Radio Radio

The boss left this nifty old radio behind this summer. It's a Zenith All Transistor Royal 8. I don't know what the eight stands for. Eight transistors? That's a real leather case!



And that's real shiny metal there, too! It's a heavy little sucker!
And it has BOTH kinds, AM AND FM! And AFC!



And here are the guts. Feel free to count the transistors. This is so discrete!



So the deal is, I needed a six volt power supply for this baby. I found an appropriate wall wart, but it had the wrong connector. This guy take a little miniature phone plug. I found the adapters for a universal wall wart, but not THIS adapter, nor the universal wall wart, either!

So I'm standing around at lunch, watching some wimmen dump stuff in a dumpster. I see a cable. I pull it out. It has a universal wall wart attached! W00t! But, it doesn't have the correct adapter.

So, I'm at home. I'm warming up the soldering iron. I'm drawing the power jack schematic, gonna switch it out with an audio jack that I DO have the adapter for. I'm looking for the hank of small solder in a drawer. I find an adapter. An adapter for a universal wall wart. The CORRECT adapter. SCORE!

I plug the adapter in. The polarity is not indicated on the case of the radio. Of course. I've got a 50/50 chance of getting it right. I've possibly got a 50/50 chance of blowing a transistor or a capacitor. I plug it into the radio, I hear a noise from the speaker. Nothing else. I reverse the adapter, I plug it in. I've got RADIO!

The volume control is a little scratchy, but she works fine otherwise.

Sounds good, looks good!

Later!