DM2 Mod Update

DM2 Mod Update
Posted on: 28.12.2008 by Javier Apreza
Alright, first off I'd like to apologize for my hiatus. It's been a solid four months since I've posted here. I had at ton of stuff going on during the summer, and then school started. It's the first time I've gotten a boatload of free time on my hands, so I've decided to do something with my old DM2-Turntable mod.

If you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, here is the original mod.

To update you guys, the mod was a complete and utter failure. It sucked. The turntable was the biggest problem. It was HUGE and took up half of my desk. It was also cheap plastic, the spindle (which is all the platter touched) was slightly bend and weakened by my mod, so the platter made this horrid scraping noise if pushed too hard, it was inconvenient to travel with, and honestly, I didn't believe it added much to my setup. It's been sitting under my bookshelf for the last few months. I didn't believe of it much.

And then I saw this.

It was like the apple falling on Newton's head. It solved all of my problems. It was extremely portable, and after cracking one open I really like the quality of the bearings and the feel to it. It's great. Now I just want to redo what I did in my original turntable mod, but have a question for you guys.

So we begin with pictures:

Here is that same mechanism, it's the basis for the DM2's jog wheels. (I don't know the name)



Here is my hard drive, smudges and all.




Now. Here is where things get interesting, and hopefully a lot easier for me.

If you look in the video, the guys used the four pins coming from the motor assembly on the bottom of the hard drive. If you look at their ocillicsope, the waveform is pretty much an on/off signal, comparable to a square waveform.

This made me believe to meself, "Hm... That same on-off pattern would be what that rotary assembly thing would output..." And so I ask you, members of the community here, what you believe of this idea. For reference, here is a picture of the motor assembly on the bottom of the hard drive:



Now the lettering in the corner says "61 VO T" And I would assume that the two top pins are power of some sort. My knowlege of electronics and cirtury are rather limited, so I do not know what the bottom two are used for. If someone could educate me, that would be greatly appreciated.

Then I got even more excited, there are four wires coming from that DM2 jog wheel assembly! Now the wires on the DM2 jog wheel circuit board are labeled, from top to bottom "V+, GND, OT+, and OT-" Which leaves me hopeful that I can connect the four pins on the hard drive motor assembly to the four pins on the DM2 main circuit board. So I ask, is this possible? It would be much preferable to mounting the DM2 jog wheel assembly directly to the hard drive like the turntable mod.

Here is a crude MS-Paint mockup of what I am trying to accomplish.



So what do you believe? Is it possible? Baloney? Am I approaching this from the wrong angle?

On another note, I added Djranking s.com to my favorites bar. You'll be seeing a bit more of me from now on.
Javier Apreza
28.12.2008
Alright, first off I'd like to apologize for my hiatus. It's been a solid four months since I've posted here. I had at ton of stuff going on during the summer, and then school started. It's the first time I've gotten a boatload of free time on my hands, so I've decided to do something with my old DM2-Turntable mod.

If you have no idea what the hell I'm talking about, here is the original mod.

To update you guys, the mod was a complete and utter failure. It sucked. The turntable was the biggest problem. It was HUGE and took up half of my desk. It was also cheap plastic, the spindle (which is all the platter touched) was slightly bend and weakened by my mod, so the platter made this horrid scraping noise if pushed too hard, it was inconvenient to travel with, and honestly, I didn't believe it added much to my setup. It's been sitting under my bookshelf for the last few months. I didn't believe of it much.

And then I saw this.

It was like the apple falling on Newton's head. It solved all of my problems. It was extremely portable, and after cracking one open I really like the quality of the bearings and the feel to it. It's great. Now I just want to redo what I did in my original turntable mod, but have a question for you guys.

So we begin with pictures:

Here is that same mechanism, it's the basis for the DM2's jog wheels. (I don't know the name)



Here is my hard drive, smudges and all.




Now. Here is where things get interesting, and hopefully a lot easier for me.

If you look in the video, the guys used the four pins coming from the motor assembly on the bottom of the hard drive. If you look at their ocillicsope, the waveform is pretty much an on/off signal, comparable to a square waveform.

This made me believe to meself, "Hm... That same on-off pattern would be what that rotary assembly thing would output..." And so I ask you, members of the community here, what you believe of this idea. For reference, here is a picture of the motor assembly on the bottom of the hard drive:



Now the lettering in the corner says "61 VO T" And I would assume that the two top pins are power of some sort. My knowlege of electronics and cirtury are rather limited, so I do not know what the bottom two are used for. If someone could educate me, that would be greatly appreciated.

Then I got even more excited, there are four wires coming from that DM2 jog wheel assembly! Now the wires on the DM2 jog wheel circuit board are labeled, from top to bottom "V+, GND, OT+, and OT-" Which leaves me hopeful that I can connect the four pins on the hard drive motor assembly to the four pins on the DM2 main circuit board. So I ask, is this possible? It would be much preferable to mounting the DM2 jog wheel assembly directly to the hard drive like the turntable mod.

Here is a crude MS-Paint mockup of what I am trying to accomplish.



So what do you believe? Is it possible? Baloney? Am I approaching this from the wrong angle?

On another note, I added Djranking s.com to my favorites bar. You'll be seeing a bit more of me from now on.
Dj Daxsen
27.01.2009
Oh yeh I remember this one. Interesting idea with the HD platter. I believe it's worth exploring, imagine how cool it would be to have a t-shirt with the djtt hd logo on the front and be spinning with one of these hahaha!
Dewey Delauney
27.01.2009
Hey Trial, did you get any further with this mod?
I stumbled upon this site whilst researching a similar idea.
Brunilda Kora
29.12.2008
My bad.
Xavier Emanuels
29.12.2008
@Patch - Please dont thread hijack, i moved your post to its own thread which can be found here - http://djranking s.com/community /showthread.php?t=2484
Xavier Emanuels
29.12.2008
Welcome back to the crew
Message midifidler and nudge him into this thread, he is definantly the man when it comes to this sort of stuff !

The only problem i personally see is that the hard drive might be spitting out a square wav that repeats much faster than the wheel would send - so the slightest movement on the to the spindle would make it look to the device that the spindle is infact spinning super fast, probably resulting in maxed out midi messages.

I believe your idea is still worth exploring though - i am hardly an authority when it comes to stuff like this !

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