aka – ‘Fixing that which is not yet broken’

5/27

Traced out the main components on the HF amplifier, found what looks like the main relay driver for the amp.
I’m pretty sure if I feed this 24v to trip the relay, it will force itself to be always-on regardless of what the computer says.

This will allow me to run the amplifier in all kinds of crazy conditions that are basically required for a Tesla Coil, but at the expense of tube protection interlocks.

Hence, if I mod this, it will probably end up as a bypass switch in a box next to the unit.
Label for the project will obviously be VBI-1, short for ‘very bad idea’.

But in the meantime I’m gonna look over the EEPROM data and see if I can’t make sense out of it. Will try doing a firmware dump later…

5/30 update – deep-dive in progress

I did manage to get a good firmware dump from the amp, and it looks like I can do ICSP live debugging which is nice.

5/31 update

I’ve mapped out some of the main functions and am currently drilling down into the routines that trigger the ‘gain too low’ interlocks. Might be a few more days but I think I’m actually gonna figure this out!