Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mansaxel]

So yeah... at this point I've turned into one of those old farts who lurks around the forum and ignores 90% of what I read.
<snip>
But my fuse is very short anymore; I give a short explanation referring them to the original article, direct them to read it in its entirety...

It is reasonable to expect people to have RTFM. You are in no way unreasonably grumpy.

[bd139]

Sometimes you have to meet people in the middle though. As someone who has spend a good few years writing documentation, leaving the end user in the dark is very easy. Best approach in these circumstances is explain that knowledge is a pyramid and point them in the direction of where to build that.

Beware the man in the ivory tower for his head is in the clouds

[Mr. Scram]

I've been looking at some X570 motherboards but it seems all look like a boy racer fever dream. Not to mention the active cooling. I'm not convinced.

[mnementh]

Sometimes you have to meet people in the middle though. As someone who has spend a good few years writing documentation, leaving the end user in the dark is very easy. Best approach in these circumstances is explain that knowledge is a pyramid and point them in the direction of where to build that.

Beware the man in the ivory tower for his head is in the clouds

No, that is covered in the "short explanation". I fully answer the question briefly, EVERY TIME... and direct the user to please read the original article as well for "grok in fullness" understanding of the device. I've been accused of explaining too much more than once, even when I explain "briefly".

I have not YET devolved to the point of just parroting RTFM!!! , no matter how many times I've answered The Same. Damned. Question.

mnem
*currently lounging about the living room in my "give up on life shorts" *

[mnementh]

I've been looking at some X570 motherboards but it seems all look like a boy racer fever dream. Not to mention the active cooling. I'm not convinced.

Totes agree about the "look"; it gets more and more ridiculous with every generation, and that's not even considering rampant RGB poisoning. Every time I go shopping, I see some new component they've found a way to infect with "Unicorn Blarff". 

Active cooling, however, is necessary; processing that much bandwidth generates a lot of heat, and the chipset cannot be relocated further away from the CPU & GPU due to capacitive/inductive loading. The alternative is yet MORE heat-pipes and big heat-sinks, right where you need massive space for the GPU that chipset is feeding. 

I expect that before long, we're going to need to come up with a new form factor standard to alleviate this by placing the MB in the center of two large forced-air cavities so that both surfaces can be "active real-estate" instead of the current mostly single-sided affair with one large main cavity and small secondary cavity mostly used to hide cabling. A lot of our popular gamer cases are already evolving with more and more space in the backside cavity; I think it's just a matter of time before this develops into a "standard".

mnem
*tzzt*

[Zucca]

One of the guy I work with, we were chitchatting at some point and he was telling me how his wife was managing all the money. I was telling him the same thing. You should have separate account and split the bills. 6 months later, she left him with the kid and went back to China with 400k$ 

Wife can be very nasty, tonight mine is good:



She is converting my Metcal tips to Thermaltronics color coding 

Kosmic, my main scope is a MSOX3014T EDIT typo: MSOX3104T, and I hope it will last for the next 5 years at least.

[Mr. Scram]

Active cooling is necessary; processing that much bandwidth generates a lot of heat, and the chipset cannot be relocated further away from the CPU due to capacitive/inductive loading. The alternative is yet MORE heat-pipes and big heat-sinks, right where you need massive space for the GPU that chipset is feeding. 

I expect that before long, we're going to need to come up with a new form factor standard to alleviate this by placing the MB in the center of two large forced-air cavities instead of the current large main cavity and small secondary cavity mostly used to hide cabling. A lot of our popular gamer cases are already evolving with more and more space in the backside cavity; I think it's just a matter of time before this develops into a "standard".

mnem
*tzzt*

It seems to be an artefact of AMD developing the chipset themselves for the first time. It's probably a bit hotter than they'd like but power consumption is likely to come down as they iterate. Chipset power consumption has historically been all over the place and actively cooled chipsets have come and gone in the past. Look at this blast from the past with active coolers on north- and southbridge.  Not a fan of the whiny little bastards that'll invariably shit the bed before the rest of the board.



As people have remarked 15 watt tops isn't nothing but can definitely be passively cooled. It's plausible AMD urged manufacturers to implement active cooling to safeguard against PR booboos when people inevitably do stupid things.

[SoundTech-LG]

Somewhere I have the 25 & 35...

[mnementh]

It seems to be an artifact of AMD developing the chipset themselves for the first time. It's probably a bit hotter than they'd like but power consumption is likely to come down as they iterate. Chipset power consumption has historically been all over the place and actively cooled chipsets have come and gone in the past. Look at this blast from the past with active coolers on north- and southbridge.  Not a fan of the whiny little bastards that'll invariably shit the bed before the rest of the board.

As people have remarked 15 watt tops isn't nothing but can definitely be passively cooled. It's plausible AMD urged manufacturers to implement active cooling to safeguard against PR booboos when people inevitably do stupid things.

You mean like liquid cooling, which takes away the CPU byproduct airflow that is usually used to keep the chipset cool? The chipset fan has its own channel in the fan control architecture; you can make it as quiet as you like or or huff like a tornado just like all the other fans, AND it has an alarm. I already answered this point with my comment about "yet more heat pipes and fins" right where you need space for the GPU.

Your concern is entirely armchair QB-ing; if you'd ever had one of these boards you'd know the chipset fan is absolutely inaudible against the GPU and CPU's VR switching whine, and I'm beating mine hard with dual NVMe drives in RAID 0. Unless you manually set it balls-to-the-walls anytime it ramps up its noise is indiscernible against the fans on the GPU. A complete non-issue.

EDIT: When I upgrade to a GPU more suitable to my HD VR/1440P gaming aspirations, I may go liquid-cooling on it as well. THEN I might notice the chipset fan; but I doubt it.

mnem

[bd139]

What can noise is this you speak of?

Can’t hear this bugger when the CPU is pulling 140 amps!!!

[mnementh]

You don't have a X570 board buddy. No chipset fan. Also, the VRM on the ASrock B450 series are known to be pretty puny; you'll run into power management throttling due to voltage sag before you hit the CPU hard enough to make that pregnant water buffalo cooler spool up. Less voltage means less heat to get rid of. 

Also, let's be honest; you don't have a GPU either. You have a video card. 

mnem
*Current mood: nukular*

[worsthorse]

I used listen to the AM'ers on 3.885MHz. Some of those guys had audio quality and dynamic range better than commercial broadcast.

You may even have heard folks like Joe Walsh - WB6ACU.

I haven't listened in many years and perhaps I've heard him. I only recall one call sign....Tim in Vermont (I think). WA1HLR (I think that was his call sign)

Problem with AM'ers is not the quality it's the content

Far warmer and more dynamic sounding prostate exams 

don't forget the always lively discussion (in the United States) on the demonic democratic socialist left deep state open-border-fueled coup-in-progress.   

[worsthorse]

Yeah similar. The current conversation content has really put me off things. Specmaster got the full rant in a PM  . The reason I got into it was because it was a technical subject and an escape from daily life. Unfortunately finding people who want to talk about or even care about the technical side is rare. Apart from that it's just a very difficult to use social network with a hell of a lot of gatekeeping, which I'm certainly not into!

Anyway I've got a cute little HM103 oscilloscope which is on the watch list and only up the road from me at the moment. Will concentrate on that for now

KJ7E, BD, and anyone else that might be interested... the only part of ham radio that interests me is the technical part (I got licensed so I could play with RF packet again), so I am always up for a discussion and working with others on that front.  Rag chewing? Contests? FT8 with a KW amp? DXpeditions?  meh!

[mnementh]

            

Daniu 33cm/100cm LED Magnifier Lamp on Banggood

5 weeks ago I bought this LED magnifier on "preorder"; with Canada Post Direct shipping it came to CAD$32 or a hair under US$25. It shipped a week later than promised so I missed it for Christmas, but now they're in stock.

It arrived in a pretty beat-up box, but the unit inside was unharmed. Bubble-wrap and a custom cut EPP foam brick around the head. 

First impressions: Good usable size, all metal arms, cast alloy base, even metal knuckle joint for the lamp itself.  Base was not user-friendly due to my desk having brackets in the way; however I had a resin base that I could get to clamp down. Base is better-than average build quality; in fact, overall that's how I'd describe the whole thing.

The LED ring/lens head is made from a single piece of spun aluminum; inside is a dual-LED illumination ring with Blue-White & Warm-White LED channels; you can illuminate either or both at once. The lens is held in by a threaded ring, not clips or adhesive. 

However, the illumination level is "borderline"; those of us used to using one of these with a 22W T9 Circline bulb as both magnifier and swingarm desk illumination will be sorely disappointed. For most uses as illumination on what you are viewing, however, the LED ring is fair to good; I found that by removing the diffuser ring as seen in the video below, illumination improved greatly and even was useful for lighting up the desktop, though still not even close to a 6W flood bulb in a desk lamp.

https://cloud.video.taobao.com/play/u/3388301779/p/1/e/6/t/10301/234633372172.mp4

They do not include a USB power pack; this saves you money but you have to source your own rated at 5V/2A. I'm using a 1.5A rated one and it does not seem to load up at all; after running an hour it was barely warm. I intend to do more testing and see what actual consumption is with other power sources.

And finally, lens is a nice ground glass unit 105mm/4in diameter; however the 5X advertised is entirely wrong (I knew this just seeing the lens in the video, though); measuring the thickness it is more like 5-6 diopter, or approx 2.5X magnification. This is what I was expecting, so not really disappointed there; a 5X lens this large would tend to distort the subject so much as to be pretty useless for my purposes anyways. 

All in all, excellent build quality right up there with many of the US name brands; not Dazor quality, but definitely a whole lot better than the price indicates.

   

And finally, here's the glamour shot; my Christmas present to my bench doing its job.  Good reach, good enough lighting, plus a STEAL at approx $25 US. I think I may be able to squeeze just a little more out of it by upping the operating voltage a hair; we shall see.

Oh, and just to make sure there's no doubt of this being TEA:

On the bench getting its cable fixed is the PERFECT mic for Discord: a good old Labtec Verse 700 series; rescued from the thrift just in time for the TEA Time Power Hour coming Saturday.

mnem

[Kosmic]

Kosmic, my main scope is a MSOX3014T, and I hope it will last for the next 5 years at least.

Nice scope! 5Gs/s is pretty cool 

[Kosmic]

I was wondering why my cheap Chinese probe (P6500) was not working anymore. I opened up the base of the probe and found this:



Look like the core is not attached to the dielectric and it's actually moving around when you move the cable.



I was trying to save a bit of money on those cheap 500Mhz probes and was hopping they would be noname version of the branded one. Look like they are really not the same  after all. Probably going to stick with branded one from now one.

This is funny. After fixing the broken P6500 probe I decided to run the same frequency response test I did a while ago. I actually manage to improve the probe while fixing the broken cable

Before:


After:


Probably the result of removing the excess solder on multiple joints.

[Specmaster]

Ah yes. I wish I was the keymaster back then 

Yeh, she's safe, not a red head 

[mnementh]

Ripley can park her shoes under my bed any time.   

mnem
Yes, even with the baby alien.

[Kosmic]

So to celebrate post #1000, I did another round of probe testing 

Table of content:

(Including previous tests)

Part 1, Batch 1 Frequency response
Part 2, Batch 1 Fast pulse
-->Part 3, Batch 2 Frequency response
Part 4, Batch 2 Fast pulse
Part 5, Batch 3 Frequency response
Part 6, Batch 3 Fast pulse

The Setup:
Same as round #1, I used a noise source to generate a signal from DC to 500Mhz. The impedance of the source being 50Ohms, a 50Ohms Terminator was connected directly on the output of the noise source. The probe under test was connected to the termination with a bnc-to-probe adapter. The other end of the probe was connected to an Oscilloscope (Lecroy DDA-110, 4GS/s, 1Ghz bandwidth).



FNIRSI P6100 100Mhz:
Overall the construction seem better that the other P6100. Performance is really bad. Got this probe with a FNIRSI 5012H battery scope.



Frequency response of the P6100 (Green) from DC to 500Mhz, 50Mhz per division. Noise source in Cyan.


Owon OW3200 200Mhz:
I had low expectation for this one. But performance is surprisingly decent.



Frequency response of the OW3200 (Green) from DC to 500Mhz, 50Mhz per division. Noise source in Cyan.


Rigol PVP2350 350Mhz:
Good construction, pretty bad performance. I was expecting more from Rigol.



Frequency response of the PVP2350 (Green) from DC to 500Mhz, 50Mhz per division. Noise source in Cyan.


Lecroy AP020 1Ghz active probe:
The comparison is unfair but it show you how a good probe should behave.



Frequency response of the AP020 (Green) from DC to 500Mhz, 50Mhz per division. Noise source in Cyan.

[Kosmic]

And now the pulse test.

Table of content:

(Including previous tests)

Part 1, Batch 1 Frequency response
Part 2, Batch 1 Fast pulse
Part 3, Batch 2 Frequency response
-->Part 4, Batch 2 Fast pulse
Part 5, Batch 3 Frequency response
Part 6, Batch 3 Fast pulse

The Setup:
Again the setup is similar, the probes are connected to my Lecroy oscilloscope calibration port via a probe-to-bnc adapter. The Calibration port is outputting a square pulse at 2Mhz, 1V, <= 1ns rise time, 25 ns width. Impedance is 1MOhms.

*Every probes as been compensated before running the test.

FNIRSI P6100 100Mhz:




Owon OW3200 200Mhz:




Rigol PVP2350 350Mhz:




Lecroy AP020 1Ghz active probe:

[tautech]

So to celebrate post #1000, I did another round of probe testing 

NoName P6100 100Mhz:
Overall the construction seem better that the other P6100. Performance is really bad.

It's a $6 100 MHz probe, what did you expect ? 

They're made by Pioneer and if they were really good don't you think they'd put there name on them ?
Still for their value/performance they're perfectly fine for old low BW CRO's.

BTW, were your tests conducted with the probes in 1x or 10x, you haven't said and the scopes input attenuation isn't visible in the screenshots..... 


Congrats on getting to 1000 ! 

[WastelandTek]

So to celebrate post #1000, I did another round of probe testing 

Oh man, this is great

I really want to see some probemaster products in the mix!

https://probemaster.com/

[Kosmic]

So to celebrate post #1000, I did another round of probe testing 

NoName P6100 100Mhz:
Overall the construction seem better that the other P6100. Performance is really bad.

It's a $6 100 MHz probe, what did you expect ? 

I probably paid more than that, but then again, it came with a scope so I'm not sure of the value. I'm not expecting 100Mhz but they should at least work. I probably wouldn't use this one, even at 10Mhz.

They're made by Pioneer and if they were really good don't you think they'd put there name on them ?

Again, not sure why you are saying that. I never expected those probes to be really good  Also I got 2 types of P6100 here so they are probably not all coming from the same source.

BTW, were your tests conducted with the probes in 1x or 10x, you haven't said and the scopes input attenuation isn't visible in the screenshots..... 

10X. Bandwidth on 1X is usually really low (6-10Mhz).

[worsthorse]

So to celebrate post #1000, I did another round of probe testing 

NoName P6100 100Mhz:
Overall the construction seem better that the other P6100. Performance is really bad.

It's a $6 100 MHz probe, what did you expect ? 

I probably paid more than that, but then again, it came with a scope so I'm not sure of the value. I'm not expecting 100Mhz but they should at least work. I probably wouldn't use this one, even at 10Mhz.

They're made by Pioneer and if they were really good don't you think they'd put there name on them ?

Again, not sure why you are saying that. I never expected those probes to be really good  Also I got 2 types of P6100 here so they are probably not all coming from the same source.

BTW, were your tests conducted with the probes in 1x or 10x, you haven't said and the scopes input attenuation isn't visible in the screenshots..... 

10X. Bandwidth on 1X is usually really low (6-10Mhz).

Kosmic, what brand probe adapter did you use?  And congrats on one thousand!   

[Zucca]

Kosmic, my main scope is a MSOX3014T, and I hope it will last for the next 5 years at least.

Nice scope! 5Gs/s is pretty cool 

MSOX3104T sorry typo