ARCHIVED FORUM -- March 2012 to February 2022READ ONLY FORUM
This is the second Archived Forum which was active between 1st March 2012 and 23rd February 2022
Yet, another ridicously vulnerable plastic part, this time from BC casette. Uder 1mm tab preventing metal shied to raise up and block head bridge.
As can see broken. Next, fixed with needles edge.Not pretty, but working
blah-blah and photographs as needed
Doesn´t this look nice?
http://www.uraltone.com/uraltone-vahvistinkehto-korjausteline-ammattikayttoon.html
Looks beautiful - a work of art, but what does it do?
How does it work?
Is it a tube tester?
Ah, it is flexible device holder for easy working
Could it hold a BeoMaster 8000?
might be offlimit
but maybe this can be modified
I just successfully connected my Beosystem 7000 to my Beosound 9000 using a cross over cable built by Sounds Heavenly. After running cables through the basement, I can now listen to a record playing on the 7000 by pressing AUX on the BS 9000 or listen to the BS9000 CDs on the 7000 by pressing ATAPE. Now I can start building out MCL and Masterlink systems throughout the house. Woohoo!
Vishay has changed their 33µF No longer as old Philips C2103.Dont know if internals are unchanged.
The Vishay 120 and 138 axial series are 105°C units.
Those are unchanged, and those are the ones I use.
But anyway, the Nichicon HE or Panasonic FC are perfectly suitable very-long-life radial units, much more widely available, and much cheaper.
Me, I'm working at restoring one Beomaster 5000 and 3 Beolab 5000 all from 1967.
I started with one of each and recently added two more.
I'm not an electronic expert but I'm getting help from a master, Menahem above which is extremely knowledgeable. Don't hesitate to ask him if assistance is needed.
I'll post my progress as soon as I can but a lot of other priorities to tackle first!
See you soon.
Menahem Yachad: The Vishay 120 and 138 axial series are 105°C units. Those are unchanged, and those are the ones I use. But anyway, the Nichicon HE or Panasonic FC are perfectly suitable very-long-life radial units, much more widely available, and much cheaper.
Getting this... Once bitten...
Jacques
Nice one. I recently managed to get a hold of a couple that are waiting for me to restore. I think I will follow your upcoming thread (with nice pictures I hope). John
Not a first for me John: this will be my second unit! I know what to expect.
I got this lovely B&O RV9A AC-voltmeter over three years ago but got finally into repairing it now. It had two faults: the power switch (OFF switch) failed to hold down (ie. the meter was always on!) and two of the 12 voltage ranges were not working (300 mV and 300 V). On those two ranges the pointer would start around middle of the scale and then slowly move up until it goes over scale.***EDIT External link removed***. Looking at the date-codes on the IC-chips, this meter looks to be an early 1977 build. There is an ad of this meter in Wireless World (December 1980, page 8).I traced the fault into the "electronic attenuator" circuit (see page 19) and found a bad FET transistor (TR10) where the original part was a U1898E. I tested this by replacing two of those and the fault followed to another range so I had found the problem! I found an old specsheet which suggested a 2N4092 as a replacement. Probably a million other modern parts would have fitted, but as I was able to source one locally, I used that. Not as pretty as the original with gold-plated feet but worked a treat.The power switch was a bit tricky. Three of the front-panel radio-buttons are related to power; OFF, AUTO and MAN. Pressing either AUTO or MAN (automatic or manual ranging) starts the meter. OFF switches the meter off and locks down (while AUTO and MAN pop out). The main power switch inside is a big clunky spring-loaded switch that springs to ON unless it's held down by the locking OFF button. The mains switch has a very strong spring, and it places a heavy pressure to the front-panel switch-mechanism. This has broken a small tab on the OFF-buttons plastic shaft that locks it down. At first I thought I'd mount a new ON/OFF- switch inside the case and use the OFF-button as a toggle-switch without linkage to the AUTO-MAN selector. But after all I was able to repair the original mechanism by 3D-printing a replacement part. It's not perfect and needs sometimes a bit more firm push or retries but seems to be working pretty much Ok. At least it looks and works pretty much as originally meant.I still haven't fully assembled the meter as I need to do some more testing to see if it needs calibrating (described in the service manual). In my quick testing it looks like to be pretty much spot-on. And of course, I probably won't be using this for any serious work so probably I won't bother ;) Some of the trimmers inside might need replacing as well as they look a bit oxidized.
While it is a nice piece of kit, I still feel it has somewhat hurried mechanical design; the mains switch puts too much pressure to the button assembly and the case is held by 4 Phillips screws as well as 6 slot-headed screws on the bottom, which makes it a bit awkward to open. Without the top cover the rest of the chassis is kinda wobbly and the mains switch only works when the case is closed as it's related to the distance between front and rear panels. Also while the two vertical circuit boards are held together with a spacer and screws, they are not held down into the slots.
This model is an interesting mix of technologies, it still has lamps for range indicators, but it also has two LEDs (scale indicators) and lots of early 74LS-series logic in a case very similar to the earlier B&O tube-based meters.
Couple of pictures:
Above: the B&O Voltmeter RV9A.
The unpopulated DATA IN/OUT is for data export or external control of the range selection. The signals are present in unpopulated headers over the three internal boards so it would be an easy update (also the signals are clearly indicated in the manual) but probably not worth the effort!
These were the replaced parts. The white bar on the front is the OFF-button shaft which I replaced with a simplified 3D-printed version. The original transistor looks very pretty with gold-plated pins.
The mains power switch is located in the rear panel and operated by a pole from the front panel switching-assembly. The orange part (partly visible at the end of the pole) is my 3D-printed replacement part. The spring under the screw and the metal plate under it are of my own modification over the original parts. It works suprisingly well being totally self-inspired!
On the top is the mains transformer, I re-wired it from 220V to 240V as per the service manual.
The meter has three circuit boards, the one on the bottom and then two vertical ones. The yellow part on the front is a reed-relay.
The replaced TR10 on the right. I also replaced couple of the bigger caps, here's one and the others are on the bottom board.
Looking straight from the front of the meter, the needle was slightly over the 20 mark so it seems to be pretty much spot-on. The scale-indicators (red dot, 2 pcs) are early LEDs, the green indicators on the bottom are lamps behing a green shader.
Nice work! It's a bit funny that the PCB has silk print on IC pin numbers. Anybody who has any business going in there would probably know them anyway!
--mika
Thanks!Perhaps ICs were considered "so new" at that point that extra help for servicing was thought necessary?Just after I had finished with the meter, I scored a nice B&O SN17 DC power supply (single output 0-30V 0-2A) from german eBay! Sold as working and in pretty good condition, too. Of course I had to get it :)
It has the same footprint to fit nicely next to the other B&O test gear:
It says B&O on the front panel, but actually that's not the end of the story, here is another sticker on the bottom:
So it's actually made by Electronic Instruments after B&O stepped out of test gear manufacturing in late 1980's (see here).
A look inside.
Gotta love the small logos on the parts
Next to the mains fuse is a Rifa X2 capacitor which I will replace when I got more parts. It already has cracles in the casing and these caps are known to blow spectarily when its case starts leaking in moisture from the air.
The sister model SN18 (0-60V 0-1A) uses the same PCB and the jumper links for voltage selection can be seen next to the transformer input on top. The schematics are available (on the site linked in previous post) and one probably could easily convert this into SN18, but I consider the 0-30V 0-2A range more practical. The UA723CN's date indicates this would be early 1989.
While there, I did a quick re-cap as there weren't many parts. The big ROE cap was just a single 2200uF 63V, it has four feet just for mounting. I also repaced the heat sink compound under the output transistors on the rear panel.
Again there was no need for calibration, after slightly tweaking the mechanical zero adjust of the meter it appeared to be spot on! The top case has small dents and little rusting but in general it looks very reasonable.
A little something I finally managed to crack open without damage:
Recognise what it is?
Don't know if it can be repaired, but at least I am in! Wish we had the service manual the label mentions...
As you might have guessed, it's the LC1 light controller.
There is actually a document marked "LC1 Service manual" in the manuals section here in Beoworld, but it's only a single page about the fuse ratings.
A quick update; against all my expectations the unit is now working again!
After disassembling the unit, I decided to try the easiest thing first, to replace the lithium battery inside.
The original CR2430 (3V) was indeed dead and it even had small leakage on one edge. I happened to have CR2032 which is almost identical (slightly less capacity) with soldering tags so I put it in.
After plugging the unit into mains, it did not respond to the touch control at first. It did work by remote and after giving it a LIGHT + GO the touch control started working too. As the lithium is there to keep the programming in, it surely was confused after the battery had first gone flat and then removed. Now the unit has been on for some hours and it seems to be working perfectly fine.
I'll post a separate thread later with more pics and instructions on how to open the LC1. I have at least one LC1 more which is not working (just tried, and it did not work by touch or remote) so I'll see if I can revive that one too. I'll need to order more lithium batteries first...
Ahh the Lival spotlight from the '70s... I've got at least four of them here at the summer house
tournedos: Ahh the Lival spotlight from the '70s... I've got at least four of them here at the summer house
Actually it was the first lamp I could find where I already had a incandescent lamp of over 40W (which is printed on the bottom of the LC1).
I didn't remember how good IR range the LC1 has. I have one Innovus RAone dimmer in use (I think I have couple, one I think I even bought from you Mika) which has much worse IR range, and what I especially dislike is that it keeps a high frequency noise when the light is OFF! LC1 has bit of a noise too but much lower and it's silent when the light is off. I think it's time to put an LC1 back into action on this one!
lausvi: I have at least one LC1 more which is not working (just tried, and it did not work by touch or remote) so I'll see if I can revive that one too. I'll need to order more lithium batteries first...
I have at least one LC1 more which is not working (just tried, and it did not work by touch or remote) so I'll see if I can revive that one too. I'll need to order more lithium batteries first...
Ok, I managed to revive two out of three LC1s that I have!
It seems that after the battery has been replaced, the unit will not react until after about half a minute after being connected to mains. I guess it does some sort of reset sequence. After that it will work straight away after plugging in.
The last one had a bit of oxidation in the shielding and the battery was completely dead. It tried to fiddle with it for some time but it didn't start working. It might have some other fault. I did not take this fully apart as I wanted to see first if simply the battery replacement would have done the trick. Needs more work, that will be a job for another day - too tired now!
Interestingly enough, the first of my units was Type 2111 (DK version per the service manual), the two others are 2119 (S, Sweden?). First one uses 1.25A fuse while the two others use 1.0A.
I also replaced the Rifa mains filter capacitor in my SN17 power supply.
Yesterday I was re-watching some of the great EEVblog videos (if you haven't seen them, do watch, highly educative and entertaining) on YouTube and came across episode 808, where Dave repaired the LCD screen of a Fluke Scopemeter. I had seen that before, and immediately had thought about my Beolink 5000, the remote that very often has the identical fault (missing lines or segments), just like mine:
Mine was in a rather sorry state so I decided to have a go at it and see if it could be revived. Not much to lose anyway!
I took the remote apart and started working on the flatflex connecting the PCB and the LCD together. Very thin and easy to damage.
Like Dave (see around 20:00 on the video) I used a hot air station and a rubber eraser: I heated the part of the flat flex that attaches to the glass and pushed it down with the eraser. Kept sweeping over the whole length for some minutes. Then I did the same to the PCB connection, as I had no idea which end was the culprit. Had to desolder that big metal shield first.
It was a bit difficult to test the remote without assembling it (which is a pain as the PCB and the LCD has to be turned around very carefully, while at the same time connecting another flex between the two PCBs!) between attempts but I found out that the RETURN button on the rear side (up on the picture above) could be used to trigger the remote to show text. So the setup in the above picture was pretty good.
It took a couple of attempts, but slowly I was getting less and less missing lines and finally the display was restored:
As Dave mentions in the video, the repair might not be permanent and I think I already saw one line flicker on my LCD. Anyway, it's currently much more usable than before!
Unfortunately this unit has several other glitches; the battery holder is damaged due to earlier leak and it's also affecting the third mounting screw that holds down the top plate. Also the display has a big crack on the right-hand side edge. I noticed some small electrolytic caps on the board that are probably bad by now and indeed the two-way IR range seems to be pretty limited.
I have a spares unit (with totally smashed screen) which I might dig up and swap parts with.
It's a tricky remote to open so I can't recommend this repair to anyone uneasy with delicate parts, especially the LCD and its flat flex.
Super job!
It was fine until the next morning! By then it was again missing couple of lines (but it was still better than before I started).
I have now aquired another unit. It was externally very nice, but again the display was missing lines and the 2-way IR didn't work at all. There were several (thrue-hole) caps that looked pretty bad but replacing those did not help. I swapped boards between the two units and I have now one that looks good and works Ok-but-not-great (pretty bad IR range) and the display still needs to be re-worked (not sure if I will bother, it was almost too frustrating to put it together!).
Great job. I have a number of these Beolinks, all have dead pixels. I've disassembled one and removed the metal shield. However, in this case the issue appears to be in the crease of the ribbon cable ie. if the cable is bent or straightened, I can get pixels to show up or disappear. Applying pressure on where the cable is glued to the pcb or lcd makes no difference. Applying pressure to the bend in the cable does.
Has anyone found a suitable replacement for the ribbon cable or some other way of restoring the function of the display?
I bought myself a boxed "non-tested, sold as-is" LC2 dimmer. I have always thought these things look superbly cool. It has quite a resemblance to a certain HAL 9000 series computer (which I think is a plus, being a 2001-fan!)
While externally pretty clean, sadly it doesn't work. I can't get any reaction on it, not by remote nor by touch.
I keep reading on old threads that there are some known troublemaker capacitors, I'll have to see about that. I only had a quick look inside, but it looks prestine. Main fuse was Ok.
It seems I have a working LC2 now
Before today I had tried the following:
- checked the mains fuse: it was Ok
- checked two electrolytic caps, ofter mentioned in earlier threads: both were fine
- measured the main +5V supply: nothing! Definetively something wrong at the power side of things.
Today I continued with a printed schematics (thanks Beoworld, the schematics and parts layout were scanned in a very good quality). I started following the mains input and found that resistor R3 (5.6ohm, 10% 0.4W) was open circuit. Externally it looked absolutely fine, ie. not charred or blown. All near-by parts were Ok so I simply replaced R3. I wasn't having too high hopes, but as I nervously plugged in the LC2, my test-lamp lit up (LC2 can be programmed to turn on when mains power is connected so this was a good sign). Ok, already an improvement! No idea why it had failed, perhaps a spike at mains voltage or something?
I tested the IR, and it worked: I was able to turn the lamp on and off. But the touch-sensing didn't work. At this point I wasted some time troubleshooting this as I had presumed that the dome sensor worked thrue the pad on the IR receiver board (it looks like it would touch the inside of the dome) and I kept poking it and wondering why it didn't work! In truth the sense is thrue a conducting rubber pin on the corned of the main PCB. It touches and makes contact to the bottom of the domed top (which I had not put back yet). I finally figured this out when I started wondering why the schematics showed the touch sensor as a separate section from the IR board...
Touching this time the correct part showed that the touch sensor worked after all. After cleaning things up, I was finally ready to assemble the unit and gave it a final test: everything works! I have now been dimming it up and down and it seems to be working nicely.
Having now worked on both LC1 and LC2, I must say I really like the LC2, the design is good looking and it's much easier to connect than the LC1. Also I think externally the LC2 looks stunning. Internally it only has three screws holding parts in.
Howdy, wondered if you might be able to help? I just picked up a pair lovely old P30's but have found one of the tweeters to be blown out (when I turn the bass up to a modest volume one of the speakers makes a rather unpleasant raspy vibrating sound). Any suggestions on how best to proceed? Based in UK, currently working to get a Beogram 1500 deck (the newer 80's model without pre-amp_ hooked up to a Pioneer SA-500. So far so good, but this speaker not being A1 has put a bit of spanner in the works. Cheers in advance, Adam :)
New country. New city. New apartment. New workbench. New tools. Same hobby.
Now that I am settled into my new home I have started to replenish my tool box (read: kitchen drawer) and decided to make a quick going through of a tired pair of original, white RL60.2's. I acquired these in the same purchase as my BL5000 and BM5000. At the time I asked the seller to bring a pair of speakers to demo the amp and he made me an offer I couldn't refuse! Plus he didn't want to haul them back home.
In a time where I should be catching up on real work and a million other projects I couldn't resist pulling these apart. A friend of mine here mentioned they really needed some good, cheap speakers and I don't have the room right now to put them to good use. So I am going to re-cap, re-cover, re-paint and re-strap these RL's to get them ready for a new home. I was saving them (behind my couch) for a time when I could set up a pair of BeoCreate units in stereo but this use is much better use, and future for these awesome speakers.
Beo4 'til I die!
lausvi:Gotta love the small logos on the parts
I seriously love finding these little details inside old B&O gear. Nerdy, but true!
I finally got around replacing the lithium battery in my Beolink 7000. I had seen it mentioned that it can start leaking and eat thrue the traces and that didn't sound like fun! (A pic here, this is also where I bought my new battery as they advertised it having the solder tabs in correct positions for simple drop-on replacement). Also the main NiCd batteries had run down so I thought perhaps I should do it all at one go.
Accessing the lithium battery was not fun, to say the least, but at least it was somewhat logical once I figured out where the flatflex cables go and how to separate the modules. Also no soldering required to get there, and the desoldering the battery was easy enough as it's located on a sparse corner not covered by the shield.
Top left: keyboard PCB, center: display + IR board. Still in the chassis: the CPU board with the battery on the underside of the corner with the white tape.
Old battery removed. It didn't actually measure too bad for being original. And most importantly no leakage and the board was very clean.
The new battery was easy to fit in.
I did also replace two small electrolytics (one on CPU board and one on display board) while there (the small purple one in background in previous picture). The IR caps I had replaced already years ago to fix the shortened IR range -problem.
I couldn't replace the main battery pack (5 NiCds) yet, I had bought new cells but I had bought only four as I didn't bother to check... need to get back there later. That's the easy thing as it doesn't require opening the remote again.
Assembly was pretty straight forward. And whew, the BL still works!
I do believe I can see some changes on how the remote behaves. For one, I *think* the menus are a little bit faster now. And everytime I tap the remote to wake it up (or press STATUS), I see "WORKING..." on the blue display, which it didn't show before! It used to be just a blank screen for a while when it queried the BM for the status. According to the user manual, it should work this way, but mine surely didn't. Perhaps with the old caps the display didn't come up just quick and missed the first message or something?
With the remote on charger, it has couple of times failed to come up with the clock display (ie. it shows only the dot even I have set it to show clock). I don't think I have seen it do that before, but most of the times it does work just fine. Weird.
I would be interrested in how to open the LC1 unit.
I have two myself which are not working. Perhaps it's that battery too ?
Thanks
Martin
BeoSound 9000 MK3, BeoLab 8000, BeoLab 6000, BeoLab 3500, LCS9000, BeoLab 11, BeoLab 7.2, BeoLab 7.1, Beolab 4 PC, BeoCenter 2300, BeoSound Century, BeoSound 8, Beosound 2, BeoVision 7-40 MK2 , BeoVision 7-32 MK3, BeoVision 6-22, BeoVision 4-42, BeoMedia 1, BeoCom 4, BeoLink 1000, BeoLink 5, BeoLink 4 & BeoTime
Hi Martin.
I'll need to sit down and write that guide I promised, but before that you can probably use these photos for reference: LC1 (in my Dropbox).
You need to open the bottom (some of my LCs have some weird screw-head used there, some have standard Phillips heads) and unscrew the mains wiring. Then there is one screw on the side that looks like it's doing nothing but you need to remove that, too.
Then the top part needs to be detached, I used spades made to open iPhone shells. Don't start with your best-looking LC1, it'll be easy to scratch the case for the first one or two times, then it becomes easier. The inside-block can be the pulled out and from there on it's a bit tricky but not too bad.
I have one or two LC1s that didn't recover after replacing the battery, I have put in an order for the main triac to see if replacing that will bring them back to life.
Thanks alot for the pics and the description.
Is the top of the LC1 glued or is it sort of a clip mechanism ?
I think it's very lightly glued and tightly-fitting. After I had opened mine, I just pressed the top part back down. It does hold but can be pulled out by hand, so it'd probably need new glue but I didn't bother in case I need to open it again.
OK, found out myself. It was pretty easy to lift the top. No visible scratches made.
The battery on the LC1 I just opened seems to be ok. It measures 2.97V. Is it ok or should I replace it with a new one ?
What batteries do you use ? I found CR2430 but with different soldering points.
Is there a way to reset all programming of the LC1 to make sure I start with factory settings for easier testing except removing the battery ?
I used a CR2032, that one I was able to source with the correct solder points. Might have slightly lower capacity but hey, the old one lasted over 20 years so perhaps this one will be fine for a while Also easier to fit as it's slightly smaller cell.
I seem to have recycled all my removed batteries, can't remember how they measured. But it might be a good starting point to replace it anyway.
Looks like this is a CR2430 battery that could fit.