Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Kosmic]

Wonder if the code for those is available anywhere.

Some info here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/hp856xe-hackers-corner/

[Kosmic]

Wonder if the code for those is available anywhere.

Some info here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/hp856xe-hackers-corner/

I think it's plain basic GPIB commands. In the programming manual you can find some cmds to draw on screen https://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/08566-90040.pdf?id=1000000072-1:epsg:man

[Carl_Smith]

I'm SOOOOOOO Lucky!!! I went looking for the USB bug (one of those micro ones) for my mini all-in-one keyboard... and I FOUND it... RIGHT WHERE IT SHOULD BE!

   mnem
   
*dancing a little jig*

A while back I picked up a cheap Logitech wireless mouse for my Mom.  I was impressed that there was actually a storage hole in the bottom of the mouse to plug the tiny USB receiver into when it's not plugged into a PC.   It will probably never get unplugged from the PC since it's a desktop system, but it's nice to know that there's a way to keep the two together short of strapping them together with duct tape.  Because you know one of those two methods is the only way the receiver won't get lost.

[Kosmic]

Wonder if the code for those is available anywhere.

Some info here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/hp856xe-hackers-corner/

I think it's plain basic GPIB commands. In the programming manual you can find some cmds to draw on screen https://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/08566-90040.pdf?id=1000000072-1:epsg:man

DLP program from KE5FX, come with GPIB Toolkit.

[Kosmic]

Wonder if the code for those is available anywhere.

Some info here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/hp856xe-hackers-corner/

I think it's plain basic GPIB commands. In the programming manual you can find some cmds to draw on screen https://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/08566-90040.pdf?id=1000000072-1:epsg:man

DLP program from KE5FX, come with GPIB Toolkit.

and more info in this app note from HP https://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/5954-2701.pdf?id=1000000221:epsg:apn

KE5FX probably took some of the code from the app note

[Carl_Smith]

I don't see it so much as crossing a line as wandering into a large gray area.  I'm not going to pay a large sum of money for a Mac just so I can try it out.  So I thought it would be a sort of "try before you buy" situation to just install MacOS in a VM and play around a bit.  If it ever turned out that I decided I liked it and wanted to use it for more than just a few minutes or hours of playing around then I would buy a Mac.   

Just because Apple generally doesn't prosecute doesn't mean it's not illegal according to their T&C.     But seriously, installing it in a VM may be more trouble than you think.

You're probably right about that.

Part of the prep for installing it on a vanilla PC involves making a bootable USB stick or custom image and then booting from that to do the install; and it's very difficult to make one on anything but a Mac (because the utilities are Mac-based, not because they're trying to stop you).  You just can't boot from a Mac image because the modified installation code must be able to identify the hardware configuration of the target machine, much like the Windoze installer operates.  It then inserts a custom DSDT into the boot space, which makes the installer think it's running on a Mac.  I suppose it's possible, but I wouldn't know where to begin if I didn't have a Mac to create the installer.  I'm lazy, so I haven't investigated beyond something that just works for me.   

Yeah, for me it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.  I know nothing about MacOS so if anything goes wrong in that process I would have a hard time knowing how to fix the problem.

The path of least effort, which also doesn't involve any violations of Apple's T&C would be for me to just pick up a used Mac.  But I go on eBay and even a used Mac Mini new enough to at least have a core i5 and 4GB of RAM costs almost $300 used.  For me that's a bit hard to justify just to play around with a Mac to see what they are about. 

[Berni]

They are DLP (downloadable program) demos. They use the cal signal to show off some features. Apparently you can make your own.

Shift + 101 + Hz = Total Harmonic Distortion
Shift + 102 + Hz = Monitor Signals
Shift + 103 + Hz = Waterfall Display

Need to try that on my HP 8566B sometime as i never seen it before.

Mine is not in quite as pristine condition, but at least it works.

[tggzzz]

@   tggzzz

https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ 

You should still be able to repair your partition table or reprovision the drive for GRUB. If you're built on a RAID, you're probably still well & truly fooked, though. Good luck, my friend.

mnem

After many blind alleys using things on that disc, I decided the MBR/GRUB/etc was well and truly hosed. So I followed my initial inclination: find out what partitions are there and where, and reinstall xubuntu. Worked like a charm, no data lost.

Oh the wonders of knowing I have all the data I've generated on a different partition to the OS: beat that MS. Actually they might be going along the track to end up where MS was with their first multitasking multiuser OS, i.e. having everything in /users on Xenix.

Now back to playing with the results of GAS...

Well, at least UBCD helped with that part, right?    

The linux live cd and installer give the same information.

You can specify where your data goes. Apps and their data, that requires paying attention at installation time, but usually still can be done. Or just let Winblows back it all up to OneDriveBy... 
Yeah, everybody thinks their app is fucking special and MUST be integrated into Windoze.  While MS encourages this behavior, app developers still CAN make simple executables that run where you plant them.

I'm not clever enough to run Windows.

[JimS]

 

Yeah, for me it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.  I know nothing about MacOS so if anything goes wrong in that process I would have a hard time knowing how to fix the problem.

A number of years ago I wanted to play around with OS10.
I bought a copy of Snow Leopard and VMware 6.
Found a VMware unlocker and installed OS10.
Checked it out for a while and removed it.

Now that my in-laws bought a new imac, I got the old one.
And it is happily enjoying it's retirement on a shelf   

[bd139]

I see so much self inflicted pain here.

I see a macOS VM and I see effort and friction and the path of least resistance evaporates before me resulting in instant disinterest. If I want a pilgrimage to a supposedly better land I’ll take the credit card tour. If that feels like it hurts too much I figure it’s a place I don’t want to go enough.

Same with magic boot discs and other snake oil.

Windows has a surprisingly good set of tools like diskpart/bootsect and a USB live recovery image built into the installer that allows you to talk to bitlocker encrypted partitions. No clever required. Just google which way to wave the dead chicken over the corpse to revive it.

[Specmaster]

I see so much self inflicted pain here.

I see a macOS VM and I see effort and friction and the path of least resistance evaporates before me resulting in instant disinterest. If I want a pilgrimage to a supposedly better land I’ll take the credit card tour. If that feels like it hurts too much I figure it’s a place I don’t want to go enough.

Same with magic boot discs and other snake oil.

Windows has a surprisingly good set of tools like diskpart/bootsect and a USB live recovery image built into the installer that allows you to talk to bitlocker encrypted partitions. No clever required. Just google which way to wave the dead chicken over the corpse to revive it.

Hmm, quick someone pinch to see I'm dreaming this or not, are you actually telling me windows is OK now, I always that that you was dead set on apple OS systems 

[bd139]

Not really ok with anything. Just everyone sets themselves up for a fight. The three prevailing options are:

1. I want a Mac but I don’t want to pay for one thus I will use a hacked up VM or frankenmac.
2. I want to use Linux and am hiding the complexity and general churn and stack of failure conditions.
3. I want to use windows but it kicks me in the balls once a week.

Cheapest solution at the time is to buy a jock strap and put duct tape round windows’ feet 

A good thing to note is that if you do use something at work, it’s healthy to use something else at home. Keeps the problem domain different so it doesn’t feel like you take work home. I use Linux at work. And Apple can’t make keyboards that work. 

Edit: I watched a Japanese TV game show ages ago where there was a man who lived with a goat for a week in a single room until he basically went insane. I draw parallels to that and computers.

[med6753]

Enjoying my morning Folger's Columbian with no sugar and half and half. If you don't have half and half over there is half whole milk and half cream.

Remember I mentioned the other day that a police car was involved in an accident in town? Here's what happen:

HIGHLAND, N.Y. — Two members of the Ulster County Sheriff’s Office, the driver of another vehicle and a police dog were injured in a two-vehicle crash on U.S. Route 9W in this town of Lloyd hamlet, authorities said Wednesday.
About 1:30 p.m. Tuesday, a sheriff's deputy and an intern were northbound on Route 9W in a marked patrol car when they stopped to break up a fight between two males in the middle of the road near the Haviland Road intersection, according to Lloyd police and county Sheriff Juan Figueroa.
While the deputies' car was stopped in the road, with them inside, it was struck by another vehicle, Lloyd police said.
Lloyd Police Chief Daniel Waage said both people in the patrol car and the driver of the other vehicle were taken to hospitals for observation and treatment of minor injuries. The police dog was taken to a local veterinary hospital, where it was treated for a cut and released.
Figueroa said the patrol car was being driven by Deputy Kyle Frano. He did not provide the intern's name. The dog is named Dozier, the sheriff said.
"Once the deputy saw the road-rage fight, he activated the lights and proceeded to make the turn," Figueroa wrote in an email.
The sheriff said damage to the patrol car was on the driver's side, and the other vehicle was damaged on the passenger side.
Waage declined to identify anyone involved in the crash, saying he didn’t want to "at this time."
No tickets were issued, Waage said.

[Specmaster]

And Apple can’t make keyboards that work. 

So I hear, on some of the "PRO" laptops costing £thousands, get any form of moisture into the keyboard, even if its used a high humidity environment, can cause the entire laptop to shut down  Epic fail.

[tggzzz]

Windows has a surprisingly good set of tools like diskpart/bootsect and a USB live recovery image built into the installer that allows you to talk to bitlocker encrypted partitions. No clever required. Just google which way to wave the dead chicken over the corpse to revive it.

My win7 machine had such a partition, but I couldn't boot into it. I did consider using it to blast the machine back to square one, but before doing that I would have checked that MS haven't turned off their update mechanisms. Last time MS allowed me to do that with an operating system (one WinXP installation, not another!) it took about 24 hours to install all the updates upon updates.

The ubuntu distributions have good boot tools. I have no idea whether they are better/worse than the win tools, but at least they they coexist well with other operating systems.

[0culus]

And Apple can’t make keyboards that work. 

So I hear, on some of the "PRO" laptops costing £thousands, get any form of moisture into the keyboard, even if its used a high humidity environment, can cause the entire laptop to shut down  Epic fail.

It's not the keyboard, and it's far worse than just shutting down. It's the design of one of the connectors at the back edge of the board. There's a potentially +52V line for the display backlight which can short directly into a much lower voltage data line directly connected to the CPU. Louis Rossman has a video where he recommends which ones to buy, and he goes over this very issue.

[mnementh]

I'm SOOOOOOO Lucky!!! I went looking for the USB bug (one of those micro ones) for my mini all-in-one keyboard... and I FOUND it... RIGHT WHERE IT SHOULD BE!

   mnem
   
*dancing a little jig*

A while back I picked up a cheap Logitech wireless mouse for my Mom.  I was impressed that there was actually a storage hole in the bottom of the mouse to plug the tiny USB receiver into when it's not plugged into a PC.   It will probably never get unplugged from the PC since it's a desktop system, but it's nice to know that there's a way to keep the two together short of strapping them together with duct tape.  Because you know one of those two methods is the only way the receiver won't get lost.

I should be more accurate... the keyboard in question does in fact have just such a storage slot right in the battery bay. I was packing it up in the box to put it away in the moving bin when I discovered the bug was not there; we ALL know THAT moment of terror    when we realize that the bug is missing from a favorite wireless peripheral. It was when I found it in my Little Bin o' Memory, which is the only place where it SHOULD be if not in a computer's butt or in its little storage slot, that I got excited. 

Careful.  That could be Murphy doing the wind up. Watch out for the pitch...!

Good point. Today is the kids' last full day at school; my wife promised me she'd be able to bring them instead of the the usual where I pick them up every afternoon. It'll be good for me if it actually works out; I am up to my elbows in cables and computer bits scattered from hell to breakfast. I really want to have them sorted and binned up before the kids are underfoot 24/7.

mnem
We'll see how that works out for me. 

[mnementh]

@   tggzzz

https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/ 

You should still be able to repair your partition table or reprovision the drive for GRUB. If you're built on a RAID, you're probably still well & truly fooked, though. Good luck, my friend.

mnem

After many blind alleys using things on that disc, I decided the MBR/GRUB/etc was well and truly hosed. So I followed my initial inclination: find out what partitions are there and where, and reinstall xubuntu. Worked like a charm, no data lost.

Oh the wonders of knowing I have all the data I've generated on a different partition to the OS: beat that MS. Actually they might be going along the track to end up where MS was with their first multitasking multiuser OS, i.e. having everything in /users on Xenix.

Now back to playing with the results of GAS...

Well, at least UBCD helped with that part, right?    

The linux live cd and installer give the same information.

Yeah, okay. You do realize that the UBCD is just that, right? It's a live Windows disc AND a *NIX Live disc with a GRUB-like PBE. This is not a "product" made by some "service company" to sell "Rescue" thumb drives; it is a collection of open source service & repair tools made by and for computer techs to fix borked Windoze installs. The fact it is STILL useful after 15 years is testament to how well-thought-out that collection of tools was. IIRC, it even has a (now probably painfully prehistoric) Xindows installer on it. 

You can specify where your data goes. Apps and their data, that requires paying attention at installation time, but usually still can be done. Or just let Winblows back it all up to OneDriveBy... 
Yeah, everybody thinks their app is fucking special and MUST be integrated into Windoze.  While MS encourages this behavior, app developers still CAN make simple executables that run where you plant them.

I'm not clever enough to run Windows.

   Yeah, I can roundly agree with that. It really sucks having to "outwit" a machine that is SUPPOSED TO BE a helpful tool just to get your actual work done. Unfortunately, that is part & parcel of the world we now live in, where EVERYTHING is "designed by committee". Unfortunately, our choices right now are that, a racehorse designed by salesmen, a 4H project horse designed by amateurs, or worse yet, a draught horse designed by an amateur committee.

Yeah, for me it's a bit of a chicken-and-egg problem.  I know nothing about MacOS so if anything goes wrong in that process I would have a hard time knowing how to fix the problem.

The path of least effort, which also doesn't involve any violations of Apple's T&C would be for me to just pick up a used Mac.  But I go on eBay and even a used Mac Mini new enough to at least have a core i5 and 4GB of RAM costs almost $300 used.  For me that's a bit hard to justify just to play around with a Mac to see what they are about.

I see so much self inflicted pain here.

I see a macOS VM and I see effort and friction and the path of least resistance evaporates before me resulting in instant disinterest. If I want a pilgrimage to a supposedly better land I’ll take the credit card tour. If that feels like it hurts too much I figure it’s a place I don’t want to go enough.

Same with magic boot discs and other snake oil.

Windows has a surprisingly good set of tools like diskpart/bootsect and a USB live recovery image built into the installer that allows you to talk to bitlocker encrypted partitions. No clever required. Just google which way to wave the dead chicken over the corpse to revive it.

See above. UBCD is not snake oil; it's just a collection of tools to help you get into and fix a borked Windoze install. 

When I was an HP ASP, aside from their DMI/Tattoo discs I carried an optical disc copy of the UBCD, PW-RESET, DBAN and IFL along with a thumb drive containing the latest MS incremental update rollups/service packs and GHOST, NINITE, MBAM, Belarc, Shadow Explorer and SCEP Install.

I RARELY had to resort to nuke/pave, and my clients were always thankful that I was able to save their existing install and their data. In most cases, it took less time than the nuke/pave too, as the HP System Restore was effing SLOW and while supposedly the process was to start the recovery and leave, in practice, due to the clients being "premiere" customers, we were required in most cases to wait for it to finish and create user accounts, install printers, etc and start Windoze updates. 

As for trying to VM OSX... yeah, that's just putting your ballsack on the anvil and handing out mallets. 

If you really want to play with OSX, you're right; the best bet is a used Mac Mini for ~$300. That REALLY isn't much of a gamble; it's highly unlikely that you won't be able to get most of your money back, if not make a profit, in doing so.

Not really ok with anything. Just everyone sets themselves up for a fight. The three prevailing options are:

1. I want a Mac but I don’t want to pay for one thus I will use a hacked up VM or frankenmac.
2. I want to use Linux and am hiding the complexity and general churn and stack of failure conditions.
3. I want to use windows but it kicks me in the balls once a week.

Cheapest solution at the time is to buy a jock strap and put duct tape round windows’ feet

A good thing to note is that if you do use something at work, it’s healthy to use something else at home. Keeps the problem domain different so it doesn’t feel like you take work home. I use Linux at work. And Apple can’t make keyboards that work. 

Edit: I watched a Japanese TV game show ages ago where there was a man who lived with a goat for a week in a single room until he basically went insane. I draw parallels to that and computers.

Fuck you... that furry little fuckard kept standing over me and drooling all night; it was like water torture only with goat-breath. 

My choice as well. Not just because of testicular tenderness; but because I got sick & tired of living 6-18 months behind the rest of the world waiting for new hardware and peripherals to make their way to Mac or *NIX.  It's nice to see a new gadget on slAmazon and be able to just click [BUY] rather than asking myself if Jobs' ghost is going to try and rape me with HTML5 again or if the Purple Hats will ever write a driver for my new gewgaw. 

mnem
And worst of all, she wouldn't put out. 

[Specmaster]

And Apple can’t make keyboards that work. 

So I hear, on some of the "PRO" laptops costing £thousands, get any form of moisture into the keyboard, even if its used a high humidity environment, can cause the entire laptop to shut down  Epic fail.

It's not the keyboard, and it's far worse than just shutting down. It's the design of one of the connectors at the back edge of the board. There's a potentially +52V line for the display backlight which can short directly into a much lower voltage data line directly connected to the CPU. Louis Rossman has a video where he recommends which ones to buy, and he goes over this very issue.

Yep, seen that video and others that deal with that very issue, but there also other models where the keyboard it self dies and it prevents the motherboard from booting up till the +3.3v rail is restored, there is a fix for it however. If I can find the video I watched a while ago, I'll post a link to it.

[Specmaster]

I'm SOOOOOOO Lucky!!! I went looking for the USB bug (one of those micro ones) for my mini all-in-one keyboard... and I FOUND it... RIGHT WHERE IT SHOULD BE!

   mnem
   
*dancing a little jig*

A while back I picked up a cheap Logitech wireless mouse for my Mom.  I was impressed that there was actually a storage hole in the bottom of the mouse to plug the tiny USB receiver into when it's not plugged into a PC.   It will probably never get unplugged from the PC since it's a desktop system, but it's nice to know that there's a way to keep the two together short of strapping them together with duct tape.  Because you know one of those two methods is the only way the receiver won't get lost.

I should be more accurate... the keyboard in question does in fact have just such a storage slot right in the battery bay. I was packing it up in the box to put it away in the moving bin when I discovered the bug was not there; we ALL know THAT moment of terror    when we realize that the bug is missing from a favorite wireless peripheral. It was when I found it in my Little Bin o' Memory, which is the only place where it SHOULD be if not in a computer's butt or in its little storage slot, that I got excited. 

Careful.  That could be Murphy doing the wind up. Watch out for the pitch...!

Good point. Today is the kids' last full day at school; my wife promised me she'd be able to bring them instead of the the usual where I pick them up every afternoon. It'll be good for me if it actually works out; I am up to my elbows in cables and computer bits scattered from hell to breakfast. I really want to have them sorted and binned up before the kids are underfoot 24/7.

mnem
We'll see how that works out for me. 

Its sounds like the great move to the North is almost here now, when is the date?

[Specmaster]

Not really ok with anything. Just everyone sets themselves up for a fight. The three prevailing options are:

1. I want a Mac but I don’t want to pay for one thus I will use a hacked up VM or frankenmac.
2. I want to use Linux and am hiding the complexity and general churn and stack of failure conditions.
3. I want to use windows but it kicks me in the balls once a week.

Cheapest solution at the time is to buy a jock strap and put duct tape round windows’ feet

A good thing to note is that if you do use something at work, it’s healthy to use something else at home. Keeps the problem domain different so it doesn’t feel like you take work home. I use Linux at work. And Apple can’t make keyboards that work. 

Edit: I watched a Japanese TV game show ages ago where there was a man who lived with a goat for a week in a single room until he basically went insane. I draw parallels to that and computers.

Fuck you... that furry little fuckard kept standing over me and drooling all night; it was like water torture only with goat-breath. 

My choice as well. Not just because of testicular tenderness; but because I got sick & tired of living 6-18 months behind the rest of the world waiting for new hardware and peripherals to make their way to Mac or *NIX.  It's nice to see a new gadget on slAmazon and be able to just click [BUY] rather than asking myself if Jobs' ghost is going to try and rape me with HTML5 again or if the Purple Hats will ever write a driver for my new gewgaw. 

mnem
And worst of all, she wouldn't put out. 

Wow, when did this sudden change around happen, did I snooze or something. It wasn't that long ago that I remember everyone was slagging off Windoze, now it seems to be the popular choice all of a sudden.

[med6753]

Looks like I've reached a temporary halt with the Heath OL-1.

Bottom side of the B+ can and resistors. Got it all apart and a few issues. First, those 22K/1 watt carbons are reading about 40K. No good. I don't have carbons of that wattage in stock. 2nd, I got the can out. My intention was to gut it and use those tie points to rebuild it with the new caps. But I don't see any easy way of getting that can apart and gutting the caps unless I practically destroy it. So I'm going to use terminal strips instead. And since I found those carbon resistors reading high decided to spot check some others. We have more reading high. So I'm going to do a more complete check of the resistors and submit an order. In the meantime this scope goes back into the TEA closet. Oh well, no big deal. It's either do it right or don't do it at all. 

[Cubdriver]

Yeah, rrestuffing them can be a real PITA.  I need to take pictures of the next multi section one I do.  I know I've posted this link before, but here it is again in case someone missed it earlier.



The second attempt starts at image 25; it came out a lot prettier as I'd figured out how to better re-crimp the bottom edge.

https://pmanning.smugmug.com/Electronics/Restuffing-can-electrolytics

-Pat

[med6753]

Just did a more detailed check of the carbon comp resistors in the OL-1. At least a dozen while not reading insanely high but definitely out of tolerance and will affect performance. So I've done an inventory and submitted an order.

[med6753]

Yeah, rrestuffing them can be a real PITA.  I need to take pictures of the next multi section one I do.  I know I've posted this link before, but here it is again in case someone missed it earlier.



The second attempt starts at image 25; it came out a lot prettier as I'd figured out how to better re-crimp the bottom edge.

https://pmanning.smugmug.com/Electronics/Restuffing-can-electrolytics

-Pat

Thanks for that. There's plenty of room under the chassis for terminal strips so I'm going to go that route. I'll remount the can so there isn't a big hole in the chassis but cut off the lugs to the caps inside.