That is definitely it. I wonder why it is so hard to find any information on these relics. I wish I still had my old one. I’ll have to see if I can find one to buy. I’m guessing that Chemstrips aren’t made anymore. I’d love use the old Accu-Chek bG for a day. Thank you everyone. 
Sorry Pat. I’ve never heard of a Merlin meter but then I had never heard of Reflolux even though I’ve been T1 for 27 years now. Couldn’t find any information or pictures of the Merlin but now I’m curious. This discussion has been a great help to me. Who knows what will happen. 
Jared:
I haven’t read what others have said yet, but my suggestion is to call AccuChek (actually Roche) and ask for their customer relations dept. I am sure they would trip over themselves to help. Every time I have trouble with a meter, they either help me solve the problem or just send me a new one … FREE! They have even sent me an extra because you should have a back-up meter in case of losing it, someone stealing it or some other stupid thing I have done!
Good luck and let us know.
Lois
P.S. 800-858-8072; 24/7.
Scott:
Ha! I’m soooooo spoiled now by my AccuChek Compact Plus that I can’t imagine I ever accepted an old thing from a gentleman boyfriend (sort of) that was his deceased wife’s. Too many steps.
Have you ever tried the Compact Plus with the drums of 17 strips and/or their Multiclix lancet pen with it’s 6-lancet drum? I’m so enamored with my equipment that I don’t even accept the free ones people have been shoving in my face for years!! When you need something and can’t afford/find it, where are they then???
Lois
I remember the term Merlin, vaguely, but never had one. I do remember the whole thing about slicing the strips lengthwise in half; there were even companies that sold devices to do that, though the manufacturers warned not to.
Of course, when we moved away from visual reading to the meters, we couldn’t do that anymore.
Here’s an image of the color-chart that we used to compare. (Thanks, Kerri, from sixuntilme.com!) If we were running high, we had to try to guess where we fell on the color-chart between 240 and 400!
Hi Pat,
I’m still trying to find a picture of the Merlin Electronic Notebook but I did find this…
This looks like it might have been the software that was used with the Merlin. I’ll keep searching for a picture. I am even more curious now.
Some of the old brand names live on long past the equipment actually being useful or current.
Remember how the Chemstrips were made or distributed by a company called “Boehringer-Mannheim”? Initials B.-M.?
I’m told that in some parts of the world they call any bg test a “B.-M.”. Not sure if they’re pulling my leg but that’s what they tell me :-).
I still ocassionally run across some who call any bg test strip a “Chemstrip” (and I think I occasionally lapse into that habit) and one even who calls their modern bg tests “Testapes”.
What a great topic! I vaguely remember the old Accu-Check. I had it right after diagnosis for a few months. Then my family got me the Accu-Check II.
If I recall correctly, the Accu-check II took 2 minutes to test your BG. At 57-59 seconds it let out short beeps and at 60 seconds it let out a long beep to let you know to wipe the blood off the strip and then you would stick the end of the strip into the Accu-check II to be read at 2 minutes. I used cotton balls to wipe the blood off the stip and those strips took so much blood that you could only wipe off maybe a dozen strips (maybe 20 at most) before the cottonball was unusable.
Calling a strip a BM isn’t as bad as calling a blood sugar a BS! (I never use the term “blood glucose” unless I’m typing!).
And I still can’t get myself to accept that the term “Glucometer” has become generic. To me, it’s the brand name of a product made by Ames and subsequently acquired by Bayer (who changed the name to the less-generic “Ascensia”.)
I used a tissue. With cotton balls, there were always little threads of cotton stuck to the strip. But I remember that my “test kit bag” held a bloody mess of tissues. In between wrapping it around my finger until the bleeding stopped (the large lancet and the guillotine Autolet didn’t make for easy healing like today’s lancing devices!) and wiping off test strips, these tissues were truly a bloody, repulsive mess.
I used Chemstrips from the very early 80’s all the way until they stopped making them in … 1998? 1999?
Although my web browsing leads me to believe that Chemstrips are still sold in Europe and called “Betachek”.
As to the Ames Glucometer… they may have been the first but the test strips but they were nothing to write home about compared to Chemstrips. Occasionally Chemstrips would be unavailable and I’d end up with a bottle of Ames test strips (fuzzy pads) instead. Having to wash the blood off with water to read them, and their EXTREME sensitivity to humidity made testing such a PITA.
The one good thing about the Ames Eyetone meter… was that it had a startling resemblance to a Star Trek Tricorder:
OMG. I never realized that Spok was diabetic. wow! 
Soy de España, me diagnosticaron diabetes mellitus tipo I en 1977, y este fue mi primer glocometer.
y aun lo tengo.completo.
I had one of those torture devices too. Yikes, when I think back to how much that thing hurt (I test more than a dozen times a day), I cringe. My fav lancet device is Accu-Chek Fastclix Lancet Drum & Device – Total Diabetes Supply
I think I still have one of those somewhere.
My first BG meter, a One Touch II:
Well, except for the German instructions. These came out in 1987, so I guess it was four years before I had my first electronic meter. Pee-on-a strip and color-matching up until then.
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That’s what I got when I was diagnosed in 92! I remember that hard shell case. What feaks me out more than the size of that thing is the recommendation of doing only 2 tests a day! (I usually scan over 30 times a day now).
Here’s a fun article on the history of blood glucose meters: [http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.468.2196&rep=rep1&type=pdf]
Wow, really old thread… But still amusing.
I was looking at the One Touch @DrBB posted, thinking “I don’t remember it looking like that, where are the nasty, blood-crusted prongs?”
I must’ve had the original One Touch for my first meter
How fun! I barely remember that thing. Forgot it had a door over the test strip. I think I lost that real quick. It worked regardless.
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