Rummaging though the Playdate parts bin at the Panic Garage Sale, I found what appeared to be mostly complete Playdate with a very early serial number. The crank paddle was broken off and the employee managing the desk was uncertain if the device functioned or not. It was just $20, so I figured the gamble was worth it just to have some spare parts.
While sitting in a Portland park with a group of members from the Playdate Squad Discord, Paul Straw let me borrow an external battery so I could try charging the Playdate.
To my surprise, the screen lit up and a few minutes later it booted! Immediately we could tell something was different about this Playdate, as there was a persistent Wi-Fi symbol on the lock screen.
Apps
The first app was an earlier app version of Input Test (now found under the System Menu). This let’s you test all the inputs of the hardware to ensure everything is working as expected.
The second app was the QA (Quality Assurance) app, which I don’t think anyone has seen prior to early/dev Playdate models leaving the garage sale. The app has a pretty extensive list of tests to thoroughly test for issues on the Playdate.
Settings Menu
When going into the settings menu, the first thing we noticed was a toggle for the Speaker. The speaker menu had the options to switch between the internal speaker and bluetooth. Sadly selecting bluetooth doesn’t do anything. Maybe this is for the Playdate Stereo Dock?
The next interesting option not present in current OS is the Language option. At first when testing this, none of the menus or anything else noticeably changes. Digging around, it appears there are localization options in the SDK[1][2]. On the developer forums, it is mentioned that Playdates don’t ship with a localized OS just yet.
System Menu
Under Device Info, the first thing we notice is the Playdate OS version is running 1.0.8. Talking with scratchminer, the first publicly available OS version was 1.9.0.
The games options are under System vs Settings and there a few things that stood out in these options. Under the Installed Games option, you used to have to crank to delete game data (which I kind of wish was still present in the modern OS).
The other interesting game option was Restore Game Data, which just teases a coming soon message.
Back Plate
The first thing I noticed on the back plate of this early model is the lack of FCC and other certification/compliance marks. The other thing that stood out was the model number is slightly different than current Playdate models, PDU-01 vs PDU-Y-01 (the Y most likely meaning yellow).
Other Playdate accessories follow the newer model pattern (thank you scratchminer for pointing this out):
- PDU-Y-01 – Playdate
- PDC-P-01 – Purple Cover
- PDC-A-01 – Aqua Cover
- PDD-Y-01 – Stereo Dock
Another interesting model The3DPrintist came across was a developer evaluation model, PDX-01.
Other things of note
- The Upside Down toggle is in the root Settings menu and the Accessibility menu does not exist yet. This is likely due to the Reduce Flashing option not existing yet.
- This unit only has 2GB of internal storage vs 4GB. The original plan was to ship units with 2GB of storage and 12 season game at $149. With the price increased to $179, storage was increased to 4GB and 12 additional season games were added (bringing the total to 24).
UPDATE (8/9/24)
The 2GB appears to have been a partition size vs a limit of the physical internal storage. When upgrading past 1.0.8 a reformatting of the disk was initiated. When finished reformatting/updating, the Playdate had access to the full 4GB storage.
Playdate Stereo Dock
Back to the Panic Garage Sale, one of the tables had a cool display of Playdates in different colored shells. In addition to those, there was what appeared to be part of the Playdate Stereo Dock!
Going into speculation here, so take these next bits with a grain of salt. The dock appears to be missing it’s front half (the part that has the speaker). I am unsure if we knew the front and back of the dock separated, or that the back half of the dock had the metal pegs.
This makes me wonder if the front part of the dock separates and can act as a portable Bluetooth speaker? And if it does separate, would it also be able to charge the Playdate when not connected to the back half of the dock? Power is passed through the bottom two metal pegs, which are present on the front and back halves of the dock. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see, really excited for whenever the dock releases!
UPDATE (8/4/24)
Rae linked me this from Episode 1 of the Playdate Podcast that has some more information.
Cabel Sasser: Just some trivia for you: The stereo dock was two separate pieces. There was the snap-on speaker, Bluetooth speaker, and then that itself would snap on to a dock/battery pack for the Playdate. So the idea was that if you want a slightly thicker Playdate on the go, you can snap on the speaker. And then if you want a very thick Playdate/one that also can sit on your desk, you can also snap on a battery pack. You can see that in the design today, where we kept the seam between the two units. Cause we thought it looked kind of visually interesting. But in getting into the realities of that point, that was a lot going on at once. With the Playdate, stereo dock, it was difficult to engineer something that was all of these separate pieces. And so at some point we said, okay, let’s make this one piece. And then we said, and well, let’s probably remove the battery because we don’t need that anymore because it’s now going to be just sitting on the desk. The Playdate stereo dock is awesome because it provides a cool home for the Playdate. That’s my favorite thing about it. You know, rather than just having it sit on your desk, this is a beautiful looking thing. It’s a nice-looking clock.
Swag
Closing out I wanted to share the mostly Playdate related swag I left with. I had a fantastic time meeting folks from the Playdate Squad Discord and Panic employees. Thank you for reading!
