Federal Ten Ten Heresy stereo "boom box" build

I built a small radio/boom box using the case from and old Federal Ten Ten and various and sundry parts.
I used for the radio one of these:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/291692426129?_t ... EBIDX%3AIT


The is an AA-AB32155 from Parts Express (15 watts per channel):


in the last couple of years I Bought 2 of these:


The first one was a VHF low version that only worked in the 30mhz range and was useless to me. The second one was the VHF High version but was dinged up. Luckily this radio can be completely disassembled and I was able to make the VHF high look good as well as get the correct crystal I needed.

The remaining Ten Ten had a broken antenna and while it worked, I have no use for a 30 mhz radio. I gutted it and am now in the process of building speaker mounts. I also was able to fix the antenna using one I had purchased in a lot of 12 from ebay. I will be building a small 12 volt linear power supply (Possibly regulated). The speakers are 2 - 4 or 8 ohm (not marked) speakers that I got from somewhere (maybe computer speakers).

 I found a piece of brass for the panel to mount the speakers to.


Painted the front of the panel.


Cutout the space for the radio, mounted it, the speakers, battery, and the amplifier in the case. Wired up the the external power and the antenna.


I had reversed and painted the speaker cover as the original finish was in bad shape.


The switch is just and on/off switch as the amp does not have a volume control, the volume is controlled by the radio or the remote. I have to open the back to charge the 2200mah LIPO. The amp draws 2 amps at full volume (supposedly) and the radio draws a max of 500ma. At normal listening volume the radio could run for several hours on battery. There is a 2 amp fuse on the battery.

Total time to build about 10 hours.

 Some minor finishing touches (a name tag).


Labels and charging connector for the battery on the back of the radio.

Yes it sounds pretty good and puts out more volume than I would ever need.

Battery Charger build

A while ago I had acquired an old 8 amp selenium rectifier car battery charger.

I took the parts from that and built a new one.

 

But I needed a case. I had discarded the old one.

Recently I found this Brumberger film carrier:

 

 I drew up plans in autocad for the front and back:

 

I laid them out on the front and cut the holes out.

The timer I got is a Haydon Model ADI 1A001C D130302.

The actual timer on the back is a General Time E15450 A2631A1 timer.

The cover plate (which is a sticker) says OFF, EQUALIZE, and NORMAL CHARGE. It appears the only source for these is here: http://www.electronicsurplus.com/haydon-1a001c-d130302-0-16-hours-adj-timer-120v-spst-28a

The unit has 2 black wires for 120vac 60hz and 2 spade connectors for the switch. The switch can handle 250vac 28 amps. The shaft is a standard D type.

I will use a 25 watt 10 ohm POT's so I can vary the input voltage to the transformer. This charger originally had selenium rectifiers so the output voltage is about .5 volts too high. I need to reduce that and do not have any diodes that can handle the 14 amps that this charger can put out before the self resetting circuit breaker kicks in. I want to vary the input voltage anyways to experiment with some of the charging methods I have been reading about. I only need to adjust between 1 and 8 ohms to reduce the input voltage from 125 vac to 115vac if needed. My wall voltage can get rather high sometimes. I do not want to use a variac. I also do not want to over complicate the charger with a DC voltage regulator.

The finished unit:

I used a 50 amp quick disconnect so I can connect the charger to standard clamps and to other types of connections.

There is only one fan on the back, the bottom is just a vent hole.

The timer is set by moving it clockwise or counter clockwise to either "normal charge" or "Equalize". The timer moves clockwise and opens the charging circuit when it hits off. The separate power switch means that the fan will continue to cool the unit once charging has completed.

Funai Magnavox TB110MW9A has green light but does not power on

Funai Magnavox TB110MW9A does not power on.
Symptoms are:
green light flashes and then stops flashing and stays solid green.
nothing but snow on the tv.

My wife's aunt had this problem. I replaced hers with a different model but decided to see if I could fix it. I opened it up to look for swollen capacitors but there were not any.

I tested the voltages in the power supply and the voltages on all the voltage regulators. They all seemed ok. Finally (with some fiddling) the unit came on. I started carefully moving things looking for the problem. The problem ended up being the small vertical card with the large chip on it, If I moved it the unit would lose picture and go to snow.

The fix was to re-solder all the tabs on it.

That was it. It now powers up and shuts down properly.

Starrsoft Win96 Win500 won't load in Windows 7

I have a legit copy of Win96 and Win500 and for reasons I do not know they both stopped working. Searches of the internet showed lots of solutions for citrix and terminal servers (which these files are not on) nor are the files on a network share.

The solution is to go in to System properties, Performance Settings, Data Execution Prevention and to add the win96.exe and win500.exe to the list of exceptions. Below are the error message related to the problem.
---------------------------------------------
Fault bucket 2762246838, type 1
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: Win96.exe
P2: 0.1.7.4
P3: 4eef5003
P4: StackHash_9f4e
P5: 0.0.0.0
P6: 00000000
P7: c0000096
P8: 00bd340e
P9:
P10:

Attached files:
C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Local\Temp\WERD494.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml
C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Local\Temp\WERE883.tmp.appcompat.txt
C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Local\Temp\WERE893.tmp.mdmp
C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Local\Temp\WERE8D3.tmp.hdmp

These files may be available here:
C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportQueue\AppCrash_Win96.exe_dd1f1d933413637c13bbca2e1e0dda3edbdb166_cab_53a9e8fe

Analysis symbol:
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: 7fe17232-457c-11e6-b628-00224d88aa25
Report Status: 12
---------------------------------------------
Windows cannot access the file  for one of the following reasons: there is a problem with the network connection, the disk that the file is stored on, or the storage drivers installed on this computer; or the disk is missing. Windows closed the program Win96 Scanner Utility because of this error.

Program: Win96 Scanner Utility
File:

The error value is listed in the Additional Data section.
User Action
1. Open the file again. This situation might be a temporary problem that corrects itself when the program runs again.
2. If the file still cannot be accessed and
    - It is on the network, your network administrator should verify that there is not a problem with the network and that the server can be contacted.
    - It is on a removable disk, for example, a floppy disk or CD-ROM, verify that the disk is fully inserted into the computer.
3. Check and repair the file system by running CHKDSK. To run CHKDSK, click Start, click Run, type CMD, and then click OK. At the command prompt, type CHKDSK /F, and then press ENTER.
4. If the problem persists, restore the file from a backup copy.
5. Determine whether other files on the same disk can be opened. If not, the disk might be damaged. If it is a hard disk, contact your administrator or computer hardware vendor for further assistance.

Additional Data
Error value: 00000000
Disk type: 0
------------------------------------------

Faulting application name: Win96.exe, version: 0.1.7.4, time stamp: 0x4eef5003
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0xc0000096
Fault offset: 0x00bd340e
Faulting process id: 0x2630
Faulting application start time: 0x01d1d98942198782
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Win96\Win96.exe
Faulting module path: unknown
Report Id: 7fe17232-457c-11e6-b628-00224d88aa25
------------------------------------------
Fault bucket 173410711, type 17
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: Win500.exe
P2: 0.2.0.7
P3: 533b3d88
P4: StackHash_8066
P5: 0.0.0.0
P6: 00000000
P7: c0000096
P8: 0076340e
P9:
P10:

Attached files:
C:\Users\xxxx\AppData\Local\Temp\WER72A7.tmp.WERInternalMetadata.xml

These files may be available here:
C:\Users\xxxxx\AppData\Local\Microsoft\Windows\WER\ReportArchive\AppCrash_Win500.exe_9cafbefff092ed2c6d7981ef5fbc5ec017761a_5b3286c3

Analysis symbol:
Rechecking for solution: 0
Report Id: 9800ad92-457c-11e6-b628-00224d88aa25
Report Status: 0
------------------------------------------
Windows cannot access the file  for one of the following reasons: there is a problem with the network connection, the disk that the file is stored on, or the storage drivers installed on this computer; or the disk is missing. Windows closed the program Win500 Scanner Utility because of this error.

Program: Win500 Scanner Utility
File:

The error value is listed in the Additional Data section.
User Action
1. Open the file again. This situation might be a temporary problem that corrects itself when the program runs again.
2. If the file still cannot be accessed and
    - It is on the network, your network administrator should verify that there is not a problem with the network and that the server can be contacted.
    - It is on a removable disk, for example, a floppy disk or CD-ROM, verify that the disk is fully inserted into the computer.
3. Check and repair the file system by running CHKDSK. To run CHKDSK, click Start, click Run, type CMD, and then click OK. At the command prompt, type CHKDSK /F, and then press ENTER.
4. If the problem persists, restore the file from a backup copy.
5. Determine whether other files on the same disk can be opened. If not, the disk might be damaged. If it is a hard disk, contact your administrator or computer hardware vendor for further assistance.

Additional Data
Error value: 00000000
-------------------------------------------
Faulting application name: Win500.exe, version: 0.2.0.7, time stamp: 0x533b3d88
Faulting module name: unknown, version: 0.0.0.0, time stamp: 0x00000000
Exception code: 0xc0000096
Fault offset: 0x0076340e
Faulting process id: 0x28f8
Faulting application start time: 0x01d1d9895a37ff92
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\Win500\Win500.exe
Faulting module path: unknown

Interesting little crystal tester I got from ebay

I saw a video by Joernone where he shows a crystal tester he built. I thought that would be pretty cool to have but I did not have some of the components to build one. While looking to order them I found a completed board that does all the same things plus a go/no go light for a pretty reasonable price.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Electro-Resales-Crystal-Tester-and-RF-Generator-XTRF-/152053865120?

I bought the board, made some minor modifications to it, and mounted it in a project box.
Here are the results:

I went through all the crystals I had, I only found one dead one, a couple that oscillated strangely, and almost all of the crystals were spot on (or very close to) their rated frequencies.

ViewSonic VA2431 LCD Monitor problems

I received this monitor from my work several years ago and it was working perfectly up until a couple of weeks ago.

My monitors are calibrated, and when I do certain things like:
login through remote desktop and then login from the console or
play minecraft and exit the monitor loses it's settings and I run a special program to restore the settings.

Lately my monitor had a pink cast to it that would not go away when I ran the program to restore the calibration. I thought maybe it had lost it's calibration so I did a fresh calibration and that seemed to fix it... for about  20 minutes, then it went pink again. I did another calibration and it seemed to work but after 5 minutes it started flashing between pink and calibrated.

sigh™

I opened it up and it did not appear to have bad electrolytic capacitors but I replaced them anyways. I tested the old caps and all of them were leaky including the large 450v filter cap.

Now it works fine.

I want Candy

Yesterday we had Candy put down.

Candy was my sister Pam's cat. Pam had got her some time around 2000 and about 2 years after Pam died we got Candy. Candy did not like other cats and her meow was broken. She could only meow when she tried really hard.

About a year ago she started losing weight and would not eat dry cat food, so we started her on the geriatric cat diet of canned cat food. She mostly only drank out of the toilet which we called "the fountain of youth" A couple of times she fell in. She would often throw up her food and even throw up water.

About 2 days ago she stopped eating and she started peeing in random places. She had been pooping in random places for a while. Friday Kathi made an appointment to have here put down. Saturday morning Candy tried to use the litter box but nothing came out. She was very listless and could not hardly hold her head up. She would not eat, for most of the morning she could barely stand.

At 9:30am we took he in and the doctor examined her. He found one of her kidneys was enlarged. She weighed 5.5 pounds. We had them put her down, but they had trouble finding a vein. They had to shave her front leg to find one. They barely injected her and she was gone. We think Candy was about 15 to 17 years old. We did not take her home as we already have 3 cats buried in the back yard. They will mass cremate her. We did not want her ashes or a casting of her paw. I think both would be weird.