Casio FlipTop DataBank IA-1000

A very nice Casio Dress Watch with DataBank

Casio really makes clever watches, this one is another example. Although the watch was not really finished when released and that is why it was not continued for long. The CR2012 (original battery in my Swiss market Casio was a gold tone Panasonic CR 2012) for the electronics was stuck with a double-sided sticker (!!!) to the case back. Strange, really strange that battery fixing and actually not typical for Casio. They must have rushed that first version to production. The watch was also not having any water resistance, and the manual clearly warned about getting it moist.
The second hand in this picture is not easy to see, since it is perfectly aligned with the hour hand. I mention this because I tried many times in vain to synchronize the analog seconds with the digital seconds inside. When you pulled the crown and hacked the quartz movement, then opened the flip top and then tried to synchronize with the digital seconds, the analog watch would not start immediately after pushing in the crown. Also if you tried to set the digital seconds to synchronize to the running analog seconds, the same. I have only this explanation for this weird behaviour: the watch used the same quartz for both movements and obviously the impulse generator was not able to serve both the analog and the digital circuit at the same time.
Now you might be surprised, but despite all those shortcomings, it was and is a great watch. I remember that this watch attracted a lot of looks especially from older people back in the early 90ies (watch was released around 1993). I often wore the watch to work and would type in some data or play around with the different functions. One nice old lady once asked me if that was a telephone, she definitely was a visionary, because mobile phones in 1993 were still about 5 kg heavy :-)

Note regarding battery replacement

I once tried to use a CR2016. I have the big Panasonic battery specification book (that I was lucky enough to pick up during an electronics fair) which lists all the battery types and gives additional explanations in diagrams. There is not much difference between a CR2012 and a CR2016, but I have noticed, that the watch runs erratically with a CR2016. No problem with the digital part, but the analog part keeps hanging, sometimes after a couple of hours, sometimes after days. So please make sure you use the original battery type CR2012.
I also noticed that the double sided sticker that stucks the battery to the case back can only be lifted about twice, then the sticker will be torn and not really adhesive anymore. I used a double sided 3M transparent filmstripe and cut out a small square and used this one instead. And I am replacing this double sided sticker now everytime when I am changing the battery. Because somehow this is one of the weirdest case back - case combinations from Casio, the sticker actually helps to keep the case back in place. Somehow the tolerances must have gone a bit on the wild side with my watch, the case back sits quite loose on the case and there is no real snap-in sound, it just pops on and then hopefully sticks there with the help of that double sided sticker.