EEVblog #460 - Mailbag - Plasma Speaker

hi welcome to the ever-popular mailbag segment and yes we have a helper today because it is mailbag Monday it is actually Monday here and it all is also daddy day care Monday so we have a helper and yes look we've reached the one Sagan limit well past the one Sagan limit of mailbag items it's ridiculous so are we going to open the mail sagen where are the packages you want to open them yeah you want to open them yeah we'll open a few all right where's your screwdriver where's your screwdriver quick get your screwdriver ready all right we're ready to go it's mailbag time let's have a look at some postcards first this time it's a postcard from my country the Malaysian one is from where I'm taking my electronics engineering a course majoring in telecommunications hope you like it from Abdul Aziz oops I can just touch the screen Abdul Aziz seaman as is good on yours is from Bahrain awesome thank you very much let's say no idea what that stamp is hmm I don't know can anyone not read that and tell us what that is got no idea I assume that's some dude important like I donate the king or something and what do we got on earth Bahrain there we go beautiful love it great shot but what they get there from the boat or are they on the other side of the lake slash you know I'm like I guess is another fishel Laker is it a river it looks like an artificial lake or something like that it's a really very nice thank you very much as is I think we've got a package from his is as well so we'll have to check that out and next up we've got Chicago hi to all my viewers in Chicago I've never been to Chicago always wanted to go so um get there one day I'm sure and it is from and what from Tim OH Chicago and Trump Tower used to be Sears Tower there you go and Chicago skyline is the world's tallest and easily ranks among its most magnificent if those three of America's five tallest buildings the Willis Tower formerly known as the Sears Tower stands 1451 feet tall meters come on you Yanks and it's a tallest building in the United States of America thank you very much that is awesome Oh sagen where's the screwdriver yeah you got the screwdriver ready to go he's ready to go folks oh thank you very much here he is he's going to attack it and first up we have a package which really are you dropped it No ah ah you ready yeah gonna open it all right so stop we've got a package from Pete Mitchell on the forum he's a fellow Aussie and he this wasn't going to be a male bear gaiden but thanks Pete he's sent in a a video card um to do some video tests and stuff on a Radian fairly high end up Radian card Oh over that you've opened most of it he's already had a crack at it folks oh look there we go and that's something else I don't I think it's some sort of cooling device it is a bloody big package that's for sure you ready open oh wow Wow what's in there look dude Wow what's that what okay there's what's a in here oh that's heavy what do we got this could take a while folks you know children and animals that sort of thing well huge big monster he'd see bracket will that man that is a enormous it's an FC 5870 Zeus version - oh it's a liquid yeah the let the liquid goes through the channels in there I can see the o-ring seals and this is the heatsink plate and this is where you what these are the poor look I don't touch the back of these are the ports looks like huh doesn't look like they go anywhere but yeah anyway it looks like that's the port so there's the heatsink our pad for the CPU and this is a pretty I mean that's oh that's a big chunk of um thanks Oh Fagin Sagan found a tape measure he loves tape measures folks show them your tape measure tape measure yeah they're pretty cool you all you like measurement you want to measure the package see how big it is can you measure it oh good boy yeah look how big is it oh wow it's exciting isn't it all right now we'll dig in to the rest of it here and ah Motorola Xoom 32 gig memory huh oh it's it that must be no Motorola I made a roll zoom oh it's a tablet really no surely not surely he's a ah he's found the liquid ah man jeez this as this is ridiculous Pete what a care package unbelievable and um sorry folks something's happened to my lapel mic so uh it's the audio is probably going to go in and in and out on this one so sorry in advance so he hasn't sent me a tablet obviously the video card yep Jesus that's heavy there's a lot of weight in that video card that's crazy oh very exciting isn't it saying yeah yeah pizza top bloke in me he's sent us kiss yeah and there we go it is it's made in China of course it is but this is the Zeus and I forget the exact number the God now I have to put in later but um it's it's not a recent one I think it's a year or two old but it apparently is a top notch kick-ass um video card so oh wow he's found a radiator folks hang on hold it hold it I found a radiator it's exciting the size that bloody radiator that is ridiculous unbelievable what sort of cooling system is this jeez cool down the freaking Saturn five booster with this thing it's ridiculous crazy all right what do we got here we got something Sony Xperia no it's empty I think it's empty say again is it empty I think it might be empty I can't see anything inside honey it's empty I think it's just padding yeah it's just padding dude all right and gonna hurry it up and we got all the tubing for this crewing wow it's exciting there's a pump there we go I've got a swift tech pump so all you were cooling aficionados probably know all about that oh he's trying to put it together well there we go it's pretty close ah it's difficult isn't it yeah that's pretty good good what did and we got whole liquid good app equalent clear equal and do not mix with other liquids okay I assume that's just like a glycol mix or something um liking the car so up all right well there we go we have some screws and things that lose that Wow this is a mess absolute mess and a whole bunch of crusty fans knock two right fans there still got all the gunk pull over and the fan grills and a whole bunch of the clamps and everything else for the I you're playing with a fan it's pretty good wowt's pins do you like that yeah all right cool um thank you very much Pete that's awesome there we go it's a 58 70 Radeon it's got 1 gig of ddr2 something like that so yeah 5870 it's a little bit old but apparently uh Pete tells me that it's a really good performance so be awesome to try it out love the black solder mask on this matte black solder mask actually I'm not a huge fan of it but it's just quite a rare to see it really maybe not in video cards or something like that but yeah I don't see matte black solder mask that often if you're going for black if you're going for black go Matt folks don't get the gloss one it's just absolute garbage and Altium actually went for the gloss black solder mask on all their products and I just I just don't like it it's just no I much prefer the matte black like that the you get nicer you know you don't get a huge shine on it and also I think you get better contrast on the silkscreen as well and here is aziz package complete with tons of stamps again with that important dude again or a couple of important dudes on there Thank You sagen that's very good awesome and what do we got up there lots of colorful stuff some beautiful coloring that up notice no touching the lens all right Kingdom of Bahrain so yeah that's got to be the Bahrain King obviously so thank you very much Aziz doesn't say what it is so let's just whip it open here oh yeah what's in there oh is another postcard ah thanks I saw this tool at the hard way and popped in and you popped up into my head that's scary thanks as is Oh pearls there you go Oh what if we got Sagan look what's your name it's me oh look it's a folding utility knife ah oh ah oh yeah good good close up oh yeah very good thank you you want to open it can you open oh oh it's a bit tough isn't it but look see they fold out look it's a screwdriver oh is that cool we've already opened that package it's empty yeah is that good like it and next up we have an Aussie it's Andrew Donnison thank you very much he's from Berlin in Berlin in Victoria I don't think I've been to Berlin in Victoria so thank you very much Andrew I have no idea what this is doesn't say so let's crack it open ready let's open it up say again what's inside what's inside do you think Hey oh you don't know all right let's have a look what is it Oh fine Oh choose from eight characters fatal fury - why do we have a fatal fury - um I don't even know what that is gamers you know what oh look Wow oh it's a gem on board look facial fury to gem aboard beautiful and I well my arcade machine has a jammer compatible board in it so maybe if I plug the thing in yeah over there the arcade machine that's right yeah fatal fury it's a game where's the arcade machine yeah it's over there that's right um awesome so this is I've never actually seen the package for this before but there you go it's a cartridge based system like that and got the fatal fury - cartridge plugs into that and yeah more packages let's see if we can get this off there we go whoa here we go this is pretty yeah this is pretty recent check it out we've got achiever I'm not sure with idea what do we got where's the processor not sure we've got some huge um quad flat-pack LSI's here thanks second screwdriver yeah made in Japan it's an SNK it's a neo mvh I'm sure all the thank you second oh yeah I'm sure all the arcade fans know all about this got some dip switch settings on the side and there's the jammer connector down there there's my bare feet and thank you Sagan yeah and I do have a jammer compatible card in my um arcade machine I believe so I'm not sure if I can just plug it in and have it go though I'm not sure what the actual deal is there but I'll have to have a look I won't do that right now I don't want to take the arcade machine apart with Seguin here cuz all he wants to do is play it don't you dude ah yeah so you can just turn the camera on things sagen it looks like um serial number is that no second don't push don't you just push the record button again and serial number we're looking at um 575 there so I haven't made all that many of them or I've got a very early one thank you say again you're not putting things in front of the lens we don't have the macro lens on though yeah and it looks like 93 our decode on here so this is actually yeah you know um early to mid 90s vintage SNK mo yeah more packages Gemma board cool and inside the cartridge down in there we've got a couple of huge roms there and not sure if they're up mask roms or something I'd have to check the number on that butter and there's two boards in there because there's a bottom board down in there with its own bunch of chips I'm not sure why they have to use our dual slots like that if anyone knows the history behind that I'm sure it's on the Wikipedia page you could look it up now check these out at first glance I thought that these were capacitors but they're not it looks like they're little Thank You second little RFI beads there hence the you note they're probably just got a wire coming up like that and looks like they're in a plastic package so you know like they're probably got you know ferrite there and fair right there and just encapsulate it or something like that encapsulated in a plastic package like that I happen to haven't seen those before it's rather unusual ender these look like I'm standard resistor arrays but they're labeled in my CR I don't know why they've done that but they just look like a pull-up resistor oh right and it looks like these are customer Asics from SNK Corp they've got two of them and the other one over here is the Neo be one that chipset so there you go fully customer Asics on these Japanese I'm SNK neo arcade boards sure anyone with all the details on those can pass it through and I'm guessing without knowing this or looking up Google the ym 26:10 there is probably given that it's Yamaha it's probably some sort of sound chip I would guess in and another custom chip it's a neo ZM @ ce to once again 94 Vincent so this board is at least manufactured in 1994 and there's our main processor today motorola 68000 no surprises on there at all more SNK corp neo is zero and the Neo f0 chipset custom everywhere and it's interesting to note that there are really essentially no are bypass caps or passives on this top board really they're on the bottom of the board there's not that many of them you know there's a few there's a bunch of resistors down here and stuff like that and the odd dart bypass cap scattered around the board and they've gone for a double sided load I mean if you're doing a high volume product you wouldn't do that of course you'd try and put everything on the top so you didn't have to do a double sided load but these things aren't manufactured in huge volumes and you saw the serial number on this very low I mean we're only talking you know thousands or tens of thousands of machines tops and we have a letter from Andrew hi Dave my brother Luke and my big fans your YouTube channel blame you for my acquisition of - fluke multimeter oops sorry at least you got the air got beauties 87 5 and 27 of which I don't ever heap a need but still have plastic film on the LCD display that's cool don't need a reason own multimeters lots of them Sagan's over there playing with the fluke now there is is that fun Sagan show show us a fluke multimeter yeah you like the fluke multimeter you remember you're in a video with the fluke multimeter you drop tested it you're trying to put the screwdriver in the jack do you think that's where a screwdriver goes you do okay please find the included Neo Geo MVS multi video system there we go piece of belonging countries it was an interesting bit of hardware for its time the MVS and the near-identical home version AES all the advancement now I don't think I've ever heard of the AES a 90s vintage if you pull out the rather large cartridge and shaker you notice it rattles due to the too disconnected PCBs I didn't do that perhaps best of all MVS ups against run hop down off the bench oh there we go did alright hmm perhaps best of all the MVS doesn't work cartridge should work are if you're only person who is honestly disappointing with something does work so I hope you like this board hope you find time to do a fault finding repair video on this board uses near standard jammer I use an old CRT with Scott do discrete marble heap of information on the web year I'm sure there are these are retro gaming communities are a big on sharing stuff there's tons of info out there and he doubles in some very basic Arduino Raspberry Pi and quadcopter stuff here are some photos there we go check out Andrews photos and here's that Flickr I can't keep producing awesome content Dave I will indeed thank you very much Andrew and Luke next one up comes from arachnid labs love it cool logo there with a little luck beaker in there from the UK the old dart from London awesome I don't say who is from electronic parts 25 bucks on the customers form so let's rip it open and we have a letter arachnid a we have a kit you have a kid folks it's the epic reload version 1.0 kit Frank arachnid labs through-hole stuff open it up we've got some little stickers here from makers of fine electronics since 2013 pretty darn recent alright and it's a heating oh is it I mean load no I get read load hence the name I reckon maybe it's based on lawyer dummy load thing because a lot of people are doing that hi Dave I've been making my own electronics projects for a while now and I recently started putting together kids for others my first project is called a reload I love the name it's cool and it's a constant current DC dummy load active load inspired him in part by your entries on the subject it's really simple near indestructible yes that's a challenge long as you don't go over 30 volts up well jeez no fun there and power by the device under test I thought you might find it interesting and or useful entries are always fascinating and informative thank you very much Nick um it has it powered by the circuit under test what if you've got like a low you know you're only testing like a 1 volt source or something like that that's the problem um so yeah any schematic no there's no schematic for instructions we have to go to arachnid labs.com slash reload and isn't it cute it's absolutely tiny tot and it just mounts directly on the heatsink like that the same Mart Series heatsink that I use they're rather popular from our therm alloy you know pretty much a bit of a standard heatsink I guess you could call it Endor there's not much there at all it's just going to be IC 1 which is just going to be a jelly bean op-amp and ER aha it's used a microchip MCP six double O two op-amp and what's the transistor it's a BTS one for one fit there we go I love it how they've labeled so drain-source and what else oh we got there's our is a shunt resistor there you go to do one good brand 0.05 ohms so 50 milli ohms one percent current shunt little three water and that's about all she wrote got little press button ones down here so you don't need a terminal block so you don't need a screwdriver very nice cute I like it there you go if you want to check out the schematic for this thing look it up on arachnid lab calm thank you very much Nick Johnson from arachnid labs and which package should we do next Sagan which one oh yeah you want that one yeah all right that's from Thomas laro yeah sounds French but no it comes from the US whoa and here we go Thomas LaRue from st. Albans in Utah I believe UT is if I know all of my 50 US state abbreviations thanks sagen 31 box geez that's a bit pricey but we have tall should I spoil it yeah why nots on here we have one pilot one palm pilot one plasma speaker and one calculator I love calculators thank you very much Thomas LaRue is that French luau I think it might be sounds French to me I don't know but I'm you know just an uncultured Ozzie I don't know these things so let's have a look let's crack this open Sagan's bug it off on the other side of the room doing something oh wow look at this little mini bonanza there we go Palm Pilots a cradle and wha there's no pump out there it is it's all smashed with that completely gutted that's an m5 1/5 I think I always wanted one of those it was like a couple of models up from one I had I had the Palm Pilot three or something and that we have a note Vermont the Green Mountain State lovely those guys look at this beautiful in Vermont oh look at that look at that in autumn time I'm assuming I'll look at the color beautiful that farmhouse the Sun reflecting off that awesome you know does it tell you now doesn't tell you that's Peacham in Vermont there you go and Lake champ the chaplain Lake Champlain there you go it's very nice right near the hills and the countryside and ah lovely printed in Italy printed in Italy folks what you're gonna be kidding me us postcard printed in Italy view of Champlin Valley Lake Champlain do we look at the other ones no see it doesn't tell you it just says I don't want some explanations here folks Green Mountain State population Oh 620 1760 motto freedom and unity 5 least it doesn't have any God rubbish really so that's great I love it and the bird is a hermit thrush there we go did you know that is a hermit thrush and hang on folks I smell something that smells like cigarette smoke to me Thomas your smoker quit that stuff we have some colorful handwriting hi Dave I was watching your mailbag videos wanted to send you some old and one of my own electronics projects is a plasma speaker all your own design cool be careful with this high voltage runs on 12 volts and it has an audio jack on the side alright PS YouTube name is Tom LaRue and take a look at it and let me know what you think I am starting out in electronics in it let me know how I am doing thank you and please make a teardown video of the palm and the old calculator and have fun pierced plasma speakers take 12 volts let us add back the battery to run it to let you know if you can read my handwriting at all yes I can read your hand write it no worries Tom well I hope the packages are well padded Sagan have you fun there yeah pretty good huh Wow you want that one next which one do you want next that one okay we'll open that one next cool and Tom's included a whole bunch of stuff this is not mine a whole bunch of info on plasma speakers are watching YouTube know their Vimeo comments early tons of documentation on ah phasing oh man how to phase the transformer and everything got a wind it beautiful reliable plus Instructables is it did he put on Instructables there we go set the circuit beautiful or does he say this is not mine as in this whole thing he's not his there you go but anyway here is Tom's home-built plasma speak a second on a very bored beautiful there you go salvaged from ache a he a TV obviously that's what it looks like and beautiful home round hots not got to have hot snot all over it there we go look at that beautiful tin the tracks on the back easier than sometimes it's easier and more satisfying than not wiring doing that it's very popular technique haha check it out we have classic TI 30 calculator look at that beautiful LED display one of those bubble LED displays on it very popular for the time really listen to that wow that's like it that's built down to a price folks that really is so how do we there we go what my fault there's an ibop battery in there does it work how do you switch it on oh there we go we're on check out the tiny little display on a little bubble display can we get PI up there we go look at that beautiful tiny little display error no no no ah can last long hello no maybe the battery's dead or something no I think we've right maybe yeah maybe the battery's cactus don't like it right there we go it's just loose that's all there we go beautiful tiny little display ah man absolutely tiny and you've got to like read at that angle if you try and read it straight on you just can't I mean it's just you know it's angled inside there like that and yeah those were the days folks these bubble displays I'm HP used to make these bubble displays I'm not sure if they pioneer them or who actually pioneered them and I'm not sure if TI even now use maybe they do use a HP bubble display in there I probably still got some somewhere actually in one of my component drawers hmm and here's my one I found it I've got a bunch of these had him for a row ever since I was a kid and these are actually my memory was out um they're not HP one zero that looks like art national semiconductor mark they're so uh if anyone knows that for sure I can't remember it's been you know I like 25 years or something since I've got these things they've been sitting in my drawer for like 25 years but like half a dozen of them ancient so if anyone knows the details then let me know but let's crack this sucker open now of course given the size of the battery compartment I suspect it may not have originally had a 9-volt battery in there it may have been retrofitted but leave that assembled in the United States of America USA USA USA I'm having a real hard time getting this to it open I thought there might have been some hidden screws under the feet there but now there's not they just stuck on and it looks like it is a press fit like a snug fit case on this thing but jeez it's are being a real it's been a real bastard let me tell you bloody cheap toi calculators I don't know as you can probably tell I'm not a huge fan of tea I always been a Casio or a HP man myself alright I just got a bit medieval on its ass there and I'm get huh tada look at that jeez is nothing in it for that hey that's a weird combination of tend tracers and gold-plated Taiwan it's made it's well yet assembled in the USA from made in Taiwan display component there you go but that's it's got TI on it and interesting they just wired it down like that and is that that it it's just a single chip solution in there so let's ah man this is really G I mean this is really horrible construction I mean it's just you know compared to a HP one I'm not sure what vintage this is but you know the construction is just it's just crap look at that I mean you know what can do here we go all 78 there we go we have a date code folks but look a very minimalist design I love that though just a single chip TNC Oh 8 9 1 NL totally custom and it's a the 18th week 1978 ah brilliant that and it still works and he's chucked in some pure maple syrup Canadian I presume maple syrup one pass chirp down no it's from Vermont there you go but grade-a medium amber pure maple syrup but really I mean you know if you want maple syrup you get it from Canada right Vermont surely so what it looks like there with that sort of half 10 board it almost looks as if they're like just somebody's just held the board like this and just dipped it into the solder bath like to solder the chip on there and that was it it's a really unusual I don't think I've ever seen a half tinned board like that especially not a production board very weird unfortunately though you do get a thumbs down for two thumbs down for the cigarette smell I can smell cigarette a mile away and is probably nothing I hate worse apart from cats than cigarette smell ah please give that stuff up see the problem is to a nonsmoker like me who can smell one cigarette particle from you know the other side of the street you know this has just got it all over it now that cigarette smell all over my hands Wow hmm time to go wash alright I'm about to pair up Tom's plasma speaker here external 12 watt supply let's see if this puppy dances tada Hey look at that beautiful check it out I love it can we make the thing dance with some audio now perhaps woo alright see if we can move this woo apart with my insulated screwdriver there tada look at that ah beautiful can we make this sucker dance though with some with some audio I love that plasma rocking look at that whoo-hoo don't know how far apart that's a fair way that's a good 10 millimeters apart oh there we go not now no there we go came back so it will go up to a good 50 or maybe just over 10 millimeters they're gonna there we go you have to bring it back to about 5 millimeters to start it up but that is fantastic alright I'm gonna try my dulcet tones on one of my videos here and us on my phone we gotta plug it in and see if we can get some audio modulation on this sucker haha okay hang on Sagan ready alright here we go I'm going to turn on the sound yes folks that actually works is a reasonable fidelity speaker just the wires there and the plasma arc in on that thing it's actually not bad at all and it's actually quite loud my volume is up fixed on this camera and it's exactly the same volume that you heard just here so I'll play it again and no that's trust me that sound is not coming from my phone it's coming from the plasma fantastic so let's play that again I'll turn the volume up you you

Channel: EEVblog

Views: 269,979

Rating: 4.226686 out of 5

Keywords: plasma speaker, plasma, speaker, circuit, how to, build, diy, plasma arc, mailbag, eevblog, plasma speaker circuit

Id: lCmo5y4DqvU

Length: 38min 12sec (2292 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 22 2013