One of our SPARC volunteers, upon opening up one Sunday, found this board leaning up by our door - no note, no explanation. A proverbial "new-born kitten in a wicker basket". Questions to those in the industry have brought no answer as to the identity of the thoughtful donor, or station. Can anyone out there give us a clue? Please zoom in on the picture (shown as received) and look for identifying hints. What station did it come from?
This board had been taken out of service somewhat brutally - not just by cutting the external cables, but by cutting the wires right at the internal connectors. Most of the wires that were purely board-interconnect were gone. To get this console operational again was from square one! Perhaps it was square two, because a big bunch of the severed connectors were in the bottom of the tub, with one-inch pigtails on the crimped push-in pins. These were vital clues. Also we had the power supply and its interconnect cable. No Manual or documentation.
Pictured here is a portion of the backplane that still had some of the monitor and line output interconnect harness intact. There are many 15-pin backplane connectors. The top three belong to an input module. The next two rows are for the monitor (present) and talkback (missing) modules. The group at the bottom are the three output modules. Notice all the shielded-pair cables that have been cut. One bunch goes to the VU meters. The red-banded cable is from the outboard power supply.
The steps to bring the board back to life were: to create schematics from the modules by "reverse engineering". Next, the module edge connectors pins were traced by continuity to the backplane connector pins. Once the functions of all the pins on the backplane connectors were known, the cut connectors could be inspected to match their pin-out to their former locations. When all the required shielded-pair cables runs were spliced onto the one-inch pigtails between the right places, the board started to work. The VU meters and their lamps needed repair. An old CBC announce booth turret was adapted to the second microphone input channel. An old CBC XLR connector panel was harnessed to the module connectors for audio line connections.
With all this behind me, I happened to talk with a supportive ex-CBC tech who could put his hands on a manual. It provided valuable information I could not have guessed at - yet, at this point most of the work was behind me. Some blank panels were made up to fill the open gaps.
This board is presently the heart of our stereo control room for high-quality streaming to the internet.
Things to notice:
The reel-to-reels: Studer A-807 and (2) PR-99s, and AMPEX ATR-100.
The Technics SL-1300, TEAC CD-701 CDs, DA-30 DAT player, & cassettes.
The McCurdy/Technics (MkII & D) turntables.
The Auditronics 218 console, with X-Y scope