OT: Lego motor box ID

[Dave Liquorice]

This should test you lot, the lad was given a mixed box of Lego from his cousins the other week. Mostly Bionicle but lurking at the bottom are a couple of motor boxes, neither of which I can kick into to doing anything.

They are about 6" long and 2 x 2" cross section, dark grey top, black base. Takes 3 x AA batteries in the middle of the base. Each end has independant motors with outputs each side and in the end. On the top the is a non-latching push button marked "ON" which clicks and a three position rotary control marked "1", "2" & "3". Central on one top corner is a semcircular dark plastic dome. Taking one apart I suspect this is a cover for an IR receive device. There is a circuit board inside with a couple of (c)Lego chips.

A couple of hours googling has turned up nothing that matches, I can't find any identifying numbers on them either.

What are they? Can they be made to do anything without the presumed IR remote?

[John Rumm]

Not a mindstorms RCX brick by any chance? :

[Clive George]

ISTR some moderately recent motors of that kind of dimensions with remote control, but buggered if I can remember which model I saw them in :-(.

[Andy Dingley]

Lego robot fighting crabs (yes, really). Around 2000, there was a pair of them (and a pair of IR controllers) to the set. One's black with orange trim, the other is black with yellow.

[dmc]

If it's real lego then it'll be in peeron. Have a look at

> What are they? Can they be made to do anything without the presumed >> IR remote?

I'd imagine they are likely to be remote control car bases. Something like

is my bet - two were included in set 8539 which was rather bionicle like so would fit...

If they support the Lego power functions IR set (they may well do) then

give some clues.

Failing that, head to

- someone there will know (in painful detail ;-))

HTH,

Darren (AFOL ;-))

[Dave Liquorice]

Spot on Andy. Thanks.

Bit of a google found a couple of sets on ebay that had been pulled or were really old and no longer listed but had the set number in the title wander over to peeron.com (thanks Darren for that link, wonderful site) and there I find:

the fighting crabs or "Manas" themselves:

only have one track but if the motors can be enabled they could drive other stuff.

[dmc]

Should you want a replacement remote, then the other fantastic lego site (peeron and lugnet are the first two :-)) is bricklink.

Using the reference from peeron you can hunt for people selling the brick you want.

few available in the UK at the moment.

Dangerous combination of sites that...

Darren

[Dave Liquorice]

I shall enquire of the lad.

It is if your are a collector or Lego fanatic, just extremely useful for a mere mortal. B-)

The descriptions all seem to be stock ones, nothing about the actual item that is for sale. I guess it doesn't matter much for a normal Lego brick but something electronic that needs to work it's a bit different. Maybe I'm not clciking on the right things, Bricklink isn't the most intuative of sites.