Eaton Viking SRC-7495 meets iPod

Greetings and thank you for welcoming me to your community !

As a first post I show you my latest toy

I swapped the rotten tape player from this SRC-7495 for my old 2nd gen iPod touch.

The iPod is powered with a wall charger installed inside the box. I also mounted a USB B jack on the rear panel for computer connection. Switching is done with a relay.

I mounted tact switches on a piece of stripboard behind the tape chassis in such a way that they can be actuated with the transport buttons. Play, pause, rewind and fast forward buttons are wired to an inline remote. Record and stop operate the home and sleep buttons of the iPod.

Finally, I added a BT receiver. Like the iPod it is attached internally to the tape input. Selection between either is done with the conveniently named Tape Select switch that had an unused pole. This switch has 3 positions, so I have another "internal input" available for future use.

That box was saved from a trip to the landfill and is quite beaten, much more fun to operate than to look at but still, here it is...

Very nice, how did you get the iPod to display a tape? Is that some kind of app?

Not bat at all! Post up a video of it in action!

Interesting mod!

That's the DeliTape app.

When I try attaching a video, I get "Error, You aren't permitted to upload this kind of file". I'll figure it out tomorrow night. Stay tuned !

Great new lease of life !

Awesome work dude.

Very cool mod!
A DIY write-up would be rad.

And that gold/blue Viking is the coolest version of that box. Lucky score!

That's awesome , I have a battery cover and deck door for this model but mine is the gold and red version.

Here's a demo of the working transport buttons When that was taken the stop and record weren't yet wired to the iPod.

https://vimeo.com/247431928

The radio is silver / blue, there's no gold. Blame my old fashioned bulbs for the yellow hue. About a month ago I got a Prosonic PQR-9850 and it's the exact same color scheme.

I think the differences between red and blue models go beyond the color scheme. Blues ones have an eject key while reds - except for the red Pantronic - don't. It looks like one is a revision of the other but which ?

Cool - but is it now an Eaton ViPod?!

Haha ! Well I'd rather call it the iKing !

A few shots of the tape chassis...

Cool. Very crafty
So that's the guts from a wired remote?

Congrats for this very good mod! I like how it works!

After a few final adjustments I consider this mod finished so I moved the Viking's chassis into the Prosonic cabinet. While doing so I took a few more pictures...



A neater mount for the (now mini) USB jack :


Here is the amplifier / tape preamp PCB. The relay (between the heatsink wings) selects between the iPod and the BT receiver and is operated with the tape select switch (through the red and yellow leads). The output taps into the tape out leads. A few component were disconnected in order to break the signal from the real tape output :


I drilled a hole through the PCB to connect to a free pole on the tape select switch :


Here's a another view of the same board mounted into the chassis. The purple and orange leads control the BT receiver power. :


Finally, the wall charger mounted into the rear cover, also with a relay that will connect it to the iPod when AC powered and will allow using the rear USB jack when power is removed. You may think the leads to the charger are thin but no worries they are well within the required rating :


As a last mod, I found that the momentary switch for Rec Mute turn the meters off when depressed, so I replaced it with a latching switch and it is now a meter on/off switch

Really nice work !

I have just finished "R2" of the iPod mod !

- now also plays back actual cassette tapes
- transport keys are now dual-purposed, selectively operating the iPod or the cassette player
- the tape select switch doubles as "aux select" - switching between iPod, BT or the actual aux jacks

Here's a demo of these features. Sorry it's not edited.
https://vimeo.com/249045184

Waouh ! Nice work...

While everything works as intended, there is a small voltage drop when the "function" relay coil is energized. Looks like either it's trying to draw a little too much current from the tape preamp power circuit or it disrupts the battery check circuit. For now I'll leave it as it is, as it only concerns tape playback - which I don't intend to use often - and even then it still plays fine: it played tapes for about 2 hours yesterday night with no issues. If it ever proves problematic I'll correct this by driving the relay coil with a transistor.