It's all good junk here.
Sunday, July 12, 2026 at 15:26:33
I recently did an unboxing for a Radioddity GS-10B Pro. The included battery charger didn’t work, and a friend offered to help me open it up to see if we could figure out what was going on.
I had to refuse his method…
Projects From the Bottom Drawer YouTube channel: https://www.youtube. … bottomdrawerprojects
Thursday, June 18, 2026 at 09:35:23
I recently picked up a big lot of test equipment. There was a unique R-C bridge and this EICO 150, both of which I wanted, as well as a couple of old Leader RF generators and a couple of meters. Other than the first two items, most of the stuff was in really poor condition (foreshadowing!) and was of little interest - or was broken beyond repair.
The EICO 150 was the biggest piece I was interested in, as I have one already and wanted to obtain another for comparison and other purposes.
However…as I found out all of this equipment had been modified to extremes over the years. Here’s the front panel:
The trim ring on this, while intact in the original pictures, was completely shattered when it arrived. I tried to claim insurance on it, but the seller just said they couldn’t do it as it was all packed in the box. Well…yes, but there was very little packing material for the equipment itself. This stuff was shipped by airline, and got tossed around. All of this stuff was knocked about and this piece in particular was quite smashed.
Fortunately, a friend was able to model a trim ring, and we’re waiting on some gray filament to make a test print. Stay tuned on that one, I’ll post the files as soon as I have them and we’re happy with the quality.
The back was in ok shape, one of the cord mounts was bent. This looks to be a chassis problem and can be knocked back into shape. The cordset, however, is a mess and will need to be replaced.
Inside, it’s even worse. I could see there were some changes made just by peeking in the hole left by the ring. But to what extent, I have no idea.
That’s certainly not the OEM amp board. It’s also not the OEM power supply. Everything has been modified. The underside has a bridge rectifier power supply with a few parts just floating in the air. Did they come off their terrible joints, or were they placed like that? I have no idea.
That’s the amplifier board. It’s using an AN214, an old-school power amp from Panasonic. This one has the Matsushita triangle on it, and of course Panasonic was one of their imprints. It commonly showed up in low-power consumer electronics, and is usually rated around 4W. This board probably came out of such a device, but who knows. It’s obviously pretty old.
That’s not supposed to be there. It’s an across-the-line capacitor and looks to have come from an old radio or television of the 1960s. Soldering is poor to terrible on all of these connections.
Pretty much all of the switches have been cleaned of their connections.
The meter drive is similarly messy.
Even the power transformer has been changed out. If the label on the top is correct, it says 15V 1A, which is much less than the higher voltage unit originally present.
So…the million dollar question. Does this thing actually work?
Yes. It does, and is actually very quiet - i.e. no noise. This amp board is quite well made.
I want to make this thing work properly, so it’s going on the bench at some point. There’s a lot of cleanup, and I may lay out a board for it, just to see what I can do.
Stay tuned!
Next part of this series: https://wereboar.com … t-2-a-new-trim-ring/
Manual: https://wereboar.com … 0and%20Parts.pdf.zip
YouTube feed: https://www.youtube. … yAcib71v-995pS_-4jDr
The YouTube feed is for both the original device and this one. Videos are still being posted to this list.
Trim ring stepfile: https://wereboar.com … 0trim%20ring.stp.zip
Sunday, June 14, 2026 at 14:46:00
We weren’t sure what the day was going to bring, it looked decent but was promising rain later.
While the rain did hold off, it started raining shortly after we left. Later that afternoon, it became dangerous, including a tornado touchdown somewhat north of the area. This was followed by torrential rains, and then a lovely cool evening.
There was some good stuff at the show this year, with more of the kinds of things I go for than I saw at Dayton this year. I picked up more at this show, things I can actually use (and one project) so it was a pretty decent show. In all, I think the threat of rain kept some away, but there was a good turnout nontheless.
here’s what i saw at the show:
The Heathkit Distortion Analyzer came home with me, I have a better chance of getting this one operational than the EICO unit i had earlier (Later me says it works, and seems to work quite well!) Stay tuned, that one will show up on the bench at some point. I also brought home the Heathkit supply, as well as both of those Radio Shack benchtop meters. There were a few parts in there as well, in all it was a good show for me.
Next show is Columbus, Ohio at the Shriners Temple on August 1st. See you there!
Monday, May 18, 2026 at 07:18:48
Saturday at the Dayton Hamvention promised rain.
And it did. Wet Pac-Man was on his way.
We mostly toured the buildings, but I went away disappointed as there were no test equipment vendors present - in fact, the only real TE vendor there was Bird, but they aren’t selling to me. The guy I was with was interested, however, as he needs a commercially available handheld SpecAn that isn’t a Chinese company.
I did pick up a few things here and there, but not much. Mostly rain discount stuff.
Here’s what I saw at the show:
We left probably close to 1PM, as many of the flea market vendors had started to pack up. I skipped Sunday as there wasn’t anything I wanted to see, I was aching, and I wanted to play with some of the things I bought.
Next show is Breezeshooters in Butler, PA. See you there!
Monday, May 18, 2026 at 07:04:32
Friday turned out to be a just slightly damp day at the show, we had a little rain but it cleared off quick. We toured the flea market, and saved the buildings for Saturday due to the forecast of heavy rains. The steak tips and mashed potatoes vendor wasn’t here this year, so bourbon chicken and a banana milkshake subbed in it’s place.
This year, the mobile AM CB stuff was almost all gone save a few units here and there. Hobby-level test equipment, i.e. the EICO/Knight/Heath/etc. was almost not present, save for a bunch of those crappy RF generators that no one really wants - the bridges and tracers and things are pretty much no longer for sale. At least, not at Dayton. Of course, the piles of plastic radios and old televisions are long gone, and even the big boat anchor radios are vanishing. I think I saw maybe 1 Hallicrafters S-38 unit for sale…
Things are changing, but there was still a lot to see:
We spent pretty much the entire day, heading out at 4:45 a few minutes before closing. We went Saturday as well, but I skipped out on Sunday.
Wednesday, April 29, 2026 at 06:02:42
If you want to mail order a Dayton Hamvention ticket, now is the time! You have until May 1st, after which tickets will be held will-call at the gate. This is for domestic orders, international orders are being held will-call right now.
Mail order ticket sales have ended. All sales are now will-call.
See you there!
Order your ticket here: https://hamvention.org/purchase-tickets/
Tuesday, April 21, 2026 at 08:57:30
I’ve added some new documents to the library, and I’m going to try and create a new zip every quarter.
This archive contains all of the documents I’ve collected for projects - at least ones that I can share. This is currently about 430MB, and is an archive of zipped files of many different kinds. Grab a copy here:
Dropbox: https://www.dropbox. … ujy&st=e7nvbey6&dl=0
The January archive is also available, but previous editions have been removed to save space.
The Google Drive link has been removed because Google decided to be rather unhappy with my video attempts. Sorry!
You can also download individual documents of interest directly from the archive: https://wereboar.com/docs/?dir=public
Most of these are zipped PDFs, although a few are folders of information about the device in question.
image courtesy of freepik
Monday, April 13, 2026 at 07:43:11
The first ‘fest of the season has come and gone. Notably, the dearth of CB radios from the past few years has started to fade. Unfortunately, all of the older stuff has started to fade away. There was still some interesting things to be seen, and I picked up a few interesting things for later projects and checkouts.
We topped the day off with a stop at Arthur Treachers’ Fish and Chips, and then headed home.
Next up is Dayton, I’m planning on going all three days this year. As a reminder, you can still mail order a ticket - internationally until Wednesday, and domestically until May 1st. See you there!
Monday, March 30, 2026 at 10:48:44
I’ve had this big USB hub in my rack for some years. It’s mostly provided power for USB devices, but had a few actual USB devices that needed data plugged into it.
I came home last Friday to a “BEEP” - something rebooted. As I was putting things away from work, “BEEP.” Ok, something’s wrong. The hub was power cycling continually…well, the switching supply inside probably decided to go to lunch and not come back.
There’s not really that much inside of the thing - a power supply and some USB hub boards. Here’s the supply, it’s a fairly beefy 5V, 14A unit.
It claims to be made by UMEC:
The supply itself doesn’t look damaged, so it probably just finally popped. Maybe something died on one of the USB stacks…I don’t know.
I looked up the part number. It’s referenced - in China. I suppose I could put a different supply in there, or even an external brick…but do I really want to? Not really, I can just tap off the 5V line that’s on the system already running the few RPi units I have left. This will probably wind up put back together, in the “to go” pile.
Later me edit: No, let’s fix it. https://wereboar.com … ring-my-big-usb-hub/
Thursday, March 26, 2026 at 11:53:59
This is an EICO 950A Resistor-Capacitor Bridge. It offers the things you’d expect from such a device. It’s odd in that it slots in-between the 950 and 950B, which were traditional EICO silver-face units. Not this one:
This one features EICO’s colorful scheme, much like the 145 signal tracer I wrote about a couple of years ago. It has comparator and leakage functions in addition to the standard R-C measurements. Leakage is provided by a neon bulb under a pilot jewel in the upper right corner, an unusual bayonet bulb that someone replaced with a standard #47 pilot, probably because they didn’t realize that it wasn’t working because it only lights when you’re using it…not when you turn it on.
The cabinet has seen some use and abuse.
Rusty Bottoms is playing this show tonight:
Even the inside is rusty.
The chassis shows a similar amount of rust. This thing had a wet, hard life.
That aside…let’s look at the inside.
Jay Hooks makes a lot of appearances here.
The underside, however, is “Mah boi, what did they do to you?”
Everything has j-hooks. Everything. Parts. Wires. Everything. ~~Why???
Exactly what was the previous owner trying to resolve here? Was the thing on fire? It amazes me this thing worked at all, especially with those capcitors flying around with no insulation. With all the wires being j-hooked to other wires…it’s like the person just replaced everything for no reason than to replace it.
I’m going to take this challenge, but I need to get a schematic first. I’ll look for one…stay tuned. Hopefully we can make this device a bit happier.
Next part of this series: https://wereboar.com … bridge-part-2-parts/
Wrapup and final thoughts: Coming soon.
YouTube playlist for the EICO 950A Rework: https://www.youtube. … XCviSJjIoCDM&pp=sAgC
Schematic: https://wereboar.com … %20Schematic.jpg.zip
Magic Eye Test (short): https://www.youtube. … m/shorts/hYwHlrx1nR8
