I keep saying that we are a Repair Cafe, not The Repair Shop. But we broke our “40 minute” limit yet again.
Our
visitors had travelled from Wimbourne to our June 2022 event, bearing 2 printed
circuit boards from their Juke Box. Some of our electronics repairers said that
they couldn’t do anything without a circuit diagram and I think they needed the
rest of the juke box too. But we have a wizard called Robert who likes to
tackle the tricky jobs in his electronics workshop at home.“The jukebox was my husband’s late parents’. We had many memorable
evenings, dancing & singing. Eventually, like everything, it didn’t work
anymore. We tried so-called experts in the field but with no joy. I came across
the Repair Cafe through the Martin Lewis website. We decided to give it a go. We
had nothing to lose. As the next step was sadly going to be landfill, we had
exhausted all other possibilities.
We transported the heavy jukebox to Robert’s home address, where he
worked wonders on it. They don’t make a Rowe-Ami R-82 jukebox any more and
parts are far and few between, if any at all. He made his own memory board and
wrote his own program, sent off to China for parts, he took the grille off to
paint, removed the old rotted foam and replaced the broken glass on the
selection display, Robert even did an ultrasonic clean on the old classic
records.
Robert kept us updated on the progress every week.
We cannot thank Robert enough, he went above and beyond, and we are
so very grateful to everyone involved. He saved this huge piece of memorabilia
from landfill and prevented hazardous substances from leaking out and causing
soil and water contamination, harming wildlife and human health.
Once again thank you so much to Robert, Ros and Repair Cafe
Weymouth
' The Collins'.”
What did Robert get out of it? A real sense of achievement. He produced a one-page summary of the work he did on it. It includes things like:
“Tried and failed to repair the Memory Unit. It plays sequences such as 130, 131, 140, 141, 150 etc and eventually it plays the selected record when the magazine gets to it. Concluded Z704 (H-7407B) is faulty. This IC (integrated circuit?) is obsolete and unobtainable. Designed new Memory Unit including software. This new board uses a
PIC16F723A micro controller instead of the H-7407B.”
There’s a lot more on the list and it wasn’t all electronics.
For example, “Bottom base speaker grille
was very rusty. Rubbed down and painted black. Rotted foam cleaned out. Broken
glass panel replaced with acrylic panel.”
How much did it cost? A donation to Repair Cafe Weymouth. We do not charge for our services.
*** Why
did he do it? I think, because he can. ***
There
are 2453 Repair Cafes throughout the world. You can find the location of one
near you here: https://www.repaircafe.org/en/visit/.
Ros
