Subject: RE: Jupiter Ace

From: "Dwight K. Elvey" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon Mar 17 18:00:00 2003

>From: Witchy <[email-masked]>
>
>> -----Original Message-----
>> From: [email-masked] [mailto:[email-masked]]On
>> Behalf Of Philip Pemberton
>> Sent: 17 March 2003 07:37
>> To: [email-masked]
>> Subject: Jupiter Ace
>>
>>     I also need a 32-ohm speaker, circular, about 1 inch in size
>> edge-to-edge. Has anyone got a spare for sale? These same speakers were
>> *apparently* used in some of the Sinclair machines (Spectrum and ZX-series
>> IIRC).
>
>Can't have been from what I remember; the original Speccy used a piezo
>'speaker', and later ones fed the sound output through the RF line....none
>of my Sinclair machines have that sort of setup, *but* the likes of the
>Oric-1, Camputers Lynx etc all did. Even the Microbees that I'm currently
>looking at have that sort of speaker....not sure if it's 32ohm though.
>
>cheers
>

Hi
 My Jupiter Ace has a small dynamic skeaker. I don't
recall how the graphics was done.
Dwight

---

From: "Philip Pemberton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Mar 18 01:03:00 2003

> recall how the graphics was done.
Mine used a 1" diameter circular speaker with a transparent Mylar (?) cone.
$DEITY knows what its impedance was, the wires going to the cone snapped off
while I was desoldering it... My schematic lists the speaker as a 220-ohm
speaker. Obviously I've read the label off the wrong part...
Does anyone know where I could get a 220-ohm speaker? Grant Searle
(http://www.home-micros.freeserve.co.uk/JupiterAce/JupiterAce.html) says he
got his from an old ZX Spectrum...
If it would help, I could put the speaker on my PC's scanner and upload a
100-or-so DPI picture of it to my website...

Thanks.
--
Phil.
[email-masked]
http://www.philpem.dsl.pipex.com/

---

From: Mail List <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Mar 18 01:41:00 2003

Hello Phil,

I don't know if the impedance would be correct, or if the sound
quality would be adequate, but one source of unusual speakers
is to pull them off old modems. I've collected a few over the course
of time.

Best Regards

---

From: "Philip Pemberton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue Mar 18 11:04:00 2003

> is to pull them off old modems. I've collected a few over the course
That's interesting - anyone got a spare modem (dead or alive as long as the
speaker is intact) or am I going to have to wait for the Ripon and DRS
Hamfest in April?

I also need a component layout for the Ace - can someone with an Ace and a
digital camera please remove the large metal heatsink from their Ace and
send me a close-up picture of the mainboard, especially the area directly
underneath the main RAMs (near the two ROMs).

Thanks.

---

From: "Witchy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 20 13:18:44 2003

> Sent: 18 March 2003 17:04
> Subject: Re: Jupiter Ace

That speaker looks very speccy-like to me; I'd forgotten it was that small!

Anyway, here y'go. ~540k images:

http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/ace-front.jpg
http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/ace-back.jpg

Make yer own machine from those :)

cheers

--
adrian/witchy
www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk - the online computer museum
www.snakebiteandblack.co.uk - monthly gothic shenanigans

---

From: "Philip Pemberton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 20 14:30:00 2003

> That speaker looks very speccy-like to me; I'd forgotten it was that
Yeah, it's a 220 ohm squeeker. And I need to find a replacement... As if I
don't have enough to do, what with the hole re-drilling and the track
re-building...

> http://www.binarydinosaurs.co.uk/ace-back.jpg
Thankyouthankyouthankyouthankyou :-)
Now I know where some of the buggered tracks go, the others are obvious.
What interests me is the date on the left-hand side of the keyboard. Is that
an assembly date of some sort? Hmm... Mine's got one too, but the isopropyl
rinse has lightened the ink a bit.

Anyway, thanks a lot Witchy. I guess I'll have to keep my eyes open for a
knackered speccy. Or I could ask in comp.sys.sinclair, but I'm not that mad
yet...

Thanks.

---

From: ben franchuk <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 20 16:46:00 2003

> don't have enough to do, what with the hole re-drilling and the track
squeeker !?  got mice problems. Can't you add a simple amp and drive a
regular speaker? Ben.

---

From: "Philip Pemberton" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 20 17:12:00 2003

ben franchuk wrote:
>> Yeah, it's a 220 ohm squeeker. And I need to find a replacement...
>> As if I don't have enough to do, what with the hole re-drilling and
>> the track re-building...
> squeeker !?  got mice problems.
A squeeker is generally defined as a speaker that can produce high frequency
sounds really well, but is crap at reproducing low-frequency (bass) sounds.
An example would be the piezo speaker in a laptop.

> Can't you add a simple amp and drive a
> regular speaker? Ben.
Maybe. But that would be a kludge at best and I'd like to get my Ace to look
reasonably original. Then again, there's always the Ace's earphone jack...
And if I can get a speaker that's small enough, it's likely that the Ace's
driver circuit could run it.

Later.

---

From: "Peter C. Wallace" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 20 17:51:00 2003

> driver circuit could run it.

How about a transistor radio sized matching (~5 --> 1) tranformer? You could
glue that to the back of an 8 ohm speaker.

> Later.

Peter Wallace

---

From: "fixxxer" <[email-masked]>
Date: Thu Mar 20 18:24:00 2003

Try an old pair of headphones, many use poly diaphragms for the acoustical
output and the headset element should be about the right size (have a kid
with a broken set of headphones that they used on their walkman style
stereo?)

---

From: [email-masked] (Tony Duell)
Date: Thu Mar 20 18:35:01 2003

> An example would be the piezo speaker in a laptop.

Actually, what about using a piezo speaker here (one of those metal 
disk-type things you can get from Maplin). Possibly with a 220R resistor 
in parallel if the driver circuit wants to see a finite DC load resistance?

I won't sound very good, but then Aces are not known for their musical 
performance :-)

-tony

---

From: "Witchy" <[email-masked]>
Date: Sat Mar 22 07:22:22 2003

> Sent: 20 March 2003 20:30

No problem; the machine was sat behind me!

> keyboard. Is that
> an assembly date of some sort? Hmm... Mine's got one too, but the
> isopropyl rinse has lightened the ink a bit.

The handwritten one? I'd say so. The Ace started in '82 and ended in 83 so
it's a good guess. Sadly neither Richard Altwasser or Steve Vickers want to
talk to me about the Ace, which is a shame. I've found people from the likes
of Tandata, Newbury Labs, Grundy, Memotech, Nine Tiles and Camputers who
like talking about the history; shame the people who were part of the
pivotal time of home computing are silent. One of the Newbury people also
did work for Torch *and* had a hand in the Enterprise 64.

> knackered speccy. Or I could ask in comp.sys.sinclair, but I'm
> not that mad yet...

I've got a couple of cannibalised ones I can get the speaker from....just
got to find them! Watch this space.

cheers