Fortunately for fixing but unfortunately for needing fixing, TenTec
cables have been a weak part of the radios for a long time and still are
in Orion I and II.
Best I can figure from the manual (which neglects to show the
interconnects between the display boards) everything on the 68705 board
is working in binary coded decimal And most of the counting is in a
string of 74LS390 decade counter chips. Then the 74LS257s act as adders
or multiplexors, I've not dug out the data further. Then that board with
two BCD to 7 segment drivers and some logic buffers is where the data is
converted to 7 segment to drive the segments.
Replacing the 68705 is one of those things we hope never has to happen
because its custom programmed and TenTec doesn't want to remember the
code for making more. But we know it goes awry when the electrolytics on
that board get bad. Probably more true on the decoder/driver board.
A quarter drp of DeoxIT should help keep connections working longer
between repairs.
Glad to know it fixed. My HP signal generator has starting showing
similar symptoms since I moved it 25 miles.
73, Jerry, K0CQ
On 4/6/2011 4:55 PM, Barry N1EU wrote:
On Wed, Apr 6, 2011 at 9:43 PM, Dr. Gerald N. Johnson
<geraldj@weather.net> wrote:
I expect a bad cable connection rather than a bad IC or
resistor.
Wallah. Good advice. On a scope, the segment driver line looked
good. So I fiddled the cable from the 68075 coming in (probably not
the problem) and fiddled the board connectors that sandwich the
driver/display boards together (probably the problem) and all the bad
segments are back in operation.
Still seems strange that the same segment went out on both the Mhz and
Khz halves and no other segments were affected. Glad to be able to
fix it and glad Ten-Tec made such a serviceable radio!
73, Barry N1EU
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