This article has a talk page!The Study Box is a cassette drive adapter for the Famicom that would read educational classes off of cassette tapes, similar to the cassette drive on a Commodore 64 or other computers of the time. The classes available were English (taught across 17 tapes), Science (12 tapes), and Math (also 12 tapes).
The Study Box was initially rolled out in April 1986 as the Model 1000 and was only available for rental to students registered to the Shinkenzemi Elementary School Course. A cheaper model would release a few years later (sometime after 1988 as indicated by the Famicom Family logo) as the SBX-01 to reduce manufacturing costs and unlike the previous model was actually sold instead of rented. Support for the StudyBox would cease in 1994,2 and today the StudyBox and its tapes are extremely rare and hard to find.3
Test Mode#
Hold A and press Reset. The purpose of this mode is unknown.
Memory Check#
Hold B and press Reset. The BIOS will perform complete ROM/RAM tests and display the results.
A printer test is also performed with the following string located at PRG-ROM $09D8F (shown here with C-style escape codes):
\r\n\eP \eKJ!Ip=qE9#N#M8&5f=j\r\n
Touch Panel Test#
Hold B + Select and press Reset. Now you can test the regular controllers, plus the additional touch-screen controller if you're lucky enough to have one.
Auto Mode#
Hold Right + Select + Start and press Reset. Loading tapes in this mode causes interactive portions of lessons to be skipped automatically.