Omega La Magique service.

I always found this type of watch to be facinating. The design goes back to the Magician Robert Houdine. Just re watched Hugo and there is a call out to the 'mystery' clock.

The main issues with battery was that at the time small batteries used mercury. Which gave a lower voltage than silver. Lithum is a more recent production. The natural voltage is different. Mercury is 1.35 where silver is a bit higher around 1.5. Lithium is closer to 3V.

I did do a quick search to see what caliber this takes. I see this is the elusive Scarface watch.

I found a photo of the inside of the watch



So there is not really a movement per sea as it is pretty much integrated into the design.

There is a thread that the search turned up on these forums https://omegaforums.net/threads/1-261-produced-omega-la-magique-de-ville-18k.46379/ which give some details including the caliber number 1357. I do not see that number in the usual datasheet download sites. I did find the 1355 which is a quartz tuning fork movement.

Mostly I play around with the 1342 quartz movements. I have some background with micro electronics (I design pipe organ relays.) The main problem is that the chip factories used to make the time control chips have long since crumbled to dust and the designs shredded.

In theory a modern general purpose micro controller could drive the stepping motor. These can be quite small. Typically though they run at a higher 1.87 voltage up to 3v or so.

The stepping coils can also have issues. The wire subject to mechanical stresses. Or even over currents from back emf and static discharges, which were not as well known back in the 1970s.

It also looks like these often were in gold cases which would trend a few of the examples to the fate of the fiery furnace. Although that could lead to some of the movement parts floating about.

A lot of repair of the early quartz does involve cannibalizing what is floating out in the wild.

I think though with the Scarface connection that there are specialist who do focus on hoarding these parts and servicing what there is that can be serviced.

I doubt there is much Omega can do since the institutional knowledge of this sort of thing is now lost. They probably do not have the parts. So hopefully you can find an independent who specializes in these.

I just downloaded the datasheet, which explains the battery replacement process.



Hit the wrong button creating the link. There are special fixtures. The website where I took the photo described the process. A special tool is needed.

There is also a lot of confusion. Omega says CA 1355 is a 'dinosaure' reference. So something is wrong since 1357 is supposedly the La Magique.

With under 300 produced, and most melted down in the fiery furnace. This is going to take some work tracking down what can and can not be done.

I doubt Omega will spend a billion for a new chip factory, sand down the chip package (like done with bitcoin security chips) and run a few controller chips. (which lack ESD diodes anyway.) At least there are plenty of 1342 movements to find abandoned on ebay. There are also other 135x movements. Sadly the online docs here are lacking into the interchangability of the controller chip.

I tried tracking down the case ref, But AI halucinates on the 1355 vs 1357 confusion and gives the 191.0084 case.

Omega had a scandal a couple years back with some auction fraud, which is working its way through the swiss court system. So there is no one there to do the archive extracts. They also broke the vintage website search capability. Althoug general searches do turn up stuff. The database is known to have gaps.

The best thing is to find someone with an inside contact who can suggest whom to contact.

@Archer and I have strong differing views on some of this. (I prefer to stick to the technical side.) On the other hand this may be a 10K watch especially if gold. So it might be better to go through the champagn and caviar channels.

As much I would love to find a dumped rat watch version of this sort of thing I suspect such would me wishful magical thinking.

Still I have an idea of what could be done with some old Apple Watch cases I have ...

T&T is fairly sure it is.

https://timeandtidewatches.com/watches-worn-by-al-pacino-on-the-big-screen/

Yes, I read that article some years ago, didn't bother to proof it yesterday.

As above, I think Al has another contender.

I think I fount the right search term 191.8523 I was looking for a more detailed data sheet. Mostly to see if I could find part numbers for spare gears, movement plates, circuits etc from scrapped cases. I did find this which seems to be the source of many of the quoted reference data.



I also found a way to old listing here. This also quotes much of the same info.

While most listings of this reference do include the word Scarface, Most recent research indicates this is not the watch used in the film.

The best I can figure is the caliber on these is 1355 or 1356/1357. The problem searching auctions for these parts is that the numbers overlap some of the escapement parts and jewels. 1350 is a small ovaloid watch. I did find a listing for a way overpriced ladies movement what claims to be 1355


Wonder if there is some commonality to the clock divider chip. The stepping motors also seem to be of similar design. Information from this era is really fragmented. On one side there is a despairite attempt to save things through tech. The other is the crashing economy what causes loss of institutional knowledge.

I am not seeing the part where he makes new modules. The website reminds me a bit of my own, which never got into the details I wanted to. Really do need to update the blog.

Mostly on the polish site see tiny pictures of interesting watches.

Replicating an electronic module is not difficult. Getting it to run on a 1.57 cell is a bit tricky as the little micro controllers prefer closer to 3V. I did dismember a stepping motor, which was a bit too small for the optical flow scanner. Other project take priority to that one.

I did start tracing over some of the photographs I downloaded into lightburn. Mostly to count and estimate the teeth in the drive train. There are a number of 3D printed mystery Clocks on various instructable sites.

Still think it would be amusing to put a mystery movement into an Apple watch case.