Sounds About Right

I picked up a Dell/Altec-Lansing ADA885 sound system for cheap, not expecting it to work at all since the plastic on the bottom of the subwoofer was distorted from melting. The idea was to build my own system if this one wasn't repairable.

Fortunately, it seems it is. There are two amplifier ICs I presume to be for the four satellite speakers. They are part number TDA7265 and sell for about $5 each.

The weird thing, though, is that these amplifiers are supposed to be protected from shorts and such. And they're actively cooled by the air at the subwoofer port blowing over the thick aluminum heatsink. I wonder what happened? This has shades of the receiver I tried to fix back in 1998. While I was able to replace the STK0050 amp packs on that, it never worked right afterward and had nasty clipping. I know more now than I did back then, however.

Basically, I can spare the money to replace the amplifiers without blinking an eye, but if the work required amounts to much more than that, this system is going to get a retrofit job with better amplifier modules that aren't going to fit inside the case.