I was cleaning up the other day when I stumbled accross an old and long forgotten toy. A "Talking Lesson One", a childrens learning computer from the eighties, in surprisingly good condition (probably due to the fact that it was as boring and tedious as Letterman and was thus rarely used). Anyway to get to the point, I thought it would be an ideal piece of equipment for some hacking. It consists of a keyboard and vacuum flourescent display in a single console. The problem is I am stuck for ideas as to what to do with it, so anyone got any ideas?
My oh my! I just checked out the "Talking Lesson One" on google and was amazed at the hackability! :o
Do you have one of these?
If you do, it would be positively EPIC if you ripped out the guts, replaced it with an Arduino, and got the monitor, keyboard and "floppy drive"-ish things to work.
Then, you give yourself (or the entire forum) a real programming challenge: Make scetches to allow this sweet baby to function as a primitive computer.
One thing I can come up with is simply using it as a terminal. You know.. connecting it to a computer and doing command-line stuff just like one would do with Putty, telnet, HyperTerminal, etc. It would probably be pretty slow but at the serial rates Arduino can use, I'm guessing no slower than any other terminal used 20-30 years ago. 
Imagine.. If you do this you can connect to a computer and use whatever dos/linux tools you want! Assuming you have the needed keys on the keyboard at least. You could even connect through serial to your computer, and then telnet/ssh out to other servers! :o
In addition, perhaps someone more skilled than me could make a PONG-type game for you, and you could add two game-ports for the "computer". Nothing fancy, perhaps just two inputs for x/y and a third for a fire-button.
Man, if you manage to do that conversion, you are pretty much my hero. ^^
Edit: I just have to add this.. Call me a geek (I know I am!) but that thing is so retro-looking it FREAGGIN' HOT! drool Eventhough I suck at Linux, I would looove to have one if these with said serial control software.
Would it be hard to make that? Assuming you figure out how to control the screen you just read the keyboard, transmit keypresses with Serial.print() as they are detected, and display incoming/outgoing serial data on the screen.
Yes that's exactly what i've got. I haven't even taken the cover off yet so I'm not sure exactly what I'll find inside.
I think I'll do as you say and start interfacing with the keyboard and monitor and see where to go from there.
One idea I have requires two of these things and that would be to use them as kind of text message radio communicators.
I wouldn't jump into ripping the guts out it, might be easier to have the arduino write to it's eeprom or something like that, in order to control the display.
It is a very attractive peice of electronics, I think turning it into an oscilloscope would be cool. Or an access for your music library.
Thanks for the ideas! 
I don't know about the oscilloscope - this would require a new screen for a start (it's only a single line 10 charachter display). I love the idea of the music library, I could turn it into an MP3 jukebox!
heh, didn't see that it was a character display.
Check this
I know yous is not the same model, but almost any toy from that period can be modified. (circuit bending is the name of the game).
This could possibly include some kind of Arduino control, like switching and controlling digital potentiometers.
for other bend stuf check my web site here:
Hey MikMo? You seem like you're into this whole circuit bending thing.. Could you please explain to me what is so cool about this? I mean, all over I see people circuit bending this and that, but almost without fail the result is a multi-colored plastic box of some sort that makes useless, weird sounds. :-/
So, please enlighten me as to what facinates you about doing this? Thanks!