I had hoped to be able to give you more information about the Sound Expansion Cartridge which was mentioned in EUG #0. Unfortunately, I have had no response to my enquiries. I suspect that Complex Sound Systems who make/made the device have gone out of business, but I may be wrong about this. If anyone has information about the company, could they let me know please?! (Ditto if you actually own one of these devices!)

The Electron is a strange animal as far as sound goes. Place an Elk in a large sitting room with a couple of people having a chat and you can hardly hear a thing. On the other hand, if you're playing a game with a lot of sound effects late at night, members of your household who are trying to sleep may well have something to say about it!

A device called the Sound Blaster was (and maybe still is) available for the Electron and once connected, allowed you to control the level of sound emitted. It consisted of a small amplifier with its own power supply, two loud speakers and a pair of headphones.

To connect the Sound Blaster to your computer, you had to remove the Elk's cover, unplug the speaker and plug in a new lead. This was fed out the side of the machine through the UHF or VIDEO socket - whichever was not in use. Once you had replaced the cover, you were away! All this for only £44.99 - amazing!!

Shall I let you into a little secret? For virtually no cost, you can connect your Electron to your HiFi system, a tape deck or even a thousand watt P.A. system (if you've got one!) with just two lengths of suitable flex. Here's how: (Warning, those of you have even a limited knowledge of electronics had better start cringing now!)

First, I shall insult your intelligence by saying "Please ensure the Power Supply lead has been removed from your Electron". In fact, you should remove everything: Acorn Plus 1, Acorn Plus 3, Rombox, all leads, etc. (Oh, alright, you can leave your socks on if you must!)

Place your computer on a carpeted floor, keyboard down, 50-way edge connector facing you. Remove the cover screws - a long, shafted Phillips screwdriver with a magnetised tip is a big help. Keep the screws safe!

Very carefully, lift one half of the Electron away from the other. A plastic ribbon cable connects the 'electronics' half of the Elk to the keyboard section and, although it is quite robust, try not to put too much strain on it. The top and bottom of your Electron can now be laid one 'above' the other as if you were opening a desk lid. You should now be able to see the Electron's loudspeaker in the corner. Small, isn't it? In front of the speaker you will see a row of slits in the casing.

Your two lengths of 'shielded' lead need to be thin enough to pass through these slits. (I used the cable from an old stereo speaker.) If you strip off the first inch of plastic from each lead then bend the exposed wire into a semi-circular curve, it can be slipped through the slits in the casing, avoiding the speaker's diaphragm. Pull the two leads round to the back of the speaker and allow several inches of slack to work with.

If you look closely, you will notice that the 'official' leads are soldered to the back of the speaker. With a bit of careful, but firm, fiddling you should be able to simply twist the exposed end of each 'new' lead around one solder point each. It is now just a matter of pulling the slack back through the slits, making one final check that your new extensions are still firmly in place then reassembling your Electron. The two leads can now be attached to anything you like, a jack plug or a five pin DIN plug or just a large speaker.

I have used this method to connect my Electron via a bank of guitar effects pedals to a 10 Watt practice amplifier and also to record directly onto audio tape. Nothing dramatic has happened to me or my Elk but perhaps I've just been lucky!

By the way, this method only allows you to increase the volume of your Electron. You can't turn it down. Come to think of it, that Sound Blaster looks like a very attractive proposition.

Next time we'll take a look at the Rolls Royce of Electron sound add-ons, the MUSIC 5000!

Will Watts, EUG #1