Idaho eh? I should have visited my brother more before he moved ...
Barfle's Bonus Room Bijou
- Thread starter barfle
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Aren't LED lights the best thing since sliced bread?
I used those LED strips as under-cabinet lighting in our kitchen in Virginia, and had them installed when we remodeled our kitchen here in Idaho. Remarkably, the peel-and-stick backing has never come loose. Seems that technology has improved a bunch!
Cool thing is that I have enough left over to put them over my workbench in the garage.
Maybe that makes me an addict.
Born in Ohio (Toledo), but we moved before I could make any memories of it. Both parents were born there, too.
Buckeye-Americans all!
sofijander
Member
+1. Awesome!
Great room! The media and equipment rack(s) is awesome as others have mentioned.
Well, a few minor updates to the room:
I added an Involve Surround Master V3 to the rack, although, sadly, I still can't play LPs. Hopefully that will be fixed this winter, but I'm a poor fortune-teller.
I recapped my Emotiva Stealth 8 studio monitors, and the difference is remarkable. Sad to think that I have gear that's 40 years old with original caps, and those Emotiva caps didn't last five years. Next on the list is the LaserDisc player. I haven't pulled the covers off, but I believe there's a switch that senses the drawer being closed that isn't doing that, so whenever the drawer is closed, there's a motor trying to grind teeth off a rack and pinion.
I also added a small latch to the door to the computer room. We recently acquired a cat, and if that door is shut and I'm behind it, she claws the fabric on the door to get in, so I added the latch to hold it open when I'm in there. I have plenty of fabric, but the door was a difficult job to cover, and I really am not interested in recovering it multiple times.
I added an Involve Surround Master V3 to the rack, although, sadly, I still can't play LPs. Hopefully that will be fixed this winter, but I'm a poor fortune-teller.
I recapped my Emotiva Stealth 8 studio monitors, and the difference is remarkable. Sad to think that I have gear that's 40 years old with original caps, and those Emotiva caps didn't last five years. Next on the list is the LaserDisc player. I haven't pulled the covers off, but I believe there's a switch that senses the drawer being closed that isn't doing that, so whenever the drawer is closed, there's a motor trying to grind teeth off a rack and pinion.
I also added a small latch to the door to the computer room. We recently acquired a cat, and if that door is shut and I'm behind it, she claws the fabric on the door to get in, so I added the latch to hold it open when I'm in there. I have plenty of fabric, but the door was a difficult job to cover, and I really am not interested in recovering it multiple times.
It all looks so good, you should be proud of yourself. I have been there and my experience was really, really fun but frustrating at times.
Cool beans!
Don't know about playing records but plug that 105 into the Surround Master & blast off! Looking forward to your observations & comparisons to your Tate, Sansui QS-1 and whatever modes you've used on the Emotiva.
The oldest gear I have is from the mid-80's that being 3 Adcom 555 power amps & 555 pre-amp and they all have original caps. Probably lost some Farads but no audio hum. I do get hum from my Anthem pre-pro but it is a mechanical buzz not signal. Probably a XFMR needs to be tightened down. However it's a spaghetti mess of wires behind it so I'm going to ignore it as long as I can.
Congrats on a new feline joing the family! Now you can post some pics in the Critters thread.
I’m proud of what’s done, but still feeling a bit overwhelmed by what still needs to be done. Two busted record players, a busted laser disc player, the “lobby” hasn’t been touched other than hanging a few pictures, and I really don’t know how I’m going to hook up my quad gear.
Oh, and Atmos. I have speakers installed and cables run to the rack, but I’m about $3,500 away from energizing them.
I won’t be done until I’m dead. Hopefully 30 years or so in the future (I’m 76 now).
The hard part about that is I still haven’t figured out how to hook up three MCH audio inputs into one MCH aodio input on my pre/pro. I’m shooting for this year, but who knows?
One thing I left off the “fixed it” list is a device called a PIAI Stereo Chord E. G. G. (Electronic Gratification Generator). I built it from a kit, somewhere in the late 70s IIRC, and I’m pretty sure I understand the circuit. It plays random organ chords with some random filtering and phasing, and is a nice way to relax if things get a bit hectic. It had some dried-out caps that I replaced from left-over (NOS) capacitors from when Imhad my own shop in the mid 1980s, and even those caps worked as they should.
What sort of crap did the Chinese builders of my monitors use? I’m really disappointed in them.
Owen Smith
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
Have you considered a passive audio/video switch? There are ones that will switch component video plus stereo audio, which is 5 phonos so sufficient for quad with one phono spare.
Yes, that’s probably what I’ll do, at least at first. One of my bucket-list projects is to build a MCH audio-in, HDMI out encoder. I’ve done similar work in the past, so it doesn’t scare me, but with all the other stuff I want/need to get done, it won’t be this year, or probably next.
In addition to @Owen Smith's suggestion the other choice is a Zektor switcher. Passive relay switching, remote control if you want, good price.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/1761032331...9uA/wXydlv9JfK7CoR832Uf9BgEh|tkp:BFBM8LzWvp5j
Owen Smith
2K Club - QQ Super Nova
You'd better start a web site for ordering those, plenty of people would want one me included. Or perhaps publish the PCB layout and parts etc so people could make their own.
Well, my goal is to stay retired, and not design myself a job, so I’m guessing that a prototype run of 10 pieces would be all that I’d be making. Surface-mount, while not impossible to do manually, is pretty tricky and takes different tools than my dear old through-hole gear can do.
Of course, if and when I actually achieve a working model, I’d put the leftovers up for sale here, and somehow share the layout and parts list.
Hey barfle, is that 70's Nurburgring back there in that pic? Did you take it?
No, it’s actually a painting of the start of the 1964 Indianapolis 500. It’s a poster published by K&K Insurance back in the day. Sadly in about four laps, there would be a terrible crash that claimed the lives of drivers Eddie Sachs and Dave McDonald.
FWIW, I did attend a F1 race at the Nurburgring in 1968. Incredibly rainy, won by Jackie Stewart, but Dan Gurney had his Eagle in the race, so this American, who had seen Gurney win stock car races at Riverside, had a yank to root for.
I was reviewing this thread because apparently @par4ken looked through it and gave several likes to the entries (thanks!), and I saw your post.Very interesting (and fun) reading through all of this Barfle. Almost like watching an episode of This Old House. I have to say I am in envy of your skill sets.
The only question I have is,,,, Did you make any progress on your wife's den?
To answer your question, I finished my part of her room last year sometime. The pocket door was probably the biggest job, because it involved moving four wires and a pipe as well as the standard wall rebuild that a pocket door requires. It also included changing one end of the closet, which had originally been oblique to square against a wall.
For electrical, I put in a triple switch so it could run a ceiling light, a bunch of half-hot outlets, and bookcase lights. Tight fit in the electrical box! I probably should have put a splice box in the crawl space and just run a single length of 16/4 to the switch, but it’s done and changing it won’t make it better. Of course, I also ran RG6 and CAT4 to a split outlet box.
The cabinetry was a bit tricky, because it’s a single unit that runs the width of the room, and is at the height of the window sills, which match the windows in my computer/bench space. That involved butt-joining two pieces of plywood that had also been cut to fit into the window frame, making one flat surface about a foot wide with the sills sticking out of it. A royal pain, but it turned out OK. None of my 12V power supplies could provide the current for an LED strip that long, and the one I bought seems to take about three seconds to come on, but it does work, so all is OK on that part, too.
Naturally, when you do one thing, you have to do two or three more somthings end up OK. In the case of the bookshelf/window sill, the HVAC vent was in the floor where the shelf was going, so I had to move that, too. Fortunately for me, the ductwork is flexible and all I needed to do was push it back a foot or so to get the vent into the new hole.
Of course, all that wall moving left a few gaps in the carpeting. The carpeting was already torn up by the previous owners’ dogs. We have 3 or 4 patches around the house, but it’s not yet a priority. The next contractor job is to replace the windows that haven’t been replaced in previous remodels. That’s supposed to happen this year. Who knows when we’ll get to the carpeting?
I didn’t take any “in progress” pictures of it, but I’ll take a few this week and post them here.
Well over six months since I updated this thread - shame on me. Not that this entry will actually get me up to date, because I have a bunch of things happening in the upcoming couple of weeks.
I note that I was getting windows, and we did. That definitely helps the ventilation in the little shop behind the screen, because now those windows are double-hung, and I can open the top and let some of the warm air out. My big tower's power switch was sticky, so I got rid of the case and migrated the guts (which I'm using now) into a smaller tower. That makes the mouse extension on my keyboard miss the top of the tower, so now I can type straight ahead!
I built a new Linux box that gave me fits trying to get things to boot up. UEFI seems to be a new thing in motherboards, and I had to shut it off in the boot menu in order to get things to function. Up and running.
I also bought a Mac mini to accompany my variety of computational boxes. I have an iPhone and an iPad, so some of the stuff is familiar, but this is definitely a different beast.
I'm pretty sure I mentioned my mother passing away last April. She had a laptop that she used mostly for a spreadsheet of the community she was living in, although she was awfully good at using a google app to go on-line, and probably had a hundred or so open tabs in MS Edge, and something was causing the hard drive to work overtime, slowing the machine down to a crawl. I got rid of a bunch of that crap (I never really was asked to tidy it up, and I almost never used it except to get it on her Wi-Fi). Anyway, I've inherited that machine, but I want it to boot from a drive I took out of another laptop that had a really good photo-editing app, but I can't get batteries for it any more. That's still a struggle. Maybe I'll hire that out. That will fill out my KVMA (keyboard, video, mouse, audio) switch and make me an official computer nerd.
I promised a picture of the bookshelf I made for my wife's den. Here it is.
I used a similar technique to light up the shelves, although hers is controlled by a switch as you walk into the room. I had to move that HVAC vent away from the wall, which was a bit scary, but not as bad as I had feared. The top of the shelves is the same piece as the window sill. I had to splice two pieces of plywood together to make the span (about 12', just under 4M for you metric folks) using 1/2" dowels. It came out pretty good with a bit of sanding and filling. The little blanket under the window on the right is for Jazz, the cat, to lie on. She seems to like it, which is unusual because anything I've done to please a cat is generally ignored.
I note that I was getting windows, and we did. That definitely helps the ventilation in the little shop behind the screen, because now those windows are double-hung, and I can open the top and let some of the warm air out. My big tower's power switch was sticky, so I got rid of the case and migrated the guts (which I'm using now) into a smaller tower. That makes the mouse extension on my keyboard miss the top of the tower, so now I can type straight ahead!
I built a new Linux box that gave me fits trying to get things to boot up. UEFI seems to be a new thing in motherboards, and I had to shut it off in the boot menu in order to get things to function. Up and running.
I also bought a Mac mini to accompany my variety of computational boxes. I have an iPhone and an iPad, so some of the stuff is familiar, but this is definitely a different beast.
I'm pretty sure I mentioned my mother passing away last April. She had a laptop that she used mostly for a spreadsheet of the community she was living in, although she was awfully good at using a google app to go on-line, and probably had a hundred or so open tabs in MS Edge, and something was causing the hard drive to work overtime, slowing the machine down to a crawl. I got rid of a bunch of that crap (I never really was asked to tidy it up, and I almost never used it except to get it on her Wi-Fi). Anyway, I've inherited that machine, but I want it to boot from a drive I took out of another laptop that had a really good photo-editing app, but I can't get batteries for it any more. That's still a struggle. Maybe I'll hire that out. That will fill out my KVMA (keyboard, video, mouse, audio) switch and make me an official computer nerd.
I promised a picture of the bookshelf I made for my wife's den. Here it is.
I used a similar technique to light up the shelves, although hers is controlled by a switch as you walk into the room. I had to move that HVAC vent away from the wall, which was a bit scary, but not as bad as I had feared. The top of the shelves is the same piece as the window sill. I had to splice two pieces of plywood together to make the span (about 12', just under 4M for you metric folks) using 1/2" dowels. It came out pretty good with a bit of sanding and filling. The little blanket under the window on the right is for Jazz, the cat, to lie on. She seems to like it, which is unusual because anything I've done to please a cat is generally ignored.
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