Light day for jukin’. I did something I rarely do-I took the 6000 project off the mech bench and put it under the big bench with a towel over the mech. Usually I plow ahead on projects until I’m finished. But, I’m convinced I need to hang the 6000 mech to keep it from shearing a gear. As of now I’m kicking around an idea using 2 inch angle iron for a support to do so. Wish I had my welder. Much easier to run a couple beads than to drill holes and bolt it together. I gave the welder to a close friend to use on his hot rod project. Bobby the Mopar Man out in Portland! The ESP is selecting perfectly but with the additional problems with the audio I decided to get the radio/amp straightened out then get back to it. That mechanism is a load to lift off the bench. I staggered with it and managed to get it under the other bench without hurting the Camaro or myself.
To this end I dug out the mechanism for the SMC2 Hideaway. This is a project I’ve been looking forward to for a couple years. Very rare piece. Its serial number is 102. I’m hopefully convinced that Seeburg started this serial string at 100 and this is #2. I have no concrete proof whatsoever but a fellow can dream. I plan on getting it completely working and restored plus connect a wallbox to it. Shortly after I got the hideaway I kept an eye open and snagged a nice one on ebay for a decent price. This unit had at one time been used to run wallboxes which is what a hideaway is designed for. The operator hid it away somewhere out of sight at the location and ran wires to the wallboxes. Remote speakers ran from its amplifier were used as well. Should connect my DDS speakers to it. This had the rare as hell blue box decoder in it, two terminal strips that had remnants of wallbox wiring and two power supplies. With two power supplies a maximum of 16 of the Digital Electronic Consolettes or DEC’s could be ran. I have a lot of experience with these wallboxes. I’ve hung and ran wiring for about a hundred of them. I did a lot of route repair on them and electronic repair on the boards. I even had what was probably the last two working wallbox locations in Dallas county back in the 90’s with both Donna’s Kitchens restaurants. After the monster 6000 mech I practically skipped from the shed to the bench carrying the SMC mech. Tomorrow I’ll tear it down and wash it.
Another reason I wanted to get to the SMC2 was that I sold the SMC3 to a fellow in Austin. He’s using it commercially. He wants to run a wallbox with it behind the bar. I mentioned that he needed the very rare hard to find blue box and I’ll be darned if he didn’t locate two of them. That and a wallbox. He brought them by last week. With a running and working SMC I can test his stuff and make the harnesses he’ll need as well. I’m a bit ahead of the game. I made sure while restoring the SMC1 and 3 to test the hideaway CPU and PCC. They work. That’s half the battle with an SMC, maybe more.
I finished cleaning the plastic cases for the five black boxes I’m renovating. The boards have already passed their initial testing. Tomorrow I’ll case the boards, test them once more, put tamper stickers on them and put them in stock. They are a steady seller. I do wish I’d sell some gray boxes. I’m afraid I went all out at one time collecting the hard to find gray boxes. I’ve got almost 40 of them. People found out I was buying and I was able to get a bunch.
I finished the day with the TSR6 on the kitchen table “bench”. The first step after confirming transformer voltages is cutting one lead of each of the capacitors to get them out of circuit. This helps give an accurate reading when I ohm all the resistors out. Pleasant surprise, all the resistors are good. It’s typical to have 2-3 bad or out of tolerance, really, by measuring way more than its value.I keep them to 10% over/under as they were designed. Any replacements must be 5% by my decision. I have replaced as many as 12 resistors in these units before. This TSR6 did not have a stressful life. Or someone made sure to test and replace tubes on a regular basis. Going into a home environment it will continue to lead an easy life.
My Seeburg Life 