This article was posted to the Usenet group alt.hackers in
1995; any technical information is probably outdated.
Pathetic Stereo Hack
Article: 7513 of alt.hackers From: emf@scf.nmsu.edu (Mr. Misanthrope) Newsgroups: alt.hackers Subject: Pathetic Stereo Hack Date: 11 Mar 1995 15:18:25 GMT Organization: Student Computing Facility, New Mexico State Univ., Las Cruces Lines: 54 Approved: not bloody likely. Message-ID: 3jsf01$f1t@dns1.NMSU.Edu NNTP-Posting-Host: freedom.nmsu.edu Status: RO
Jeeez.. whatta damn pain... Here's today's hack, it's not so much pathetic as the equipment being hacked is pathetic. okay, you see, i've got this cheesy Fisher portable stereo in the bedroom.. had it for about 10 years now, so I guess it's about time it gave up.. anyway, i'm playing a tape, and suddenly.. no sound, just an awful buzzing noise... a quick look shows that the motor isn't running. So i open it up... the rubber belt (not to be confused with rubber band. bleah) has broken. I Krazy Glue this back together and reassemble.. this works for a while, but Krazy Glue isn't very flexable, and of course, the belt breaks again. I need a new belt. Rubber Band... i dig up an assortment of rubber bands and find one that is roughly the same size and tension as the belt. alas, no rubber band worked, either they were too tight and the motor would not spin, or they were just right except that rubber bands are stretchier, so the tape runs at a slightly irregular speed as the band bounces along.... the word "slightly" here is an understatment, basically this was impossible to listen to. alright, dammit... we give up on replacing the belt.. time to replace the entire tape deck... a quick rummage through the parts closet turns up the previous walkman, which can easily be plugged in in the same place as the portable CD walkman.... to make things even better, the power connectors have the same polarity and size. this is too easy to be true... but it works.... for a while.. then i remember why this walkman was scrapped inn the first place... after about 5 minutes into the tape, the old and abused motors of this little walkman dont have the strength to maintain correct speed, so everything slows down and sounds horrible... this will not do. more rummaging around for the previous previous walkman.. a nice little aiwa unit that doesnt spin the motors at all.. it's also got flaky battery and headphone connectors.... open it up and actually fix the flaky connections.. just broken solder connections.. simple.. a quick check reveals that the power connector is of opposite polarity, so a few cut traces and a couple jumper wires and it too conforms to the cd player's power supply. tuner works fine, sounds as wonderful as it ever did; aiwa makes good stuff. tape still dead. turns out the motor is just Used Up. it is, however, noted that the little rubber belt appears to be the same size as the broken rubber belt. removal of the good belt shows that the length is the same... the thickness isn't. the walkman has a thin belt, the big portable has a fat belt. but they're the same length, so what the hell.. put *this* in the portable, and the tape deck works again.. what a damn pain just to dig up a belt.... Hopefully it wont snap because it's only half as thick as the original belt... ObWhatIShouldHaveDoneInstead: should have just run speaker wire from the component stereo in the main room to the little speakers in the bedroom.. I'd need some small pocket mirrors and some adhesive putty to make the remote controls function, though. and it's probably still too far out of range. -- Erik Fichtner (techs@scf.nmsu.edu) [http://scf.nmsu.edu/~emf/] I bet one legend that keeps recurring throughout history, in every culture is the story of Popeye.