Hi Welcome to everyone's favorite segment yet again. Mailbag? Yes! I've got still got ten items. they just keep coming in haven't even checked my mailbox today or Friday the thing and they just keep rolling in. Unbelievable.

Some kind of to do on every week until I'm cleared but it may never get cleared anyway. People send in stuff, people and companies. If you want to get your project showing or something like that or your product show, this is probably the best way to do it. I Don't really do like review all these companies and and people keep asking are can I do a review, video of your product and stuff like that and well you know it's not really appropriate that kind of thing so it's better suited to the mailbag.

So if you've got a project, a Kickstarter project or you've got something else or some other product, send it into mailbag. Let's get on with it. And yes, you better believe it. The knife is back.

Let's do it. Okay, first one is from someone who shall remain nameless. Are in Owen in PA in the United States I must say yes it is United States Postal Service PA Is Pennsylvania so let's crack this sucker open shall we? And let's see what's inside. Okay, so look, we have a cable and slimy pellet II things.

and what is this since? Jude Medical Ah, it's a cardiac. It's some sort of a cardiac monitoring machine. or it's yeah. I Don't think it's a yet some sort of monitoring machine.

It's not a defibrillator. Um, house call plus transmitter. Awesome! Let's check it out. Medical device could make an excellent teardown.

Tuesday Hey Dave Found this medical device at the Salvos It looks like a device for remotely modern in your pacemaker. Yes, it does. with that pad, though, this should be quite a wide variety of electronics to make everything worth work. The device communicates over the phone line excellent, sends audio and data at the same time over line.

Ah, interesting. So here it is: I mean yeah, it's obviously a pacemaker thing. so presumably this is your inductive coil which goes over your pacemaker which has a a matching coil in there. Or you know it's going to be some resonant system of course.

and he says both of these are labeled left arm. So yeah, oops. I'm not sure what's going on there, but yeah, you whack those on there and I don't know. Stimulant: Read out your pacemaker I Don't know what the deal is and yet there it is.

Keep lead open until all four is complete. Hang Up Telephone. House Call Speakerphone to talk. Okay, so yeah, you know it's a home use system so you can you know phone up a doctor, something like that or a nurse and you can plug it in and they can monitor various things.

And till you die, breathe deeply, raise your left arm, do all that sort of jazz and check out your pacemakers. So I think that is totally worthy of a separate teardown. Tuesday Video these medical type things. very interesting sort of niche bit of kit.

so yep, thank you very much. Matt We'll keep that one and next up we have one from Serge A Medvedev the name is familiar so think we've had one from him before our Deutsche Post. So hi to all my viewers in Germany Let's check it out. What does it say on the front? Not much.

can't make heads or tails of that. so let's crack this and tell you what. I am liking the new knife and no, it's not overkill for an Australian Not at all. This is a an Australians everyday carry knife.

There you go, so let's well, at least you. Yanks Anyway, you know well here we have a whole bunch of stuff. We have a postcard from noticed it in Germany sorry I'm pronouncing that incorrectly hey Dave Love you love you do a great job He lives in nor disturb it's a small city which borders on Hamburg Awesome Yes! I've been to Hamburg As I mentioned before, I'm in Hamburg in Lubec My photo on the front shows the town all that that's your photo is that your photo fantastic is got some vintage gear. Um, tell us what it is and how it works.

Oh one is a chopper camp is that the note that looks like a some sort of industrial controller and hmm. Interesting. Awesome. Let's take it out and the other device.

there's a vacuum flew right displace. Please and please explain how to turn on this play with a bench power supply. Thank you very much sir! Jay Awesome! Let's go Wow Look at that. Isn't that a lovely shot? I Like that.

that's the Town Square in notice turd pronouncing it incorrectly. Absolutely made in the old art made in the UK This is what we've got first cab off the rank. It's a Euro Therm temperature controller. So yeah, it's one of these.

you know, industrial temperature controllers. You can set them up and they do alarms and probably have the you know, various relay outputs and things like that. Wow 18 channel everyone 34 36 channel input. Holy Crap.

Eola So yeah, some huge temperature thermometer. Um, you know the external were reading all external white thermocouples and things like that and you know, maybe given you know over temple arms, all know ramped well. Okay, so you can so can ramp up stuff based on temperature. So it's a yeah, it's a loop controller.

Perhaps something like that. range 0 to 1600 degrees C Mmm. but what? I Can't make heads or tails out of that model number whatsoever. It's good.

probably got so many bloody options and you can poke a crow probe at. Ah, it's ridiculous. Anyway, it's what are these our PID controllers? and this one goes to well, it's range 0 to 1600 degrees C And here's your pin outs which is rather handy. So if we take a look at the back, it actually reveals quite a lot.

You can see if we get in there, these aren't actually separate pins, they're just all one big metal strip. The sort of one big metal pin in there really just start stamped out as one pin. So each one of these is actually a pin rather than like a 4-way connector or anything like that. Is that First glance you might actually think this thing to be? but no, there's so.

it's got 36 total connections on the back of that thing. and these things are usually very Spartan on the front of course, but quite complex inside. You can actually set them up and there are a real pain in the ass. You sometimes actually set these things up using the front panel and things like that.

You got to have the manual if you can. I Guess if you program these things every day, you'd know it off by heart. but geez. Anyway, it is a PID control.

It looks like it's got a green four-digit 7-segment display in there with a couple of annunciators and that's about all she wrote. But yeah, it's designed to UM ramp up and down things using a PID control loop. so let's take a look inside. it looks like it's a real pain in the ass.

To open, it's got this complete plastic bracket, the front panels all molded in. It doesn't come off so obviously these are slidy tabs. I've got a sort of like punch those in and then some. Presumably it'll just slide out the back like that from this plastic holder.

but jeez, it Tough. Well, maybe not. The thing actually has some pin top and bottom here, which seemed to be like a press-fit kind of thing. So you get a screwdriver in there and boom.

it looks like these side panels just pop off, so that's rather unusual. People who know about these things are probably screaming at me right now. Aha. and these connector blocks on the back here.

Unsurprisingly, they just pull out well after a bit of effort. Actually quite a bit of work to get them out, but they do plug out like this so that you can. You know the manufacturer can then plug in different types of terminals and configuration terminals on the back because these things are highly configurable models. and wow, this is getting really a pain in the ass.

Look, we've got either separate board so they might join up further in there, but got these splits and this entire plastic molded thing looks to be like one whole piece. and ah, man, these things are awful to get apart. They really are. unless there's got to be some trick to it.

surely. And after some gentle persuasion that involves some bigger screwdrivers, oh, we're in. almost like Flynn Lyndon Gets in a lot quicker than this, and there we go. Whatever.

Tada I don't care. come on, that's a screw. There we go. Must have a heatsink or something on that.

And there we go. Three board construction we're in. that's not a LED display. It look like it through the really diffuse window, but it's a vacuum fluorescent display as was mentioned in the note.

of course, got a small mains transformer on the top there so in a big ass cap so that's obviously our power supply board. up the top looks like we got that's our processor board down in there. We'll take that out and have a look at that. and we've got some relays down in there so that bottom ones are sort of like a real a switching board.

We've got another vertical one on the side here and probably that one's doing some of the analog stuff and are there no of some IO control there? Notice the little spaces on the transistors there? Look at that. Oh Fancy pantsy. Wow there's that bloody annoying spacer. I Had problems with keeping the board's together, but once you get that out, then they all will just pull out.

They're all on the header pins and Bob's your uncle. Yeah, there we go. Nice modular construction except that one's that hard. sold it onto there at right angles.

but I know no it's not. No, it uses those Yeah. uses those pins. There we go.

I Thought that one was also I've sold it, but it's oh, hang on Bloody Clip. There's no main processor board and we'll take a look at that processor in a minute. Doesn't ring a bell, but datecode wise, we're looking at a tweaked 85. So yeah, mid eighties vintage for this puppy.

And yeah, it looks like it. Yeah, that is yes. Thompson Chip there? No idea. See you Oh, One Nine, eight, One Eight doesn't bring anything up.

Manufactured first week Eighty-five run at Four megahertz. there. nothing fanciest. probably.

maybe just a, you know, a rebadged sort of a more familiar processor that we used to finding out. You know, Although you might think there's no, it's got to be a Mike Actually, it's going to be a microcontroller, some sort, because there's no external memory on here. so it must be a mask ROM Coded chip of that vintage, of course, is not only safe flash rubbish back in 1985. So yeah, that would.

well, they could be like, say a square prom memory was most likely a mask ROM processor of some description and here's a blast from the past checking out this: The number I don't recognize ER 1400, but GI I Do recognize this is actually a microchip part. A microchip used to actually be called General Instruments are back in the day on and this is a general issue as part. and this is a serial A squared Prom the ER 1400. It's a 1400 bit bit a squared from awesome 86 vintage and elsewhere on the board.

Not much doing here. I'm 741 Op amp and some 4000 series. see my stuff. That's about all she wrote.

and as I said, those transistors in there. Nice little light pin holders there, look at that. Nice spaces. Oh so there you go.

That's how those modules actually plug in. They just go like that. Very very nice. and again, as was common in the era, no solder mask over bare copper look.

They're 10 rolled these boards before they've coated the solder mask. Can't you get all that crinkly stuff? That's the just the tin. That's a sort of, you know, not evenly coated on the bottom of these traces and the rest is pretty much boring as bat-pill I Mean we've got some more 4000 series that see my stuff and inputs over here and look at this really bored. It's only a single sided job and you know half the stuff isn't fitted there.

and we've got some jumper links. so they decide to save a few bucks by having that as a single sided board. and well, not much. Oh, that's a couple of relays and a filter cap.

and then we've got our main power supply down here. Fairly heavy, bulky main transformer in the thing. but apart from that, yeah, not much goes into these things. And check out the traces on this board, it's clearly order router, look at the like, the square traces like that and just going around.

Look at that boom boom boom no you know professional layout person would actually wrap the board like that I think they've just hit the bloody order out button on that thing. It's almost as if they were designed and manufactured by different people. Are different departments because look, there's no art enrolled on this. This is solder mask over bare copper as a poster.

This one which looks like it does seem to have been. you know, a fairly intelligent and carefully and nicely art laid out by hand. I Think and it's being manufactured different. So yeah, there you go.

Just like. sort of like totally different implementations there. And there's the vacuum fluorescent display for those into their display. Porn that they're just very nice vacuum fluorescent displays I Love them.

You can see the port on their back where they've sucked out all the air and sealed it off. That beautiful. These are reasonably fragile things and they do age so you know they're not terrific at long term, but very nice. Anyway, this one had a nice and a bar graph on there.

Look at that. Neat. and of course you get that. Lovely.

And so Jay asks, how do you actually power these things up with a bench power supply? Well, they're not that trivial. There's a bit of a trick to them. They operate similar to tubes. You need a low voltage, a filament voltage you know, three or four volts or something like that might do it like sub 5 volts and then you need a higher voltage for the grid, so you know it's going to be like 12 volts and up.

Maybe you know it's something like that. Some older ones can be. you know, as high as you know, 20, 30 volts or even higher. something like that, depending on the type.

so you know a bit of experimentation involved there. And then you've got to have driver chips - I Do that. You can make those out of transistors and stuff so that that's beyond this mail bag. but there's a nice interest.

I might do a separate video of how to UM salvage and power up a vacuum fluorescent display and next up amid the rubble here that was that thing. Serge's also sending this thing which is rather interesting and there's the front panel for it. Look at that, you know we've got millivolts, volts and reference cowl and then some sort of you know, gain setting or something like that. so really interesting.

and then on the backside here we've got a positive and negative input end up mark, whatever the hell that is. so some sort of custom device. he says it basically contains a chopper amp. I Believe he's referring to this thing and he wants to know how chopper halves work well as it so happens.

I Have done a complete video on chopper amps and I'll link right here. click I don't know around about here somewhere and right in the middle and you'll go to a Chopper Out video. It's one of my very old ones, but yeah, that explains how they would and this thing's rather interesting. and Sergej doesn't say actually what it's from apart from sort of like a chopper amp thing.

And you'll notice these are the switch boards down in here. like this and just similar to how a multimeter operates. has just got the contacts on each one of those boards and then they're just mounted in slots. and I've mentioned this before, a slot cut out on the board and then sold at either side and that's actually not a bad way to.

I get a vertically a quite a rigid vertically mounted dart board on a PCB and they just so happen to have I've done it as a switch This: They've actually got double sided contacts in there by the looks of it and looks like a few they jumpers down there. Looks a bit silly. the routing on that is a bit crazy, but anyway, we've got an interesting little metal can down here. I've got a couple of trimmers over here.

The side of this is plastic case here. had a couple of a couple of trimmer holes in it here to access these pots on the outside. and oh yeah, I don't know no idea what this thing actually does. Here's an interesting thing: we've got some open multi turn pot.

See, there we go. Look at that. There's your mouldy turn pot, the shaft, and then this centre element. Here is the thing that wipes along.

I'm turning that now and it wipes along the carbon trace on the bottom. So there you go that is inside one of these things. I Mean the open nature of this is horrible cuz you're gonna get dust and crap in there. I Mean you know, jeez.

I haven't seen these. These are rare as hen's teeth. Now my first stab at what this thing is just a random thought is that some sort of like a you know, moldy channel industrial chart record a thing. I Mean obviously this is like a plugging unit designed to go into a rack with like, you know, ten or a hundred of these things or something and of course your inputs on the back and then you've got various.

You know you can record, calibrate and select your ranges and stuff like that. Yeah, I'm very purpose design. uh-huh and there's our chopper up there. Anyone heard of them? Goods met? sure? What is that you know? Gaza It's something to do.

what you know like Goss and Mitchell what we're familiar with BBC I Don't know if anyone knows the history of these things or the date code. I Should check the date code on some of the chips here. might be able to get something. But basically, as I said, you know, click here for a chopper amp video on what chopper ants work.

Basically they're an also called an auto zero amplifier so they basically what they do I won't explain the operation but they basically eliminate any input offset voltage at all and they're quite novel little things. And I'm getting date codes out of this thing of like about 1983 or there abouts. and yeah, that's about par for the course for something like this. If anyone's got any further info on that, then please let us know.

But thank you very much so J for those excellent little mini teardown items I probably spent a yeah yeah I think I've been yapping on for these for about 15 minutes. Oops, sorry. Next, just wanted to show you those cute little tie-down pins. Look at that.

Neat. next up, pretty big one - that crazy Aussie like Peter Box seven, nine for nine Baulkham Hills New South Wales to 153 Australia Austria um this one that comes from our s bukas I think if I'm pronouncing that bootys if I'm put, who cares if I'm pronouncing that correctly sorry I'm from a Durban in South Africa Thank you very much. we don't get many from. South Africa Is this one of these dodgy fuelled things that I've got to be careful with? Is there a zip cord on it? No, Just right.

It's just a bubble wrap one. See there? Yeah. I don't even need the knife for that. We've gone right.

we're gonna. Huge oil bag. Let's eat it Autumn perfectly. This: what is it to Intermec M90? Some sort of scanner II thing at hand entry thing and Mars Electronics International Validator today coin or something Val Yes, it looks like it's a coin or a something validator.

Awesome! I thought I'd drop you some things of interest for tear down safely enclosed in the smallest anti-static bag he could find. the anti-static bag is from Hag's never heard of him. as mentioned on the forum. there you go.

It's a forum. Fred The forums. Huge. There's like 700 hosted.

I Can't keep up. The coin mechanism was originally used in a vending machine. It probably works to sell that freakin' coins in three of their 11 official languages are Crikey. Can't imagine living in the country with 11 official languages.

although Australia has like probably hundreds of different languages in Aboriginal languages. you know, our local ones Derek Tribe for example. but you know they're not sort of. you know official languages of the country anymore.

In fact, are very few people actually speak them anymore anyway. um, scanner was used for stock taking, superseded by both technology and software moving forward. ya know thing that was Shawn Be in South Africa thank you very much Sean And look why I Hacked on here to get the thing working and yeah, it's one of those that laser scanner things which I've already taken a look at, so you know. not terribly interesting.

I'm not going to recreate I'm not going to redo that thing. You can see the mirror in there I can see it. bit of shimmy on the mirror in there? maybe? yep and that will let that sucker will rotate and spin around and do a 1d barcode. So coin mechanism? Hmm one.

Rand Check it out. Funny money. Yeah, it looks like it goes it up there and it's just gonna pop out the bottom because of course it's not going to accept it. there's no power and to activate the solenoid and divert it to somewhere else I believe there's another art.

There's probably another orifice where it comes out down the bottom there. I'm guessing and that little laugh flapping a solenoid drives that little flap writing down in there. Instead of directing it out here, it flips up and directs it down that chute would be my guess. and I've done a coin validator video before.

so I don't think I'll be doing a full teardown on this. Like up there you go, the flapper goes over and that's just got a flat felt flecks on there. There's some coil detection are stuff on there to detect the coin. Usually they'll have a size sorter as well.

and yeah, I mean there's not much to these things. We're gonna crack it open. have a look at the main board though. Oh I hate it when you get the wrong hole.

No look here. I Thought it popped out. It might have might have been a flap here, but there's not. Take the cover off and bingo, there's your flap there.

So if it comes down it either, if it accepts it, then obviously that goes in there and it's gonna pop out there instead of rolling straight back out. And as is very common with these things, I that that would be a nice queer problem. Not even going to look up the number, but it'll be like a configuration device to store the settings for a certain set of coins that this thing can actually accept. There we go, we're in.

We've got an insulating knife sheet over that double-sided load There, we've got a through-hole and then wave what waver soldered and surface mount 1206 resistors on the bottom and a little surface mount So8, and of course the pads. They're designed for our wave soldering so let's take a look at that. There you go, there's a 7805 voltage regulator and the reason they have the big square pads on the outside. there is there.

When they see this chip is glued, you can see the red glue underneath the chip. There, there's a line of glue going under there so the chip is actually are stuck down on the board. and then this thing is that put upside down and then when it goes through the solder wave, it'll go in one direction. ever that direction or that direction for example.

then this. The larger pads here actually capture the solder to stop them are shorting across the pins on the thing. So there's our various US standards for our designing pad. footprints like that for bottom border wave soldering so still use today.

People still do it in, you know, cheaper. So have you know power supplies and no TV sets and things like that. looks like I'm going to have to ID solder all these big heavy pins down in here to get this board out. but anyway, this the as the solenoid that then activates that shudder there that ever accepts the coin or rejects the coin.

Pretty basic. so I'm just gonna de solder this board. Sometimes it's just easier to get out one of these hand vacuum art solder suckers. I Could get my D soldering gun but it's got the smaller nozzle on it and I've got there big pins.

Couldn't be bothered changing it. so sometimes it's just easier to use these things. and please suck it up reasonably well on these large pins. Not bad at all.

So I always worth having multiple life things you know I've got the you know I've got like that hot air I've got the desoldering I gun here I do have a large arrow tip fruit but it's oh yeah there it is in there. Don't even know if it's large enough for these pins. Actually it may not be a bit. yeah.

I've got this is that solder. We got various different kinds of ways to ID sold up pins like this so but the right tool for the job is often there we go. Oh, this stuff. ah it stuff stinks.

Let me tell you, it's hard. yeah. but generally these hand vacuum ones, they're they're okay for you know, good big stuff like this. if you've got big gaps around your pins and stuff like that just works.

a treat so you can see how huge the gap is around a pin like that. So that's where those disorder hand vacuum ones actually work. Just a treat. and all that flux residue that was already there I was just there just reheated that sucker.

Well it's not like I've you know it heated up the board or anything like that. that's just crap flux residue. This is why I had to desolder the pins got a whole bunch of yeah, there's some matching coils under there. so in this there we go.

two-sided like that, so a flat flex connects over like that if I go into details of how these coin acceptor works. But yeah, they've all gunked all that up. They've potted all that down. They've got several sensors as it goes along and one actuator here.

And here's our processor board. Yeah, we just got a National Semiconductor something or other under there. What do we got? Come on, reveal yourself. Who are who or what are you? I don't know.

National Semiconductor Gate Array. They're SC x 60 206. Just a small gate array so not a processor and what is, you know? what is that? I Got no idea I Went looking at date code of you know 94 vintage here. same with the National Semiconductor gate array up there.

but geez, yeah. like totally custom. and as far as this laser scanner goes, well have a look inside here. and one milliwatt.

oh haha really screaming and tada we're in. and that's what we've got inside this puppy main processor under there, presumably. And there's our scanning module. Here's our LCD graphic LCD module.

Take a look at that. that's a nice hot bar arrangement there. I'll show you that, close up. So here it is.

What you've got is basically that chip flipped onto a flat flex and then that comes down onto individual pads on the board like that and that is, um, soldered on. Usually using a hot bar attachment probably goes under various names, but they come down and just a reflow the solder during we onto the board. So that thing just gets sort of like a surface-mounted sort of, you know, impressed hot bath surface mounted onto the PCB there. So it's a rather unusual way to do it, but recently common with that LCD type stuff.

and at first glance I can't give any info on that. PC 1012 LCD module. Obviously a dot matrix thing, you know 128 by I don't know 64 or 96 or something like that. perhaps hundred 28 128.

but if you can find out on these sorts of things, you can't actually reuse them and get the flat flex with it. No problems whatsoever. Well hello, there's a bit of a blast from the past. Is that an NEC V20 5 processor? Follow up to the famous of V 20.

Of course, the 808 E8, 808 E6 equivalent. This is NATO 186 equivalent part any C's equivalent one. They were faster, lower power, all sorts of stuff. So there you go.

It's in basically an 801 86. Awesome. Copyright Any seen 86 in the laser module there and no surprises. Symbol Technologies made in USC USC USA and it looks like it's not going to come apart without a fight.

But basically there's a mirror there which fell out and then we have our vibrating mirror here which just scans back and forth. This one doesn't actually spin, it just just goes back and forth there. I Have no plans to reuse this so they complain that I'm scratching the surface and there's L 1 milliwatt laser diode under there and and being all shy behind there there is our photodiode all the way up within up in there. so that second mirror that we had would have basically been part of the reflective path here.

going back into that IR mirror that IR diode in the back there. So that's all there is in these things. There's a vibrator, a mirror, secondary mirror, and a photodiode and a laser. That's about all she wrote.

The rest is all in software, so thank you very much. Sean B for sending that in from myself. every current well I don't think I have to do a bloody teardown Tuesday now ever don't Looked in a whole bunch of stuff today. Very interesting.

So yeah, I have probably another mailbag next week. so I hope you enjoyed that. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up. Catch you next time you.

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