Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bitseeker]

I use hibernate rather than shut down because it saves me time opening apps and files, arranging windows, etc., to get back to the point of continuing what I was doing.

As always, different people have different needs. Ultimately, you want an OS that enables you to do what you want to do with the least hassle.

My version of that YT video: All OSes suck, just in different ways.

[bd139]

Condolences on the nuked plug. Done that more times than I'll admit. 

Powerpole/SERMOS connectors are supposed to "float" under spring tension inside the shell and "self-align". But in reality, they're very sensitive to misalignment due to preload applied by the wire soldered/crimped to them. Soldering makes it worse, as the stiffening of the wire from solder wicking up the strands give added leverage to any lateral loading from position or crooked wires. This can make the "overlap" region of the contacts "miss" each other, or can cause them to be rotated out of phase with each other so contact is only made on one side edge. And sometimes, the damned things just want to be dicky. 

Looked in on the command line and of course you're right; HIBERNATE is still a powercfg supported switch. OTOH, why bother? Might as well just shut it down. 

mnem
How many monkeys?

TBH I'd crimp 'em but I'm too cheap to buy the crimp tool so these are soldered. They are however soldered flat rather than at all weird angles.

Decided as I'm only shifting 5A through these particular ones to say fuck it and use D-sub connectors as (a) polarised (b) cheap (c) will handle 5A per pin and can parallel (d) allows me to add two sense wires to the connector on the charge side of things (e) strain relief (f) already have d-sub sized holes in the boxes!

Shut down means I need to open shit again. Resume from hibernate takes about 20 seconds on this box. Hibernate you dont notice because the lid is shut.

I feel the pain of everyone running Windoze.  To the point that I went around and patted all my Macs on the monitor and thanked them.   

Oh, and before the chorus of "but the cost..."  starts up: all my Macs (including the one I'm typing on) are PCs running MacOS.  The last one I installed took less time than any Windoze build I ever suffered through, and has been 10x as reliable. It was also cheaper than any desktop Mac because I could choose my components for quality and compatibility.  The latest Linux builds are OK (I'm using Raspbian for some testing on the network), but still lacking a lot of the software I need and use every day.  For a basic networked computer, though, they do work pretty well as long as you understand and enjoy the Unix philosophy.  If not, well, they can be agonizing.

You do you, of course, but realize that there's a third choice with reasonable cost and usability.  I've used all 3 major OSes since about 1984, and this one fits me the best.  I breathed a huge sigh of relief when I retired and sent my work laptop back; even with the employer maintaining it, Windoze was no fun.   

Four problems with MacOS:

1. I bought a top of the range Apple MacBook Air in December. They keyboard snuffed it after two weeks lleeeadding mee too tyypee likke soomeeone wiith toourrettes oor soomeethiing. Seriously I spent over £2000 on the damn thing including AppleCare and they couldn't get something basic like they keyboard to work properly for more than two weeks. They sheepishly just refunded the whole amount and apologised.
2. Can't drive it with a keyboard. Virtually impossible without memorising street fighter keyboard combinations.
3. Really really difficult to keep everything portable and OS independent on it.
4. More macbook fun. 6 inch drop onto carpet. BUT IT HAS MAGSAFE.  ... That was a top end i7 15" rMBP. Screen cost me more to replace than my T440 did + extended battery + new High DPI screen + SSD + T450 touchpad frankenpad.



Enough with them.

You'll have to pry my iphone out of my cold dead hands though.

[med6753]

If only IBM hadn't given up on OS/2 warp. That was a GOOD and CRASH PROOF O/S that had lots of potential.

[worsthorse]

I would prefer to treat my computers as appliances that simply do what I need them to do when I need them to do it. I cannot and so I have a mishmash of machines with different operating systems (Windows 7, two or three versions of OSX, various flavors of Linux) that are tailored to use. I do what I need to do to keep them running but have no desire to become an operating system or internals guru.

But I know I am old-fashioned. For example, here's my computer setup:



And here's the only thing I really worry about these days:

[bitseeker]

Does anyone here have, or plan to get, one of the new-fangled, stealth-fighter-looking Rigol DG800 function generators?

[xrunner]

Does anyone here have, or plan to get, one of the new-fangled, stealth-fighter-looking Rigol DG800 function generators?

I wouldn't mind one but none of my coffee mugs will sit on top of it. 

[mnementh]

I use hibernate rather than shut down because it saves me time opening apps and files, arranging windows, etc., to get back to the point of continuing what I was doing.

As always, different people have different needs. Ultimately, you want an OS that enables you to do what you want to do with the least hassle.

My version of that YT video: All OSes suck, just in different ways.

I use hibernate rather than shut down because it saves me time opening apps and files, arranging windows, etc., to get back to the point of continuing what I was doing.

As always, different people have different needs. Ultimately, you want an OS that enables you to do what you want to do with the least hassle.

My version of that YT video: All OSes suck, just in different ways.

That's what I use SLEEP for. It's faster, and I don't mind using the same amount of power as an LED nightlight to keep it going. Except when it gets fuckerized and I can't fucking figure out  its fuckerized fuckerization fucking is.

mnem
Fuck me. 

[bsfeechannel]

The Heath OL-1. New binding posts installed. Front panel is now complete.

Beautiful.

The service manual for the RCA WO-505A scope showed up and I'm impressed. Nicely bound and excellent copy. I guess it was worth the $24 USD after all. 

Uh, does this manual have only two pages?

[Kosmic]

Does anyone here have, or plan to get, one of the new-fangled, stealth-fighter-looking Rigol DG800 function generators?

Was really tempted. The fact that they can be upgraded to a DG992 is really interesting.

In the end decided against it. What I don't like:
- Average perf in general.
- 20Mhz AWG max.
- When upgrated to DG992 performances above 50Mhz are not that good.


Considering I already have a 2.7Ghz signal gen and a 125Mhz AWG (Tek AWG2021). Decided to keep my money for something more usefull.

[bd139]

No DG800 for me. Performance is worse than my DG1022Z

[Kosmic]

Does anyone here have, or plan to get, one of the new-fangled, stealth-fighter-looking Rigol DG800 function generators?

Was really tempted. The fact that they can be upgraded to a DG992 is really interesting.

In the end decided against it. What I don't like:
- Average perf in general.
- 20Mhz AWG max.
- When upgrated to DG992 performances above 50Mhz are not that good.


Considering I already have a 2.7Ghz signal gen and a 125Mhz AWG (Tek AWG2021). Decided to keep my money for something more usefull.

They sell it as a 250 MSa/s AWG but in reality, only do 60 MSa/s in AWG mode.

[med6753]

The service manual for the RCA WO-505A scope showed up and I'm impressed. Nicely bound and excellent copy. I guess it was worth the $24 USD after all. 

Uh, does this manual have only two pages?

No. 32 pages including full schematics.

[Carl_Smith]

all my Macs (including the one I'm typing on) are PCs running MacOS.

I've wanted to install MacOS into a VM on my Windows PC just to play around with it a bit, but every web page I've found with instructions on how to do so starts with something to the effect of "Go to a Mac and download the OS install ISO..."   If I had a Mac to do that on I wouldn't be wanting to install MacOS in a VM.   Grrrr....

[beanflying]

All Operating Systems are testimony at attempting to maintain backward compatibility, broad cross platform support and massively bloated code. What could possibly go wrong 

[bitseeker]

Does anyone here have, or plan to get, one of the new-fangled, stealth-fighter-looking Rigol DG800 function generators?

I wouldn't mind one but none of my coffee mugs will sit on top of it. 

Rigol should make a compatible coffee mug.

[Neomys Sapiens]

But I know I am old-fashioned. For example, here's my computer setup:

Indeed, I hold a certain mistrust for computers not displaying their bus content properly on the panel and not having a start/stop/single switch.

[0culus]

Hibernate to SSD is fine. The whole hibernate to SSD thing destroying devices is a myth. The big problem is it eats a chunk of disk space which was an issue when disks were small and/or expensive.  I have NEVER lost work state in 15 years of hibernating. Not once. And I do it a lot!

Here's my current main disk in my main work machine which gets hibernated 2 to 3 times a day every day. Check out the write volume and powered up hours. Disk is about 11 months old and was in my spare laptop before that for a year. 4.6TiB written approx. Write lifetime according to [1] is 1511TiB approx so I've used 0.4% of its lifetime. Stop worrying and enjoy the speed

   Also on windows feck ups, it takes me about 60 minutes to do an install from USB on this disk and run all the updates in and install all the software I use and recover the data. I lose a windows build approx once every 6 months which is fine. Total time expended on just unfucking high DPI displays on linux exceeds that.

Edit: the last two times I got a hosed windows build were thanks to HP printer drivers. This problem has been eliminated now by literally drop kicking the fucking printer on to the street and getting a Brother laser 

[1] https://www.anandtech.com/show/8239/update-on-samsung-850-pro-endurance-vnand-die-size

I've personally lost spinning rust disks to hiberfile.sys fuckerizing the MBR & FAT; it's part & parcel of the total clusterfuck that Windoze memory management has become due to the PC Hardware industry (and large fleet buyers) DEMANDING that they STILL be able to run on a fucking retarded X86 box with just 4-8GB RAM, even though a 16GB build has been affordable for a DECADE.  As a result, the memory architecture is fucked to the point where Windoze doesn't use anything above ~6GB properly; it starts hashing the fuck out of the HDD at around 3GB loaded up and will still shit a brick if you have plenty of RAM and try to disable the swapfile.

SSD manufacturers (Samsung among them) recommend disabling Hibernate to preserve your warranty. Windows does it automatically if you bother to tell it to optimize itself for SSD; it's been a switch in WinSAT since Windows 8.1 (For those of you who don't know; WinSAT still works, it's just a command-line tool now). If you do a fresh install on an AHCI-enabled drive, it confirms the drive parameters and optimizes itself for SSD, disabling hibernate.

I think you've been lucky. 

mnem
*back out into the suck*

There's a joke that goes somewhat along the lines of: "if Bill Gates had stayed in college one more semester he would have learned memory management" 

[mnementh]

I guess I have no room to talk... my own memory management is roughly akin to reaching into a running washer and taking whatever I can pick out without losing pieces off me. 

mnem
Underpants. Every. Fucking. TIME. 

[worsthorse]

But I know I am old-fashioned. For example, here's my computer setup:

Indeed, I hold a certain mistrust for computers not displaying their bus content properly on the panel and not having a start/stop/single switch.

Right. Plus with paper tapes, you never have to worry that you are going to feed the cards in the wrong order. 

[URI]

I feel the pain of everyone running Windoze.  To the point that I went around and patted all my Macs on the monitor and thanked them.   

Nope. Not entirely. I've got a laptop to run windows (7) that I use occasionally if the use of Windows is required.
My work horses are a debian based server for storing data in a raid 1 with two hdd's in it and a client PC running the latest stable Ubuntu.
They're both always on and energy-saving-optimized. -What is easy to me as I don't play games on my computers and as a result of that only need standard CPUs with built in graphics processor.
I have no issues with hibernating because of my always-on-computer infrastructure -but my Ubuntu client is configured to be able to hibernate and I tested (and rarely used it) and it's working fine. 
I tend to having enough RAM though: Despite my computers beeing 8-9 years old my Ubuntu client has 16Gig of RAM (as well as the Win-laptop) and my server has 8Gig RAM (which it rarely fully uses, almost all for cacheing.    )

Oh, and before the chorus of "but the cost..."  starts up: all my Macs (including the one I'm typing on) are PCs running MacOS.  The last one I installed took less time than any Windoze build I ever suffered through, and has been 10x as reliable. It was also cheaper than any desktop Mac because I could choose my components for quality and compatibility.  The latest Linux builds are OK (I'm using Raspbian for some testing on the network), but still lacking a lot of the software I need and use every day.  For a basic networked computer, though, they do work pretty well as long as you understand and enjoy the Unix philosophy.  If not, well, they can be agonizing.

The latest Mac Os is ok from my point of view because it's a sort of successor of *nix.       

[URI]

My version of that YT video: All OSes suck, just in different ways.

I agree with you, definitely!

I think I got used to the kicks and buffs Linux gives its user from time to time, so I'm ok with it.
I don't notice them any more, I think.   
But I hate freezing/hung up computers. Windows at work is fairly enough for me in this regard.
My computers uptime typically is defined by the time between major/security kernel updates/fixes..

[URI]

Does anyone here have, or plan to get, one of the new-fangled, stealth-fighter-looking Rigol DG800 function generators?

Looks good at first glance but the performance isn't that great if you inspect deeper. 16bit vertical resolution isn't all.. 
I also dislike the typical rigol user interface and also dislike the overall design.   

I'm used to good, usable, userfriendly or -at least- HP-style UIs.   

[bitseeker]

In addition to the downsides mentioned thus far, for me it also doesn't fill the waveform generation gap I currently have between 50 MHz and 137 MHz.

[bd139]

Yes I have that problem too. I though the TF2015 would be "good enough" to fill it but it's a drunkard, swinging all over the place without phase lock.

I have resorted, twice, to building frequency multipliers to solve that problem and multiplying up the DG1022Z 1970s style.

[Cerebus]

all my Macs (including the one I'm typing on) are PCs running MacOS.

I've wanted to install MacOS into a VM on my Windows PC just to play around with it a bit, but every web page I've found with instructions on how to do so starts with something to the effect of "Go to a Mac and download the OS install ISO..."   If I had a Mac to do that on I wouldn't be wanting to install MacOS in a VM.   Grrrr....

Erm, I don't think you can complain that pirating a copy of MacOS requires you to jump through some hoops to start from a legitimate copy from a machine where it's supposed to be running. Given you've already decided to cross the line, why don't you just download a torrent of the many hooky copies that are already out there?