I bought this board years ago on ebay and thought at the time that it was an orion prototype and just stuffed it away for a rainy day. now it looks as if it was meant to be a tri-path amp due to the rectangular contacts on the signal half of the board but I do know there are a few different types of tripath chips and I don't know if they're interchangeable. anyway, there are resemblances to orion tech as the fuse holders are similar as well as the power plug and speaker output plugs. there aren't and markings on the board as far as model number go, and there are a few missing fets on the output stage. looks like 2 FQA32N20 fets are missing, as inspecting the other output channel and comparing to the two existing ones, but the other four that are missing are a mystery. never seen relays on a board like this either. yes the board is filthy and I'm trying to find a way to clean it off easily without submersing it in water or going the dishwasher route (im afraid of getting water in the relays and pots). any and all help would be greatly appreciated. thanx guys!
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Tripath amps were never qualified for anything but ST mosfets as I recall from their white papers. So the modern mosfets installed might not work too reliably. Tripath had their gate drivers tuned/designed for the ST mosfets so unless you use devices with very similar characteristics I think you will end up with some engineering issues. If the designers were sticking with original white paper designs then all the output mosfets will be N channel devices.
Tripath made several large box modules only a couple ever got used in car audio. If my memory is in order today I recall 0102 and 0103 chips were used in car audio by PG, US Amps, Alpine, Clarion, possibly a few others but I remember these because I worked on all of them at one time or another many years ago now.
Cleaning can be done by tooth brush and PC board cleaner commercially available at Fry's, Mouser, digi-key, etc... just about any reputable electronics parts seller will have cleaning supplies> canned air for simple dusting, liquid board cleaner for the greasy crusty stuff. High grade electronics grade pure alcohol will remove most residual water if rinsed properly and blown dry with fans , compressed air, blow dryer etc... Careful, no open sparks though, You don't want any fire issues from any solvents you might decided to use...
PG and US Amps used the 0103 modules as I recall the Clarion used an 0102 module. Each module was designed to a different power level so each module had different voltage requirements basically speaking. If you google search the net I think you can still find all the white papers floating around on the web. I may have them stored on an aux hard drive somewhere.
Since your dealing with an unfinished project, I would start by figuring out the high rails supply voltage to try and figure out which module might be appropriate. I never saw the 0104 and it replacement the 2500 used in any car audio but being this is a proto then anything might be possible if the rails supply's are high enough since each chip had its own voltage range for proper operation.
Your unit looks a lot like the PG Tantrum 1200.1 internally so maybe the 0103 chip will work for your amp .
Hope this helps some, I found modules at UT source in China. Don't know how they got there from Santa Clara valley but they are original and not clones from the samples I picked up....
Tripath made several large box modules only a couple ever got used in car audio. If my memory is in order today I recall 0102 and 0103 chips were used in car audio by PG, US Amps, Alpine, Clarion, possibly a few others but I remember these because I worked on all of them at one time or another many years ago now.
Cleaning can be done by tooth brush and PC board cleaner commercially available at Fry's, Mouser, digi-key, etc... just about any reputable electronics parts seller will have cleaning supplies> canned air for simple dusting, liquid board cleaner for the greasy crusty stuff. High grade electronics grade pure alcohol will remove most residual water if rinsed properly and blown dry with fans , compressed air, blow dryer etc... Careful, no open sparks though, You don't want any fire issues from any solvents you might decided to use...
PG and US Amps used the 0103 modules as I recall the Clarion used an 0102 module. Each module was designed to a different power level so each module had different voltage requirements basically speaking. If you google search the net I think you can still find all the white papers floating around on the web. I may have them stored on an aux hard drive somewhere.
Since your dealing with an unfinished project, I would start by figuring out the high rails supply voltage to try and figure out which module might be appropriate. I never saw the 0104 and it replacement the 2500 used in any car audio but being this is a proto then anything might be possible if the rails supply's are high enough since each chip had its own voltage range for proper operation.
Your unit looks a lot like the PG Tantrum 1200.1 internally so maybe the 0103 chip will work for your amp .
Hope this helps some, I found modules at UT source in China. Don't know how they got there from Santa Clara valley but they are original and not clones from the samples I picked up....
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actually it does help some. I did do some searching a while back and couldn't come close to finding a match or anything close to one. I have seen multiple tripath modules on ebay for some time now, a few below $20 and some as high as $100. I don't want to spend that much as this is essentially a "project" if you will, I just wanted to tinker with it and see if there was a way to get it to work. that being said, here's a list of the fets in the amp and maybe you can determine if this was an abortion from the start or actually something that's viable.
all chips are from Fairchild.
output fets starting from the signal input end are:
TIP42C TIP42C
TIP41C TIP41C
FQA34N20 MISSING
FQA34N20 MISSING
MISSING MISSING
MISSING MISSING
MOSPEC U16C20A MOSPEC U16C20A
MOSPEC U16C20A MOSPEC U16C20A
NDP7060 NDP7060
NDP7060 NDP7060
NDP7060 NDP7060
NDP7060 NDP7060
all chips are from Fairchild.
output fets starting from the signal input end are:
TIP42C TIP42C
TIP41C TIP41C
FQA34N20 MISSING
FQA34N20 MISSING
MISSING MISSING
MISSING MISSING
MOSPEC U16C20A MOSPEC U16C20A
MOSPEC U16C20A MOSPEC U16C20A
NDP7060 NDP7060
NDP7060 NDP7060
NDP7060 NDP7060
NDP7060 NDP7060
FQA34N20 MISSING
FQA34N20 MISSING
These worry me, as I never really ever saw any Tripath amp that used these devices. Tripath may have mentioned them but I think Tripath went under before they could qualify them to their suggested parts list.
They always used the ST mosfets which are now discontinued and have been for some time now. I see them on ebay supposedly NOS and like $14.00 each and this amp will need eight of them if you use those devices. Also the amps built long ago had thick ceramic insulators because of the very high frequency time base these amps had they ofter ran into the 1/4 megahertz regions they used these unusually thick insulators just to decouple the mosfets case from the heatsink so the amp could operate properly at its intended clock ranges for full bandwidth operation. I even saw them in all of the sub amps also so its a tripath design concern so you will need these unusual insulators so the outputs can be mounts to a sink surface, along with the rare outputs and the rare Tripath modules.
To pick the correct module you will need to get the amp to turn on somehow without a module installed and measure the rail supply voltages to the outputs. Once that has been figured out a module could be picked to use. I am think its either 0102 for 800 watts or less and 0103 for 1200 watts range of amp power..
Most of the parts for these are way over-priced nowadays because speculators know what they are used for and are charging accordingly for these special discontinued parts.. SO this will not be a cheap project if you chose to follow thru in the idea of bringing it back to life. I think if you look around you will find a tripath amp working on ebay for much less money then this project, but if it ever fails well your back at square one again with parts being stupidly priced by speculators...
FQA34N20 MISSING
These worry me, as I never really ever saw any Tripath amp that used these devices. Tripath may have mentioned them but I think Tripath went under before they could qualify them to their suggested parts list.
They always used the ST mosfets which are now discontinued and have been for some time now. I see them on ebay supposedly NOS and like $14.00 each and this amp will need eight of them if you use those devices. Also the amps built long ago had thick ceramic insulators because of the very high frequency time base these amps had they ofter ran into the 1/4 megahertz regions they used these unusually thick insulators just to decouple the mosfets case from the heatsink so the amp could operate properly at its intended clock ranges for full bandwidth operation. I even saw them in all of the sub amps also so its a tripath design concern so you will need these unusual insulators so the outputs can be mounts to a sink surface, along with the rare outputs and the rare Tripath modules.
To pick the correct module you will need to get the amp to turn on somehow without a module installed and measure the rail supply voltages to the outputs. Once that has been figured out a module could be picked to use. I am think its either 0102 for 800 watts or less and 0103 for 1200 watts range of amp power..
Most of the parts for these are way over-priced nowadays because speculators know what they are used for and are charging accordingly for these special discontinued parts.. SO this will not be a cheap project if you chose to follow thru in the idea of bringing it back to life. I think if you look around you will find a tripath amp working on ebay for much less money then this project, but if it ever fails well your back at square one again with parts being stupidly priced by speculators...
Yeah they made a bunch of them but the Tripath chips only drive a few of them correctly. It has to do with the gate drive circuitry designed into the Tripath chips internally, and the gates of the respective mosfets used by Tripath in their original work. And from the open units I have seen its a silicon die under black sealant in most of them so without any real definitive device info you best stick with the white paper approved mosfets.
Oh I found the ceramic insulators on ebay and they only want $7.00 plus shipping for ten of them < maybe a good deal, I would need to search further to be sure >. They can break easily so ten piece buy would give you some breakage room at least. These look similar to the ones I have seen used inside all of these Triapth chip amps, so maybe a good sub.
eBay item number: 221402641956
I checked out those ceramic pieces and they look cheep enough, but before I buy I'd like to get a line on the fets first. The ones from china just can't be trusted but the price is right. Mother there's the Syracuse electronics place that has working pulls for $12.50 a piece. There's gotta be a better place that's has them cheaper. I did however find the white sheets for the tripath chip where it specifically details the fets needed. It was a good read, but a little too technical to really get all the way through so i skimmed it. In any event all I need is to find a place that has the fets. The hunt begins.
Update to this thread. After looking all over I finally spotted what I think this amp is, an Orion cobalt CS250.1T. It was a tripath amp they put out after they were acquired by directed. Although the board seems a bit too long to be the 250.1t, maybe they offered a 500 watt version? In any event, does anyone know where I can get the manual for the cs250.1t as a start? I checked the orion site and found nothing. The plot thickens... ; )
It's not the 250.1T, as that amp only has 2 fuse holders and my board has 3. The input end of the amp is the same as the 250.1T though so I'm still on to something here, must have been the larger version. Does anyone here know of any orion engineers from back in the day? Maybe they could shed some light on the matter.
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