As with the previous Sony Watchman hack, injecting a composite video signal into this one is just as easy. I desoldered both the VIF/SIF IC & the digital tuner control (the tuner controller was still injecting it’s indicator into the video circuitry with the IF IC disconnected).
Composite video is on pin 18 of the Video IF IC, with the audio on Pin 13.
Here’s another Sony Flat CRT TV, the FD0280. This one was apparently the last to use CRT technology, later devices were LCD based. This one certainly doesn’t feel as well made as the last one, with no metal parts at all in the frame, just moulded plastic.
Being a later model, this one has a much larger screen.
Instead of the manual tuner of the last Watchman, this one has automatic tuning control, to find the local stations.
The spec puts the power consumption a little higher than the older TV, this isn’t surprising as the CRT screen is bigger & will require higher voltages on the electrodes.
The certification label dates this model to May 1992.
Still not much in the way of inputs on this TV. There’s an external power input, external antenna input & a headphone jack. No composite from the factory. (Hack incoming ;)).
The UHF/VHF & power switches are on the top of this model.
Removing some very tiny screws allows the back to be removed. There’s significant difference in this model to the last, more of the electronics are integrated into ICs, nearly everything is SMD.
There’s the usual RF tuner section & IF, in this case the VIF/SIF is a Mitsubishi M51348AFP.
The digital control of the tuner is perfomed by this Panasonic AN5707NS.
The deflection & sync functions appear to be controlled by a single Sony branded custom IC, the CX20157. Similar to many other custom Sony ICs, a datasheet for this wasn’t forthcoming.
There’s very little on the top side of the board, the RF section is on the left, there’s a DC-DC converter bottom centre next to the battery contacts. This DC-DC converter has a very unusual inductor, completely encased in a metal can. This is probably done to prevent the magnetic field from interfering with the CRT.
Here’s the CRT itself, the Sony 03-JM. The back of this CRT is uncoated at the bottom, the tuning scale was taped to the back so it lined up with the tuning bar displayed on the screen.
Here’s the electronics completely removed from the shell. There’s much more integration in this model, everything is on a single PCB.
The curve in the phosphor screen can clearly be seen here. This CRT seems to have been cost-reduced as well, with the rough edges on the glass components having been left unfinished.
Here’s the electron gun end of the tube. There isn’t a separate final anode connection to the bell of the tube unlike the previous model. Instead the final anode voltage is on a pin of the electron gun itself. This keeps all the wiring to the tube at one end & shortens the high voltage cable.
Here’s the gun in the neck of the tube. Again this is pretty much standard fare for CRT guns. It’s more similar to a viewfinder tube in that the anode connection is running from the pins at the back. (It’s the line running up the right side of the tube). I’m guessing the anode voltage is pretty low for this to work without the HV flashing over, probably in the 2-4kV range.
Hacking the Sony FD-20 to accept a composite input is easy – the tuner receives the RF transmission, produces an IF, this is then fed into IC201, a Mitsubishi M51364P Video IF Processor. The VIF IC then separates out the composite video signal, which is output on Pin 13 (in photo above, left side, 3rd pin from the top). The audio is separated out & sent via Pin 11 to the Audio IF processor.
In the above photo, the VIF IC has been removed from the board with hot air, as it was interfering with the signal if left in place. The RF tuner was also desoldered & removed. Unfortunately I managed to mangle a pad, which is the ground pin for the VIF IC. This isn’t much of an issue though, as an identical signal ground is available, just to the left of the IC.
The audio can be tapped into in a similar way, the circled pad in the centre of the photo marked SIF is the place, this is the output of the Audio IF processor to the audio amplifier. The Audio IF processor didn’t interfere with the injected signal, so it was left in place.
Here’s an oddity from the 1980’s – a CRT-based portable TV, with a very strangely shaped tube. Sony produced many types of flat CRTs back in the 80’s, with the electron gun at 90° to the curved phosphor screen.
The front panel has the display window, along with the tuning & volume indicators. Unfortunately since analogue TV transmissions have long been switched off, this unit no longer picks up any transmissions off the air, but it can be modified to accept a composite video input.
The back panel has the battery compartment & the tilt stand.
The certification label reveals this unit was manufactured in May 1984, 32 years ago!
Rated at 6v, ~2.1W this device uses surprisingly little power for something CRT based.
The battery holder is a little unique, this plastic frame holds 4 AA cells, for a 6v pack.
The battery holder slots into the back of the TV, there’s also an extra contact that the service manual mentions is for charging, so I assume a rechargeable 6v battery pack was also available.
Removing a pair of pin-spanner type screws allows the front glass & screen printed CRT surround to be removed. Not much more under here other than the pair of screws that retain the CRT in the front frame.
Here’s the back cover removed, after unscrewing some very small screws. As per usual with Sony gear, the electronics is extremely compacted, using many flat flex cables between the various PCBs. The main PCB is visible at the back, this has all the deflection circuitry, RF tuner, Video IF, Audio IF, video amplifier & composite circuitry.
Lifting up the main board reveals more PCBs – the high voltage section for the CRT with the flyback transformer, focus & brightness controls is on the left. The loudspeaker PCB is below this. The CRT electron gun is tucked in behind the flyback transformer, it’s socket being connected to the rest of the circuitry with a flat flex cable.
Here’s the back of the CRT, the phosphor screen is on the other side of the curved glass back. These tubes must require some additional deflection complexity, as the geometry will change as the beam scans across the screen. There’s a dynamic focus circuit on the schematics, along with extensive keystone adjustments.
Here’s the tube entirely extracted from the chassis. The EHT connection to the final anode is on the side of the tube bell, the curved phosphor screen is clearly visible. The one thing I can’t find in this CRT is a getter spot, so Sony may have a way of getting a pure enough vacuum that one isn’t required.
I’d expect the vertical deflection waveforms to be vastly different on this kind of CRT, due to the strange screen setup. Not much of a beam movement is required to move the spot from the top to the bottom of the screen.
No doubt to keep the isolation gaps large, all the high voltages are kept on a separate small PCB with the flyback transformer. This board generates the voltages for the electron gun filament, focus grid & the bias to set the beam current (brightness) as well.
Here the deflection yoke has been removed from the CRT, showing the very odd shape better. These tubes are constructed of 3 pieces of glass, the bell with electron gun, back glass with phosphor screen & front viewing window glass. All these components are joined with glass frit.
The electron gun in the neck looks to be pretty much standard, with all the usual electrodes.
Here’s a view from the very top of the CRT, the curve in the screen is very obvious here. The electron beam emerges from the bell at the back.
Here’s the full schematic of the entire TV, I extracted this from a service manual I managed to find online.
More to come on hacking this unit to accept a standard composite video input, from something such as a Raspberry Pi!
Here’s another battery charger designed for lithium chemistry cells, the BLU4. This charger doesn’t display much on it’s built in LCD, apart from basic cell voltage & charging current limits, as it has a built in Bluetooth module that will link into an Android or iOS app.
Above the charger is operating with 4 brand new cells, at a current of 500mA per cell. If only a pair of cells is being charged, the current can be increased to 1A per cell.
Not much in the way of user interface on the charger, a tiny LCD & single button for cycling through the display options.
The usual stuff on the data plate, the charger accepts an input of 12v DC at 1A.
Removing the 6 screws on the bottom of the casing allows the board to be seen. Not much on the bottom, the 4 cell negative connections can be seen, with their springs for adjusting for cell length.
There’s a couple of P-Channel FETs on the bottom side for the charging circuits, along with some diodes.
The main PCB is easily removed after the springs are unhooked from the terminals. Most of the power circuitry is located on the top side near the power input. There are 4 DC-DC converters on board for stepping the input 12v down to the 4.2v required to charge a lithium cell.
Not entirely sure what this IC is in the bottom corner, as it’s completely unmarked. I’m guessing it’s a microcontroller though.
The top left of the board is crammed with the DC-DC converters, all the FETs are in SO8 packages.
One pair of DC-DC inductors is larger than the other pair, for reasons I’m unsure of.
Bluetooth connectivity is provided by this module, which is based around a TTC2541 BLE IC.
Below the Bluetooth module is yet another completely unmarked IC, the direct link to the BLE interface probably means it’s another microcontroller. The Socket to the left of the IC is the connector for the front panel LCD & button.
There’s not much to the LCD itself, so I won’t remove this board. The LCD controller is a COB type device, from the number of connections it most likely communicates with the micro via serial.
For the latest big project, replacing the battery bank on the boat with 5 brand new 200Ah Yuasa heavy duty flooded lead acids, I’m going to need to make many short links from heavy battery cable to connect all 5 batteries into a parallel bank.
Cutting cable as big in diameter as a good sized thumb is difficult at best. In the past I’ve used a hacksaw, but it doesn’t do a very clean job, especially as the cut nears the end – strands get ripped from the cable by the relatively coarse blade & this reduces the current carrying capacity.
Over to eBay again netted a pair of ratchet-type heavy duty cable cutters for £30. These are rated to cut cable up to 240mm² or 600MCM.
The cutting head on these snips is massive – cutting through cable up to 35mm in diameter takes some force. The ratchet mechanism is used to get a large mechanical advantage to force the cutters through the copper, without having to resort to more expensive & complex mechanisms such as hydraulics. (Hydraulic cable cutters do exist, but cost a small fortune & are totally over-rated for the job).
Overall the tool seems to be well made, the handles are Vinyl dipped to make them more comfortable, which certainly helps when applying a large amount of force. Running a file over the cutters themselves reveals they’re actually hardened – unusual for cheapo Chinese tools.
I recently decided to restock my toolkit, as there are plenty of jobs I need to sort that require the use of crimp terminals, so eBay again came to the rescue.
In my experience, cheap tools of any flavour are usually universally shite – I’ve had drill bits made out of a metal softer than aluminium, that unwind back into a straight flute bits as soon as they’re presented with anything harder to drill through than Cheese. Ditto for screwdrivers. But for once the far eastern factories seem to have done a reasonable job on this crimp tool set.
These are ratchet type crimping pliers, with interchangable heads so many different types of terminals can be used. A handy Philips screwdriver is included in the kit for changing the dies.
The largest dies in the set can handle cable up to 25mm² – just about the bottom end of main battery cables, which is very handy.
Smaller sets of dies are provided for other types of terminals.
I’m not precisely sure which type of terminals these dies fit – the profile is a bit unusual.
The smallest dies in the set are good for extremely small wires – down to 0.5mm
The pliers are supplied with the standard colour-coded automotive dies installed. Sometimes these terminals never crimp properly, as the dies just effectively crush the copper tube of the terminal, so more often than not the wire strands are just forced out of the terminal as the crimp is made, leaving a bad connection.
These are even better than the ratchet-type crimp tools at the local Maplin Electronics – the set of those I have just distorts when a large crimp is made, so the terminal never gets a full crimp. The steel is not stiff enough to handle the forces required.
Here’s a couple of large crimps on 6mm² cable attached to an ammeter. The crimps are nice & tight & hold onto the cable securely. The insulating sleeve on the terminals also hasn’t been cut through by the dies, which is often a problem on cheap crimp tools.
Here’s another piece of commercial gear, from an industrial air conditioning unit. These pumps are used to drain the condensate from the evaporator unit, so water doesn’t end up raining down from the ceiling.
This is a peristaltic pump, with a silicone hose forming the pumping element.
The test switch & electrical connections are on the back, along with the data label.
The electrical connections are all on a single 5-pin socket. Along with 240v AC mains, there are a pair of thermistors connected to the unit, which switch the pump on when a 5°C temperature difference across the evaporator coil is detected. When air is cooled, it’s capacity for moisture drops, so the water condenses out on the coil.
Here the front cover has been removed from the pump, showing the silicone tube & roller wheel. The wheel was originally Cadmium-plated, but exposure to the elements has oxidized this into highly toxic Cadmium Oxide.
Here you can see the rollers. These pinch the tube at the inlet, and the rotation carries a slug of liquid through the tube to the outlet side.
Here’s the tube itself, the main wearing part of the pump. This is replaceable as a spare part.
Inside the casing is a shaded-pole motor, connected to a large gearbox, to give the slow rotation for the pump head. The rated speed is 51RPM.
There’s not much to the control PCB. The large resistor forms a voltage dropper, to reduce the mains 240v to a more suitable level for the logic. There’s a TL062C Low-Power JFET Op-Amp & a CD4060BCM 14-stage binary ripple counter forming the logic. The set point is adjustable via the potentiometer.
The pump motor is switched via this Z7M SMD triac, not much switching power is needed here as the motor is only a very small shaded-pole type.
Here’s a modern LED bulb, that unfortunately decided to disassemble itself within a few minutes of being installed in a light fitting! The base plastic snapped off the main aluminium body at the screw posts!
The PCB in the base holds nothing but the input components. Above is the bridge rectifier.
The other side of the PCB has a 10Ω fusible resistor, for protection.
The LED PCB itself has the driver IC, which is a CYT3000A linear constant current IC, that runs direct from full-wave rectified mains. The single resistor sets the LED current, but there aren’t any smoothing capacitors on the DC rail, so this bulb would flicker a lot.
Looking through eBay recently I came across a great deal on some Helium-Neon laser heads from Melles Griot. While definitely not new, these gas lasers are extremely long-lasting & I figured the tubes inside would make a nice addition to my laser collection. Doing some searching on the model number, these heads are rated at an optical output of 4mW, but depending on how much milage is on the tubes, the output may be a bit higher.
I got a pair of the heads, this one was manufactured in July 1988, the other March 1989.
The OC end of the head has the laser classification label & the beam shutter. Once I’d tested the laser heads to make sure they survived the post intact, I set at extracting the plasma tubes from the aluminium housings.
The end caps are fibre-reinforced plastic & are secured with epoxy resin, so some heating & brute force released the caps from the housing, giving access to the laser tube itself.
The laser tube is secured in these heads by hot glue – this was squirted into the housing via two rows of holes around the ends. (Some are secured with RTV silicone, which is substantially more difficult to remove).
I’ve no photos of the actual extraction process as it’s difficult enough as is without at least 5 hands. A heat gun was used to warm up the housing until the glue melted enough to slide the tube out of the housing. Since everything was hot at this stage, a piece of copper tubing (above), was slipped over the OC mirror mount, so I could push the tube out of the housing while the glue was soft. This also protected the mirror from damage while the tube was being removed.
After a few minutes of gentle pushing while keeping the housing hot, the tube was released! It’s still pretty well covered in the remains of the hot glue, but this is easily removed once the tube cools down to room temperature with Isopropanol. The line of Kapton tape running down the tube to the cathode end is insulating a start tape electrode, which is supposed to make the laser strike faster on power-up. Instead of being metal though, the electrode appears to be a carbon-loaded plastic tape.
Here’s the HR end of the tube, which also serves as the high voltage anode electrode. The start tape is clipped onto the mirror mount, but all this will be removed.
The OC end of the laser, where the beam emerges. What I think is the mW rating of the tubes is written on the end cap, probably from when the tubes were manufactured.
Applying power from a He-Ne laser PSU confirmed the tube still works!
Another random teardown from the junk box time!
Here’s an old Motorola DECT landline phone, no use to me as I’ve not used a landline for many years.
Not much on the back, other than the battery compartment for a pair of AAA rechargables. The base unit contains the charger.
Here’s the main PCB removed from it’s casing. There’s not really much going on, one of the main ICs, which is probably a microcontroller, is a COB device, so no part numbers from there. There’s a row of pads for programming the device at the factory. The RF section is on a dedicated IC, a DE19RF19ZCNC from DSP Group. I couldn’t find much on this part, but it’s one of a range of DECT/VoIP DSP devices.
Inside the base unit is a similar board, just without the keypad. Main microcontroller is again a COB device, the RF IC is under the shield.
Removing the shield reveals the same IC as in the handset, only this PCB has a pair of antennas.
Here’s another bit of commercial gear, a catering thermometer. These are used to check the internal temperature of foods such as meat, to ensure they’re cooked through.
This was given to me with some damage, the battery cover is missing & the plastic casing itself is cracked.
Power is provided by 3 AAA cells, for 4.5v
There’s not much to these units, the large LCD at the top is driven by the IC in the centre. A programming header is also present on the board near the edge.
The core logic is taken care of with a Texas Instruments M430F4250 MSP430 Mixed-Signal Microcontroller. This MCU has onboard 16-bit Sigma-Delta A/D converter, 16-bit D/A converter & LCD driver. Clock is provided by a 32.768kHz crystal.
The probe itself is just a simple thermistor bonded into a stainless steel rod.
Time for another teardown! I managed to fish this Sky+ box out of a skip, but to protect the guilty, all serial numbers have been removed.
These are pretty smart devices, with DVR capability on board.
There’s a lot of ports on these units, from RS-232 serial, POTS modem, eSATA, HDMI, USB, Ethernet, SCART, Optical, digital outputs & even composite video.
Removing the top plastic cover reveals the operation buttons & the built in WiFi adaptor, which is USB connected to the main logic board.
The PCB on the front of the chassis has all the indicators, and the IR Receiver for the remote.
Removing the top shield of the chassis reveals the innards. The PSU is on the top right, 500GB SATA disk drive in the bottom centre. The main logic PCB is top centre.
Here’s the main logic PCB. The massive heatsink in the middle is cooling the main SoC, below.
The main SoC in this unit is a Broadcom BCM7335 HD PVR Satellite System-On-Chip. It’s surrounded by it’s boot flash, a Spansion GL512P10FFCR1 512Mbit NOR device. It’s also got some DRAM around the left edge.
The smart card reader is on the PSU PCB, the controller here is an NXP TDA8024
The PSU itself is a pretty standard SMPS, so I won’t go too far into that particular bit. The logic PCB attaches to the large pin header on the left of the PSU, some of the analogue video outputs are also on this board.
There’s also a Microchip PIC16F726 microcontroller on this PCB, next to the pin header. Judging by the PCB traces, this handles everything on the user control panel.
Some local supplies are provided on the logic board for the main SoC, the IC in the centre here is an Allegro A92 DC-DC converter. I didn’t manage to find a datasheet for this one.
The RF front end for the satellite input is a Broadcom BCM3445 Low Noise Amplifier & Splitter, again not much info on this one.
The standard MAX232 is used for the serial interface. I imagine this is for diagnostics.
The POTS modem section is handled by a Si2457 System-Side device & Si3018 Line-Side device pair.
