

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We've got the remote for the LG swing that you've got right behind you there.

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Cool. And this guy is IR, so we should be able to just learn it on this guy.

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Okay, so you just press any button to power it on. Let's go to a page that I haven't programmed anything into yet.

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So, let's go to page five. Oh, wait, hold on. Page five. Yep. All

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right, we're on page five. So, pick the button that you want to

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program to. You can start at A or you can start at one, doesn't really matter. I'm going to

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go with what makes sense to my reptile brain and I'm going to go with one.

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So, hit the one key. Now, you've got 51 in the display there.

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Beautiful. If you pop open the programming stuff at the bottom, you

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can't change any of the programs without hitting the enable button first. And

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now, we'll hit the do button on the bottom to start programming capture.

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And you've got this little L here showing that you're starting a sequence.

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Okay. So now, we can just

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Oh. There we go. >> C is captured. Damn. So now that we're

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done that, you can stop the program with okay.

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And give it a shot right behind you. Okay.

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There you go. It's just that easy. >> It's It's actually kind of elegant.

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1987. That's crazy. Okay, let's find out if

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it's a toggle then. It is. It is. 1987.

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Okay. >> can program another one and have 1987 start Netflix for you.

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Let's do it. Okay, Netflix.

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Okay. I'm going to turn enable off then.

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So, okay. >> up uh It picked up me. So, let's just turn it off again.

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>> no, hey, hey, put that away. We don't need that anymore. We only use this now.

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Off. Got him. Can't imagine the look on my wife's face if I put this on the

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coffee table though.

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There you go. And then I I could put I could put arrow keys in. Yeah, no, with the uh

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when I was testing this out upstairs, I put all of the arrow keys in for the TV

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upstairs. It was a Hisense. Everything worked flawlessly. This is

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crazy. Okay. Do

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Hit me. Left? Yep. Okay.

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Eight. Do down. Down or okay?

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Down.

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Okay. Enable off. All right.

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Now I just have to remember all of that. So home?

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I should be able to Dude, this is so cool. Okay, so I could

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uh I could open up YouTube. Okay.

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Core master. Dude, this is like actually usable

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though. If you have a like giant brain and you

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can remember your TV interface on here

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somehow. Well, I had uh

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I had notes for when I was doing stuff. Right. I had pen troubles, too. But

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Solid solid journal. Uh available at lttstore.com. Our

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notebook notebook. Or wait, which one is this? Whatever, it's a notebook.

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You can get a screwdriver to write in it. Can can we make it do more? Yeah, I mean

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we can do a program. So let's do something super super easy where you

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might want to move the volume up like five or six steps or something like

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that. So let's program volume up into there.

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We can use like the number three. It doesn't really matter. Oh, yeah, you can

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use C and D. >> D.

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Hey, there we go. Just like that. Easy peasy. You want to move it up 10

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steps with one button? I mean, not really, but sure. So what

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you want to do? Just start the way you did before. Choose a button that you

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want to bind to first. Enable. Yeah. Oh,

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okay. So this is easy then. If I want to turn my volume down really fast, then

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all I've got to do is go do

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this this this this this.

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Okay. Yeah. So, theoretically, I could

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go up volume up volume up volume up volume. Okay, so I'm at 10 and then I

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hit this. Boom. Five.

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And you can go a step further and actually choose functions from other

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pages. So, instead of just hitting the C button, you could go page seven C or

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page eight B and then access the different functions that way. So, I

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could have bathroom break where I press one button and it'll pause playback and

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turn up the house lights. Yeah. You can actually go a step further with the

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programming. This is deeper than I'll go right now.

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You can add loops. So, it will do an action five like do a

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series of actions five times, then move on to the next step.

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I don't want to do that. I don't know. But, you can do it. Absolutely

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incredible, isn't it? I mean, fun fact, DVDs didn't show up in the US until

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about 10 years after this remote came out and it was four more years after

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that before Harmony was ever a thing.

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So, why did this not only not take off, but no one seems to have even heard of

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it? Well, for starters, as I've alluded to before,

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it wasn't cheap and it wasn't especially

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user-friendly. It feels like exactly the sort of

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solution that a genius multimillionaire might devise for a problem that only he

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had at the time. There's no shortage of passion in this

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device. Woz even said that he programmed the Apple II assembly language into this

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thing so that you could program it just like your Apple computer.

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So, it was perfect for the highly educated

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low-level programmer geek in your life,

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and quite literally no one else. So,

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if you ask me what went wrong, I would say that it was just too advanced. And

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by the time that multiple remote anxiety became a mainstream issue, CL9 was out

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of business, and other cheaper, simpler solutions were coming to the market.

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Either in the form of universal remotes that had codes for thousands of devices

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pre-programmed in, or single-vendor solutions where your TV remote came with

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buttons that worked for a matching VCR or AV receiver, or both. So,

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if there's a lesson in all of this, I would say it is

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do your market research. Even now, advanced programmable remotes are pretty

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niche devices, and as CEC continues to

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improve, please improve CEC, and more things

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shift away from IR control, they're probably going to get even more niche.

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But, all that said, it doesn't mean the Core Master was a

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complete failure. In fact, the device lived on as the PIC 100, and later the

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PIC 200, marketed by Celadon, a custom

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remote control company who appears to have adapted it for use on X-ray

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machines. This has actually been spotted, well not quite this, but the other ones, in use

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as recently as the late 2000s, about 20

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years after its introduction. I guess you never know where the story's going

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to end until you get there. And you never know where the segway is

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going to end.

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this video, maybe check out the time we got an old Soviet-era mouse working.

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That had some seriously 80s vibes.