K6100 Additional Parts Kit

August 2006

Recently I was sent an email asking for clarity on the K6100 additional parts kit. The composer also sent a few bits of data that he found on the net that simply were not true, so I thought I'd create a few spare minutes to quickly clarify this a bit.

As far as I can follow this story via the net, one night one of the hobbyist decided to do a marathon of repairs to his K6100 chassis' & took notes he thought pertinent to his findings & posted them on his web page. He later turned them over to another hobbyist who did the same thing & added all of his own personal observations. Now some time later a third hobbyist made his own observations & upgrades he thought would improve his K6100s, leaning on the two previous collections of thoughts along with other hobbyist's comments. Lots of hobbyist's latched onto this new & improved list that they found on a website.

After a few years of hobbyist doing these "improvements" I started getting requests to put these parts together into a kit. The common threads were one, the parts were hard to find, & two, the ones they did find were in multiple locations making the shipping costs far outweigh the cost of the parts. I resisted & suggested they try some of the established kit makers.

In Dec 98 I got another email CC'd from a half dozen hobbyist telling me that they could find no one to put together a kit of these parts & asked if I wouldn't reconsider. I asked around about the kits trying to see why no one wanted to put them together & the general concensus was that since the kits were not something that was a product of WG, or their engineers, that they were uncomfortable with supplying them.

I was still reluctant to put the kit of parts together, for some of the same reasons, but after many emails asking for various components of the kit & with more suggestions of just gathering up the parts, adding a disclaimer & making them available as is... just a kit of parts... I finally caved mid Jan of 1999 & did just that.

I've been supplying the kit of parts with the disclaimer since that time & although I do not agree with a lot of the recommendations, they had been used prior to my knowledge of them & had not done any harm and, in fact, everyone was convinced they improved operation.

The one change that I made was because whoever read the OEM diodes D100-D103 obviously was not familiar with them & underrated the replacements by a good deal! This was also mentioned in the recent email for clarification & this error was attributed to my kits, which is not true, and the suggested replacements are also underrated! I'll paste the quote here:

"The other thing to be careful of about Bob's ultimate 6100 cap kit is that the diodes provided for the deflection board are wayyyyyyyyyy under-rated. They get burned up to a short in a matter of minutes which then takes out other components in the LV section. I use 1N5408."

This is obviously written by another person who does not know how to read diodes and, although I believe these 3 amp diodes to be suffient electrically for the particular circuit, they are still underrated vis-a-vis the mfr's specs. As for using the 1 amp diodes recommended by the "list", although they are seriously underrated, IMHO they would not be the cause of other components kicking the bucket, but rather just the opposite... the other obviously bad components would kill the underated diodes upon powering up or soon afterward.

Here's a current excerp from the "improve the K6100" list:

D100 1N4007 (NTE125) diode Replaces 5A2 (1N4005/NTE116)
D101 1N4007 (NTE125) diode Replaces 5A2 (1N4005/NTE116)
D102 1N4007 (NTE125) diode Replaces 5A2 (1N4005/NTE116)
D103 1N4007 (NTE125) diode Replaces 5A2 (1N4005/NTE116)

"Note the new 1N4007 diodes used at locations D100 to D103 will be considerably smaller than the 15 year old original diodes. Don't worry about this; new products are smaller, yet more durable."

Well... where to start... yes, worry a bit, the 1N4007 diodes will be considerably smaller than the S5A2 OEM diodes & the reason for that is not shrinking technology, but rather the fact that the 1N4007 diode is only a 1 amp diode vs the S5A2 5 amp diode. Incredibly, the author has listed the OEM diode above, 5A2, and the very part number is the key to it's value.... 5Amp200V.

The 1N4007 diode is one of a series & not read so readily. It is one of the most common rectifiers (diodes) in use in electronic apparatus as it can safely replace all lower voltage rated ones in it's series. I'll sidetrack here just a tad to post the ratings of the series:

1N40011A50V
1N40021A100V
1N40031A200V
1N40041A400V
1N40051A600V
1N40061A800V
1N40071A1000V

When it comes to physical size of diodes they have been pretty consistent throughout the years up until the advent of SM technology, so you will pretty much find that a 1 amp will be larger than a 500ma & a 3 amp larger than a 1 amp... so on & so forth. There are exceptions to every ROT, but this one is fairly consistent. On the other hand, capacitors & resistors have been ever shrinking over the years. Get out the magnifying glass!

The diodes supplied in the Additional Parts Kit are 6A2 or higher, or equivalent, depending on what is available at any given time. The 6 amp diodes are what you might refer to as an upgrade as they are able to handle a higher amperage.

One last thing mentioned in the recent email was a request to layout these parts, so I will attempt to place them on the layouts below before I leave here to run over to my attorney's office to see if he can recommend a better grade of motor oil for Alice's Ford van.