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Speakers and Screws

A project log for Real C64 Cyberdeck

Evolve a real c64 into a portable decking device. Obsolete? Maybe. Useless? Definitely NOT.

martin-goodwellMartin Goodwell 10/06/2022 at 11:170 Comments

The Speakers

The solution for having audio on the Cyberdeck was still missing. The unamplified speaker was barely audible.

So, I ordered an amplifier PCB and some speakers. The speakers arrived yesterday

So: where to put these? (just two of them, of course). And how to fix them?
Do I need to drill holes to get the sound out of the computers's case? Or is there "the perfect place" to put them?

After some back and forth (not looking at the right spots), I identified that the vents at the front of the case would be great because I wouldn't have to drill. 

The only downside of this: longboards (the earlier C64 mainboard revisions) probably won't fit into the case anymore, as the speakers occupy some of their space.

The white stuff underneath the speaker is double-sided glue tape. I used this to find out if the speaker collides with the keyboard, which is coming down from the top.

Once I was in the process of fitting the speaker to the vents (what would be the best position?), I found out by pure accident that the speaker had the same width as the vents themselves.

With this being clarified, I started to model a bracket that would allow me to keep the speakers in place.

And I just glued them to the case. Bottom line.

In case I want to remove the speakers one day, because I wanted to put a longboard in, these brackets are small enough to not collide with the mainboard. So, I could even keep them in, without a need to removing them.

Et voilà, the speaker and it's bracket :-)

Next question: how can I make sure that the speaker doesn't fall out?

I didn't want to glue it to the case. And I didn't want to glue something on top of the brackets to keep them in place. Because in case of necessary disassembly, glueing means breaking. And I didn't see a viable chance to mount screws anywhere, at least not in a meaningful way.

But again, the answer came by itself: the keyboard will sit on top of the speakers anyways. After some trial and error, I found out that the keyboard will not touch the speakers, it will sit about 5 millimeters above it.

So, I decided to put some soft pads on top of the speakers, which allow the keyboard to put enough pressure on them to keep them from moving.

These pads could be a tad lower, but the case still closes in a solid way and the when the case screws are in, everything sits tight.

The outside view shows that the speakers should have enough exposure to the outside to keep the 3-channel SID-sound coming :-)

From an audio perspective, all I need now is the amplifier board. This is supposed to arrive later today, or tomorrow, and I'll do a separate update about that.

The Screw

While I was in the process of mounting the speakers, I identified another pending issue with the case: a broken socket for the mainboard

The one in the top corner is the problem.

As I was warming up the 3d printer for the speaker brackets anyways, I decided to add another piece to the print job

It fits perfectly. And as screws usually don't go well together with FDM prints, I always go for inlets

With this in place, the board has much better fit again.

And it just feels great to improve something - especially this once-wasted case.

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