Searched through a few free Compass apps to download onto my Samsung Galaxy S22 and a couple of them I thought would work were loaded with popups after installation that almost took over the entire screen! Instant Uninstall! 
Then I found one called Compass Free (PRO Compass) that I like and only shows banner ads at the bottom of the screen. I can deal with that.
Not that old, was still finding/working on computers with IDE drives as recently as 8 years ago I think?
Now, if that was a SCSI drive?
Have a customer who just purchased a house that came with a ginormous Samsung TV.
Cool, right?
One of the ginormous Samsung TVs that require a Samsung One Connect Box…
Cool… cool…
Guess what’s missing?
Good grief!
Depending on the exact TV model it could be picky about which specific One Connect Box it will actually work with…
So… That’ll be a project/treasure hunt…
Wait. The previous owners took the box, but left the TV??
I have so many questions.
Right?
It could be in a box somewhere?
I’m planning on asking if I can talk to the relator, see if I can get any clues.
If it were one of the models where the box was an optional upgrade, supported but not required, in theory any One Connect Box you find on eBay should work?
But… Based on what I’m seeing on some support forums, this TV may require a specific version of the box?
I’ll find out more when I can get eyes on it.
Depending on where the previous owners moved, it was probably more cost effective to just buy a new tv than try to move it. That’s what our movers advised a couple of years ago.
I get that, but, why take the box? Why even disconnect the box? Could the movers have just grabbed it and boxed it up for moving? Just so … odd.
Anybody have any great ideas for this problem?
New battery! Place for old battery has some stumpy little posts soldered to the motherboard. Old battery was probably spot welded in place.
I have a soldering iron/pencil.
I think the best option is to put some great blobs of solder on both terminals of the new battery, and connect the terminals to the existing posts with short bits of wire.
Then tape the battery very tightly to its “hole” and then put back the connecting cables, plug it in, and see if it works.
Actually, the real best way would be to find an actual battery holder for this format battery (a BR-2/3A) or its equivalent and solder that to the board…but I’m kind of in a hurry.
That’s what I usually do, but I don’t attach it to the board, I solder wires to the board and put the battery holder some where that if the battery leaks it doesn’t damage a board.
If it’s just a memory backup battery the size of the battery doesn’t really matter, just the voltage, so you could go with any combination of battery(ies) and holder you want as long as it puts out the same voltage as the old one.
Yes indeed…I was being a bit sloppy in writing. Just solder some leads to the board, then secure the battery holder somewhere…perhaps even somewhere more convenient than having to remove all the shielding.
I believe a CR2032 is 3V and should work fine.
I just have to find a hardware store that has a little holder for the battery with some leads attached (ideally)…seems that Home Depot doesn’t stock those from a cursory search…and electronic stores are seeming far and few between these days, at least in the real world.
And then try to convince the buyer of the synth that I’m purely looking out for her best interests and am not at all a procrastinor! And adding value to the synth through my special l33t modification to make future battery replacements a snap!
I want her to buy the next ten keyboards from me!
Actually, I’m sure I have something lying around that I don’t mind cannibalizing for the battery holder…
I love older video games & video game consoles - the Atari 2600 is no exception!
A fun game was Circus Atari, a clone of the Exidy arcade game.
Using the paddle controllers, you propel clowns into the air (the stick figures on screen) with a seesaw to pop balloons (the squares up top).
See those black squares? Those are really a series of black lines that normally appear on the sides of 2600 games which are affectionately known “The Comb”. These are caused by the CPU writing each line of sprite data out to a set of hardware registers (since the 2600 had no Video Memory), in close synchronization with the video display’s horizontal retrace timing. Instead of having an ugly series of black lines, programmer Mike Lorenzen cleverly incorporated them into the game by bunching them together and making each new acrobat jump out of it. (Source: AtariProtos.com - All Your Protos Are Belong To Us!)
The death scene is hilarious too with the clown going SPLAT and limbs flailing everywhere.
OK, last ditch “solution” discovered!
I find some old gadget that has some kind of battery compartment.
I then break it into a piece about 2/3 the length of a AA battery, cram the BR 2/3V battery in there, solder leads to the PCB, then hot glue the container somewhere or other inside the instrument.
I went to Home Depot, Harbor Freight, and even called a place called “Batteries Plus”…nobody has any kind of holder for any sort of battery…
I blame America! But I blame myself most of all!
Not really, but someone’s responsible for this mishegas!
I even looked at what claimed to be a “plastic (bodied) welder” at Harbor Freight (pretty sure it was not intended for “welding plastic”!..there’s a different name for that kind of tool, pretty sure!)…I suspect that was not really a spot welder, but just some kind of soldering tool with a confusing package.
Conductive glue would have worked, but couldn’t find anything like that either. Maybe just some bits of copper or something metal anyway I can find around and just tape it up to the battery, or use a big chunk of shrink tube and heat it up carefully. Heat is not supposed to be great for the battery’s longevity, but I must succeed!
/*edit DAMMIT!!! I could have picked up just now some little bits of metal or something at Home Depot. soldered them onto the nubs of the battery posts sticking out of the PCB, then…you know, just kind of stuck the battery in between those. Somehow. I don’t know, with springs or something.
Yes, I did my share of breadboarding circuits and all that doing basic lower-division electrical engineering courses at college, but I don’t have the handyman gene for fiddling with stuff.
I still think heat gun+shrink tubes + hot glue gun can play a role in this solution…somehow. */
/** But the genius is I took off from work early to go shopping around to brick and mortar stores, and accidentally bought a bottle of Tullamore whiskey…
what’s more fun than soldering?
whiskey-fueled soldering!
Trust me, it’s fine! **/
/*** and tinfoil…that could be useful…probably… ***/
I used to find those battery holders in old remote controlled toys. You might be able to find a cheap one at the dollar store.
Exactly my thinking! You’re a credit to your race.
Maybe not toys as such, but various remote controls and such.
I’m still thinking giant blob of solder onto the battery and stick a few leads in there…but I don’t believe I have a file or coarse enough sandpaper to get nice thick lead solder to adhere to the smoove battery terminals.
Use your hot glue gun or some other way to anchor the wires (remember to give them strain relief) to the circuit board. Anchor them on their insulation. This will keep them from moving around as you attach them.
You’ll need to “tin” the pads, and your wire leads. To do that, you’ll need flux…check online for home made, or ACE will have it. Heat the pad, add a little flux, then a small drop of solder; remove the iron as soon as the solder liquifies. You’ll want to tin the wire leads too, add flux, then heat with the iron and add solder, it should wick up the wire bundle.
To weld, apply flux to both the tinned pad and wire lead again, heat the pad, and use tweezers to put the wire lead “into” the solder bubble on the pad. Remove the iron, but not the wire as you let the solder cool to solid.
After you finish welding, get a Qtip and dip it in isopropyl, to clean burnt flux and any imperfections left behind.
But you want to be very careful. Some circuit boards don’t handle heat well, and while there is going to be more stoutness to a power/ battery terminal, still, be wary. You can heat and tear the pad right off the board.
Another mistake to look out for is covering more than one pad with solder, where you can short circuit the board…good luck, dude, I used to help fix circuit boards down to the component level, with some crazy small and complicated chips-- but I also had a 15K dollar circuit board repair station and an electrical engineer to help me !
This might be waay to much info, but I wish you luck !
That’s the right amount of info!
As a matter of fact, I just prepared a few leads (for pos/neg) and found that I do have a small amount of flux in a small spool. In addition to some kind of rosin-core or flux-core solder in a reasonable diameter from who knows when.
Switched the soldering pencil tip to a nice flat, wide one, which seems good.
I think I know about tinning contact points…I’m more concerned about scuffing the battery terminals TBH, but, like I mentioned, I’m halfway into a bottle of Tullamore Irish.
Point taken about care with the leads to the PCB: it appears these are through-and-through solders, and the instrument is from 1986…I think I can manage not applying undue pressure, therefore, heat.
And I have Q-tips and isopropyl alcohol to boot! That was meant to be supper, but I’ll suffer for the sake of the art!
I somewhat doubt I’ll be as scrupulous as your instructions indicate, but I think it’ll probably be good enough.
Thanks Captain Electro!
/* I thought “tinning” was just applying a small amount of solder to each surface to be soldered? Is that not the case? Granted, my most soldering was in high school ginning together record players and speakers and such…so…long time ago! */
/** OR … conductive tape! Which it appears Home Depot does not carry… It’s blessing…and a curse…well, I should probably do it anyway.
Don’t feel like scrounging for various components, so I think I’ll just scuff up the battery terminals, stick a lead in each end of hot solder, and solder those to the stubs of the battery posts and knock an wood.
Worst case, my buyer with cancel her order due to my sloth. But I will have learned something.
For example! How could I have misplaced my wirestrippers? Unacceptable!**/
Meh, seems OK to me. Took a few minutes, but the joints are holding.
What do you think, sir?
Yes, I abandoned the idea of rummaging around my place looking for stuff, and just soldered directly to the terminals a few bits of wire.
Oh no! They’re both the same color wire! I might perish!!!
To my surprise, seems to hold steady, but I haven’t tested it yet, even with a multimeter.
/* Meh, just grabbed the digital multimeter out of the car. Battery’s fine. The leads from the solder’s fine.
Everything’s fine!
Don’t worry about it!
*/
Nice, you did it !
I tell you, your work style would fit right in, in Australia. I have never seen a people drink like them (at work, while working). Beers every Friday afternoon, and this is good, Aussie beer – then on to the pub !
After the pub, you just have to go to the casino; which, in reality, is another pub albeit with video poker.
I worked there for two months, and would have moved permanently had we not had pets back in the US (the quarantine was 2 months, and one was already aged).
I worked in the “repair depot”, and when something, anything, broke…it was brought to us. If a tool broke, unless it was heavy duty, had to be fixed. When we got back to the US, it was pretty different, everything was brand new, and state of the art…I was actually lost.
Anybody know anything up-close and personal about using conductive adhesive tape?
I’ve learned one thing over the past week of near-sleepless nights: I hate soldering, and while I can make some nice joins, that I wouldn’t hesitate to use on my own equipment, since this is for a buyer patiently waiting, I don’t have the confidence to stand by my skills.
I think conductive tape or conductive adhesive, around the battery posts soldered to the mobo, slip on a heatshrink tube for structural stability…being careful not to indiscriminately blast other ICs and stuff with the heatgun… or just use heat from the soldering iron, or whatever, to shrink the 2:1 tubes I have…that’s likely something more my speed that I feel I can do.
This is just for soldering medium-long wires from the battery posts to a CR2032 battery holder which should be arriving tomorrow, then put back on the metal shielding, plug back in the various connectors, and complete the task of soldering those wires now extended from the top of the metal shielding, also with some shrink tubes, and just dab the new connector to the metal plate with a dot of hot glue or something.
That last part I can do, but soldering to vertical posts…I envision blobs of soldering dripping down the posts, and possible exposing unwanted indirect heat to the PCB itself.
Hence, conductive tape, or, last resort, the messier seeming conductive adhesive.