What's a Takara Booster 200A? Let's Find Out!

hi everyone and welcome to another episode of mr. Carlson's lab today we're gonna take a look at a neat device called the Takara m200 booster can you guess what this thing does well let's find out together we'll take a look at the case I'll open the thing up we'll take a look inside see how it's built and then we'll power it up and see if the thing even works so let's get started let's take a look at the face of the Takara booster so on this corner here we have a voltmeter and it looks like it goes to 150 volts or so in the centre there's an indicator bulb of some sort usually when you see a coily apparatus inside of a glass bulb like that it's usually a neon bulb and on this side here we have a selector switch so yeah it's a selector switch with notches so it's not a VR or anything like that so any guesses as to what this is yet what I'll do is I'll reposition things here and I'll turn it around we'll take a look at the backside on the backside of the booster is an electrical outlet right here and on this side is a line cord that's incredibly brittle it's not so brittle that it's gonna actually break but it feels like an incredibly hard plastic material will be interesting when I remove this white tape here to see how incredibly rigid this core it is it'll probably stay in this in this position right here so this kind of gives it away what it does right here it says takara booster model 208 and it says input voltage 70 to 110 volts so that would be AC and the output voltage is 110 to 120 so it sounds like they have a boost transformer in here this says maximum output power 200 watts transformer inside isn't too incredibly big so it says right here to be used with radio and television only so I imagine since Japan has a line voltage of around a hundred volts and may experience you know dips in that voltage this is probably to convert an American appliance - something that would be used in Japan so it would basically step up 100 volt line to around 120 volts this is my guess at this point at any rate that's what it looks like it does so what I'm gonna do now is reposition the camera again and we'll take the cover off and see what they've put inside I see a whole bunch of colored wires in here it actually looks pretty busy inside there so let's take a look getting inside the takara booster looks relatively straightforward I don't think I need to remove any screws on the face or any knobs or anything like that to get inside it looks like it's just going to be these four screws here these two on this side and these two on this side of the case and I imagine the little lift off if there is any catches or anything like that I'll show you that as I'm going along here but it looks like it's going to be relatively easy to get inside on the bottom of the unit there is a fuse holder right here that's exposed to everything looks like it's supposed to have a cover on top of it you see nowadays if this was a modern device there would be an alarm and there'd be a switch in here so if you remove this it would cut the line cord and it would link to your Bluetooth and tell your entire family and it would you know tweet all your friends and everything when you take the little cover off back in these days everything was incredibly simple you know you were just expected to know okay I need to unplug the line cord before I go sticking my fingers in here because these are live connections that's actually kept well look at how loose that is fuses probably even wrong so the easy way to fix this is pinch these together like so and put this back in that's nice and tight fixed just like that so there is no cover on this so if I was to ever put this thing in a service or anything like that I would make a small cover that would protect this something you know you wouldn't accidentally slip your finger in there something like that looks like there's just a bunch of mounting on the bottom here looks like some rubber mounts probably to stop the transformer from buzzing maybe inside or something like that keep the case quiet so we'll discover all this when we get inside it so on so what I'll do now is I'll just remove these screws who's on the top here they look like they're relatively easy to get out yeah they're just really loose so so I'll get all the screws out of the case and I'll be right back all the screws are removed from the case so I will lift the top off here we go you'll notice that when I'm lifting the top off I'm pulling the sides apart like this so that they don't drag and take any paint off you'll notice on the bottom here what they've done is they put little 1/2 slots if you just loosen the screw off you can technically just pull the case up the problem is is usually the case is pretty stuck on the sides here because I've been sitting for so long right and you pull up it's going to drag the paint off the paint on this is in really nice condition so I don't want to really damage that at all even if I repurpose the case down the road for something else right so inside this it's looking pretty busy so nice little neon bulb here look at how they fastened that in a little shield here it's an actual thread in tight bulb and they've just soldered directly to it you got a like the way they used to put things together creative you know did a nice job nice big transformer here not incredibly big but big enough for the job these rubber mounted feet to try and keep things quiet so there's a bunch of components in here it looks like somebody's been in here and replaced this that is a modern component with some old lead dress interesting a relay over here and this is just a coil with a spring tight strip on it so let's get some form of a spring type it looks like it's made at a copper spring type clip this is an early buzzer yeah buzzer inside it so it does have some form of an indicator for something Hey look at that nice little aqua green colored rectifier back here that's an old rectifier so for changing alternating current to direct current right over here it looks really clean doesn't really look like you know a whole lot of tampering has gone on inside here resistor on the side and River common you see these in a lot of the earlier I guess you could call him all-american five and AM and FM vacuum tube style radios that came out of Japan you see a lot of this type of resistor in them contacts down there very interesting limits at over there it looks like there's a limit set on this as well so the next thing to do is plug this thing in with this incredibly stiff line cord Wow I'll move this forward here so you can see the line cord look at this it's like a spring that plastic is just so incredibly hard it's not like breaking kind of like brittle crack off the actual copper wire inside hard but it's it's brittle and hard so somewhere between breaking and not in this this line cord it feels like an extremely hard plastic material you can actually hear it incredibly hard that plastic is wow that's brilliant thing is a suspension spring in a truck or something that's that okay so what I'm going to do is I'm going to get my very act isolation transformer and current limited supply attached to this thing so if there is anything wrong inside this see the transformer has a short knit or something like that when you see the cover missing to a fuse and you see a fuse rating of what is this three amps so it's rated for 200 watts but there's a 3 amp fuse in there right there's a warning sign so it may have an issue you know the reason that the fuse cover is actually missing so I'll just put this your doesn't matter because it's gonna be attached to a current limited supply anyway so if anything goes wrong my other supply will take care of things so that's what I'm gonna do I'll get everything plugged in and hooked up we'll see what the thing does looking forward to hearing that buzzer the takara booster is now attached to my isolation transformer and variac supply right now the line cord on this unit has 100 volts AC present you might be asking yourself why is there only 100 volts ac on the line cord when we have 120 volts here in North America well if you recall earlier the tag says input voltage range is 70 to 110 volts ac so for us to put 120 on that that would exceed that the standard line voltage in Japan is 100 volts AC and that's what leads me to believe that this device was created to operate a North American device in Japan so basically to step the line voltage up so that the North American device would be happy transformers can be configured in a buck or a boost configuration right now this is configured in a boost configuration so we can take that voltage and boost it up boost that up to 120 and whatever this will allow us to go to I think it only allows us to go to 120 after 120 it's in the red line there seems so it'll probably allow us to go up to 120 so I'm imagining that these relays and stuff in here are probably protection devices and it has a buzzer so it has some form of an alarm so we'll fool with all that here in just a moment and see exactly how this thing works now this device here has 100 volts ac exposed all over the inside of this thing right now so if I was to go about poking my hand in here I would get a nasty shock devices way back when were put together like this that everything was exposed because there was a cover on top of it and you weren't supposed to go inside unless you knew what was going on and they were just built like that they expected the technician or engineer whoever was working on this thing to know that at the times have changed a lot since this thing was made everything has got a three wire plug on it we now have GFI receptacles in our house you know you buy a modern device it has three layers of heat shrink tubing on a line that's got 30 volts on it you know there's a 911 in the chassis and a respirator tucked off in the corner and you know Tyvek suit for you to wear and safety goggles and everything way back in the day they didn't do that they just expected you to know what was going on inside if you didn't know what was going on inside you didn't go inside so if you're following along you're doing so at your own risk just know that this is a dangerous device to work on let me do the dangerous stuff okay I'm about to turn this thing on what do you think is gonna happen so let's take a look shield some light on the meter here just in case we get any action on the meter so here we go look at that doesn't that look nice that neon bulb it looks hot now neon bulbs only get warm to the touch but it just looks like it would be incredibly hot well that's why it looks like a stove element what a neat looking neon bulb see stuff like this way back when head character you don't see stuff like this anymore so the meter the needle is pointing right in the middle between 100 and 120 so I imagine that's 110 which tells me that this volt meter is most likely watching what's at the outlet because we have a hundred volts AC on the line so that would be over here unless of course the meter is reading wrong see what happens when we move this switch I moved up to 120 so this is looking at the output not the end point would have been handy to have a switch so that you could look at the line cord and then look at the output at the same time so input and output but I guess they figured that maybe it's more important to know what's coming out of this thing than what's going in she kind of had a relative idea that it would be at a hundred volts or around that right so the bulb does get brighter it doesn't really show that well on camera but you can see it's a little dimmer in this position a little bit brighter in that position so this is most likely on that outlet as well let's see what happens when we go to three Oh shuts off so this is in the red area and it's shut off but the transformer still working because I can still feel that the buzz in the case here so the actual transformer itself is vibrating a bit let's see what happens when we go you can actually hear the buzz now I don't know if you hear that so it sounds like that really is clicking in this it happens oh yeah you can see the contacts down in there so that's the protection device so that you don't overload your appliance which makes me wonder why that buzzer isn't going off let's see if if the buzzer should be yeah I can feel the coil is energized and now it's off now that the bulb is glowing again so yeah so if I touch this here yeah you can see I'm now acting like the buzzer which tells me that somebody has probably tightened this thing up so they don't have to listen to it let's see what happens I imagine this is gonna sound horrible let's find out you know get here we go that wasn't all that tight either oh yeah yeah that's horrible so I imagine you know just the fact that you're turning this up too high and the things cutting off and you know you've you know pretty much reached the point where you might be overloading your appliance if that's not bad enough they put something in here that would scare the pants off you when you you can tell how loud that is that's loud on this end okay so that's horrible it works I'm gonna tighten this thing back up so we don't have to listen to this while we while we try it out I wasn't even very tight so definitely somebody's been in here well we can tell that because that capacitors been replaced right when I'm pointing to this thing I'm a long ways away from it so I don't know if you can tell I move my hand so it just looks like it I'm very close to the exposed stuff in here but I'm not I'm quite a bit higher than the unit I can stand a screwdriver here you can't tell the the depth really so I'm nowhere near poking my hand and this thing so it looks like it's working the next thing to do would be to test the output and see if this is accurate to what's on the meter so I'll get that set up and I'll be right back I have the voltmeter attached to the outlet here so let's see what happens I turn this thing on so here we go that's very close that says you know it's pointing right at 110 so 111 very nice for an analog meter yeah that's really close to 120 so we're not looking at that square on so kind of hard to look at it square around because of the glaring lights and everything but very very close so the meter is working very well so I can actually move the focus over to this here you know it's very very close 122 and then it just shuts off so we're down to 1111 volts or so focusing on that again so there it is so it'll allow us to get to a hundred and twenty volts comfortably a little over 120 and the accuracy of that meter is to be expected everything is working really nice so what I'll do is I'll get a light bulb and I'll plug the light bulb in and see what happens I have my load attached to the booster let's see what happens when I turn this on not bad that's 110 and that's 120 so nice and bright and if I go one extra notch it just shuts it off so it's working really well to restore this little device really wouldn't be a whole lot of work I'd replace the line cord with a polarized line cord the outlet is polarized oddly enough but the line cord isn't so replace this line cord replace the grommet make a cover for that fuse holder in the bottom here might put a bit better capacitor in here change that capacitor or clean the relay contacts things like that there really isn't a whole lot more to do inside this thing it works just fine so it really is a nice looking little case it would be nice to repurpose and build a project into this but on the same hand it's in such good condition it would be kind of a shame to destroy this thing it it looks so nice even with this nice little glowing neon bulb in here which brings me to the electronic trivia question of the day here is your electronic trivia question and I'll answer this question in the next video I'll try include a little bit of trivia for you in the upcoming videos some strange electronic stuff that isn't normally talked about and I talked to a lot of engineers a lot of engineers that design stuff with vacuum tubes back in the day and they can't even get this question right so here you go here's the trick question trick trivia question this is a regulator tube this is a zero a three tubes so sometimes these are used as a reference so this will control a larger pass element like a 6a s7 or something like that usually through a smaller tube so technically this would control a 6 8 u 6 and the 6 8 u 6 would control say six as7 or six l6 or something like that but these are sometimes used as references but most of the time when you find a tube like this on a chassis it's it's own regulator they're actually just using this as a shunt style regulator itself these are they come with all sorts of different numbers and they have all sorts of different voltages so this one here is a zero a three they have zero d3s they have zero C threes there's all sorts of different styles of regulators and they also glow different colors as well these here are very close to neon bulbs this is just a standard neon bulb right here and this is a very special style of neon bulb it's rated at 82 volts so this is the equivalent to say an 82 volt Zener diode and this is just a standard neon bulb believe it or not neon bulbs are used as regulators in many pieces of circuitry so here is the trick question on the underside of a chassis sometimes you'll have a little regulator like this or like this or sometimes even a big regulator like this mounted below the chassis very close to it you'll have an incandescent bulb like this that's just tied to the filament line so when you turn on the piece of equipment you have a filament that's glowing on the underside of a chassis so there's no Joule lamp you can't see the bulb nothing like that they just have a light bulb on the underside of the chassis and usually it's close to one of these devices why do they have an incandescent bulb close to one of these devices on the underside of a chassis there is your trivia question I'll answer that in the next video thanks for stopping by the lab today I hope you've enjoyed this short video on the Takara booster if you did enjoy the video you can let me know by giving me a big thumbs up then hang around there'll be many more videos like this in the near future we'll be taking a look at vacuum tube and solid-state devices alike so there'll be a lot of repairs troubleshooting procedures restorations and even circuitry design on this channel so if you haven't subscribed now would be a good time to do that as well if you're interested in taking your electron knowledge to the next level and learning electronics in a very different and effective way and also getting access to some of my personal electronic designs you're gonna want to check out my ongoing electronics course I'll put the link just below the video description under the show more tab so just below this video is a description and just below that description is a show more written in capitals if you click on that it will expose the link I may even pin the link at the top of the comments section so until next time take care bye for now you

Channel: Mr Carlson's Lab

Views: 87,726

Rating: 4.9511151 out of 5

Keywords: Learn Electronics, boost circuit, buck circuit, understand electronics, repair electronics, fix electronics, restore electronics, tube equipment, regulator tube, Neon tube, regulation circuit, Takara Booster Model 200A

Id: 84rzwJHQZcg

Length: 22min 25sec (1345 seconds)

Published: Sun Mar 17 2019