Re: [LAU] Audio interface for newbies ?

On Sat, 27 Aug 2016 12:56:18 -0700, Fernando Lopez-Lezcano wrote:
>We do own several of these cards but don't use them anymore. The 1010
>card was the first magically affordable 8 channel solution for our
>needs. There was even a smaller box that could intercept the digital
>signals and provided digital multichannel connections. We still have
>them around lying in plastic bins (some were recycled). Such a shame.
>
>For old timers in this list the power supply issue on the 1010 is well
>known. The voltage doubler (or quadrupler?, I forget) capacitors in
>the power supply blow up after a while due to bad design. The 5V rail
>is still there but the analog voltages go down or disappear, so the
>card still "works" but all audio is gone or badly distorted. Replacing
>the capacitors fixes everything (visual inspection can easily reveal
>if that is the problem).

Hi Fernando,

IIUC there are different 1010 models out there and some are using
external power supplies and those power supplies seem to be be very
cheap.

Regarding this
http://offog.org/notes/delta-1010lt-repair/fixed_size1600.jpg picture
and some reading this card, the "LT" model, has got no external power
supply. It gets the power from the PCI slot. In front of the picture,
on the left side and on the right side, there seem to be voltage
regulators and a few caps that belong to the circuits around the voltage
regulators. My TerryTec EWX 24/96 don't have something on the left
side, IOW not such a TO-220 package thingy and no big caps, but on the
right side the TerraTecs look similar to the Delta. Two small
electrolytic capacitors and behind them is a 1117 voltage regulator on
the TerraTecs Envy24 cards. The power comes from the PC's power supply.

I don't know how easy it is for the OP to replace the caps. It could
be possible to replace caps using a 25 W ERSA soldering iron without
risking to damage vertical interconnect accesses, but sometimes
removing the old caps even doesn't work with a Weller desolder station.
Once a friend needed to desolder caps for me at work, using hot air. I
couldn't remove them using my soldering iron and we couldn't do it
using his desolder station.

If the OP could simply replace the caps, then it doesn't harm to
replace them, even if they are still ok, but as soon as it should be
hard to remove the caps and there should be no visible leaking or
bloat, it's better not to risk it, before it isn't ruled out, that it is
not a software issue.

I don't claim that the caps are ok, they could be borked, but a
zombified sound server related process is good enough for reasonable
doubts. Sure, we could suffer from cooties and fleas at the same time.

2 Cents,
Ralf
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Received on Sun Aug 28 16:15:06 2016