EEVblog #1148 - Mailbag

Mailbag Monday
Yes, I know the lighting and sound isn't great yet in the new lab, working on it.

SPOILERS:
Expanded scale 5V voltmeter
Russian multimeter and calculator
Casio Data-Cal 50 calculator
Nintendo 64 N64RGB upgrade board
Delay line
Battery in-product current measurement

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[PlasmaHH]

I bet that schmitt family is easily triggered.

[vladf]

11:44 its a repair shop address book of all USSR 13:33 its a palladium-silver capacitor (some like NP0)

[hi-friaudioman]

That little board is an RGB mod for the Nintendo 64! just look at the board number on the bottom left! Lol

[jfrede]

The new mailbag corner looks so tidy. I'm curious how long this condition will last.

[MiniLuv-]

Byte magazine - a first class publication! Thanks for the memories Dave!

[WelderRiffer]

in the brochure to the soviet calculator are the addresses of all official repair shops of the USSR

[orwhat]

I am the guy who sent the soviet stuff, nice to see it here in video. I was also surprised that the main chip in multimeter has a newer date than the one stamped on the back. This could be a warranty case, so maybe it was just replaced later. And as far as I know, the original owner of this device was a rather creative engineer, and I have seen a lot of these pale pink wires across his DIY devices, so it also could be his job.

[zyzzyva]

The card that came with the calculator is a list of addresses of authorized repair centers.

[mjouwbuis]

The IC and probably the LCD were retrofitted, seeing the meter itself has a date stamp of April 1988 on the type plate. I assume a flatcable was originally fitted.

[alpagutsencer]

Soviet IC date codes indicates the month of the year not the week. :)

[TheMorpheus]

big sheet with electronica mk51 is probably list of service centers around the country.

[daryltownsend]

Love the in-line battery current PCB ... simple practical idea for a tricky job.

[jochem_m]

The Altera video board thing is an upgrade kit for a Nintendo 64. The N64 doesn't output RGB, only encoded composite and s-video, so with this kit, some very careful soldering, and some extra adapter bits depending on the version of your console, you can make it output analog RGB.

One side of the board gets a digital signal straight from the graphics processor, and then converts them to an analog RGB signal for improved video quality on an otherwise original console.

[joopterwijn]

Fun, like being back in past, the lightning and sound are so out of date this is such fun!

[josephcote]

I loved Byte magazine. Learned a lot about a lot of things. The Circuit Cellar column was always a good challenge to understand.

[douro]

The IC in that Casio calculator reminds me a bit of the ones in perestroika-era Soviet calculators where they were bonded to a glass carrier.

[sonixthatsme]

That's a rgb board from Tim Worthington for a Nintendo 64. (He's from Australia too by the way.)

[alpagutsencer]

Those soviet stuffs are pure amazing. There is a youtube channel named Msylvain59 who teardowns all old missiles etc. Cable lacing and coating on these pcb's are plain perfect.

[mfx]

I made a simple Go-No-Go voltage checker for the field techs where I used to work, It just had a Tiny micro and a couple of LED's plus some protection for the power/ADC lines, you taught it the Go/No-Go limits by shorting a pad on the PCB and it stored the ADC values in EEPROM then it was mounted in a clear connector shell so they could see the LED's. It was for use on a 24v vehicle CCTV system and didn't need to be massively accurate.

[petersage]

New mailbag nook looks great Dave!

Love those square Russki ceramic caps in that moldymeter.