The nickel tour...

Only a small sample of my over 500 CDs. I bought many of them used at djangos.com, half.com and amazon.com, and downloaded a few out-of-print items that could not be found anywhere else. At bottom are one of my CD players and my analog-to-digital Pioneer CD burner.

You've got to have a good oscilloscope to troubleshoot. Fortunately for you, I've already done that! Here is my Sencore SC61, bought at a pawn shop for $800 (it was worth twice that much). Smaller and cheaper scopes will work but you need one with a high bandwidth (60 MHz or more) to diagnose an FM transmitter. From the ball of yarn we seem to have found the cat's new hiding place.

Here is the heart of the RF side, discreetly tucked away in a corner of the living room, near a window to run the transmission line outdoors and up to the antenna on the roof. Yes, it looks like a rat's nest, and someday I'm getting metal work tools and cleaning it all up. The transmitter is in the shielded box at left (it took a day with the tools I had to punch the hole for the transmission line socket), and the audio processing is done with the naked circuitry seen at right. The stereo generator is on the small board feeding the transmitter.