Cheese Drums

This right here is the Roland CR-80...

... owner's manual, which I happened to spot for sale and couldn't resist picking up.

Mind you it did come with a free Roland CR-80 which needs a bit of service, so maybe let's take care of that. I guess. The manual can wait.

As can clearly be seen, the issue with this drum machine is that it's filthy.

And that's literally the issue. It's so filthy that some of the buttons have completely seized up with gunk.

So out come the screws so we can have a look inside and see about cleaning this up. Do note that there are two different types of screws used to hold the case together, the three slightly smaller screws are sheet metal screws that go into a bracket at the rear of the unit, while the rest are plastic screws.

It's a subtle difference and can be easy to miss.

So, first up, as per usual, is a battery check.

And it is quite flat.

Luckily it's not soldered in, so swapping a new one in is easy-peasy.

Moving on, we can see some of the filth on the front panel PCB that crusted up the tact switches.

So the tact switches come out, as well as one LED at the end that apparently did not survive whatever sticky liquid infiltrated this part of the unit.

Then it's time to take a bath in the sink.

Who wants a taste?

Whatever this goop is, it managed to stain this silicone somehow.

But anyway, the rest of the case also gets a scrub-a-dub-dub.

And the button caps finally break free of their grime-prison.

And with the board clean and dry, it's time to repopulate it.

And this process goes fairly smoothly.

But there's a teensy tiny issue. Or maybe a slightly less than teensy tiny issue. The new LED I put in sits just ever so slightly taller than the originals. It's also likely dramatically brighter, though I didn't actually check.

If I'm in for a dime I'm in for a dollar, so I might as well replace all of the LEDs.

I'll keep the old ones around, though, just in case they come in handy with a more seamless repair later on down the line.

Now I just need to put everything back together and... hang on, something's not right: when I screw the PCB down the buttons are clicking and saying pressed. That's weird, though, they're just the usual 5mm tall ones.

But the originals are... not.

Ok, fine, I guess I'm ordering some 4.3mm tact switches now. In the meantime, it at least looks a lot cleaner, even if I can't press any of the clicky buttons for the moment.

But moments are fleeting and soon the new, slightly shorter, tact switches arrive.

And they are indeed the correct height this time.

I got the 4-leg tact switches for this job, because conveniently the PCB has footprints for either type, and the short snap-in legs makes these way easier to install than the 2-leg variety.

But there's still a problem. I put the board back in the case and for some reason the Bank 3 button was stuck? That's peculiar, I wonder why-

Oh, yeah, that would do it I guess. Turns out that one (1) of these button caps has a clipped tab so that it doesn't get stuck on the LED here.

Lesson learned, I guess.

So with everything back together and working properly now, all that's left to address is the situation with the wandering feet.

It's time to fight fire with fire.

Or I guess fight glue residue with naptha.

Mmm, that's clean.

And a set of new feet goes on.

And it's all done and working at 100%.

This somewhat peculiar preset rhythm box is now ready to be set atop a home organ to provide hours (yes, at least two or more hours) of entertainment for the whole family.

Quieterer

So when we last left off with rehoming my wintendo's computer gubbins in a new case, the fans were quiet-ish, but maybe not perfectly quiet.

The basic issue is that only one fan port on the motherboard supports a direct PWM fan speed control, while the rest use a much more primitive voltage control. With modern low-power fans, the voltage control really doesn't do anything useful, so the fans run at full speed pretty much all the time.

So one of my CPU heatsink fans, plugged into the yellow port above the RAM sticks here, gets PWM control, and the rest are just noisy-ish.

So what's a person to do if they only have one fan port with PWM?

Well they're low power fans, so let's just give them all the same PWM signal. This does technically mean that the case fans will be spinning up in response to CPU temperature rather than ambient case temperature, but with the size of the CPU heatsink I think those are going to be pretty well correlated most of the time.

Finding a place to mount the board was a bit of a trick, though. It's too big to fit on the back side of the case, and the CPU heatsink fans don't have long enough wires to reach that open area past the front of the motherboard, so I eventually figured out that I can stick it up behind one of the case fans (temporarily removed here) and while it's not perfect, it's at least good enough.

And the result? Much quieter. Quiet enough that the dominant noise source is the spinny rust down at the bottom of the case, and that's not going away any time soon, so this is as good as it's gonna get.

Some things need fixing, some things don't

I had for a time written off the idea of getting a Roland D-50. The price had been driven up a fair bit by nostalgia for certain songs that featured it quite heavily, and once I got the rack mount version, the D-550, I had full access to its sound engine and thus had no need for getting the keyboard version.

But sometimes a deal just rolls along that's too good to resist, for a unit that's "broken" but not broken.

So I might as well pull the ladder up after me and let everyone know how to fix these themselves.

Not Synth For Work

So today in the "it was cheap so why not" category, I found a Roland JV-880 rackmount synth module with a dead display.

And other than the sticky adhesive stuck to the top of the unit, this was the only fault with it. Lucky days!

Feeling Powerless

So I was about to do a little bit of video editing when I noticed that my Wintendo wasn't responding to the power button. You know, the one that's usually supposed to turn it on. This wasn't a particular surprise to me as the power button had been somewhat flaky in the past, often requiring multiple pokes, but this time it was quite solidly dead.

I had a poke around inside, and as per usual, the first thing we must do is to check if there's even any power making it to the motherboard. So the multimeter comes out to measure what's on the +5Vsb pin.

Well that would explain it. I guess it was the power supply going soft, and now the 5Vsb rail has completely collapsed.

Except hang on, something else isn't right.

Right, false alarm, it's just the UPS needing new batteries.

Yup, that fixed it.

Anyway, let's install this new power supply that I bought before figuring this out.

And while we're at it, a new CPU cooler probably wouldn't be the worst idea, since I've just been using the basic boxed Intel heatsink for the past 13 years.

That poor assassin, it must be lonely not having any peers.

And, you know, since I'm in this deep...

Hmm, this might have gotten slightly out of hand. Click below to read on.

Groove V

It's time to embark on another project, and this time most of the work won't be done by me. I do not have the patience and free time to engage in an entire re-roof by myself.

I do, however, have the patience to pre-paint some v-groove soffit boards, as some of the existing ones are water damaged, and it's way easier to paint them before installation rather than after.

First up, the v-groove boards.

As for the paint, I've still got half a bucket left over from when I ripped the vinyl siding off the front of my house.

And needless to say, I'm glad I have a paint stirring attachment for my drill.

The first coat goes on as usual.

And no matter what it says on the bucket, paint never covers in just one coat. So, on goes a second, and after it dries it looks pretty good.

An hour down on the ground painting these on sawhorses sure beats spending who knows how long up on a ladder trying to paint them upside-down.

A Vegetative State

It's giardiniera time again.

Not much to report for this batch, except that I ran out of bay leaves and so one jar is without, and curiously two jars failed to seal properly. One was still holding a vacuum but with the lid not sucked down nearly as tight as it should be, and the other leaked down to atmospheric pressure completely.

I think the one that leaked down completely is probably the one that fell over sideways in the pot when I was pulling them out after canning, but I'm not 100% sure about the other. Either way those two go in the fridge while the rest go in the cupboard for me to nibble on over the next 6-ish months.