Darlings anyone....

[Sal Brisindi]

I just finished my 2nd Darling amp tonight, almost identical to my first Darling as you can see from the photo. Just like the first, this one sounds great too. Here is a photo of it being tested on a small pair of KLH speakers. Sorry for the messy workbench!

Unlike my first one, this one did not work at first.... I had no voltages coming out of the power transformer... who would have guessed a brand new on/off switch was not working! Then I had I a slight hum, I grounded the chassis to the negative rail, then I noticed the left channel was not working, oops, I was 1 pin off on the 12SL7 tube for the B+ resistor. All fixed within 30 minutes. Maybe I should get a good night sleep the next time I build an amplifier... Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_08

Sal

[wiredbecker]

Good going Sal. Whoa check out the ancient Archos player! I wish mine still worked. I hacked it to bits long ago.

[EWBrown]

Nice! double your pleasure, double your fun...

Your bench is a LOT cleaner than mine... :o

I have one of the Archos 20GB players, the HDD is slowly and inexorably deteriorating, it's down to around 15GB now... but I have a NOS 30GB same brand / series HDD replacement that I have to install sometime (it requires some "brain surgery" to get inside, but eventually I'll get it done.

/ed B in NH

[TomMcNally]

Nice job on the twin Darlings Sal !

Ed - Sal acquired the Archos from me in a trade deal -
I got it on eBay with a small/bad hard drive, and replaced it.
It wasn't very difficult. The free downloadable software
called "RockBox" really makes it a pleasure. In fact,
I installed RockBox on my iPod ... it's cool ... the skin I
installed make it look like DOS. haha

[Sal Brisindi]

Thanks Tom,
How hard is it to take the Archos MP3 player apart, My son dropped the player with the headphones plugged in and now there is a loose connection on the earphone jack, the line out is fine. I have to pull the earphone plug out about 1/8 of an inch to get both channels working. Other than that, it works great!

PS: The best part is Tom replaced the 10 gig drive with a 40 gig drive and he left one or 2 songs on it... Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_02

Sal

[EWBrown]

I downloaded a newer set of drivers a while ago, and ,the firmware has the original operating system, and the upgrades reside on the HDD. So even if that disappears off fthe HDD, it still works, though in an slower, dumber, earlier revision mode. Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_09

Besides, when I was trying to "recover" the HDD, I did all the usual hard format, etc, stuff to it, and ran various disk diagnostics, but it was definitely and irretrievably dying off, bit by bit... call it a case of HDD alzheimer's


I found the "rockbox" site a while ago, and a "how to dissasemle and re-assemble" site, so I'm good to go.... Just have to get the ambition and the spare time (of which I'll have plenty of after then end of May Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_03 Until I get back to a local "salt mine" sometime this fall, down in NC.

I've also used the Archos as a portable USB hard drive, as well as an MP3 recorder - I've used it to "rip" old cassete and R2R tapes as well as LPs, with decent results. WIth the proper sampling rates, the sound can be pretty good, at the expense of "megabits per tune" :o

/ed

[TomMcNally]

Sal - At least he didn't drop a $ 300 iPod !

Check out the RockBox site - there are detailed instructions
on taking it apart ... it's simple enough.

http://www.rockbox.org/

[Sal Brisindi]

Sal - At least he didn't drop a $ 300 iPod !

Check out the RockBox site - there are detailed instructions
on taking it apart ... it's simple enough.

http://www.rockbox.org/

Tom,
Thanks for the link, I just took apart my Archos Studio 10 generation zero mp3 player and soldered a loose connection on the headphone jack. Good as new now!

Sal

[Sal Brisindi]

Nice! double your pleasure, double your fun...

Your bench is a LOT cleaner than mine... :o

I have one of the Archos 20GB players, the HDD is slowly and inexorably deteriorating, it's down to around 15GB now... but I have a NOS 30GB same brand / series HDD replacement that I have to install sometime (it requires some "brain surgery" to get inside, but eventually I'll get it done.

/ed B in NH

Ed,
Here is the link on how to replace the hard drive in your mp3 player, its real easy!

http://www.mctubster.com/hd.html

Sal

[EWBrown]

Thanks! I think mine already has a 2.5 inch drive - the replacement is that size, and of teh same series, according to the W98 system that I used to check the HDD and attempt to fix it...


It looks a lot easier to do, than I would have guessed, maybe I'll bring it in and do it here at work... Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_06

/ed B in NH

[jduffy]

Really like the chickenheads. Great work you do.

Nothing says cool electronics more to me than chickenheads! Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_11

[Sal Brisindi]

Really like the chickenheads. Great work you do.

Nothing says cool electronics more to me than chickenheads! Yellow_Light_Colorz_PDT_11

Thanks for the compliment. I put the chickenhead knob on temporarily until I buy new knobs but I kind of like them on the amps so they are staying.

Regards,
Sal

[EWBrown]

I also like the look of the "chickenheads" on the black chassis, it gives it a true vintage, old-school look, of which fancy-looking, or shiny aluminum / chromed knobs definitely do not.

/ed B in NH