"This is Zoomer Radio Toronto, CFZM-FM and CFZM-AM, owned and operated by NZ Media
Incorporated." [Music]
Back by popular demand is the Indian made 5 Core radio, this time to take a look inside it.
But first many people also seem to have trouble finding this radio for sale even though I said
it's only available on eBay, not on Amazon, and if you go on eBay and just search for "5core radio"
it'll come right up along with another very similar radio from 5 Core which appears to be
the same thing, just with some slight cosmetic differences. But I noticed that even though the
model number is clearly listed as T-22 on both the box and the radio itself, for some reason on the
eBay listing the model number is listed as TC-22. So if you type that in it may help you find it.
And also a lot of people seem to think that this space here was not originally for a third battery.
They somehow think it's space for storing the power cord. Well, this is a typical portable radio
power cord and I don't know how you're going to fit it into that tiny little space that's
the size of a single D-cell battery. I mean, you can see that the plug barely even fits in there,
so that's definitely not space for a power cord. It clearly was designed originally to have three
batteries and that's why it originally had a 4.5 volt DC input. But for some reason they canceled
the third battery and changed it to run on only two batteries so now it's rated for three volts,
and you can even kind of see how this part of the plastic case
looks to be a newer part of the molding. They probably just covered up what was originally
there, and that's why they canceled the 4.5 volt input, because now it only runs on 3 volts.
This is that station I picked up in the first video when I was comparing it to the other radio
when they were playing that 1980s song, and I'm trying to figure out
which station it is. But every time they just go from one song to the next with no
kind of ID. I think it's on 830 kilohertz, and it's all like '60s, '70s, and '80s music.
But you came here to see me take this radio apart, so let's get on with it.
You can see there's no remnants of an AC power supply, even though you can see that's
where the transformer would have originally gone. But there's nothing left there so it now can only
run on batteries. And it also doesn't even have an earphone output -- it only plays through
the built-in speaker. This is where the power comes in from the batteries, and this was just
the attachment for the FM antenna which I had to remove to give myself some space to open it up.
Here's the internal AM ferrite bar antenna. There's the tuning capacitor -- yes, it's a real
variable capacitor. And you can see the coils used by the AM and FM analog tuning circuits.
And besides that there's one main chip here and also one transistor, and that's it for
the circuitry. If you look at the other side of the circuit board I don't see any components
on the other side -- just a bunch of solder joints. This is the entirety of the circuitry:
just one main chip, one transistor, a bunch of coils, and a variable capacitor, some capacitors,
and resistors and that's about it. And also the speaker was made by 5
Core. It says "original speaker system" -- it's good to know that somebody didn't sneak in here
and replace it. A four-inch speaker, I think it says 10 watts, made in India,
and it is a nice-sounding speaker. "92-1 LNG. Now, if this doesn't work
I only have myself to blame. Let me try this right here... Ooh, it worked!
Brian told me to stay away from the carts. He said no, no, don't go, but I had to play at least
one... Oh look, it's even fast forwarding!" There's a closer look at the main circuit board
of the radio, also branded as 5 Core. And this was the biggest surprise
to me: you see that name on that chip? It was made by Sony! It's a CXA1619BS.
The heart of this radio was made by Sony, so that could explain why it performs so well.
And yes, this is a real Sony chip -- I was able to find the data sheet for it. It can run on anything
from two to eight and a half volts, and it even has a built-in 500 milliwatt audio amplifier,
so it truly is a one chip solution for making a very simple, low-cost radio. And because of that
it's also popular for people to make their own radios based on this chip. I found the website of
Nina Gajjar, who built her own radio based on this chip
and she published the board layout and schematics. If you want to take a
look at that, I'll include a link to it. "13 CFRW turns on commercial-free Sundays.
That's right, Sundays are commercial-free on CFRW.
13 CFRW, Winnipeg's only radio station giving you what you've been asking for:
commercial-free favorites. So if you like great music commercial-free, turn on a commercial-free
Sunday this weekend, only on 13 CFRW." It really couldn't get any simpler than this
while still being an analog-based radio tuner. The only way they could simplify
even further would be to use one of those digital chips. But it's good to see somewhere
in the world, they're still making these old-fashioned analog radios based on a Sony
chip, even though Sony themselves is probably not using this chip in their own products anymore.
[Music]