The lift table sounds like a useful boat anchor manipulation device.? I am of "that age" but am still very good at lifting (everyone is good at something in the gym).? However, sidelined a couple of months due to having to go to the maintenance facility for a shoulder repair for a different injury and the doc telling me no heavy lifting for a bit.? So for now, circuit development and debug of tiny stuff like 0402 SMD parts.
I have to get into my 8660D which I still like for lower frequency RF work as other more modern units I have (modern is relative) don't go below 300 kHz.? The 8660D mainframe is alright but could use a tuneup but the low frequency plugin has no output.? I will probably need to make an extender.? I do have parts and harnesses from a scrapped 8660 mainframe I grabbed that someone had left as trash at the end of a hamfest so maybe can make an extension cable with those Winshester-looking connectors.
Most of the alignments and adjustments in the 8660 can be done without extenders but some steps can't be done without.
Due to how busy I am I think this will need to wait a few months but it will happen!
Peter
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On 3/19/2025 4:49 PM, David Feldman via groups.io wrote:
Peter - yes - beast (trivia - back in about 1981 I was one of hundreds of volunteer extras (person-sized bird characters) for a movie being filmed north of Los Angeles called "the beastmaster" - never saw the movie!.)
A recently purchased (earlier this week) VEVOR TFD15 hydraulic lift table has made 1000% improvement in handling these heavy/old machines (8660, 8350, 8673) which use linear/transformer power supplies and are made of 100% pure cast iron straight from the mine. Highly recommend such a thing for those of us "of a certain age" that still wrangle electronics by the metric ton.
Determined course of action at this point --- going to build extender mechanism to allow the pictured module to operate outside the synthesizer. 6x2 3.94mm card edge connector, already have PCBs with 3.94mm pitch traces for making these sorts of things, and 14-pin IDC DIP male plugs to make the 2-port ribbon cable that appears to go off in the direction of the YTO, are both on order, couple weeks til delivery, so machine is back to it's "hangar queen" location until I am ready for testing.
Barring any other adds to this discussion, I'll surface again with the topic once I am able operate the module(s) outside the synthesizer chassis.
