TS-180S Display Fixed (Again!)

As I reported previously I discovered that the display in my TS-180S which is currently undergoing major restoration was again faulty.

The symptoms were either that it displayed just the "base" frequency of the band in use when it was powered up, "1.500.0" for example on Top Band, "3.500.0" on 80m, or another sequence of numbers unrelated to anything.  None of these numbers changed when the bandswitch was operated with the set switched on.

A couple of nights ago I decided to have a look with my test gear to find out what was going on, or not.

The trickiest part of the whole operation is extracting the display from the radio, and conversely refitting it after investigation, and this struggle led me to suppose before I started that the fault was induced during the arduous refitting after the previous repair, and the consequential tidying up of the cable harness.

This was soon proved not to be the case as investigation with an oscilloscope quickly led me to the conclusion that (a) there was plenty of 40-40.5 MHz signal from the premix unit but (b) there was no gate signal in the digital counting chain.

So attention returned to the previously repaired divide unit which sits underneath the main counter board, and so consequently the whole caboodle had to be extracted once again from the radio so I could get at it.

Well at least I was well practiced at this, and knew what to do (familiarity doesn't imply enjoyment!), so eventually, after cutting some of my nicely installed cable ties, and much cussing, I had the recalcitrant unit upended so I could investigate.

TS-180S Display Divide Unit

The marked up drawing above shows what I found, and I quickly came to the conclusion that either Q8 or Q9 would appear to be faulty, with the balance of probabilities suggesting Q8.

 

Fortunately a trawl through my spare parts revealed that I had a 4013 (Dual D-Type Flip-Flop) and also a 7400 if required, so I had a "cunning plan" to replace these parts in the radio the following evening.

 

 

 

 

Divider Board - Q8 Bottom Right

 

And so it came to pass.  The following evening Q8 came out as sweet as a nut (it was helpful that it was in the corner of the board and no immediately surrounding components, a new 14-pin turned pin socket was soldered in and the new chip installed.

 

Powering up the radio followed and to my great delight the correct frequency display appeared!  Yay!

 

Display Correct (note - upside down!)



Display ready to go back in ...



The display has now been refitted and is working as I type this, so after much effort, I am now back where I started and wondering (a) what on earth will go wrong next? and (b) how can one radio have had so many seemingly unrelated faults?    The only connection I can think of between this fault and the previous repair to the divide unit is that both of the faulty chips were CMOS types of presumably similar vintage?  Maybe the anti-static handling precautions at the factory weren't up to much at the time?

 



Faulty Q8 - Innocent Looking, eh?