[Madskp]

One more note to this test. The mute button on the MCL IR eye will also activate the BM5500 and set it in standby.

[Madskp]

This may be drifting a little away from the passive, but still relevant for the use of the IR eyes.

As observed in another thread the datalink conenctions are shared between the AUX and speakerlink connectors at least in a BM5500.

On the The MCL2A IR data from the IR eye is connected directly to the datalink connection

 

This made me think, can the IR eye be used connected directly to the datalink pin 6 on the BM5500 AUX connector. So I made a little 7 pin DIN connector with data and ground from the MCL IR eye connected to pin 6 and 2 and a wire to a set of headphones connected to pin 1, 4 and 2. 5V power from a bench supply connected ground and +5V wires of the IR eye.

Setting the IR eye to option 1, and covering the BM5500’s IR eye full control is possible.

 

[Madskp]

quattttro wrote:

I am not really sure about the cost effectiveness of such repairs:  The Beo4 was about £20 incl P&P, a new screen about £25 and a new battery cover £4.

Wouldn’t it be possible to transfer the display from a BEO4 with another defect, or are the different versions of the display?

I have a Beo4 with navi button that are use daily for my V1, and the display is missing a line, and the black paint on the case is scratched in several places, so I was thinking of using an a older (but in nicer condition) BEO4 as a donor for freshing it up.

[Madskp]

Guy wrote:

As you can see they clean up quite well as long as you are careful not to damage the rubber keyboards.

Nice result 🙂

Guy wrote:

The Video Terminal is interesting.  Initially I tried to test the AUX and TAPE button with my BeoSound 1, but then realised that it will only control video equipment, hence AUX is actually V.AUX (or DTV2) and TAPE is V.TAPE (or V.MEM).  I also discovered from an old thread that PRINT sends the PC command.

We got one of these video terminals at home when I was a kid, and I remember wondering what the Print button was for. Now I may even wonder more that it it equal to the PC command. What equipement was it for?

Also a funy little detail with the telephone symbol over the MUTE button as a kind of extra explanation of the function 🙂

 

[Madskp]

Guy wrote:

Madskp wrote:

We got one of these video terminals at home when I was a kid, and I remember wondering what the Print button was for. Now I may even wonder more that it it equal to the PC command. What equipement was it for?

According to this thread:https://archivedforum.beoworld.org/forums/p/38215/317414.aspx … it was supplied with the with the LX2800 and 2500 TVs amongst others. And the PRINT button may have been for printing out Teletext, although B&O never supplied a printer.

Ok that makes kind of sense as teletext was kind of the Internet of the 80’s, even though I’m not sure how such a printer would connect to a Beovision. Might have been preparation for future use though.

[Madskp]

The game Monopoly is called Matador in Denmark

 

[Madskp]

Madskp wrote:

I don’t have a BLC 1615 myself (yet), but will try if this is possible with the BLC 1611. Might not work the same way though as the BLC 1611 is not a link room product the same way as the 1615.

Just did a test with the BLC 1611, and that dit work.

The connection between the BLC 1611 AAL connector and the MCL2AV screw terminal is as follows:

BLC1611 pin 2 – > MCL2AV Brown GND R, Grey GND L, Shield GND

BLC1611 pin 1 – > MCl2AV Yellow L

BLC1611 pin 4 – > MCL2AV Green R

BLC 1611 pin 6 – > MCL2AV White Data

The MCL2AV set to option 1,5 for activating the PL connectors. I cannot comment on sound quality as I used a pair of headphones as PL speakers

As audiomaster on the ML side I used my Beoport with no IR eye connected to make sure that the IR signals was from the MCL2AV only.

Now it’s going to be exciting to see if it will also work with the BLC 1615 as that combination could make a ML link room with local datalink inputs

 

[Madskp]

Guy wrote:

Yes I suppose that both the BL1615’s AAL socket and the MCL2AV’s AUX/TV socket are expecting to communicate directly with a TV, hence cannot pass commands to each other. It’s a shame that the stand-alone BL1615 can’t be used to extract the audio from masterlink. Looking at the circuit diagram, there seems to be a couple of points where the ML ON/OFF could be by-passed, but I think that the TV would still need some sort of data command to turn its ML output on (even when the TV is already turned on).

A new thought regarding the use of the BLC 1615. In Guy’s test the connection was between the BL1615’s AAL socket and the MCL2AV’s AUX/TV socket, but as he noted this is not the way the communication is intended to be as for both sockets a TV is expected to be connected.

But then I came to think that a TV connected to a BLC 1615 can be compared to a link room speaker (which can only get audio and video sound from the A and V masters) which connect to Masterlink via the BLC1615.

The MCL2AV is seen from the MCL side also a link room speaker (although not with integrated speakers) with the same limitations in regards to only getting sound from the A and V masters. So maybe a connection between the MCL2AV’s MCL screw terminal connection and the AAL connector on the BLC 1615  could make sense to try.

In one of my other tests I have verified that the MCL2AV will accept Line level signals on the MCL screw terminal connector, so this should not be a limitation.

 

I don’t have a BLC 1615 myself (yet), but will try if this is possible with the BLC 1611. Might not work the same way though as the BLC 1611 is not a link room product the same way as the 1615.

[Madskp]

Dillen wrote:

It’s B&O alright. Not sure for what, though, but could be a RIAA, so perhaps an input adapter for a TV or a tape recorder.

Thanks for the answer. Looking closer I can also see that the DIN connections are definitely not B&O standard connected. It seems that pin 1, 2 and 4 are all connected across the 2 DIN plugs, and pin 3 are connected to pin 5 on the other connector.

Dillen wrote:

And the 56K resistor has a bad solder joint.

Well spotted 🙂

 

[Madskp]

matador wrote:

Madskp, I love you and am for sure following this.

Thanks for the kind words.

Madskp wrote:

I noticed different results for the connections PMUTE and +5VA St.BY. When the BL3500 was stand alone both would be at 5V in both standby and when activating the BL3500 with and audio command. However when I connected the 1611 converter both would be 5V in stand by, but drop to 0V when activating with an audio command.

Tried again, and might have been a little bit to tired or dizzy when I did it yesterday.

The value for PMUTE in standby is actually 4,59V where all other around is 5V, but it is still dropping to 0V when activating the BL3500 connected to the 1611.

However the +5VA St.BY is not, so I might have touched another pin when I tried that, but I guess the important one is the PMUTE signal as it is connected to the power amplifier.

I also tried the same test now connected with MCL to my BM5500, with the same result for PMUTE being 4,59V in standby and 0V when activated with a source.

Now we just have to figure out how to make use of that knowledge.

 

 

 

[Madskp]

Ok taking it to a deeper level of resarch now. I have tried to open up the BL3500 to try and acces the plug board, but it’s placed beneath several layers, and it seems that the wooferes also has to be removed and they are atteched with a combination of screws and double sided tape, so that has to be for another time.

However that display and IR reciever PCB in the front might give some insights.

The ribbon cable from the PCB contains several signals, so I decided to measure the with my multimeter when the unit was in standby and activated. After that I tried this again but this time with the 1611 converter connected to ML to se if anything was different.

I noticed different results for the connections PMUTE and +5VA St.BY.

When the BL3500 was stand alone both would be at 5V in both standby and when activating the BL3500 with and audio command.

However when I connected the 1611 converter both would be 5V in stand by, but drop to 0V when activating with an audio command.

Looking at the Block diagram for system control in the service manual I can see that the PMUTE signals ends in the power amplifiers for left and right respectivly.

So this indicates that when the speaker is not connected to ML it will not unmute the power amplifiers , and therefor not let sound through to the speakers in stand alone mode.

I will try to do the same test with MCL connected one of the coming days to see if this give the same result.

 

 

[Madskp]

Guy wrote:

A further thought: For datalink, we had discovered that Tape and CD use pin 7, whereas Phono uses pin 6, unless RIAA is built in (to the Beogram) in which case it uses pin 7 also. We had also thought that the MCL2AV circuit diagram was incorrectly showing datalink to Tape/CD pin 6 instead of 7. From the service manual, your BG2000 uses pin 6 for datalink. So does this mean that pins 6 and 7 are connected inside the MCL2AV, or has your BG2000 been modified?

Sorry. I forgot to mention that pin 6 and 7 on the CD connector on the MCL2AV is connected with a little piece of wire by a former owner. Therefore I could just connect the Beogram 2000 even though it has datalink on pin 6

[Madskp]

Lesteraction wrote:

When power is connected, the 1611 automatically configures to a video- or audio-master. Could you trick the 1611 into reconfiguring, then detach your BC2300 and connect the second source? Making or breaking connections while electricity is applied, however, is risky.

I think that is not a nessecary thing. At the start of the thread it was belived that the 1611 would have audio input on the DIN connectors pin 3 and 5 for both audio and video, but it turned out that the audio input is on pin 1 and 4 and the video (audio) input is on pin 3 and 5. Matadors drawing in this post shows how it is connected https://forum.beoworld.org/forums/topic/beolab-3500-and-1611-converter-settings/page/4/#post-14017

I think that the 1611 will adapt to being an audio and/or videomaster depending on what it is conencted to. When no audio and video master is connected it will function as both

[Madskp]

Guy wrote:

Out of interest, could you also control it using PHONO (N.RADIO)?

It didn’t react to that no, which I already expected.

I think i have an idea why. Looking at the diagrams for the Beomaster 5500 there are 2 datalink lines from the microcomputer TP1 and TP2. The one is for tape and CD, and the other is for Tape2 and Phono (CD2?). I think that it’s only the IR commands that differs, but internally there are only tape and CD (or phono) commands. The microcomputer then register the correct IR code and open the datalink for the correct DIN connector. As the MCL2AV has fewer DIN connecters than a Beomaster, it might just have a reduced version of the Microcomputer with only  one set of tape and CD commands. Just my thoughts without further insight to it.

Guy wrote:

Also looking forward to seeing this connected to the BLC to the NL world beyond!

Me too. Just taking deep breaths and preparing for a gigantic cable and settings mess 🙂

[Madskp]

I just aquired a working Beogram 2000 with some cosmetic issues, but none of the less working.

So I had to try it with the 1611 -MCL2AV combo

Setup:

BL3500 -ML – 1611 – datalink – MCL2AV – datalink – BG2000 (connected to CD input)

Control og the BG2000 was fully possible from the BL3500 with the use of CD command.

only issue was that I had to turn the volume to max as  I still need a RIAA amplifier.

[Madskp]

Guy wrote:

However, selecting either V.TAPE (A.MEM) or DVD2* would start the DVD1 playing Track 1, but further control (numbers, arrows or STOP/PAUSE) was impossible. A long press of the power button was still required to turned the DVD1 off.

Interesting that it would react to V.Tape commands, but not to DVD, but might be an anomily because it’s another link protocol than its made for.

Guy wrote:

So, I seem to have demonstrated limited direct use of AAL data, albeit not very useful!

Agree, no great usecase there for now

Guy wrote:

I will do further DVD1 experiments with MCL2AV when I can extract it from the box pile.

The dreaded mountain of boxes … 🙂 Looking forward to the testing though

 

[Madskp]

Guy wrote:

I had done limited testing of DVD1 to BL1611 here:  https://forum.beoworld.org/forums/topic/beolab-3500-and-1611-converter-settings/page/8/#post-14333 But I was trying to select using DVD command rather than CD, but in order to do the latter (and get sound) I would have to move the  audio pins from 3&5 to 1&4.  Of course I could just test control without audio.

Test without audio could be fine just to see if it does anything at all.

Seems like it didn’t respond to the DVD commands in the test you linked to. interesting to see if it could react to CD commands

[Madskp]

Guy wrote:

but next time I have the MCL2AV equipment out I will try it connected to the CD socket and see what happens.

Great 🙂

Guy wrote:

It could be that the DVD1 only responds to AAL commands rather than Datalink commands?

Yes maybe, Could be interesting to see how it responds to either command when connected to the 1611 converter also

[Madskp]

Guy wrote:

DVD1: Note: Madskp has just reminded me that I tried the following back in Jan 2021 as reported here:  https://archivedforum2.beoworld.org/forums/p/45162/326789.aspx#326789 I then tried connecting my DVD1 (with modified SCART to 7-pin DIN) to the AUX socket.  Witht the MCL2AV in L.OPT 1.X, the DVD1 could be selected using AV DVD (or AV SHIFT SAT on BL1000) and full control was possible to skip through CD tracks. It did however need a long press on the remote Off button to ensure that the DVD player went to stand-by.  (Note: SHIFT RADIO 4 did not open the AUX input or start the DVD1 – I hadn’t tried this before).

@Guy: Just a thought. When you tried testing with the DVD1 did you ever try if it would react to the CD command?

[Madskp]

Madskp wrote:

although it would be more simple if the beolink passive had an input.

And that lead my to another thought. Can the powerlink input in the Beolink passive be used while it is connected to Masterlink. So I made this setup:

1611 converter as Audiomaster – ML – Beolink passive – speaker cable -Passive speaker

And connected the PL output of an MCL2AV to the PL input on the BL passive.

MCL2AV in option 1.5 with iphone as input on the tape connector.

No response from the BL passive when activating the MCL2AV. Disconnecting ML from the PL passive and then it works, but the IR eye seems to be disable apart from the red LED.

[Author]

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