There has been a development on the SMC2, finally. What with replugging the mech plugs onto the PCC and seeing it work correctly I popped all the pins out one at a time today on the mechanism plug and soldered the wires to the connectors in case of a loose crimp. The jukebox worked perfectly for about 30 minutes and then back to its old tricks. Hmmm….. I turned the jukebox off and an hour and a half later turned it on and it worked perfectly….for about 30-40 minutes. Something is heating up. Interestingly Ed Fischer, the inventor of the Gen2, called last night and among other things asked how the Gen2 was doing. I related the problems I’m having among others the fact it won’t do its built-in tests and the fact that after subbing in the repaired harness the Gen2 picked up the 100 selection it had been looking for but couldn’t “see”. And as posted before, once I selected 100 again the mech just scanned. I ordered another Gen2 for the SMC1 coming up. This is when I will find out if the first Gen2 is actually bad or not. For the time being, knowing that something is overheating I will test only with the Seeburg MCU. It has been rock solid. The boards look new. It came out of a very rare SMC2 Hideaway Unit.
The turntable looked terrible on the SMC1 mech. Most of the paint was missing. This turntable is painted flat black and has six chrome circles embedded throwing a little sparkle that is relected off of a chromed “mirror” as it rotates when playing a record. I can see where Seeburg got the idea for a disco ball for the SMC2. Aside from 1978 being the Disco Era anyway. I took the turntable off and was so glad that it basically slipped off. Most of them are difficult to remove and require some very careful “persuasion”. I popped the few circles still on it off and then sandblasted it. I rubbed it down with steel wool, cleaned it with a water based cleaner, taped off the center spindle hole and painted it several coats of flat black. I did this with it laying on its back so it remained unpainted just like original. It came out very nice and will look good as new once the chrome circles are epoxied back on. I love having a sandblaster to use for repainting parts. Paint will always show anything underneath including old paint pock marks and whatever cracks there are, missing spots, etc. Once sandblasted down to bare metal I have an absolutely smooth clean surface to start with just like the factory.
I tested Kevin C’s black and gray boxes and found no problems. When I initially tear these down I look of course for physical damage but will also reflow solder cracks almost always found around the long board interconnect pins and clean the edge connectors. These actions may well have fixed any problems. The boards will get recased and I will only charge a small checkout fee per box. They will be in the mail back to him tomorrow.
My Seeburg Life 