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What electronics have YOU fixed lately?
- Thread starter Robb
- Start date
pita
"google Pulseaudio sucks About 90,200 results (0.22 seconds)
So I'm not alone and this is something of a dead horse . If nothing else kicking it makes me feel better .
First of all a hearty double shot of mid-roasted Jamaican Blue Mountain to idyllictux for an easy to follow and nearly complete method of holding the beast PA (PulseAudio) at bay .
I did say nearly complete .
It seems that through some incompletely documented update that I have yet to find ,vestiges of the dreaded beast have once again appeared in my machine . Starting Skype (that works just fine w/o PA btw) seems to produce a kidnapping of my audio hardware by a non-existent PA (having been completely removed as well as following the above link) and failing to release it even after a kill . Following this something as simple as "twinkle" aborts with "failure to access, audio device busy ..." and nothing short of a reboot so far has been a cure . I am still looking for the kidnapper with lsof | grep some such but not being a serious nerd the process of extracting resources used by an app and creating a diff from another app escape me . I just know it's broken .
Movies that played over my small home network now have to be imported whole and entire to the media center to play with anything approaching audio . Previously ALSA worked just fine . PA as a default addition to ubuntu for the sake of "put out something broken for the community to fix" rather than extensive testing in alpha/beta and multiple platforms is just plain irresponsible and wrong . Because of PA and it's invasive ,system wide intrusion 10.04 LTS is unavailable to me on not one but 4 different platforms . Simply editing /grub/menu.cfg directly in 10.04 to remove "quiet splash" allowed HID to load before PA and access to the keyboard was possible ! How is that for invasive ?
Sun Microsystems (may it rest in peace) made a good living out of being a solution in search of a problem for a good number of years but it worked .
The ubuntu community is not in need of under developed , operating system invasive (if you don't check the "items to be removed" in the synaptic dialog box when completely removing PA you will find your entire desktop environment gone) obfuscated from the user , insane machinations to make it work try this if you have a spare week or so when simply it's eradication and removal would do the community more good in the short term and possibly be a lesson to the core developers that release to community in order to speed the maturity by way of bug reports and fixes is akin to a soup with 90,200 unhappy chefs producing an inedible brew . A solution in need of a problem indeed .
How about a solution to a problem for the benefit of the community . I don't recommend we line up PA against the wall with all the lawyers and shoot (sry , personal pet peeve ) but rather place PA in quarantine at the risk of it's further development taking place in a vacuum rather than in real world computing . PA may yet be the next thing but does anyone remember the lesson of application integration that was M$ internet explorer ? (and I'm not talking about the legal ramifications ) .
I full well realize that what I'm suggesting is a fork in ubuntu development , one with and one without PulseAudio . I think the time is well over due for the masses to be heard . Please , in a meaningful way , DEVELOPERS , ask your user base if PulseAudio has a place in their desktop as it is now ,not as some intend it to be . remember where good intentions get you .
Screw it I'm done . I'm FFFR away from leaving ubuntu simply over this one issue . I wonder if I'm alone . Other than the 90.200 hits I found on google
Last edited by kopcicle; June 12th, 2010 at 09:26 PM. Reason: to remove unrelated rant about liberal Democrats"
=============================================================
So, care to ask me any further questions about Pulse Audio or liberal democrats ?
So I'm not alone and this is something of a dead horse . If nothing else kicking it makes me feel better .
First of all a hearty double shot of mid-roasted Jamaican Blue Mountain to idyllictux for an easy to follow and nearly complete method of holding the beast PA (PulseAudio) at bay .
I did say nearly complete .
It seems that through some incompletely documented update that I have yet to find ,vestiges of the dreaded beast have once again appeared in my machine . Starting Skype (that works just fine w/o PA btw) seems to produce a kidnapping of my audio hardware by a non-existent PA (having been completely removed as well as following the above link) and failing to release it even after a kill . Following this something as simple as "twinkle" aborts with "failure to access, audio device busy ..." and nothing short of a reboot so far has been a cure . I am still looking for the kidnapper with lsof | grep some such but not being a serious nerd the process of extracting resources used by an app and creating a diff from another app escape me . I just know it's broken .
Movies that played over my small home network now have to be imported whole and entire to the media center to play with anything approaching audio . Previously ALSA worked just fine . PA as a default addition to ubuntu for the sake of "put out something broken for the community to fix" rather than extensive testing in alpha/beta and multiple platforms is just plain irresponsible and wrong . Because of PA and it's invasive ,system wide intrusion 10.04 LTS is unavailable to me on not one but 4 different platforms . Simply editing /grub/menu.cfg directly in 10.04 to remove "quiet splash" allowed HID to load before PA and access to the keyboard was possible ! How is that for invasive ?
Sun Microsystems (may it rest in peace) made a good living out of being a solution in search of a problem for a good number of years but it worked .
The ubuntu community is not in need of under developed , operating system invasive (if you don't check the "items to be removed" in the synaptic dialog box when completely removing PA you will find your entire desktop environment gone) obfuscated from the user , insane machinations to make it work try this if you have a spare week or so when simply it's eradication and removal would do the community more good in the short term and possibly be a lesson to the core developers that release to community in order to speed the maturity by way of bug reports and fixes is akin to a soup with 90,200 unhappy chefs producing an inedible brew . A solution in need of a problem indeed .
How about a solution to a problem for the benefit of the community . I don't recommend we line up PA against the wall with all the lawyers and shoot (sry , personal pet peeve ) but rather place PA in quarantine at the risk of it's further development taking place in a vacuum rather than in real world computing . PA may yet be the next thing but does anyone remember the lesson of application integration that was M$ internet explorer ? (and I'm not talking about the legal ramifications ) .
I full well realize that what I'm suggesting is a fork in ubuntu development , one with and one without PulseAudio . I think the time is well over due for the masses to be heard . Please , in a meaningful way , DEVELOPERS , ask your user base if PulseAudio has a place in their desktop as it is now ,not as some intend it to be . remember where good intentions get you .
Screw it I'm done . I'm FFFR away from leaving ubuntu simply over this one issue . I wonder if I'm alone . Other than the 90.200 hits I found on google
Last edited by kopcicle; June 12th, 2010 at 09:26 PM. Reason: to remove unrelated rant about liberal Democrats"
=============================================================
So, care to ask me any further questions about Pulse Audio or liberal democrats ?
I fought with pulse audio a few years ago. For some reason it one day decided to not process audio anymore, and I never could find out why. If pulse is the future, the future will be very quiet indeed.
I don't know about the future of pulse audio but I just made the most bombastic home made pizza. Damn this is good...way better than alsa or pulse.
In the spirit of this thread, thought I'd share what I repaired today. Last week stopped by a CB shop and the guy had a wall of dead radios in the back room, I had an old Grant XL at home that needed so many parts... I spotted a single Grant XL in the wall of mostly Cobra 29LTD Classics, (there had to 500 radios in that wall/shelf), bought it for $10. Took it home, didn't even have an antenna setup to test it with, just used my MFJ Tuner and it's builtin dummy load, SSB seemed to be working okay, AM had good carrier, poor modulation swing, very poor. Threw a dipole up in a tree, radio RX'd, but audio was very weak and crackly when you turn up volume, PA function same. Pulled the Audio Chip (TA7222AP) out of miserable Ugly as hell, missing parts Grant XL I already had, swapped it into the $10 Grant XL, and BAM, working AM/SSB radio for $10 LOL. Hope everyone else has the same good luck with $10 Grant XL's. Fine old Radio, especially for $10.
For the price of $5 I couldn’t help rescuing this Midland 13-723. Although dusty, all the seller’s photos clearly showed limited use. This particularly one was obviously stored in a dry environment. Rust and corrosion is usually expected with these early all metal case HT’s. This one was the exception. Channels 19, 14, and 4 were included. As it turned out, all three channels were well within tolerance. Having 19 alone made the $5 price a wash, but this restoration wasn’t all about price. The seller’s copper pipe mod with rubber duck adaptation didn’t bother me. That just further enticed me into applying a BNC. Having that connection also made the radio easier to tune. This one didn’t have any external antenna connection. That feature was usually reserved for 3 watt or higher wattage models. For starters, I removed the copper pipe, and replaced it with a short piece of RG174 along with the BNC as a temporary dongle. The BNC would later be mounted as a last step.
First indications showed both low receive sensitivity and power output (less than ½ watt). The receive audio also had a popping noise that continued at one second intervals. As suspect, replacing all the old electrolytic caps solved that problem along with some of the sensitivity issue. All of the adjustments including the RF gain pot looked stock (paint and wax left intact). After an alignment the receive came roaring back. Power output was now a little less than 1 watt with the 12v battery source. Modulation was adequate. I didn’t mess with the modulation pot. I might do so later upon further experimentation. I kept this HT hooked up on my base antenna for a couple of weeks, having good reports with the few truckers that passed through town. No heat was being produced from any of the components after a 5 minute key down while using a 13.8 volt external power source. This was a surprise since no heat sinking was applied to the final or anywhere else.
The biggest hassle I had with this restoration was mounting the BNC jack. Unlike plastic HT’s, having a metal case meant the jack needed to be isolated. The circuit board had a floating ground with numerous bypass caps going to chassis. These bypass caps detuned the circuit and created a mismatch. Therefore the floating ground needed to be connected to the coax shield, not the chassis. I didn’t have any BNC isolation washers large enough to fit the exceptionally large hole. Fabricated washers were in order. This process took several hours. The top washer was made from a chassis foot and the inside washer was made from a large white shirt button. After destroying a couple of those plastic feet while experimenting with various Dremel bits, I was pleased with my final result. The top washer with the extended collar looked stock and the inside button looked like an ordinary washer. I was worried at first about cracking, but these items were made from exceptionally strong material, possibly nylon. Like many other near duplicate radios, I need to sell or give this one away in the future. This was an enjoyable undertaking that awoke some of my past memories.
The first two photos were taken by the seller. The quality isn’t the greatest, but I kind of like what he did with the copper pipe so he could fit that slip over style rubber duck.
First indications showed both low receive sensitivity and power output (less than ½ watt). The receive audio also had a popping noise that continued at one second intervals. As suspect, replacing all the old electrolytic caps solved that problem along with some of the sensitivity issue. All of the adjustments including the RF gain pot looked stock (paint and wax left intact). After an alignment the receive came roaring back. Power output was now a little less than 1 watt with the 12v battery source. Modulation was adequate. I didn’t mess with the modulation pot. I might do so later upon further experimentation. I kept this HT hooked up on my base antenna for a couple of weeks, having good reports with the few truckers that passed through town. No heat was being produced from any of the components after a 5 minute key down while using a 13.8 volt external power source. This was a surprise since no heat sinking was applied to the final or anywhere else.
The biggest hassle I had with this restoration was mounting the BNC jack. Unlike plastic HT’s, having a metal case meant the jack needed to be isolated. The circuit board had a floating ground with numerous bypass caps going to chassis. These bypass caps detuned the circuit and created a mismatch. Therefore the floating ground needed to be connected to the coax shield, not the chassis. I didn’t have any BNC isolation washers large enough to fit the exceptionally large hole. Fabricated washers were in order. This process took several hours. The top washer was made from a chassis foot and the inside washer was made from a large white shirt button. After destroying a couple of those plastic feet while experimenting with various Dremel bits, I was pleased with my final result. The top washer with the extended collar looked stock and the inside button looked like an ordinary washer. I was worried at first about cracking, but these items were made from exceptionally strong material, possibly nylon. Like many other near duplicate radios, I need to sell or give this one away in the future. This was an enjoyable undertaking that awoke some of my past memories.
The first two photos were taken by the seller. The quality isn’t the greatest, but I kind of like what he did with the copper pipe so he could fit that slip over style rubber duck.
Fixed a 55 inch TV today. Piss poor design has a connector that busts it's solder connections and kills the backlight. Resoldered the connector and it lights right up.
Thanks for the tip, YouTube.
Thanks for the tip, YouTube.
Not a repair, but a rescue. School I work at was throwing out heaps of stuff, no real hands on any more, all online experiments.
Couldn't stand to see this from the 50's scrapped.
Phone for scale .
Couldn't stand to see this from the 50's scrapped.
Phone for scale .I picked up a used, recently brand new, Texas Star DX 350V amplifier about a week ago.
Fellow said it was popping fuses as soon as the power leads were connected.
Well, it did that alright.
But it was an easy fix today.
Both HG 2879 transistors were bad. The 1.6 ohm bias resistor was bad.
The preamp transistor was bad.The 33uf 35V filter cap was bad.
And the direct short to ground causing fuses to pop as soon as power was applied to the power leads was caused by a glob of solder under the board directly under the pre-amp transistor. Someone had attempted to "fix" the amp already.
I took care of everything. Installed another matched pair of HG's 2SC2879 transistors.
The amp is now doing 300 watts output with an am dead key of 4 watts from my bench Galaxy DX959 radio.And the SSB delay is now working, and the preamp is also working.
I only picked this amp up because they are so easy to do repairs on.
Now I am ready to sell it for way less than they cost new. And by the way, it does still look new.
Fellow said it was popping fuses as soon as the power leads were connected.
Well, it did that alright.
But it was an easy fix today.
Both HG 2879 transistors were bad. The 1.6 ohm bias resistor was bad.
The preamp transistor was bad.The 33uf 35V filter cap was bad.
And the direct short to ground causing fuses to pop as soon as power was applied to the power leads was caused by a glob of solder under the board directly under the pre-amp transistor. Someone had attempted to "fix" the amp already.
I took care of everything. Installed another matched pair of HG's 2SC2879 transistors.
The amp is now doing 300 watts output with an am dead key of 4 watts from my bench Galaxy DX959 radio.And the SSB delay is now working, and the preamp is also working.
I only picked this amp up because they are so easy to do repairs on.
Now I am ready to sell it for way less than they cost new. And by the way, it does still look new.
I have been w/o my main go-to power supply for over a month.
Ordered parts from Astron and it took three weeks to get here.
It is one of the oldest versions they produced of the RS-35A.
Replaced the .05 ohm load resistors, all four of the 2N3771 pass transistors, the rectifier diodes, and I replaced the regulation board with the new upgraded version. The main caps tested very good, as they were replaced at some point before acquiring this unit. All in all, it was still much cheaper than just buying a new supply. The original crowbar device I chose to keep in line so that that heavy current wouldn't flow thru those skinny traces on that new board.
Ordered parts from Astron and it took three weeks to get here.
It is one of the oldest versions they produced of the RS-35A.
Replaced the .05 ohm load resistors, all four of the 2N3771 pass transistors, the rectifier diodes, and I replaced the regulation board with the new upgraded version. The main caps tested very good, as they were replaced at some point before acquiring this unit. All in all, it was still much cheaper than just buying a new supply. The original crowbar device I chose to keep in line so that that heavy current wouldn't flow thru those skinny traces on that new board.
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