Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Nice... I tend to bin small speaker enclosures with bad drivers, though I have repaired one speaker with bad tinsel wire... fixed with homemade tinsel wire...

[momaka]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

^ Nice!

So wait, you bought those drivers specifically to fix these speakers? At almost $10 a piece, I can get a 2.1 system in good working condition around here. But I guess that was the point of your repair/exercise, wasn't it. Fits the thread pretty well.

As for the weak bass... I imagine that is likely caused by a bad cap somewhere - either electrically leaky or high ESR / low capacitance. If you swap the input signals going to each pin on the amplifier IC and the weak bass follows, the issue is before the amp in the signal circuit somewhere. And if the issue doesn't follow, then either bad output coupling or feedback cap in the channel with the weak bass. And if it's neither of those, perhaps the amp is bad. In that case, crank it up to the max and let it smoke itself out?? Bonus points if you use an adapter with voltage rated very close to the absolute maximum rated.

Anyways, that modded/repaired speaker looks totally badass like that. Love it!
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Unfortunately, I'm too cheap to spend any money when it comes to stuff like that... but NOT time. I posted this repair on a pair of cheap Acousitc Audio speakers a while back... and looking at it again, I certainly should have put it here in the worthless repairs thread.

So perhaps if you want to waste even more time with these speakers, you can try to rewind the old smoked drivers, if you still have them.

As for my more recent worthless speaker repairs... I did two speaker surround jobs: one on a single Boston HD8 speaker, and another on a pair of old and kinda crappy Philips speakers. Both of these were too cheap to waste money on surrounds... so I did them the same way I did my good ol' Realistic Nova-18 speakers: made the surround myself from paper. Though on that note, I should say I've improved the "quality" of my surrounds quite a bit. Seems that paper towel and latex house paint make for a decent surround material. Perhaps I should post pictures of these two with some details how to make them. The Nova-18 speakers were my first try... and they still work! I actually listen to / abuse those speakers quite often. They don't sound good, but there is something about their heavy speaker cones that produces a strong vibration in the chest and makes them sound 10x louder than they are. And being mid-range "bright", they actually sounds OK for everyday listening. Also, after all these years of me occasionally abusing them (cranking the volume to silly levels where the speakers distort... but still don't burn out for some reason), the paper surrounds have finally broken in to the point where they don't make any noise with high cone excursion (>5 mm each way). This is where the paper towel + latex paint helps on my "improved" versions, as that material doesn't need breaking in to get rid of surround noise. It's still an extremely lo-fi repair, though.

[lti]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

I tried to fit a different speaker in those computer speakers that smoked a long time ago. The sound quality isn't worth the parts cost (Peerless TC6FC02-04 drivers, on sale at Parts Express for $9.80 each) and the time it took for me to cut those adapters. They sound about the same as the original drivers, but with less bass. However, I haven't changed the driver in the left speaker yet, and the amplifier has a problem with weak bass in one channel that I never figured out.

[SluggerB]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

No there is nothing wrong with you ——> it's manufacturer that use shit-e components that there is something wrong with them they are greedy and only interested in making as money as possible and giving the customer crap

I would recommend that when you recap something use well known capacitor brand manufacturers not some more of the same exact crap with different brands names

I meant why am I bothering to fix my ancient, decrepit PC instead of just assembling the parts I have sitting in boxes 10 feet away and have a way better PC?

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Oh yea I do this crap when I do not have the right part sometimes double up capacitors back to back lay them down just to make it fit in the case sometimes it works sometimes it does not

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Another case of "do it right or do it again?"

<-- guilty as charged x 10000000000000000000000000000000000000000

[sam_sam_sam]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

I don't know what is wrong with me

No there is nothing wrong with you ——> it's manufacturer that use shit-e components that there is something wrong with them they are greedy and only interested in making as money as possible and giving the customer crap

I would recommend that when you recap something use well known capacitor brand manufacturers not some more of the same exact crap with different brands names

[SluggerB]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

About a year and a half ago my ancient, decrepit piece of crap computer started shutting down randomly and wouldn't stay on more than 30 seconds. I take it apart and see a bulging cap near the memory banks, replace it, and it's back up and running again. I then proceed to buy/receive all the parts for a new PC build. And then let them sit in boxes for over a year.

Last week the ancient, decrepit piece of crap PC that I fixed before and am still using starts randomly rebooting after powering on for 30 seconds or so. I take the cover off, and low and behold the el cheapo capacitor I had put in as a replacement popped. So do I finally take that as a sign the universe wants to to just assemble the pile of components I have sitting right across the room to have a PC more than twice as good as this old crappy one?

Nope, I pop out the board replace the cap again, and am still using it. While the shiny new stuff sits in boxes still. I don't know what is wrong with me

[Per Hansson]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

I have used the PSU mentioned in this thread as a parts PSU since, well, you see the date on that thread...
I also have another Seasonic SS-250FS that I got a few years later but with a burned up secondary coil that I was meaning to fix up.
But instead of fixing that later found PSU I decided to do the first one, since the PCB had also sustained allot of damage.
That was a quite fun job to find all the required parts and make sure I did not forget anything after all these years
First I powered up the 5VSB though a 75w incandescent light bulb: it fired right up with no problems!
So I then put the coil I had desoldered to use in the other PSU back in, and replaced almost all capacitors except for the primary that measured good.
I tried it again on the limiting light bulb but it lit up full and the PSU hiccuped.
Not feeling content on bringing this APFC PSU up without a current limit I used my toaster (LOL) and it worked a treat!
I then gave the seized fan a few drips of my favorite fan oil: Castrol Edge Professional Long Life 0W-30 and it spun like a bought one
Finally I found a Swedish website selling 300W incandescent light bulbs so I got one.
And that allows me to test the PSU even with two hard drives as load and it works fine!
Oh, and the Arduino seen in the last picture is part of testing a fan failure detection circuit, but that will not belong in this worthless thread

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

metric? What's metric?

(The meter is an RCA 50µA meter from the 1950s that appears to have been part of a multimeter, probably not VTVM. It has 4 mounting screws that are 6-32.)

[stj]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

and then you find it's metric thread!

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Not sure if this is worthless, pointless, ghetto, or simply dumb:

I have this old analog meter that has ¼" posts for connecting wire to it. However it seems both standard NC 20TPI and NF 28TPI nuts do not thread - it appears to be 24TPI...

So I printed plastic ¼" 24TPI nuts on a 3d printer...

They thread on tight enough so that I can attach a wire to the post at least. Fortunately there is a metal backing nut so the plastic nut only needs to push up against the metal one.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

dang i repair wall warts all the time now, though there are a few that I gutted after buying a new one... before I learned how to fix them.

[momaka]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Repaired a 12v 1A wall wart for a Linksys router. Probably have half a dozen replacements in my DC power box but fixed it anyway. Main filter cap and bootstrap cap were both bad.

LOL, I did that too with the power adapter that came with my D-Link DI-614+ router. The latest repair (there were more than one, since first the startup cap went bad and then after a number of years the primary cap went bad) was posted here:
https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showpo...8&postcount=28

Like you, I already had a dozen of other 5V, 2 to 3 Amp adapters... but I don't like throwing away something that is easily repairable. In the case of this adapter, I never bothered to close it back properly after the first repair (only put a few bread wire ties around it. ) So opening it took less time than actually getting the box (with router and adapter inside) from my closet.

[jayjr1105]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Repaired a 12v 1A wall wart for a Linksys router. Probably have half a dozen replacements in my DC power box but fixed it anyway. Main filter cap and bootstrap cap were both bad.

[Topcat]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Big waste of time...

https://www.badcaps.net/forum/showth...97#post1041397

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

Yeah I'm hesitant on doing too much damage to the board, as replacing the whole 4-pack is still a possibility if all else fails (hot air gun is ready with small nozzle...). I think that 2x¼W resistors would be way too big especially if I don't glue to board, and suspect that there will be other issues.

I need someone to give me free WORKING(grr!) 2G PC5300/6400 DIMMs so I don't have to do this

[Topcat]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

I don't even know where I'd begin with this thread.....I've wasted tons of time fixing things & building weird computers that I probably couldn't give away.... I guess 'Pat' would be a good candidate for the ultimate wastes of time!! ....but it's still fun!

What can I say.....I find this kind of stuff 'therapeutic' in a strange way.

[momaka]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

If all you have is through-hole resistors, then clear solder mask on traces on both sides of the broken resistor and solder fine wires to that (i.e. forget about soldering directly to the array resistor - you will more than likely bridge connections on it... I've done it more times than I care to remember, but I do remember enough that I don't do it anymore.) Then, solder the other end of the fine wires to your resistor(s) (if all you have is 10-Ohm ones, then two in series should be more than close enough.) Otherwise you can get such small low-values SMD resistors on junk motherboards (next to the RAM area) or video cards (behind/near RAM chips.) I imagine anything from 20-47 Ohms will probably work.

[eccerr0r]

Re: Post your worthless and/or pointless repairs

:o

Yeah, replacing the whole array is probably easier for these for 0805 4-packs with hot air.

I think I could try 1208's with 4x0603's, but putting in 4x0201's for an 0805 ... But not sure at this point what to put in, as I have no idea where to get 22 ohm resistors of any type. Putting in two 10 ohm ¼W resistors does not seem like a good idea.

BTW, only one resistor in the middle of the pack is open, and I have no idea how it got destroyed with the outside ones just fine, as well as the size of this thing.