Hi all,
I am the proud owner of a beocenter 5500 which i bought back in January. The unit was not greatly well looked after when I bought it and all 4 beovox speakers have undergone reconstruction with new speaker foams and the unit generally tidied up. Then the last on the list to fix was the faulty record deck (beogram 5500). The plug had been removed due to fault which turned out to be a cracked power board, but this is where I discovered it was in much worse shape than originally thought. After hours of studying diagrams of the unit and attempting to get the machine running I came to the conclusion that too many obselete parts were damaged so I shelved it and started ahunt for a new one. I bought a similar unit that matched the hifi (the beogram 5005) and pretty much forgot about the 5500.
Then, while thinking of a project to do over the seemingly never ending winter (until I can get back to working on my car) I thought about building a small computer as my friend had done. The plan was hatched, an old VCR or DVD case to make a PC in so I started looking around and found my old 5500.... BINGO, idea! You guessed it... Beogram becomes beoputer! So I began and here is the story in pictures....
The strip down of the 5500 starts
Linear Tracking Arm removed
The Chassis stripped down. You may notice the odd curcular mark where we tried to drill out a pressing but failed due to the material the chassis being made of being crazy strong!
Trial Positioning of the all the major components.
My Beocentre 5500 with the beogram 5005 before i put the beogram 5500 back
Trail fitting with lid on... a few modifications were made but it all fits...
Platter resting back in place
Linear tracking arm mocked up using the original parts 'fittied (read: glued)' back into place... can you see the 33rpm light.. thats the power LED for the PC
One normal looking B&O 5500 with record on (ok - so you noticed there isn't a pickup.. I don't have one of those spare :( )
Except this Beogram 5500 has more to it!
The finished system (with no screen attached as yet - plans for something interesting/subtle for that, probably a TFT stripped of its case and fitted to a picture frame for the wall!)
OK - the tech details. Please bear in mind this was made on a serious budget as a trial to see if it can be done with aview to investing in a top end PC to fit in future.
PIII server board (old rack mount of mine) at 950MHz with low profile fanless heat sink
512MD ram
15GB laptop HDD
laptop cd drive
mini-itx PicoPSU to replace the power supply with a laptop powerbrick connector on the back of the case mounted in the old power cable slot.
Alot more went into building this than the pictures would suggest and I am very happy with the finished product. I am aware this might upset people - pulling apart such a beautiful unit but the way i see it, I have a working one which I love and this was left doing nothing and failed to sell for parts on ebay so this has saved it from the bin and so I think its a worthy use - and it looks great that I have PC on my desk and no big ugly case, just a slinky brushed aluminium B&O case. All I need now is to upgrade the computer now I have proved it can be done! I also want to get a laser keyboard so that you wont see that either!
Sorry its abit long winded and missing detail - it is 1:30am! So - thoughts guys!
p.s. pictures of it running will be up soon!
Jon Smith-Moorhouse
Beosystem 5500 with multi room extension pack - love the 80's