Author: gary

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More Philips Boombox Tinkering

new AA cells

Having recently fixed the Philips boombox CD player, we decided to review the battery compartment mod, done at least 20 years ago, and still working.

The original idea was to fill the battery compartment with 8x rechargeable D cells and arrange that they would be constantly trickle-charged while the mains lead was plugged in. The battery compartment’s positive terminal was connected via a current-limiting resistor to the power supply section of the PCB. This trickle charges the cells at about 10mA. This is enough to charge them up over a few days, but not enough to cook them.

Good quality branded rechargeable D-cells are relatively expensive…. about €10 a pop for a ~10Ah cell, so it’s about €80 to fill the battery compartment. Given that the thing is not used that often on battery, this was a bit much. So instead, 8x AA cells were used in holders, and soldered to the existing connections in the battery compartment. The cells were NiMH made by GP and rated at 1.2V, 1500mAHr. This mod was done, we guess sometime around 2000.

So today, ~25 years later, new cells were fitted and we measured the capacity of the original cells. Discharging at 200mA to a cutoff voltage of 0.9V, the original cells tested at 599mAHr…. about 40% of their original nameplate capacity. The new cells fitted are from Lidl and are rated at 2500mAHr.

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Another “Miracle” Repair

CD Mechanism

OK, so not quite as old as that 1970s tape recorder that we fixed last week, but a 1996-vintage Philips AZ8640 Radio-Tape-CD boombox. The CD had stopped working, but the tape and radio were still fine.

Opening up, these things are not meant to be easily disassembled. They tend to be built from the inside out, with not much thought about future disassembly or serviceability.

When we fix old electronics, there are a few “usual suspects”, which quite often give us a fix. Old electrolytic caps are one…. they dry out after a decade or two of service. Another is bad connections or solder joints.

Solder joints, cracked or so-called “dry”, can be hard to see sometimes. Wiggling the component legs can help you see them, or simply re-touching all joints with fresh solder can do the trick. This one was quite spectacular, however.

A 3-legged power transistor that supplies power to the CD mechanism, looks like it had moved on its heat sink, and the 3 solder joints had completely detached from the PCB. Re-soldering the 3 joints brought the CD back to life. The transistor looks like it’s held to the heatsink by a spring clip rather than a screw. Perhaps the spring has failed. It’s very hard to see, and it’s a nightmare to remove the circuit board to check.

Failed Joints

Interestingly, the transistor, a BD236, is still available new from Farnell at €0.72! Here’s hoping for another 30 years of service.

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A Real Jam

We’re big into our jams at TOG….. Linux, Python, Finish-a-thons… you name it. Last Saturday at our regular monthly Open Social, we ran a real jam… blackberry and apple to be precise!

With 3.2kg of blackberries collected from the Royal Canal in Dublin and Kildare, and apples from one of our members’ trees, we made a huge pot of jam which filled about 24 jars.

Our Open Social is usually a foodie affair anyway, with our pizza oven going. This one was especially busy with both the pizza and jam. Everyone got to have a stir of the pot, and we all got to take a jar home…. still piping hot.

If jam making and other foodie things interest you, get in touch. We might do another session soon. Check out our gallery for even more photos.

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Fix All The Things

socks

If you follow Tog, you’ll know that we’re no stranger to Repair Café. It’s become a bit of an institution around here. We never know whats going to come in our door on the day. We’re probably well into 4 figures in terms of the number of items that we have fixed over the years. Repair Café also embeds a culture of repair in all those who get involved with them.

When is the last time you darned a pair of socks however? This is an easy fix, and probably one that most of us will have the means to do at home. Sadly however, we’re too inclined to just throw our old clothes away. This morning, we read that Ireland consumes more than double the European average of textiles.

These socks, bought on the Aran Island of Inisheer in 2024, were a bit too young and too nice to throw away. So out with the needle and thread, and in no time they’re good to go for another while. Now just need to keep those toenails trimmed!

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Postcards

Every week we send a postcard to some hacker or maker space somewhere in the world.

We’ve interacted with many spaces over the years, and it’s a right of passage for our members to visit the local hacker space whenever they visit somewhere new.

Sure you can email, and there’s all manner of instant social media and messaging apps, but where is the fun in that! 

If you’d like a postcard from Dublin, let us know and we’ll add you to our list. Send us a postcard yourself!

TOG, Unit 1B Motor City, Kylemore Road, Dublin 12, D12 CF6V, Ireland.

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8mm Cine Camera and Projector

Tog recently received a very kind donation of an 8mm movie Ciné camera, projector and other items. We still have all of our dark room equipment in the space, and several TOG members are still keen on film photography.

In the past, we have ran film photography workshops and processed film in the space. These formats are not dead. They still have a small but dedicated following. If film photography including Ciné and instant photography is something that interests you, why not drop in, see what we have, and have a chat with us. 

When we moved into our current space here in Bluebell, one of the very first pictures that we took on the day was an instant photo on an original 1970s vintage Polaroid SX70 camera that’s still working like new!