The ghetto mod thread

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Here's another project (WIP) I am currently working on:

Anyone want to guess what it is?
I'll give you a clue - it's NOT an Xbox 360 with a modified orange LED.

[c_hegge]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

^
Building a PC into the Xbox's case?

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Not quite, although I've been wanting to do that too . Just need to find a small board for that.

I'll give a second hint... look at the picture's name

[Pentium4]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Is it the amp for your sub you built? Can't wait to see internal pics of it!

Not much of a ghetto mod (especially compared to yours) But I really needed to replace the 92mm exhaust fan in my computer, it works fine but it's so noisy even being thermally controlled. I didn't want to pay for one and I'm impatient so I didn't want to wait either so I just dug through my scrap pile and found a 92mm Power Logic sleeve bearing fan from a Fuhjyyu'd Topower.

The other fan is an almost dead Top Motor fan so I just desoldered the 3 pin cable from the Top Motor and replaced the 2 pin cable on the Power Logic (As you can see the cable is also much longer ) Problem solved...this thing moves about just as much air and is so much quieter than the double ball bearing fan.

It has sufficient oil in the bearing so I think it will last a long time

[c_hegge]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

^
I doubt if the tach will work, though. Even if the fan has a solder pad for it, the components are not usually installed.

[Pentium4]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Really? By changing the fan settings in the BIOS I got it to run at a slow speed and full speed

[c_hegge]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

All that does is lower the voltage, which works fine on a 2 wire fan. I'd bet that if you went to the hardware monitoring (or health status, depending on the BIOS) section, it would read 0RPM

[Pentium4]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Okay I will check it out. At the very least I got longer wires

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Is it the amp for your sub you built? Can't wait to see internal pics of it!

Yes, it is.
... or at least that was the idea originally. Both the amp board inside that Xbox and the sheetrock driver came from a Dell MMS5650 system. Unfortunately, the amp PCB had a significant portion of it broken off and missing, so to drive that sub meant I had to use passive tone controls. But those seemed a little inefficient. Therefore, I tried hooking up some regular 3-way speakers instead of the sub. Ended up getting pretty decent output out of it, even with a 17V, 40W power adapter. And that's when I decided I would make a regular amp with it. There are still 6 more channels available on the board (or 3 BTL - which is what I'll likely end up using). Therefore, there is still a possibility to make two of them (or one in BTL) drive the sub.

Yeah, I just took some pictures of it today. Thinking whether I should create a new thread or post them here. Might just post them here, since it's a ghetto mod. But it may not stay like that - not externally, at least.

Not much of a ghetto mod (especially compared to yours)

Hehe, thank you .

The other fan is an almost dead Top Motor fan so I just desoldered the 3 pin cable from the Top Motor and replaced the 2 pin cable on the Power Logic (As you can see the cable is also much longer ) Problem solved...

Nice. I always liked PowerLogic fans. Good save .

[Jack Crow]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Hi guys,
Been working on a ghetto mod of my own of late.
As some of you may know, I fix up old Astron PSU's for the ham radio community.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/9010884...57634474652345

There has been an on going issue with the analog meters the OEM uses.
In a word, they suck.

This photo is my raw prototype, where I refit an old case with 'new' digital meters.
The left side monitors input line voltage, the right side is DC V and DC A.

Im using a cheap switcher inside as a current source, do not have a working Astron to play with at the moment.

The next step is to have some adapters physical printed to adapt the new meter movement housing to the highly non standard opening of the astron.

If you tap the 'back' button you can see how I got to where I am.

Enjoy guys.
Jack Crow in VA

[kc8adu]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

the biggest issue with the meters is idiots drilling them to install led's.
every dead one i have dealt with had crud in the movement making it stick.
if i get first crack at it i fix 100% of them.if not its hopeless.
have installed these sort of led meters in astrons that had none from the factory.

[momaka]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

The ghetto audio mods continue.

This time with a pair of Realistic NOVA-18 2-way speakers.

Got them for free, but the foam on the woofers was completely rotten. I was going to get a re-foaming kit on eBay, but got impatient and wanted to see how they sound before investing any money (and to get some practice with re-foaming).

Question: So how do you re-foam speakers without a re-foaming kit?
Answer: Make your own, out of cheap, suitable materials you have on hand .

Did I hear someone say ductape? Yes, that could certainly work, but I wanted something that will last a little longer, and ductape always seems to eventually unglue itself and leave a sticky residue. Also, I wasn't sure how I would make the cone surround flexible with it. After all, the speaker cone has to be able to move in and out a fair amount of distance, yet not move sideways and make the voicecoil scrape on the walls of the magnet. Therefore, I needed a material that I can form into a ring.

This is where paper seemed like the right material of choice. I took a broken HDMI cable and coiled it in two loops forming approximately the same diameter as the original foam surround ring. Then I pegged it down with wire ties to a piece of cardboard. Next, I cut some pieces of regular printer paper into 1/4 circle arcs, again about the same diameter as what the foam surround ring is supposed to be. After that, I soaked the paper pieces in water and pressed them over the coiled HDMI cable, thus giving them the same shape. Let it dry (it takes approx. 3-4 hours to dry 4 stacked pieces), then cut to proper size to make it fit. I then glued them with Elmer's wood glue to the speaker's metal cage and let them dry for about an hour. After that, I glued the cone to the paper. With the glue still fresh, I moved the cone up and down make sure it is centered and the voicecoil isn't scraping the sides. After 1 hour or drying again, the final step was to "fine-tune" the paper surround, because as you might imagine, paper isn't exactly as flexible as foam and will make poping noises when being bent in certain spots. So those spots needed some straightening or bending to make them quiet (about 5 to 10 minutes of work). Also used a few drops of glue in some spots to make the paper harder where it was needed.

In the end, this was the result:


And here's a close-up of the handywork :


Yes, it's not very pretty, but it works. Of course, keep in mind these speakers are ported, so when the woofer cone starts moving, the pressure inside the speaker box can escape, so the paper isn't under much stress. If these were acoustic suspension speakers, I probably wouldn't have attempted this (or would have drilled a port).

Surprisingly, the whole mod was fairly easy to do as well. I imagined that centering the cone would be critical and very hard. It wasn't, though. I did the second speaker pretty much perfectly. No voicecoil scraping at all, and the forming of the paper was much better. On the first speaker, however, I didn't center the cone too well. when pressing the cone inward on the far sides, there's only 1 side that makes the voicecoil scrape, and it does that only when the cone is almost all the way at the bottom. But even this shouldn't be that alarming because I found that a lot of cheaper speakers do this, and on all sides too. So, this isn't too much of an issue. And of course, when I played these speakers, there was no scraping heard at all. Nor did the paper make any noise.

Now, was this worth all of the trouble vs. just buying a proper re-foaming kit?... Well, maybe.
- To me it was, since I didn't want to wait a few days for the re-foaming kit to arrive and I also wanted to get a feel for what it takes to re-foam a speaker (centering and all of that). After all, this mod only took me a total of about 1 to 1.5 hour per speaker (not counting the drying time, of course - but during that time I was doing other things anyways). Also, this mod only uses paper and wood glue, so I can take it off the speakers and put on a proper foam surround any time I want. But it works well enough as it is, so I won't be doing that for the time being.

As far as sound, these speakers are decent but a bit "boomy". Bass below 80 Hz drops off rather quickly and at 85 to 90 Hz, you get those "one-note wonders" (i.e. lots of bass at that frequency). But I think that has to do more with the speaker drivers than the cabinets. I haven't ran the calculations for the cabinets yet, but I think they are tuned properly to a fairly low frequency. Most likely the woofers just aren't capable of those lower frequencies. My guess is, since this is only a 2-way speaker, they probably picked a woofer that extends to a slightly higher frequency range so that way they could use a mid-range/tweeter with a higher frequency too.
Running them in parallel (on a separate channel) with my Sony SS-MB215 speakers makes for a decent setup though, as those have a much better low-end response. Now I just need to change the power supply for that Xbox 360 amp to get a little more power out of it. Speaking of which, I'm thinking of making a new thread about it just because I have a lot of pics and don't want to hijack this thread too far.

[Hw00d]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

Here's another project (WIP) I am currently working on:

Anyone want to guess what it is?
I'll give you a clue - it's NOT an Xbox 360 with a modified orange LED.

ummmm...RRoD???
good luck

[joshnz]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

MY server

IT works though.

[domas]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

not a bad idea, i could use it for my problem: https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...483#post372483

[joshnz]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

not a bad idea, i could use it for my problem: https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...483#post372483

Power is from the 19volt power adapter via 2 switching buck conveters to get 5 volt and 12 volt via a sata power connecter from a dead power supply.
And made sata adapter out of two sata connectos from a dead main board. Total cost $8.

[domas]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

yes i got the idea from pictures

how do they say.. it ain't ghetto if it works?

[domas]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

ok, you inspired me. )

that is real ghetto

[goontron]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

this tube freak gets his turn now!
my custom use of the guts of a zenith floor model radio, it sounds really good and has plenty of bass to shake my room (drop the bass is NOT a (c)rap term RD!)

[joshnz]

Re: The ghetto mod thread

this tube freak gets his turn now!
my custom use of the guts of a zenith floor model radio, it sounds really good and has plenty of bass to shake my room (drop the bass is NOT a (c)rap term RD!)

Nice goontron.