The versions with the code book allowed manual ship positioning as well, but you didn't have to enter every space of every ship - just the location of one end and the direction it was facing (north/south/east/west). It would verify that this didn't clash with any of the ships you'd already placed. It was quick enough.
The 1989 talking version does this as well. I'm wondering if we shouldn't attack that version first, as the boards seem reasonably common on eBay, and I don't really want to destroy the one I have here. (once we figure out the test mode for dumping tsp50cxx devices though, I wouldn't mind lending mine out for non-destructive dumping)
