Zel's Motoring Adventures...Peugeot, Renault, Rover, Trabant, Invacar & A Sinclair C5 - 16/04 - Routine Consumables...

[Zelandeth]

Some sort of multivibrator using the inductance of a transformer instead of capacitors maybe?

 

I'd be interested to see a schematic of it too.

Precisely the sort of shenanigans that come under the heading of "clever and/or sneaky" in my head. I'll see if I can get it traced out at some point. Shame there aren't any markings visible on those TO-3 devices on the front panel as that would make figuring out the circuit layout a bit easier.

[Zelandeth]

This turned up this morning.

 

 

So shall be able to get the gas kit reassembled shortly.  Figured just buying a new one was easier than faffing around trying to get the ancient one cleaned up and sealed properly.

 

The downpour that we have had overnight has done a good job of highlighting that rainwater is still getting into the one corner of the van.

 

Still not entirely sure exactly where the point of entry is.  However for the purpose of elimination of a possibility I have refitted and properly sealed the high level tail lights (though obviously this will make myself more MOT prep work as I will need to wire them up now).  Not actually a bad idea anyway as one limitation of the of the factory lights in the bumper is that they aren't visible from the side at all - the little orange reflector is just that, it's not a repeater.  Plus given the fact that so many drivers seem to be in a complete daze addition of extra lights can only be a good thing.

 

 

I have also re-bedded one of the bits of sealant just below one of the upper weatherstripping which looked a bit suspect.  If this still doesn't do it I will just pull all of the strips and trim off the entire corner of the van, clean back and rebuild everything from scratch.  Messy job but it will probably be needed.

 

Have also added a little sticker to the rear window showing support for a friend of a friend of a friend who has been going through some exceptionally hard times over in the US.

 

 

I usually go great lengths to avoid putting stickers on my cars - though this is for a good cause, plus I think you can get away with a bit more on a camper without stuff looking silly.  Still have a couple of Hub Nut stickers somewhere too...

[Zelandeth]

My Dynastart belts are flapping about all over the place after 1800 miles. No matter how I shim it, I can't get rid of the slack. Have a new pair to fit.

Have you made sure the whole can assembly is sitting square? I found that I have to keep quite a bit of weight on the top while the band was tightened up or it would sit with the top tilted slightly towards the rear of the car leading to one belt being far looser than the other.

[dollywobbler]

I probably need to try that. Poor TWC is due a service. She's not having one while it keeps hailing though.

[Zelandeth]

Tomorrow will see a bit of a change of pace as I need to see if I can revive this.

 

 

Initial peek inside however shows some likely candidates for possible causes.

 

 

Yep...several capacitors have vented. Not massively surprising after several tens of thousands of hours of hard use (when the machine is not in active use it runs a distributed computing client crunching data for a split between SETI@Home and Rosetta@Home - so the CPU and GPU spend most of their time flat out - so heat buildup will play a role. Especially with how hot last summer was.

 

Hopefully a handful of new caps will get it back up and running.

[LightBulbFun]

have you also tried pulling PCI cards?

 

a PCI card going bad can easily prevent a System from POSTing

 

might be worth checking out before you go through the faff of replacing caps (although of course if there bulging its not a bad idea to replace them, but if you can get the system going, you can put off replacing the caps until some time more convenient  )

 

speaking of, I think you must have one of the very few PCs thats both Has Water cooling and a SCSI card in it!

 

(I know of one other, and thats 1970mgb,s PowerMac G5 2.7Ghz which has a SCSI card for interfacing to a fancy scanner he has)

 

as mentioned earlier Im pretty sure I have a Mac Pro here I can give to you if you want some proper Dual Xeon workstation hardware

 

(that is also much more suited to running such distributed client stuff as much as that makes me cringe because of much it hammers the hardware! LOL)

[Zelandeth]

To be fair, I keep it dust free and it's well cooled so it should be fine. I've tended to find that irrespective of CPU load,if the machine is in a steady state of will usually be pretty reliable. It's thermal cycling that causes the most issues. Assuming the thing is properly cooled anyway.

 

I've tried booting it with all HDs unplugged, memory out and graphics card out. Memory pulled is usually a good one as it's the one that will usually make it unhappy enough that it will trigger beep codes irrespective of the state of most other hardware is in. Haven't done anything else as it's quite hard to get at in place on the workstation. Hence I've brought it downstairs to somewhere it's easier to work on.

 

I'd definitely not say no to better hardware, never really had a chance to play around with some higher end Mac kit before so I'd definitely be curious.

 

Maybe see if we could do a trade at some point...that Performa 5500 still has your name on here...

 

If I can get this one back up and running I'll be happy though. Only thing I might do before it goes back into its corner if I do will be to throw some additional memory in. Motherboard supports up to at least 16gb (maybe even 32), and given the age of it I don't imagine maxing it out would cost much.

 

Biggest headache I have with memory is actually on one other machine - sadly that one has a duff second memory slot so not much I can do about it. It's an 8-core i7 and the Rosetta processes are quite memory hungry - so quite often I find it only using four or five cores with the rest of the processes showing "waiting for memory."

[LightBulbFun]

aye I was more referring to the stack of laptops you keep buzzing away   (which have less then stellar cooling setups as im sure you aware)

 

did you try the machine without the SCSI card or such? if that decides to pull a voltage rail down and make the chipset unhappy or such you can end up with a No POST no nothing but fans spinning situation regardless of what you do with RAM etc

 

biggest issue with the Mac stuff is Physically transporting it, I can barely haul my own behind around let alone 20Kg of aluminium cheese grater LOL

 

(see now If i had an Invacar I could just load up and take it down *grumble*   )

 

is the "8 core i7" the Laptop we talked about? that would be 4 cores with hyper-threading

 

does remind me, I have a sad laptop here, that MIGHT be compatible with its CPU which you might be able to have

 

(its a Cheap nasty plastic acer core i3 thing with a broken hinge, but surprisingly it has a HM77 chipset with the proper APIC table to support Quad Core CPUs, so in theory at least and depending on how badly the cooling shits it self, it might just take a Quad Core CPU, it can definitely handle an ivy bridge CPU as thats what it has, an i3-3110M)

 

 

(Pic from when I got bored one day and hackintoshed it for the LOLz)

[1970mgb]

Water cooling and SCSI thrown together-a combo that warms my heart(or is it more appropriate to say cools it in this situation).

 

I have to tell you that it was quite a headache to find a SCSI card that would play nicely with a PowerMac G5-later versions OS X itself only supports a somewhat limited number of SCSI chipsets, and finding a card that it supports, works in the 3.3V PCI slots in the G5, and has external ports for which cables actually exist can at times seem to be a bit of a unicorn.

 

I wish there was a sanely priced SCSI PCIe SCSI card that was OS X compatible. I'm running the SCSI scanner I used it with now off a Quicksilver G4(and admittedly I don't even need the scanner anymore since I now have a Nikon film scanner that can scan 4x4 "Superslides"-the one use case that I had for that ancient Polaroid film scanner. Its one saving grace is that its fast, but the color is terrible and my Nikons with their LED sources and Digital ICE are just all around better). The card in the Quicksilver, though, has both 50 pin and 68 pin internally, which makes it handy if I need to look at/manipulate a drive.

[Zelandeth]

Guess I'll just need to drive down one day and haul a huge beige box up the stairs to swap for an equally heavy metal box...

 

Yes the one I was referring to was that very laptop. In addition to a fault with the memory controller it also has stuffed wireless and a broken screen hinge.

 

All of the machines in that stack are either in some way broken or are sufficiently obsolete to be beyond really practical use. Yet aren't really old or interesting enough to be worth cherishing. Save possibly for the very first generation netbook...though having it data mining is just so silly an idea that it has to stay there...bit like seeing someone tearing around the Nurburgring in an Invacar...

 

A transparency scanner is something I really do need to get sometime. I've a shedload of photos on film and slides that I would really like to digitise some day.

 

MGB - I've quite a few spare SCSI cards here, want me to check what they are in case they're useful as spares for you? I was after one (Adaptec AHA-1542) in ISA form for another machine and when I went to collect it he just gave me a bag of random cards! All Adaptec, quite a few are PCI based, and I'd guess to be in that 2000-2005 sort of age bracket.

[1970mgb]

I appreciate the offer!

 

Let me see if there's any specific Adaptec models I don't have-in all honesty life seems to be easier with ATTO cards at least when it comes to G5s, although you'll pay dearly for them.

 

I'd also like to remind Dez that I've experimented with a a SCSI card-or rather a SAS RAID card-in one of my MP 1,1s, although don't have one installed at the moment .

[Zelandeth]

So my old PC was overdue a bit of cable pruning etc anyway as there had been a couple of bits of hardware changed in the last year or two, so time to pull it to bits. Immediately discovered that my main hard drive with my OS on was hooked into the expansion card rather than the onboard SATA controller. Really smart. Not a clue how that happened! No need for that expansion board now anyway as the number of drives involved has reduced somewhat (Windows 7 having nuked itself saw it removed from the lineup for one). Been an age since I last used the SCSI equipment on this machine as well (have two other machines with SCSI abilities and a PCMCIA adaptor as well) so that card is coming out. It added a full 30 seconds to the boot as well so won't be sorry to see it go.

 

Going back in the spares bag...

 

 

This too.

 

 

With the board out (was slightly shocked to discover that every one of the screws holding the motherboard down had vibrated loose!) a quick visual inspection revealed three very obviously cooked capacitors.

 

 

This whole region runs rather warm as it's where the CPU voltage supplies are derived, and, and with this machine having spent probably a couple of tens of thousands of hours with the CPU flat out not surprising things have got a bit cooked.

 

Didn't realise *how* warm until I saw that it had actually discoloured the mask on the reverse of the board! 

 

 

Nothing else was obvious visually, so I'll get some new caps ordered in (sadly can't just pop down to Maplin can I...boo! Will see if that sorts it out. Finger crossed.

 

I may have wound up using the fins in the graphics card heatsink like a tiny toast rack to keep all the expansion cards and the memory out of trouble until it goes back together.

 

 

This is the motherboard model number for those interested.

 

 

Car wise, time to drag the Lada out from under the tree and tidy it back up to get it ready for another shot at selling it.

 

The birds have been busy the last few weeks so I've got me work cut out for me.

 

Also, I hate that tree in our front garden.

 

 

 

It's also full of leaves and pine needles - so starting point will be throwing it at one of our local hand car washes for a mini valet. Then I'll attack the roof and bonnet with the polish to shift what will inevitably be left.

 

Before I could do that though I wanted to tick a couple of things done inside as it's been too long. The fuel pump power supply cable floating around in the footwells was one as it has got yanked out every time it's been vacuumed so far.

 

Nice simple job. Sill covers lifted just enough to tuck the wiring under then put back in place.

 

 

The ECU will be moved from the void where the glovebox should be where it is just now shortly and will be attached to the underside of the under dash shelf.

 

 

That will also get rid of the one remaining visible bit of wiring there too.

 

The driver's side will covers were removed early on when I was fiddling with the accelerator linkage. The one had been being awkward about going back in which is why I had ignored it for a while.

 

Turned out the reason for this was due to the trim being fitted before the seatbelt. As such even though they do not share any fasteners, the trim is trapped behind the seatbelt bracket. So that had to come off. This turned into a 45 minute battle as the bolt was jammed into the belt bracket so it tied the seatbelt in knots. Also then had to clean threads out as the carpet had been mashed into the bolt hole when the car was built.

 

 

Also got the seatbelt inertia reel properly fitted upright so it should be less touchy about extending.

 

 

It will hopefully be far cleaner this time tomorrow.

 

[LightBulbFun]

Yeah now you see why I cringe at the 247 CPU hammering 

 

max RAM is indeed 16GB, but its DDR2, but luckily its an AMD system, so you can use the dodgy AMD only RAM you see on ebay from china, (DDR2 4GB Memory sticks are quite hard and expensive to find otherwise, in non Registered/Buffered form)

 

3112 chipset on that SATA card? (looks like it) if so they can be flashed with Mac Firmware for use in various PCI based macs defo worth hanging onto regardless, as the SIL3112 chipsets is one of those things that has a driver for pretty much any OS under the sun, much like the RTL8139 Fast ethernet controller

 

(I have a couple 3112 cards that I have flashed like that, always fun having a modern SATA HDD show up in a Operating system from 1996 )

 

 

Happy to see some Lada content it will be interesting to see how she reacts to being woken up after standing for sometime now she has is equipped with EFI

 

http://autoshite.com/topic/35048-lada-riva-vaz2101-1972-bristol-roffle/ its replacement maybe?

[Zelandeth]

I reckon the liquid cooling may actually have something to do with this failure. There normally would be a fair amount of airflow in that vicinity due to the proximity of the exhaust from the CPU fan sink. The original upper case fan wasn't great either which will have been the main coolant source for this area.

 

The only way I could tell the Lada had not been driven in a little while was that I can barely see out of it... otherwise started right up like it was used yesterday. Battery never really gets drained given it doesn't even have a clock...

 

I'll have a shot at planning something out this weekend, but you think we might be able to arrange for me to drop by your place next week at some point for a bit of a computer hardware exchange? Finally get this old 5500 down to you.

[LightBulbFun]

I reckon the liquid cooling may actually have something to do with this failure. There normally would be a fair amount of airflow in that vicinity due to the proximity of the exhaust from the CPU fan sink. The original upper case fan wasn't great either which will have been the main coolant source for this area.

 

The only way I could tell the Lada had not been driven in a little while was that I can barely see out of it... otherwise started right up like it was used yesterday. Battery never really gets drained given it doesn't even have a clock...

 

good point yeah, its why a lot of stock coolers have fans that sit on top of the heatsink blow downwards towards the CPU socket/VRM section 

 

(mind iv still see plenty of CPU VRM sections go nice n brown, good ol Netburst Pentium D's where known for doing that to Mobos on account of their silly power draw and heat output)

 

happy to hear the Lada fired up with 0 issues in that regard

[Zelandeth]

good point yeah, its why a lot of stock coolers have fans that sit on top of the heatsink blow downwards towards the CPU socket/VRM section

 

(mind iv still see plenty of CPU VRM sections go nice n brown, good ol Netburst Pentium D's where known for doing that to Mobos on account of their silly power draw and heat output)

 

happy to hear the Lada fired up with 0 issues in that regard

Just thinking too - directly above there is the inlet fan on the PSU - so a lot of cool with from the case fan will probably have vanished straight up there. Sitting that high in the case ain't ideal either...not stellar thermal design really...

[LightBulbFun]

and on the other end of the scale you have things like this, piss it off and cause the fans to ramp to max and your going to need new ear drums, speaking of you could always shove *that* fan into your PC and solve all the cooling problems in one fell swoop 

 

[lanciamatt]

Not sure if you are sorted with wheel trims, but I've got loads of those metal mercedes wheel trims, I used to collect them when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure they are 14 inch too. Pm if you still need some

[Zelandeth]

and on the other end of the scale you have things like this, piss it off and cause the fans to ramp to max and your going to need new ear drums, speaking of you could always shove *that* fan into your PC and solve all the cooling problems in one fell swoop

 

Oh I know that sort of thing well. I've got a couple of 120mm ones that were dug out of an ancient Sun server which if placed face down will hover about 1/8" above the surface of the desk. One of them is likely to become the heater blower in the Invacar.

 

Not sure if you are sorted with wheel trims, but I've got loads of those metal mercedes wheel trims, I used to collect them when I was a kid. I'm pretty sure they are 14 inch too. Pm if you still need some

Thanks for that offer, I'll drop you a PM later today.

[Timewaster]

 

I do plan to trace the circuit of that inverter out at some point purely to satisfy my own curiousity. I'm struggling at this point to see what makes the thing oscillate given there aren't any capacitors present (unless I've missed one) which suggests to me the designers have done something clever and/or sneaky...and I want to know what.

 

 

I wouldn't over think the inverter. It's just a transformer in reverse.

[SiC]

I wouldn't over think the inverter. It's just a transformer in reverse.

But a transformer requires AC power to work and that inverter is designed to run off a DC battery. The conversion between DC to AC is done by the transistors on the front, a couple of discrete components and that smaller transformer/choke/inductor. It would be expected to have a capacitor somewhere to cause the transistors to switch on and off to help generate AC. However looks like it possibly does something clever with that smaller transformer/choke/inductor instead.

[Timewaster]

Ah yes,I hadn't taken that into account. Much easier to convert from AC to DC.

 

Is it a bridge rectifier?

College was a long time ago!

[Zelandeth]

The question for me is how the oscillator that produces the switching works.  Have not had a good dig yet, but all I have seen inside the box save for two transformers is a couple of resistors and a diode.  The rest is dead simple, it's just the oscillator that intrigues me.

 

Today has been a rubbish day to be honest.  Mentally I have good days and bad days these days (and I have my doubts that the group therapy session that the NHS have offered me - after I make it past the waiting list which is apparently around 10 weeks at this point - will help with that). Today has been a bad day, so finding energy to do anything has been a real struggle.

 

I did manage to get the Lada over to the Magic Hand car wash over on Monk's Way for a bit of a clean up.  Felt kind of guilty taking it to them in that state, but needs must.  They had kit far more likely to shift that gunk than I did.

 

Did a decent enough job too.  Couple of bits missed, but given the state it was in I'm really not complaining - especially as she really needs a polish anyway.

 

 

 

 

 

They all do a really good job on the interior too.

 

 

 

 

 

Need to attack the engine bay with an air line to get a whole load of pine needles out of the scuttle etc.

 

 

 

Oh - completely at randomly I spotted a copy of this in an eBay listing yesterday...

 

 

Have been chasing it around the van since I got it trying to work out where on earth it lived.   Turns out the answer is underneath the toilet cassette - intention I guess is to help prevent the tank sagging in the middle when it has 20 litres of liquid in.

 

Capacitors have been ordered for my PC so hopefully it will be back up and running soon.  LBF, here is a close up of the main chip from the SATA expansion card.

 

 

Cannot really see it being something that will see much use - only became an issue for me as at one point I had a downright daft amount of drives in there.  Not half as bad as my old old machine which was a full size AT tower that is absolutely crammed to bursting...including but not limited to a 1.2Gb hard drive circa 1991 full height 5.25" SCSI beast made by Micropolis.  Makes the floor shake when dealing when that gets busy with random seek operations!

[LightBulbFun]

like for the good bits like the shiny Lada (any car I can see the reflection of something in I consider shiny!)

 

SIL3512, not quite as versatile as the SIL3112 chipset, but still pretty damn versatile

 

(one of these days ill actually look up what the difference is between the 2! AFAIK there both just regular old 2 port SATA1 chipsets, but they have different PNs and are not compatible with the same FWs so something must be different LOL)

 

(its not full sized AT until you have to put it on castors to move the damn thing  )

[Zelandeth]

(its not full sized AT until you have to put it on castors to move the damn thing )

I did exactly that!

[PhilA]

Some sort of multivibrator using the inductance of a transformer instead of capacitors maybe?

I'd be interested to see a schematic of it too.

Yup, edge switched transformer multivibrator.

 

Moderately stable, what frequency it runs at?

 

Would see that having trouble driving an inductive load though.

 

Phil

[Zelandeth]

Yup, edge switched transformer multivibrator.

 

Moderately stable, what frequency it runs at?

 

Would see that having trouble driving an inductive load though.

 

Phil

50Hz going by Mk I Ear anyway. Though I'm curious to see how stable that is on/off load.

 

Not a circuit type I've heard of before, will have to read up on it. Every day's a school day!

[PhilA]

You can do it with 2 transistors, but w chained that way with a diode causes a harder state transition and cleaner switching.

 

One side rising with the lag in the inductance of there other side of the coil (center tap) causes the other side to flip flop and once saturated the other side stops

[Zelandeth]

I was quite pleased with how TP behaved when I last had her out.  So when I had a local trip lined up this afternoon if obviously made sense to take her rather than have the Activa drink another half gallon of fuel.

 

While only a couple of miles across the town centre, this would be the furthest from home that I had ventured so far.  Did she make it?

 

 

Of course she did.  Place only opened a couple of years ago, so I doubt there has ever been an Invacar in that car park until today.

 

Had to swing by the pharmacy on the way home, which left me the opportunity to watch out the window for several minutes watching people walking past TP and be totally baffled by what they were seeing.

 

The size comparison to a Skoda Roomster is somewhat comical.

 

 

Back home an hour or so later and a milestone has been reached.

 

 

Those of you with far better memories than me will recall that the odometer read 11353 miles - the first additional mile was done attached to a drill when the engine change was underway as I wanted to confirm that the odometer worked, so call it 11354.  So at close of play today that's 51 miles covered since DW rescued her from that field.

 

She definitely earned her keep today...proper week's shopping onboard.

 

 

Didn't miss a beat either, so as a reward for good behaviour I got a small but important detail seen to.

 

 

Finally put the badge back on.  Not quite sure whether this will make people more or less confused when they see her now.

 

A few shopping bags have now been assigned to the car for future shopping trips.

 

 

Which I know I will never remember to take into the shop with me because I never do.

 

I reckon based on my experience today that bungee may get stuffed in one of the doors to help keep stuff still as the floor mats combined with shopping bags appear to result in zero friction whatsoever...so my shopping slid all over the floor and was generally an utter pain on the way back. 

 

The carb I am glad to report seems to be reasonably happy now.  Only grumble with it is that the choke cable has come off again, but given she lives in the garage that's hardly a major issue, I'll sort it at some point.

 

The only recurring gripes are the grumbling drivetrain - which I'm pretty sure at this point is down to pitted pulleys (I do have a plan in mind to see about cleaning them), and the dead travel in the brakes.  That's better than it was but still needs improving ideally.

 

Now we have passed the magic (and utterly arbitrary) 50 mile mark I will probably drop the oil and change the filter this weekend as if there's gunk floating around in there, it has probably been washed into the sump by now, time to clean it out.

 

Really do need to do something about the front end bodywork now too, especially given the car seems to be getting into a vaguely usable state now...the duct tape and my laughable first attempts at fibreglass need to go...I can do a lot better job of that now.

 

Hoping that this weekend I will have the opportunity to get a few more miles covered.  Would be nice to get a photo of her somewhere other than another underground car park!

[LightBulbFun]

happy to see more reports of smooth running (and smooth flooring!) and she now has her AC badge (time to Gate crash an AC Cobra meet!)

 

considering this is exactly the sort of thing id be using mine for, glad to see she works well for doing so

 

 

I look forward to the Mad dash across town at 70Mph for her first MOT

 

"Hey dude I saw an Invacar screaming its way along the motorway today!"

 

"An Invacar?!"

 

"No it was the driver!"

 

 

in regards to body work repairs, any plans to neutralise the rust on the window frames? I hear that those are the weak spot of the Model 70 and have a bad habit of rusting out, so might be worth having a look at, same goes to DW and TWC