The subwoofer has a new foam surround. It’s one of the relatively few that attaches behind the cone. Have to wait 24 hours for the glue to set before giving it a test run.
Follow-up: Success! It works, and thanks to the plastic shims keeping the cone centered while doing the gluing there’s no rubbing.
My next repair project will be replacing the LCD panel in my 14″ HP laptop. Over the past year it’s developed a rather large and distracting defect.
As previously posted, I’m tackling the dreaded rotted foam problem that befalls all old woofers with suspensions made of that material. I was hoping to avoid removing the dust cap, but I determined that, in this case, the only way to keep the cone centered in the magnetic gap while gluing on the new foam surround would be to secure it in place by inserting plastic shims.
With the easiest part of the rotted foam removal done, and the dust cap removed, the replacement parts are sitting loosely in place. I knew the diameter of the new cap would be 0.125″ too small, but it was the best fit I could find. Unfortunately, that means I’ll have to glue the cap onto the points where the dual voice coil wires leave the cone. It’s too late to turn back now!
I’ve been busy with the final steps required to close out the family Trust that was entrusted to me by my late parents. I’m not done yet, but for now I’m back on my hi-fi repair projects. The foam ring has rotted in my old passive subwoofer from Radio Shack.
Some other old speakers I have also need their foam surrounds replaced. It’s like a kingdom being lost for want of a nail. My Sony CD MegaChanger and dual cassette deck just needed new belts, and lubrication for the CD drive rail, and they’re working perfectly again.
The New York Times has this article about Wisconsin-based Epic Systems. More than half of all patient records in America are stored and retrieved electronically using Epic’s software.
The article is worth reading, despite saying nothing about how Epic became so successful. When the company was starting out it bought operating systems from my former employer, and part of my job early on was generating customized O/S assemblies for Epic. So I know something about the company, and their story is much more interesting than knowing how its sprawling campus is decorated, which is the focus of the NYTimes article.
One important point of business about Epic Systems in the article is that the company is privately held. For contrast, I highly recommend this excellent piece in The New Yorker from last August, about another EHR (Electronic Health Record) company, the publicly traded Athenahealth.
Also in The New Yorker, Atul Gawande talks about the difficulties confronting doctors, including himself, who are required to use Epic’s software. (Note: There is no connection to Epic Games.) If you don’t want to read the article, there is this video explanation, smuggled out of a bunker in an undisclosed location.
https://youtu.be/7fy83E_pFNs
Gawande has no one to blame but himself, however, as his writings were influential on President Obama in requiring the move to electronic patient record keeping. Gawande now has an opportunity to further influence American healthcare, having been picked by Jeff Bezos, Warren Buffett, and Jamie Dimon to head up a new think-tankish venture.
A referesher on vinyl disc manufacturing.
I’ve been offline for a while because of a Verizon FiOS upgrade that went wrong, combined with my enduring commitment to flip-phones. Which prevented me from saying until now that I fixed my broken cassette deck.
Kudos to vintage-electronics.net for its tape drive belt kit and the installation tool for it. The tool helped to make the job a lot easier than I expected.
