Sept 18, 2009
(apparently the 890 is the same as the 885 - I do not actually know but thought I'd put it here to aid searchers.)
I recently picked up a complete Altec Lansing ADA885 4.1 THX speaker system - Goodwill - $20 : large subwoofer with all circuitry, and 4 sats. This is a 10 year old system. Has SPDIF in!
Very quickly I noticed that it had great sound. Also equally quickly I noticed that the subwoofer would rather quickly stop working. sometimes there was a bit of whistling before it died.
Did lots of googling. Found this thread
http://www.computerforum.com/152154-altec-lansing-ada885-sub-cutting-out.html
which is why I am posting this info on this forum - hopefully folks googling will find it.
It became quickly apparent that lots of folks had 885 subwoofer problems. Altec Lansing said neither schematics nor replacement circuitboards were available.
DO NOT DO ANY OF THIS UNLESS YOU TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR SAFETY AND THE CONDITION OF YOUR SYSTEM.
At this writing, a manual is available in zip download from Dell at
http://dell.driversdown.com/dell-drivers-downloads/Altec-Lansing-Altec-Lansing-ADA-885_5447.shtml
There are 2 ways to test the speaker system:
press the button on the back of the subwoofer case and it cycles through. Press and hold the MODE button on the right front sat until it says "noise" then release and it will put noise out sequentially until you press MODE again.
The beast:
1. Unplug it unless you are certifiable.
2. Flip it over. There are 7 screws holding the bottom on: 1 is by the sat ("sat" == "satellite") plugs and 2 are under the little felt pads on the tall feet, and 2 obvious in the middle.
3. Gently raise the bottom such that you realize that 3 cables are holding it down. Eyeball the green-green-green-white-black-white (or whatever that is, I forget) connector and unplug that cable. Gently.
4. You can leave the smaller 4-wire cable connected and ignore the power cord/fuse, and just tilt the bottom back 90 degrees to the base. DO NOT PUNCTURE THAT BIG BEAUTIFUL SPEAKER.
Okay, kiddies. Now, one problem is that when you plug the unit in, the little front light does not light. (this system was apparently intended to be left on 24/7)( I'm betting that 99% of subwoofer failure is due to abuse of neighbors).
1. Check the fuse in the bottom panel by the power cord - the cap unscrews. it is a slowblow but I forget what amperage 3 amp I believe - not much. Replace if bad.
2. If you look at the circuitboard stack attached to the bottom that you can now easily view - near where the 5-pin connector that you unplugged, goes, you will see something printed on the circuitboard saying something like replace these fuses with 1 amp slow blow fuses, and an arrow pointing to what looks kindof like 2 half watt resisters. ----- AYE - there's the rub! because to remove either of them you have to be good with a soldering iron, or remove the entire circuitboard stack to get access to the bottom. I did in fact blow one of these at some point when I was initially playing with it. It took me quite a while to just find the durn things. I verified that one was open with a simple ohmmeter/continuity checker. I made a judgement that the problem was transient, so I made the judgement to simply jumper it with a couple strands from some 22 ga stranded (so if there really WAS a prob it would melt the strands) and soldered them from the top. YOU NEED TO USE YOUR OWN JUDGEMENT HERE.
Other than that, there is probably nothing important for you on these 2 boards, though I did remove the smaller top one so that I could bore out the hole for the RCA SPDIF connector as my cables wouldn't fit. But that is not really necessary.
Okay - so realized that I had to go deeper into the abys:
The speaker is held on by 6 bolts (they are longer and bigger than the bottom bolts so easy to keep separate). DON'T PUNCTURE THE SPEAKER. Remove the screws and then use a flat-blade screwdriver or something to gently pry one side of the speaker up away from the particle board. Gently pull the speaker out - there's only about 8" of cable available so find a SAFE place to lean it.
Notice the absolutely gorgeous toroidal power transformer in the cavity. Some wires go up through the particle board to the cable you unplugged, and other wires go to a box, bolted to the underside of the particle board.
Remove the box: there are 4 bolts holding the box in place - 2 may be hidden under the sealing glue around the wires on the pass-throughs. Loosen the 4 screws completely and the box will drop down. The screws go into 4 little tabs on the top of that box and you do not want to bend those tabs!!!
Now counter space (particle board) gets limited so speaker goes to left and box goes to right. There are 4 end-screws on the box - remove and label them. Remove the box top (and mail it to me with 23 million dollars for your FREE spiderman miniature xerox copy).
Take 3 tranquilizers.
When I took my box top off, I saw a board that had clearly been badly abused - several 1" size mounds of charred circuitboard.
Now the fun began. I removed the 3 cables from the circuit board (they are glued but an exacto knife will quickly release them) , and then the 4 screws holding that circuitboard to the box bottom and so had circuit board in hand.
This circuit board is powered by the 3 (orange?) wires coming from the toroid. There is a full wave rectifier and a bunch of filtering capacitors. Then there are 2 amplifiers, side by side. (the amp chips are bolted to that side heat sink.)
In my case, it was the area around the little toroid/chokes that had fried in both of them. Did I mention that 2 capacitors fell out of the box when I opened it? - one was a little cylinder (electrolytic) cap and the other was a 0.56 ceramic cap. Amusingly its mate in the other amp had extruded it's guts and looked like it was giving birth to a miniature aluminum foil factory (capacitors are essentially just lots of aluminum foil with a layer of some insulator - so it can store a charge, or pass a certain frequency) - it had gotten so hot in there it simply melted the solder on the circuit board until enough items fell off and if stopped functioning.
I carefully scrapped the charred materiel away and tried to dust it off - clean and pretty is good in electronics! one tiny trace had clearly burnt through so I replaced it by soldering a small jumper to 2 points an inch away.
I removed the cap that was giving birth. The one that had fallen out (0.56uf) had left it's imprint on the other amp in the same relative position. More about this in a minute...
Everything else looked good so I decided to put it back together and see where I was at.
Nothing... - that is, the sats worked fine, but nothing at all on the subwoofer. So much for "pretty"!
I tried inserting that 0.56uf cap into it's original home, and noticed that the little toroid/choke for that amp got VERY HOT.
I tried it in the other amp and got the same result, with that amp's toroid/choke. HOT!!! By the way, I do have a cap meter and it registered very close to 0.56uf - I did wonder if it was shorted, but nope!. (meter I'm using here is a cheapie $25 from Sears pocket multimeter 82351 - a meter that does cap! at $25!
I did try putting back that electrolytic cap, but it seemed not to make any difference so it's in my parts bag.
Anyway, I was totally baffled that absolutely nothing was coming out of the speaker.
I finally focused in on the small black box on that circuit board labeled Omron G6B-2214P-US . I googled and found a pdf and quickly found that it was a relay with the 2 pins nearest the little mark rectangle was the 5VDC coil. With power connected, I measured 4.7VDC across the coil but it was not firing (no "click"). So I shorted 3 to 4 along one side, and 5 to 6 along the other side, and voila! boom!
http://www.omron.com/ecb/products/pdf/en-g6b.pdf
part way down the pdf page 6 of 7 is the wiring diagram for the 2214 relay.
Well, sorta...
actually, I found that one amp was putting out noises like something wasn't properly grounded, while the other one worked. I found this out by playing with the larger 4-pin connector to that little board in the box, that is connected to the 2 - count them - TWO coils on the speaker!!!
This squealing was independent of whether the little 4-pin connector from the decoder board (board fastened to bottom) was plugged in or not.
So eventually, I simply removed the red wire from the large 4-pin plug, that related to the squeal, so I effectively was driving only one of the speakers coils. (these pins are easy to remove - press in on that nub in the side window and it slides out.)
Later, I found that connecting the 2 red wires together (of this large 4-pin plug going to the speaker), gave me full bass - driving both coils with one amp - never would fly if I needed a lot of volume, but I'm in a small apt in a noise sensitive area....... so actually I wound up connecting some 22 ga zip wire - one to the red pin that I was using and one to the other hanging red wire, and running this pair out the front so I could have disturb-the-neighbors bass if I wanted, by twisting that pair together, or not, as I wish. and as the source changes.
Okay, this all worked well, but then, of course, I started getting a THUMP from the subwoofer when I shut the speakers off (I plugged my speakers into a switchable power-strip that is sitting by my keyboard - I shut them off when not using them).
The reason for this is that I had shorted out the relay contacts - THAT was the purpose of that relay!!!!!!! Prevent power-off thump!
Okay, took the whole thing back apart again - be careful tightening the speaker screws - that's only particle board and strips easily! I had a 5VDC wall wart (looks like a power supply to an old samsung cell phone I once had?) . So I cut the traces leading up to the coil of the relay on the little circuitboard in the box, soldered in the wall wart, threaded it all back out, put it back together, and LOVE IT!!!
I think one important thing here is that the 2 amps are missing a few parts but 1 still works.
Luck was a huge factor in my success.
Your mileage will definitely vary depending on what is burnt out.
If that had not worked, I had considered
1: picking up another 885 on craigslist. and hoping for the best.
2. finding a stereo hifi power amp at Goodwill and wiring that in between the
A. small 4 wire plug that goes from upper board to little board in box.
-and-
B the large 4-pin plug in the little box that goes to the 2 coils on the speaker.
This would retain the valuable stuff - the speaker, and the speaker box, and all the circuitry mounted to the bottom.
Hope that helps.
I am not an expert. Everyone's case is different. No, I won't try to fix yours. Maybe this will help geeky folk!
(apparently the 890 is the same as the 885 - I do not actually know but thought I'd put it here to aid searchers.)
I recently picked up a complete Altec Lansing ADA885 4.1 THX speaker system - Goodwill - $20 : large subwoofer with all circuitry, and 4 sats. This is a 10 year old system. Has SPDIF in!
Very quickly I noticed that it had great sound. Also equally quickly I noticed that the subwoofer would rather quickly stop working. sometimes there was a bit of whistling before it died.
Did lots of googling. Found this thread
http://www.computerforum.com/152154-altec-lansing-ada885-sub-cutting-out.html
which is why I am posting this info on this forum - hopefully folks googling will find it.
It became quickly apparent that lots of folks had 885 subwoofer problems. Altec Lansing said neither schematics nor replacement circuitboards were available.
DO NOT DO ANY OF THIS UNLESS YOU TAKE FULL RESPONSIBILITY FOR YOUR SAFETY AND THE CONDITION OF YOUR SYSTEM.
At this writing, a manual is available in zip download from Dell at
http://dell.driversdown.com/dell-drivers-downloads/Altec-Lansing-Altec-Lansing-ADA-885_5447.shtml
There are 2 ways to test the speaker system:
press the button on the back of the subwoofer case and it cycles through. Press and hold the MODE button on the right front sat until it says "noise" then release and it will put noise out sequentially until you press MODE again.
The beast:
1. Unplug it unless you are certifiable.
2. Flip it over. There are 7 screws holding the bottom on: 1 is by the sat ("sat" == "satellite") plugs and 2 are under the little felt pads on the tall feet, and 2 obvious in the middle.
3. Gently raise the bottom such that you realize that 3 cables are holding it down. Eyeball the green-green-green-white-black-white (or whatever that is, I forget) connector and unplug that cable. Gently.
4. You can leave the smaller 4-wire cable connected and ignore the power cord/fuse, and just tilt the bottom back 90 degrees to the base. DO NOT PUNCTURE THAT BIG BEAUTIFUL SPEAKER.
Okay, kiddies. Now, one problem is that when you plug the unit in, the little front light does not light. (this system was apparently intended to be left on 24/7)( I'm betting that 99% of subwoofer failure is due to abuse of neighbors).
1. Check the fuse in the bottom panel by the power cord - the cap unscrews. it is a slowblow but I forget what amperage 3 amp I believe - not much. Replace if bad.
2. If you look at the circuitboard stack attached to the bottom that you can now easily view - near where the 5-pin connector that you unplugged, goes, you will see something printed on the circuitboard saying something like replace these fuses with 1 amp slow blow fuses, and an arrow pointing to what looks kindof like 2 half watt resisters. ----- AYE - there's the rub! because to remove either of them you have to be good with a soldering iron, or remove the entire circuitboard stack to get access to the bottom. I did in fact blow one of these at some point when I was initially playing with it. It took me quite a while to just find the durn things. I verified that one was open with a simple ohmmeter/continuity checker. I made a judgement that the problem was transient, so I made the judgement to simply jumper it with a couple strands from some 22 ga stranded (so if there really WAS a prob it would melt the strands) and soldered them from the top. YOU NEED TO USE YOUR OWN JUDGEMENT HERE.
Other than that, there is probably nothing important for you on these 2 boards, though I did remove the smaller top one so that I could bore out the hole for the RCA SPDIF connector as my cables wouldn't fit. But that is not really necessary.
Okay - so realized that I had to go deeper into the abys:
The speaker is held on by 6 bolts (they are longer and bigger than the bottom bolts so easy to keep separate). DON'T PUNCTURE THE SPEAKER. Remove the screws and then use a flat-blade screwdriver or something to gently pry one side of the speaker up away from the particle board. Gently pull the speaker out - there's only about 8" of cable available so find a SAFE place to lean it.
Notice the absolutely gorgeous toroidal power transformer in the cavity. Some wires go up through the particle board to the cable you unplugged, and other wires go to a box, bolted to the underside of the particle board.
Remove the box: there are 4 bolts holding the box in place - 2 may be hidden under the sealing glue around the wires on the pass-throughs. Loosen the 4 screws completely and the box will drop down. The screws go into 4 little tabs on the top of that box and you do not want to bend those tabs!!!
Now counter space (particle board) gets limited so speaker goes to left and box goes to right. There are 4 end-screws on the box - remove and label them. Remove the box top (and mail it to me with 23 million dollars for your FREE spiderman miniature xerox copy).
Take 3 tranquilizers.
When I took my box top off, I saw a board that had clearly been badly abused - several 1" size mounds of charred circuitboard.
Now the fun began. I removed the 3 cables from the circuit board (they are glued but an exacto knife will quickly release them) , and then the 4 screws holding that circuitboard to the box bottom and so had circuit board in hand.
This circuit board is powered by the 3 (orange?) wires coming from the toroid. There is a full wave rectifier and a bunch of filtering capacitors. Then there are 2 amplifiers, side by side. (the amp chips are bolted to that side heat sink.)
In my case, it was the area around the little toroid/chokes that had fried in both of them. Did I mention that 2 capacitors fell out of the box when I opened it? - one was a little cylinder (electrolytic) cap and the other was a 0.56 ceramic cap. Amusingly its mate in the other amp had extruded it's guts and looked like it was giving birth to a miniature aluminum foil factory (capacitors are essentially just lots of aluminum foil with a layer of some insulator - so it can store a charge, or pass a certain frequency) - it had gotten so hot in there it simply melted the solder on the circuit board until enough items fell off and if stopped functioning.
I carefully scrapped the charred materiel away and tried to dust it off - clean and pretty is good in electronics! one tiny trace had clearly burnt through so I replaced it by soldering a small jumper to 2 points an inch away.
I removed the cap that was giving birth. The one that had fallen out (0.56uf) had left it's imprint on the other amp in the same relative position. More about this in a minute...
Everything else looked good so I decided to put it back together and see where I was at.
Nothing... - that is, the sats worked fine, but nothing at all on the subwoofer. So much for "pretty"!
I tried inserting that 0.56uf cap into it's original home, and noticed that the little toroid/choke for that amp got VERY HOT.
I tried it in the other amp and got the same result, with that amp's toroid/choke. HOT!!! By the way, I do have a cap meter and it registered very close to 0.56uf - I did wonder if it was shorted, but nope!. (meter I'm using here is a cheapie $25 from Sears pocket multimeter 82351 - a meter that does cap! at $25!
I did try putting back that electrolytic cap, but it seemed not to make any difference so it's in my parts bag.
Anyway, I was totally baffled that absolutely nothing was coming out of the speaker.
I finally focused in on the small black box on that circuit board labeled Omron G6B-2214P-US . I googled and found a pdf and quickly found that it was a relay with the 2 pins nearest the little mark rectangle was the 5VDC coil. With power connected, I measured 4.7VDC across the coil but it was not firing (no "click"). So I shorted 3 to 4 along one side, and 5 to 6 along the other side, and voila! boom!
http://www.omron.com/ecb/products/pdf/en-g6b.pdf
part way down the pdf page 6 of 7 is the wiring diagram for the 2214 relay.
Well, sorta...
actually, I found that one amp was putting out noises like something wasn't properly grounded, while the other one worked. I found this out by playing with the larger 4-pin connector to that little board in the box, that is connected to the 2 - count them - TWO coils on the speaker!!!
This squealing was independent of whether the little 4-pin connector from the decoder board (board fastened to bottom) was plugged in or not.
So eventually, I simply removed the red wire from the large 4-pin plug, that related to the squeal, so I effectively was driving only one of the speakers coils. (these pins are easy to remove - press in on that nub in the side window and it slides out.)
Later, I found that connecting the 2 red wires together (of this large 4-pin plug going to the speaker), gave me full bass - driving both coils with one amp - never would fly if I needed a lot of volume, but I'm in a small apt in a noise sensitive area....... so actually I wound up connecting some 22 ga zip wire - one to the red pin that I was using and one to the other hanging red wire, and running this pair out the front so I could have disturb-the-neighbors bass if I wanted, by twisting that pair together, or not, as I wish. and as the source changes.
Okay, this all worked well, but then, of course, I started getting a THUMP from the subwoofer when I shut the speakers off (I plugged my speakers into a switchable power-strip that is sitting by my keyboard - I shut them off when not using them).
The reason for this is that I had shorted out the relay contacts - THAT was the purpose of that relay!!!!!!! Prevent power-off thump!
Okay, took the whole thing back apart again - be careful tightening the speaker screws - that's only particle board and strips easily! I had a 5VDC wall wart (looks like a power supply to an old samsung cell phone I once had?) . So I cut the traces leading up to the coil of the relay on the little circuitboard in the box, soldered in the wall wart, threaded it all back out, put it back together, and LOVE IT!!!
I think one important thing here is that the 2 amps are missing a few parts but 1 still works.
Luck was a huge factor in my success.
Your mileage will definitely vary depending on what is burnt out.
If that had not worked, I had considered
1: picking up another 885 on craigslist. and hoping for the best.
2. finding a stereo hifi power amp at Goodwill and wiring that in between the
A. small 4 wire plug that goes from upper board to little board in box.
-and-
B the large 4-pin plug in the little box that goes to the 2 coils on the speaker.
This would retain the valuable stuff - the speaker, and the speaker box, and all the circuitry mounted to the bottom.
Hope that helps.
I am not an expert. Everyone's case is different. No, I won't try to fix yours. Maybe this will help geeky folk!
