Adding a Supplimental Cooling Fan to a Kenwood TS-711A or TS-811A

This will be a quick and dirty overview of adding an extra cooling fan to a Kenwood TS-711A or TS-811A transceiver.  This may work for the Asian and European versions of these rigs as well.  This mod is intended for radios that will be powered off of the built in AC power supply and will not work properly when powering the rig from the DC power jack on the back.  I performed it on both my TS-711A and TS-811A as they were getting a bit warm to the touch on the back when just scanning some local repeaters.  The fans work, but I don't trust the 30+ year old motors.  If your fans are completely borked, you can get a 60mm PC fans and install it inside where the original was. I found that after a couple hours of scanning I did not feel a noticeable warmth on the rear of my rig with the added fan running.  Mission accomplished!

Standard common sense disclaimer:  I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE IF YOU FRY YOUR RIG BECAUSE OF THIS GUIDE.

Fan Guide

First, Remove the top and bottom covers (be careful of the wire for the speaker!!!), then locate this area near the power plug on the bottom side.
 

This is where we will be tapping into the 13.8 Volts DC that the internal power supply creates.  When running from AC power these connections are switched with the main switch, so your fan won't be running constantly






When servicing equipment, I like ans many things to be modular as possible, so I do not recommend soldering the fan directly to the power connection.  You can use whatever connector you feel like using, but I also like being somewhat lazy (and cheap).  My fans already had a standard 3-pin connector, so I pulled a 3-pin fan header from a dead motherboard.  See the image for the removed header with pin-out information.




Solder a pair of wires on, and heat shrink over the connectors to prevent shorting.







Since I am leaving the original fan in my rig and mounting an 80mm fan externally we will need a place to run the wire through.  I am a big fan of not putting extra holes in a cabinet, so I decided to use the already provided hole that the optional computer interface connector goes in as I don't have the interface in my rig.  Be sure to install a grommet to protect the insulation on the fan wire.






Next, I had to remove the audio board to get access to where the fan cable will run from the top half to the bottom half.  Unscrew the nuts on the Ext. Speaker and Key jacks (don't loose them, or the washers!), and fold the daughter board back out of the way





Its probably a good idea to mount the fan now so you can get an idea of how much wire slack you have.  My fan model has a super long cable that goes right over to where I am tapping in the power.  If you fan's cable isn't quite this long, you can make the leads on your power tap longer.  The original Kenwood fan is set up to exhaust air out the back, so that's what I have set up with the computer fan as well.

Its a tight squeeze, but I ran my fan's cable down next to the back edge of the frame where there is already a bundle of wires










Remove the power connector and use a small pointy thing to hold back the plastic tab and pull out the orange wire on the end.  On the wire, whittle away at the insulation to expose the conductor then wrap your lead for the + terminal on the fan header around and solder.  I don't know what kind of wire Kenwood used, but I found that I had to use some flux to get the solder to flow.






Add some heat shrink and carefully reinsert the pin into the connector.

 



Solder the negative lead to chassis.  I found the bare lead going to the nearby terminal tab bade a good spot.












Plug in your fan connector.  I added some extra heat shrink for protection (not yet shrunk in this pic).










Tuck the wires out of the way, then reassemble.

Final Notes

When choosing a fan, I suggest using one that has a fluid dynamic bearing as those are the quietest, but a ball bearing is also a good choice for reliability.  Avoid sleeve bearing fans as they are not designed for longevity, and also will fail very quickly (sometimes within a couple months) if the fan is pointed up or down (or angled).  I used Arctic F8 80mm fans (available at this link, or in a 5-pack; eBay affiliate links).  These are a good balance between price, build quality and noise level.

Of course, this is just an overview of what I did for my situation.  Feel free to improve upon it, or change your steps to fit your needs.

73.

Sharing an NTFS partition in Ubuntu 10.04

Today I set up a different computer to host my shared files and printer. All my shared files are on an NTFS-formatted hard drive. I chose a standard Ubuntu desktop for the operating system because I also use the computer for listening to music and surfing the web.

I ran in to difficulties while trying to share the 500GB hard drive that has all my music and stuff on it.

Here is what I did to get it to work.

First you will need to have the partition automatically mount on boot up, and make you the owner of the mount point (as opposed to the root account). You can manually edit the fstab file if you want, but I found that using the "pysdm" program was quite easy (search for it in synaptic).

Once installed, it is under System > Administration > Storage Device Manager

On the left side of the screen is a list of hard disks in the computer, clicking the little arroe will display their partitions.

in my case it was sdb > sdb1

You will want to create a folder to mount the drive in (I put it in my home folder).

Set the mount point to this folder. Then in the box for options immediately after default type ,uid=1000 (where 1000 is your user ID, if it is a one-user system it is more than likely 1000). This tells the computer that you are the owner of the contents of that mount (by default it is root). Click apply then mount.

After you have the mount point configured you need to configure your smb.conf file. press Alt + F2 to open a run application dialog box, then enter: gksudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf and click Run.

Under the [global] section add or modify these options to allow guest access:

usershare allow guests = yes
security = share
guest ok = yes
guest account = your_logon_name_here

Replace your_logon_name_here with what name you use to log in with.

Save the updated smb.conf file. (Note: It is wise to backup config files before any changes are made, but I was lazy and didn't do it.)

Restart samba by entering sudo restart smbd in a terminal window.

Now you should be able to right-click the mount point in the file manager, click sharing options and configure your share.

This may not be the proper or best way to do it, but it worked for me.

How did we ever live without ESRB?

Playing some of my old NES games recently I realized that some of them that at the time of release would have been considered kid-friendly really arent by today's standards.

The first that I have noticed this with is Bubble Bobble. A Tiato arcade classic from 1986. While playing it on the NES I saw a bonus iten that looke remarkedly like a glass of wine. This could garner an M rating from ESRB for Alcohol consumption if you want to nit-pick.

The other title is Chip 'n Dale Rescue Rangers released by Capcom for the NES in 1990. The final boss of the game, Fat Cat, is smoking a cigar, and if I recall correctly one has to attack the cigar to defeat him. I seem to remember something about cigarette-smoking lizards as well, but I could be wrong. This would probably garner a T rating.

Honerable mention is Dr. Mario with its pill-popping antics. Although it officially has an E rating, one has to wonder about all those drugs the Plumber/Doctor hands out, err, excuse me, "vitimins."