Kicad on the Mac: It doesn’t work (and/or the last “build” available for Mac is terrible in Mavericks). Maybe this post will have more when/if it does. Even Chris Gammell gave a talk on KiCad a few weeks back and for his mac install, he just put Ubuntu in a VM and installed KiCad there. *sigh*
DER (IET) DE-5000 Review
I previously purchased an ESR meter kit a while back for checking capacitors on things like LCD monitors, power supplies, etc. And it has served me very well, but unfortunately, I needed something that would measure inductance. And while you CAN do it with a function generator and oscilloscope, it’s just a pain to break out the pieces needed, power things up, etc. I wanted a simple meter for checking inductors/chokes (partially because I have a huge pile of unmarked inductors I got from a very kind neighbor), since older/larger ones usually aren’t marked at all. The one that most people point to for hobby/intermediate use is the DER DE-5000, which is found from various resellers on eBay, and is the OEM part for the IET DE-5000 (IET just calibrate it a bit better, and offer proof of calibration). After some looking, and time, I found an eBay seller selling the DER DE-5000 with the alligator clips, tweezers, and ground lead for $85 with free shipping (a good $40 less than anyone else) (which I’ve told people on the eevblog forums about this sale, and probably given the seller a good 10-15 sales).
Ampeg B-80N Repair
My dad recently dropped off his guitar amp, an Ampeg B-80N from the late 70’s or early 80’s, for repair saying that it wasn’t working. It was behaving oddly, then just stopped working one day. Figuring it should be easy to fix, I gladly said I would take a look. First thing was obviously pulling it apart and seeing if anything obvious was wrong. The trick to taking these apart is to remove the speaker grill, then the 9 screws that hold the speaker on, drop it down and unplug the spade connectors on the driver. Then unscrew the amp on the back, and pull it straight off, and then pull the speaker wire out of the hole that it threads through down to the sound box. Make sure to note which lug plugs into which spade on the speaker, btw. I just snapped a quick picture with my phone.
Anyway, pulling the amp, there was nothing obvious wrong other than being a rather old design of a, I believe, class AB amp. It uses a diode pair (STV4H) to bias the output transistors, and unfortunately, that diode pair is at this point, unobtanium unless you want to spend $60 on ebay.
Okay, anywho, after the initial look, I contacted Ampeg (or rather, loudtechinc) to get the schematics, and manual for the amp. Sadly, they don’t post schematics on their site like Fender, but if you contact them, you can ask, and they’ll send you back an indemnity clause that you agree to not electrocute yourself, then they’ll send you the info. Took about 2 business days to get the schematics ((btw, I find these old schematics funny given they use the old symbol for polarized capacitors)).