The source code of the original 'Farby' that can sing, dance and talk is like this

The source code of the original model of electronic toy " Furby (furby) " which was developed by Tiger Electronics in the United States has been released.

TITLE PAGE INTERACTIVE TOY (FURBY.ASM-Version 25) INVENTOR: Dave Hampton
(PDF file) http://www.seanriddle.com/furbysource.pdf

Furby is not only able to sing and dance, but also a comical stuffed toy that manages its own "Farby language", when it was released in 1998, it made a big break worldwide. Furby is also sold and popular in Japan from Takara Tomy.

Furby Japanese version promotion video - YouTube


Primary Farby has the feature that it can not only reproduce programmed songs and dances, but also a sensor embedded in the body that can take action according to external input, as a toy at the time advanced A program was given. The source code of the original Farby is published as a PDF file.

The original Farby source code recorded by inventor Dave Hampton is A4 paper with a total of 297 pages. The programming language used is " 6502 OPCODES ". Inexpensive chips used for toys at that time seems to have used 6502 instead of C language etc. because there is a limit on the size of code and memory. Farby's program written in assembly language is difficult for ordinary people to decipher what is going on.

Hacker News has received many impressions about Farby's source code.

Original Source code for the Furby [pdf] | Hacker News
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17751599

There are writes such as "There is a mechanism to set the PWM according to the battery voltage and not load the motor," which is interesting, etc. In response to this, "It is amazing to read such code ... The impression of ... ... is also attached. The person who reads it seems to be able to read naturally since "6502 Assembly spent over 10 years writing games."

If you modify the source code, you are likely to be knocking out Furby as you wish, but if it is the latest model furby, you can hack it relatively easily.

Hacking to say "I'm your father" etc to children's toy "Furby" - GIGAZINE