I forgot to mention I tried a couple of DIY enclosures; cardboard and that plastic board you get from signage. You need to add a good sized air intake or the vacuum line will collapse the enclosure onto your work…. I’m told, by a friend, who didn’t realize how foolish I he’d been. ![]()
Great, thx for making the effort !
I managed to score some industrial test equipment (along with some misc networking gear and power supply’s)
Big (expensive
) mail day for me and unfortunately not everything made it intact.
First up, a mostly empty rack mount unit with 64 switches! Literally switches on the front and terminal block plugs on the back.
Rack mount step sequencer?
And next, more switches! And relays! And things? The white dip IC’s are resistor arrays (I was hoping for buffers or optoisators) ![]()
And if you where paying attention you might have already spotted some of the damage on the lovely rack mount road case that was clearly dropped during shipping
Luckily all the networking gear seems to have survived and will go into my other rack.
I was planning to mount my Barp2600 and some new DIY rack creations in this. Any smart idea’s on salvaging the road case? I don’t have much hope of getting much from the shipping company (hopefully a refund for the shipping costs at least)
I think I could rivet a new panel to the bottom where the feet were smashed off, any idea what plastic I should be looking for? but I’m a bit stumped on repairing the front panel?
Repairing the plastic: I once repaired the plastic (probably ABS) shell of an office chair using glass-fibre matting and resin from an “Isopon” kit for car bodywork. I assembled the pieces back together like a broken chocolate easter egg and built up the matting on the inside where it didn’t show. The chair stayed perfectly usable for years.
Thanks for the lead on ABS and the general idea to piece it back together.
Unfortunately significant pieces were lost, but I was able to use an old plastic modelling trick and made a plastic paste/glue by dissolving some not so useful bits in acetone. I’ve repaired a lot of the cracks and holes in the corners of the cover.
I will 3D print some parts to cover the remaining holes and glue them on with the same goop.
Acetone is great for solvent welding ABS parts together. I use it in y 3D printed parts.
Just got this Schalmei back from the repair shop. It’s basically 8 trainhorns on a trumpet, they were popular in communist marching bands in 1910’s Germany before being forbidden by the 3rd Reich. It’s extremely loud and out of tune (note sure if it’s tunable)
For tuning, the larger of the pipes should be able to slide out and in to match pitch. If it’s still off you could adjust at the valves. As for loud? It would appear that you need to make a set of diddly mutes or tiny hinged bowler hats. I would love to hear it.
A day late, but I haven’t really posted in months. The cold seasons are upon us, so I’m getting back in the swing of working on the big synth project. First things first ways to get ready for my next cabinet and to have a third power supply ready for my test cabinet. I wanted something top end, DIY, and standard across the three and was thrilled that @AI-Synthesis has a new solution after my regular US vendors (synthcube and modular addict) have almost no options for DIY power.
Anyways, (much) more to come later, but here are two tested and ready to go Kosmo friendly power supplies I’ve built in the last 24 hours thanks to Abe!
I have a long list of completed and racked modules, as well as my next wave of modules near ready for jack sockets, so I hope to be a bit more active over the next month. Hope all is well everyone!
Mmmmm deadly. I love it.
First challenge is getting the flipping thing open. Screws won’t budge. May have to drill them out.
I may be too late but holding a soldering iron on the screw head for a short while can release them.
if you change that to “A long while” it becomes more certain
Excellent idea and not too late! Worked great.
Looks identical to this Speak & Read with bends marked.
Also looks basically identical to this Speak & Spell with different bends marked. I’d guess same hardware and different firmware. At least some of the latter bends I’d think would also work on the S&R.
Check out the pristine battery contacts. Seems hardly used.
Does anyone know why it has that cartridge-style interface on the bottom edge?
Because there are cartridges — see the Speak & Spell photo.
I gotta try this, Genius idea!










