The ghetto mod thread

[goodpsusearch]

Originally Posted by momaka

I did a quick search on the Creative, and it looks like it already has all of the amplifies inside the sub enclosure. So really you just need to find some mid-range / tweeters for the "surround" speakers, and you should be set probably.

I got this sub with its back surround tweeters and the center speaker. The front left and front right tweeters are missing and unfortunately one of them had the control buttons. So the system is dead. I use the back tweeters to test repaired amplifiers since I don't care if they get damaged. But first I connect a speaker I took out from a trashed and broken black and white CRT TV.

The linear transformer is also missing but I can use a laptop adapter without issues here. Same goes to the Altec Lansing system that has a bad transformer. Tried laptop adapter and perfectly worked. But the quality of the sound is quite bad.

Originally Posted by momaka

Yup, kind of did that already.
Well, the 4-ch amplifier IC for the subwoofer was already wired to 2-ch BTL. I just couldn't / didn't feel like trying to understand what was going on with the pre-amp and filter section since, as I mentioned, the PCB was missing pieces. So I just disabled the pre-amp section entirely, then uncoupled the inputs from the amp IC and hooked them directly to RCA stereo jacks, giving me a simple stereo amp to work with. Eventually, I enabled the other identical amp IC on the board and converted it to have 2 channels on BTL. So this "amp" contraption is now capable of driving 2x Left and 2x Right speakers in regular stereo mode - i.e. same as "speakers A" and "speakers B" on "conventional" stereo amps. Only limit at this point is the power adapter ("measly" 16.5V, 40 Watt) that was once part of an Altec Lansing or Cyber Acoustincs system (that I never got to see, actually.)

Anyways, I'll start typing up the post and hopefully post it sometime this year, lol. It's not really suitable for this thread, as it's an entire ghetto creation by itself.

That said, you can actually get a "hint" of what it looks like from the thread below (I won't spoil and tell you which picture it is. )
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showthread.php?t=20886

lol speakers on top of speakers

that's something we have in common

if you remember the pic I posted from my bedroom, a cheap Philips mini hifi speaker is the base of the front right Dali Spektor 2 speaker....

...and my grandma's Winson speakers got repurposed as speaker stands for my Dali Zensor 3 big speakers I have on my living room.

But I need to fix the Sony AVR to make those Dalis sing. Right now they are not connected to anything

[RukyCon]

This is more of a repair than a mod, but i assume it can still go here.

Story: So a few years ago, I got a 150w/10A electronic load off eBay, and when it arrived, it turned out the LCD was damaged in shipping, so after a bit of back and forth with the seller (and eBay stepping in) i got a full refund for the unit, and used the money to buy a replacement, while the broken one was put aside for parts.

Anyway, a few weeks ago, i doing a bit of cleaning when a brilliant idea popped into my head on a way to "fix" the broken unit. But first, i needed to find a new cooler, as i had stolen the old one off it for something else, so a bit of digging later, and I found an old Intel cooler, that appears to be slightly beefier than the Cooler Master one that came with the item originally.

So all i had to do was attach it and...
IMG_20220312_175426702.jpg
Fits like a glove
i don't know what that connector is for, and i don't care.

So now i just needed a power meter, and i had just the part.
IMG_20220312_175532161.jpg

I got this voltage/current display off eBay back in 2017 or so, for a DIY bench PSU, which I did build, but proceeded to end up killing by mistake, however, the display survived and ended up in storage, waiting to be put to use again.

So now it was time to put these things together, but first, i needed to find power for the display, only issue was it required 12v, and most of the unit runs off of 5v or 3.3v, but i did manage to find one trace with 12v on it, so i scraped away some solder resist and tacked a wire direct to it.
IMG_20220312_184127966.jpg

It's not pretty, but it works, and that's all i care about.

Next up was to try and figure out how to attach the current sense wires, and that was the tricky bit for me, as there wasn't an easy way to do it, but in the end, i did find a way, and that way was to move the input onto a daughter board.
IMG_20220312_190759793.jpg

So now was the moment of truth, i gave the unit power, and the display came to life, next i connected a power supply to the load and... Nothing happened.

As it turned out, the display i used had the current sense line common to ground, and the mistake i made was, i connected the current sense wires to positive, effectively shorting out anything i connected to it, which is exactly what happened to the power supply i connected.
So a bit of resoldering later, and...
IMG_20220312_192811668.jpg

It works.

Now, some may ask why i didn't get a new LCD, and the reason is that almost no one (except some shady back channel sites) had the right part. And even though some functionality is missing from this due to the repair, I honestly don't care much.

[momaka]

Originally Posted by goodpsusearch

I got this sub with its back surround tweeters and the center speaker. The front left and front right tweeters are missing and unfortunately one of them had the control buttons. So the system is dead. I use the back tweeters to test repaired amplifiers since I don't care if they get damaged. But first I connect a speaker I took out from a trashed and broken black and white CRT TV.

Yeah, always good to have a few "test speakers".
In my case, I use this Eminence Kappa Pro-15A speaker driver that I repaired for testing more heavy-duty amps. When turned upside down on my carpet, it can take quite a bit of power. Free-air, though, it doesn't take much before the VC reaches the same spot that made it go bad the first time. So I can't use that large driver open-air with too powerful amps.

Originally Posted by goodpsusearch

The linear transformer is also missing but I can use a laptop adapter without issues here. Same goes to the Altec Lansing system that has a bad transformer. Tried laptop adapter and perfectly worked. But the quality of the sound is quite bad.

By bad sound quality, do you mean you hear extra noise? If so, that may be because of circuit grounding. Some laptop adapters tend to be noisy and cannot be used for audio gear unless their ground pin is disconnected. On others, you must make sure the ground is connected. It's weird, but I find that not all switching adapters play nice with my audio stuff. It also depends on the input source too.

Originally Posted by goodpsusearch

lol speakers on top of speakers

that's something we have in common

And computers on top of computers?

Originally Posted by goodpsusearch

...and my grandma's Winson speakers got repurposed as speaker stands for my Dali Zensor 3 big speakers I have on my living room.

LOL, bad/crappy speakers used as stands for something else... now where have I seen that before?
Ah yes! I used these crappy speakers - one as a make-shift night-stand in college (for putting my phone next to my bed), and the other as a make-shift computer stand. LOL! They are pure garbage otherwise.

Originally Posted by RukyCon

Anyway, a few weeks ago, i doing a bit of cleaning when a brilliant idea popped into my head on a way to "fix" the broken unit. But first, i needed to find a new cooler, as i had stolen the old one off it for something else, so a bit of digging later, and I found an old Intel cooler, that appears to be slightly beefier than the Cooler Master one that came with the item originally.

So all i had to do was attach it and...
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...8&d=1647145473
Fits like a glove

Nice.
That stock Intel cooler actually looks better than the Cooler Master one on the working unit

Originally Posted by RukyCon

So now it was time to put these things together, but first, i needed to find power for the display, only issue was it required 12v, and most of the unit runs off of 5v or 3.3v, but i did manage to find one trace with 12v on it, so i scraped away some solder resist and tacked a wire direct to it.
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/attach...3&d=1647145473

It's not pretty, but it works, and that's all i care about.

Function over form... yup, pretty much my style too.

[Dan81]

Since I was cheap and this is probably the only slotket I could ever find, I took a gamble and went ahead and modded it to work with Coppermines.



Not sure if it's really ghetto but the fact that I wouldn't want to spend money to get a proper slotket that supports CuMines out of the box is pretty ghetto for me. Not sure about voltages though I think the BE6-II I have bought must've adjusted itself accordingly (also have installed latest BIOS as security measure) to the Coppermine voltage since the Slot 1 versions don't run at a too big voltage to matter for this slotket (1.65v for Slot 1 vs 1.75v for 370 - if anything I might've undervolted the chips slightly )

The only chip I couldn't get to POST was a SL5QW, though not sure if the chip itself is defective or the BIOS simply didn't like it. I remember running it a few years ago (2 or 3, not much) on a EPOX EP-3VCM and it worked fine... something's quite amiss, but as long as I have a 133FSB SL4C8 Coppermine P3, I don't really mind.