[sdiy] Genital Electric P/V converter LIVES

[Harry Bissell Jr]

My Gentle Electric GE-101 PV converter has come
back from the grave. I bought it "as is but in good
shape" from someone on AH. It was blown to kingdom
come, probably from reverse voltage on the power
supplies. I paid way too much for it in the condition
received (but hey, it was 'as-is' right ???)

My first clues to an amateur repair attempt was that
ALL THE ELECTROLYTIC caps were replaced, cheap sockets
were inserted for all the opamps (also replaced).

another clue. One IC had the non inverting input
drilled OFF CENTER to accomodate a guard ring (common
S/H technique).  The person (dis)effecting the repair
put in an IC socket with that pin 'folded under' so no
connection was made. Were they going to hook it up
later, or did they just bone it ???  I think (from the
mass capacitor destruction) the latter...

Sad is that the potted modules (2) were blown out...
the fundamental extractor AND the expo module. Even
the 2K Q81 tempco was toast. All the cmos chips were
trashed, as well as a large number of transistors and
diodes.

Glad is that I was able to reverse engineer the
modules
with hammer, chisel, and propane torch.  I just found
the last problem, which was a defective opamp that
still worked, but maybe had an extrememly LOW input
impedance due to internal damage.  Replaced it with,
yup... a 741 and it started working. OK so 741's
suck... but I'm fresh out of LM301s

It was a lot of pain to fix this, but I wanted it for
educational purposes. If it HAD worked, would I have
smashed the potted modules open ???  Probably not.
How well does it work ?  I'm not sure yet, but it does
the P/V thing as advertised.

Maybe when its in a box, I should send it to another
Gentle Electric owner for an A/B test ???   :^P

Anyway... I just wanted everyone to know there is
life-after-talking-about-your-manhood on s-diy 

H^) harry