Adventures of a Tech, avonturen van een techneut

My sister came walking in with her small Sony Radio/Cassette/CD-player. Of course there was a problem with this device The volume control was not working, when at "0" it would mute, but at low level it would just go too loud. Luckily I found a schematic online : http://diagramas.diagramasde.com/audio/HCD-EP30%20EP40%20sm.pdf After some investigation I figured out that the LC75392 was in control of the volume http://pdf.datasheetcatalog.com/datasheet/sanyo/ds_pdf_e/LC75392.pdf I traced the problem to the main circuit board and started measuring all the voltages (given in the schematic) and they appeared to be all right. I then used my new audio-sniffer to track the audio from the radio receiver. http://www.openmusiclabs.com/projects/audio-sniffer/ This is where I got one from Santa-Claus. Some example of someone else tracking a signal with the audiosniffer here on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxUItbtYl_0 I noticed that I was getting a l...

One of my other PC's started giving trouble. Random hangs and crashes, not normal behavior. The system runs Linux-Debian-7 so it should never crash ever. After the usual updates, rebuilding the video-driver (nvidia closed source driver) it still was not fixed, and since my wife needs the PC for book-keeping I was ordered to fix the problem (or get a new PC). Replace the Cap (with a lower ESR, higher voltage and bigger capacitance I had in stock) This is becoming a common weekend activity. :-) Problem solved. Saved myself a lot of cash again not buying a new PC.