While attending the 2017 edition of Mini Maker Faire at Aarhus central library (DOKK1) We (Labitat expedition) also went to the obligatory visit at OSAA (Open space Aarhus) and looted some stuff from their Limbo-shelves.
In between all the good stuff there, I found a Sony BDP-S360 BluRay-player. It went back home for exploring.
Upon powering-up it just sits there saying “Wait” on the VFD while making some mechanical noises.
As I have no interest in having a BD-player it was turned into parts. Nothing really useful was found inside. Bog-standard primary SMPS, 22 watts max output and mainboard with more or less single-chip-solution.
The mechanics had the old venerable KES-410-optical pickup (known from the ‘PS3 fat‘)
As I have a special interest in VFD’s (Vacuum Fluorescent Displays) (amongst other older display technologies) I took a closer look.
It has all the power supply circuitry onboard directly – usually the Filament-drive and VEE-supply is built-in in the main SMPS, but Sony apparently went for the simpler approach here. I like that!
2 minutes on Google yielded the service manual with nice schematics and pictures of the front panel-board foil and silkscreen.
Looking at the schematic for the power supply for the VFD it’s pretty bog standard-kinda-deal here.
Transformers have always been an interesting item – for most a “black box”. I would like to know the number of windings etc. So i took out the transformer, put it into Acetone for a minute and opened the core (the outer ring lifts off, revealing the windings.)
I documented my findings here, in case that it might come in handy for someone else hacking with VF-Displays
