Stiff's Stuff

Bend-O-Matic drill bit

broadside23 — Sat, 14 Jan 2012 13:52:55 +0000

Now I wasn’t expecting a set of drill bits that cost a fiver to last that long, but quite frankly this is taking the piss:

Rolson Bend-O-Matic drill bit

A 5 mil bit of MDF caused this.

Model embankment

broadside23 — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 16:06:41 +0000

This is the bank with hopefully joins the baseboard to the backscene. First coverage of scatter so still some holes.

Class 47 with ESU / SWD DCC sound

broadside23 — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 09:53:44 +0000

Freightliner Class 66 DCC sound

broadside23 — Mon, 12 Dec 2011 15:42:59 +0000

OHLE progress

broadside23 — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 16:01:00 +0000

New model railway emerges

broadside23 — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 15:40:03 +0000

27 Feb 2011 – Seed sowing starts here

broadside23 — Sun, 27 Feb 2011 15:39:52 +0000

Today I sowed tomato (Garden Pearl and Gardener’s Delight), chilli Cayenne and Hungarian Hot Wax. Flower-wise, in went gaillarda, penstemon, dahlia, larkspur, rudbekia and aster.

Here are the dahlias sown on the 16 Jan this year:

Geraniums, impatiens and onion sets sown in modules one week ago:

Strawberry runners brought in for early fruits:

Korg DS-8 Battery Replacement – part 2

broadside23 — Sun, 20 Feb 2011 15:22:50 +0000

Here we have the new battery ready to fit. The old one came out easily with a solder sucker:

Top view of board – battery in:

Then put the PCB back into the keyboard. As mentioned, all the connectors are different so you can’t get them wrong:

Put all the screws back in, and power up – it may well take a while to initialise as the RAM is full of garbage at this point. All the factory patches have gone – which is something I need to invesgate restoring, but as I use it only as a MIDI controller no great rush. The main thing is that the keyboard now remembers its settings.

Korg DS-8 Battery Replacement

broadside23 — Sun, 13 Feb 2011 12:45:15 +0000

Have just rediscovered a 1987 vintage Korg DS-8 synth I bought many years ago. At the time I spent many hours fiddling with the patches etc only to find the next day it had forgotten them. It seemed that the backup battery had expired and was put away filed under too difficult.
Move forward a few years and here is my attempt at fixing it:

Korg DS-8

First thing to do is turn it over and remove just about every screw you see. Leave the ones in the rubber feet though:

The metal back cover should then lift off to reveal the insides:

The backup battery is on the PCB on the right hand side – the one with the MIDI ports. It is a small silver disc – the standard issue CR2032 3V cell. Unfortunately it is a soldered on type – which means more work:

Next step was to remove the PCB so I could get to the battery. Although there are loads of connectors on the PCB all seem to be different, so should not cause difficulty on reassembly. The PCB is held down with two gold coloured screws. Now with the PCB out and flipped over I can see where to unsolder the battery (three solder marks in centre of pic:)

To be continued….

Updated train pics

broadside23 — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 15:06:56 +0000