[sdiy] Nothing box

[tomg@efm]

I've got a story about this one...

I bought an EICO kit once that was this exact
circuit. I was about 12 years old I guess. I had
a paper route and you had to be at least 12. I 
had already reverse engineered my first fuzz box 
but had absolutely no idea about what I was doing 
or how it worked. ( I was 12) It needed a 90V 
battery! What!

There was this guy on my paper route who had
tv and stereo stuff all stacked up on his carport
who I knew was a air force tech that fixed stuff
on the side. So one afternoon when he was home
I asked if he would help...

It was fascinating....he drew out a power supply
on paper then went searching in all sort of places
for the parts. He built it on terminal strips mounted
on a small piece of wood. It was the first time I
had ever seen anybody but me solder and put
something electronic together. He wouldn't charge
me for it....so I skipped his house the next month
when collection time came.

I took it home, hooked it up and watched the 
little lights blink for about 15 minutes before the
power supply exploded!! Well the cap anyway.
My room filled with tiny pieces of black stuff 
(insulation material - tar possibly) that weighed 
nothing and gently settled on everything.

I took the remains back and he fixed it. It never
blew up again and thats good because my mom 
would have banned electronics from the house!

Now that I think back. The power supply he built
was just rectified 120VAC that put out possibly 
160VDC and then used a 90V zener. How did 
I survive??..;-) 

I was only about 2 months from discovering that
it you take the output of a small tube amp and 
plug it into a larger tube amp that it sounds great
right up to the point that the larger amp blows up
and speaker cones catch on fire....I never told 
mom about that one....;-)

Tom


> Not S-DIY but it has _neon_ oscillators and it, err...
> blinks :)
> Check it out:
> http://michaelgellis.tripod.com/nothing.html
> 
> 
> 
> marjan