Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[capt bullshot]

I'm more than impressed with this 34401A.
...
So it looks like it has been calibrated once at the factory and then one more time before being delivered to the original customer.
...
The fact that it measured my LTZ1000 voltage reference so accurately despite not being calibrated since it was first put into service is quite amazing. The fact that it also measured my 1K, 10K and 100K ultra precision resistors as almost the identical value that the cal lab measured them at is frankly incredible!

Congrats on this 34401A!

Anyway, what you describe is what I expect from a 34401A. At least one of mine is in exactly this state (never been calibrated after initial factory) and still matches the Fluke 5100 to ballpark 10ppm in the 10V range. I don't know the calibration history of the other two, but in terms of accuracy they're quite the same.

[capt bullshot]

Also while I’m here, argh. Just spent three sodding hours trying to get an STM32 talking to a PCF8574 to no avail. The PCF8574 never acks the first bus command. Bus is properly terminated. Addressing correct. Will attack again tomorrow.

In some derivatives of the STM32 family, the I2C peripheral is broken in many interesting ways. Anyway, with STM32 I found bitbanging I2C way much easier than using the I2C peripheral at all.

[med6753]

Afterglow. Total darkness and the 535A has been powered off for over 10 seconds.

I think it's the optional "P2" phosphor. And it will continue to glow for several minutes.

[med6753]

California just went on lock down. All non-essential services to close except food stores, banks, pharmacies.

[bd139]

Also while I’m here, argh. Just spent three sodding hours trying to get an STM32 talking to a PCF8574 to no avail. The PCF8574 never acks the first bus command. Bus is properly terminated. Addressing correct. Will attack again tomorrow.

In some derivatives of the STM32 family, the I2C peripheral is broken in many interesting ways. Anyway, with STM32 I found bitbanging I2C way much easier than using the I2C peripheral at all.

Thanks for this scary piece of information  . However in this case I’ve got the scope on it and it’s sending the start frame and address. There is just no ack from the PCF8574 despite using the correct address.

After sleeping on it, I get the feeling that I’d got the state machine in the slave end in a state which meant it wasn’t going to work so I’ll look at clocking out a reset sequence before assuming it is good today.

[Brumby]

You've earnt them, no not for the woodwork you're working on but the job you've done on Brumby this week. 

We won't mention yesterdays PM's I titled 'Resident Evil' I sent him either

Yeah, well.   Bean seems to get enjoyment over tempting my wallet to yield.....

[beanflying]

Nothing wrong with a little vicarious spending 

[Specmaster]

I've been working in the manufacturing side of the industry for the 35 to 40 years right up to the time I retired I can safely say that the JIT method does indeed have its place in the business model. That place is in the high value luxury goods market, and not in the food chain or the basic commodity arena.

Sounds like you think food manufacturers will struggle to ramp up production quickly, to cope with the surge in demand?

In a nutshell, yes I do believe that they will struggle to ramp up to meet the challenge. The problem rests with the basic concept of JIT system. It very heavily relies on the sales teams getting an accurate sales forecast into the production planning Dept, not just 1 month in advance but often up to 6 months in advance. Then the bean counters can decide on the right balance in their view, on the stock levels and optimum order values to try to stay a few days ahead of the curve.

This process is repeated all the way down the chain from the producers, it affects all the suppliers of the various ingredients of the finished product and then that in turn rolls down to the farmers / growers who do not want to grow crops with all the expensive fertilisers etc involved, just to plough in the ground again because there is not the market for it. This is all in the name of profits.

Before JIT, if a farmer over produced then the price dropped in order to move that over capacity on through the food chain to the consumer to encourage them to buy and consume extra and it worked well until the bean counters became involved and all in the process of increased profits.

Nobody could have forecast the Covid19 virus would come along cause such unprecedented demand and now the weakest link in the chain is the farmer who cannot respond quickly enough.

[tggzzz]

People like this person are the cause of the food shortages, and you know what, I bet that a lot of that will end up in the bin anyway with use before dates expiring and that fresh fruit and veg will go off real quick, bastards. There people working all day in essential jobs who when they get to shops at the end of their shifts will find next to nothing, while this wealthy person has all the time in the world got out and stock pile. 

https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1240684125440352256?s=20

Yeah, what an entitled douche, and what a shitty example to set your kids. Chances are they'll be even worse than him when they grow up.

Yeah, I'm all for looking after the family ensuing that they don't go hungry, but he had months worth of food and in reality you only need a 2 to 3 weeks worth as you must be able to source more in that time period.

A problem in the UK is that we only produce 50% of our food; the rest comes from "elsewhere". If borders become shut that might become an issue.

Now I know I'd like to reduce my weight a little (to get my blood pressure down if nothing else), but not by too much!

[tggzzz]

People like this person are the cause of the food shortages, and you know what, I bet that a lot of that will end up in the bin anyway with use before dates expiring and that fresh fruit and veg will go off real quick, bastards. There people working all day in essential jobs who when they get to shops at the end of their shifts will find next to nothing, while this wealthy person has all the time in the world got out and stock pile. 

https://twitter.com/mikegalsworthy/status/1240684125440352256?s=20

You ought to see my daughter's flat. She has (or, to try and get the tense right, probably will have had) a business making and selling ice cream. Unfortunately peanut butter and salted caramel or lemon merangue ice cream isn't anybody's definition of a good diet!

[bd139]

I've been working in the manufacturing side of the industry for the 35 to 40 years right up to the time I retired I can safely say that the JIT method does indeed have its place in the business model. That place is in the high value luxury goods market, and not in the food chain or the basic commodity arena.

Sounds like you think food manufacturers will struggle to ramp up production quickly, to cope with the surge in demand?

In a nutshell, yes I do believe that they will struggle to ramp up to meet the challenge. The problem rests with the basic concept of JIT system. It very heavily relies on the sales teams getting an accurate sales forecast into the production planning Dept, not just 1 month in advance but often up to 6 months in advance. Then the bean counters can decide on the right balance in their view, on the stock levels and optimum order values to try to stay a few days ahead of the curve.

This process is repeated all the way down the chain from the producers, it affects all the suppliers of the various ingredients of the finished product and then that in turn rolls down to the farmers / growers who do not want to grow crops with all the expensive fertilisers etc involved, just to plough in the ground again because there is not the market for it. This is all in the name of profits.

Before JIT, if a farmer over produced then the price dropped in order to move that over capacity on through the food chain to the consumer to encourage them to buy and consume extra and it worked well until the bean counters became involved and all in the process of increased profits.

Nobody could have forecast the Covid19 virus would come along cause such unprecedented demand and now the weakest link in the chain is the farmer who cannot respond quickly enough.

I don't think production is an issue here. We are already choosy about what we accept into the supply chain (bent carrots go to animal feed stock etc). A larger supply can be provided if we just ignore that for a bit. And the supply is definitely there. The issue is not really JIT here either I don't think which is possible if done correctly with decent mathematical modelling, but the centralisation of suppliers around supermarkets in this case. Typically they organise everything in a hub/spoke model for distribution balancing purposes so they can feed in from one supplier and out to multiple stores. That means total system capacity is defined by the throughput of each spoke, the redundancy model of each spoke and the capacity of the distribution centre to store and route products. If someone places demand then the capacity is entirely limited by the narrowest point and that is always defined to be as cheap as possible on a normal basis, not effective in a crisis, because of the race to the bottom pricing of our supermarkets has squeezed every bit of economy out of the situation. On top of that usually you end up with supply chains being manually managed so when Tesco puts in an order for half a million bog rolls for next week, the manufacturer produces them and ships them and then their drivers have to queue up outside the tesco distribution centre, leaning on their trucks smoking and being moaned at by their wives for hours at a time. This is because there is no space to put them because of capacity and unloading problems.

Also on top of that the architecture fails because the entire process requires an army of truck drivers, unloaders, shelf stackers etc some of whom are actually sick or pretending to be at least  . You can walk into our local tesco at the moment with an ID, two arms, two legs and be starting work an hour later.

Source: did two years working on ERP systems for this stuff.

[Specmaster]

We still need buffer stocks of non-perishable food at both the producers and the chain stores distribution depts in unison with a robust stock rotation control then when bad weather / dock strikes, or major health scares like we currently have, the effects of that could be diluted to a large extent because there would be stocks already distributed around the country that could quickly be deployed to plug gaps on the supermarkets shelves. 

JIT does not really lend itself to the food industry because it is a must-have situation, luxury items like expensive cars, gold watches etc are not so a delay in getting one of those is not as critical as getting food to the people especially those that cannot queue for hours on end, the ill, elderly etc.

[xrunner]

I tried ordering using Wal Mart's grocery service where you order online and go pick it up yourself. A worker brings out your order and loads it. I didn't get the toilet paper I had ordered which was in stock at the time. But if it's gone when they go out to get your order, then it's gone. I asked her if toilet paper was coming in and she said yes. But they no longer put it on the shelf because it's a waste of time. They just move the pallet to the floor and let the buzzards pick it clean.

I will continue to order that way, and get take-out dinners. I just read an article on the grocery supply chain and it seems to be able to handle the load but people are still buying all they can deliver. But it said at some time people will realize they have enough and will start to use what they have and the stress on the system will go down.

[Specmaster]

I tried ordering using Wal Mart's grocery service where you order online and go pick it up yourself. A worker brings out your order and loads it. I didn't get the toilet paper I had ordered which was in stock at the time. But if it's gone when they go out to get your order, then it's gone. I asked her if toilet paper was coming in and she said yes. But they no longer put it on the shelf because it's a waste of time. They just move the pallet to the floor and let the buzzards pick it clean.

I will continue to order that way, and get take-out dinners. I just read an article on the grocery supply chain and it seems to be able to handle the load but people are still buying all they can deliver. But it said at some time people will realize they have enough and will start to use what they have and the stress on the system will go down.

While this very true, there are still an awful lot of people who are still struggling to get sufficient food in the meantime thanks to these buzzards picking the shelves bare.

[mansaxel]

Lidl low-alcohol (3,5%) lager.

You're calling 3.5% beer low strength? What are you, Finnish? 

Well, in Germany, where this particular beer comes from, they usually let a Pilsener do its thing up to a bit above 4, perhaps 4,3% which is considered more appropriate for the kind. Not much stronger, though. If you push a lager close to 6% ABV it will start tasting horrible. An ale, stout or similar is required to carry such percentages.  Consequently, a 3,5% lager is on the weak side.  Or so I'm told. Not going too close to the brewery rabbit hole.

[bd139]

Idiots down here: https://mobile.twitter.com/CrimeLdn/status/1240376132056342540

 

Best reply:

[AVGresponding]

Lidl low-alcohol (3,5%) lager.

You're calling 3.5% beer low strength? What are you, Finnish? 

Well, in Germany, where this particular beer comes from, they usually let a Pilsener do its thing up to a bit above 4, perhaps 4,3% which is considered more appropriate for the kind. Not much stronger, though. If you push a lager close to 6% ABV it will start tasting horrible. An ale, stout or similar is required to carry such percentages.  Consequently, a 3,5% lager is on the weak side.  Or so I'm told. Not going too close to the brewery rabbit hole.

To be fair, I only drink the strong stuff at home.

If I'm out at the pub (if that ever happens again) I'll drink the weaker stuff in the 3.5-4% range, otherwise I'd just be a sloppy drunk mess on the floor within a couple of hours   


EDIT: UK gov scientists now say social distancing needs to continue for a year to defeat covid prevent critical care from being overwhelmed...

Yeah, good luck with that   

[Specmaster]

Idiots down here: https://mobile.twitter.com/CrimeLdn/status/1240376132056342540

 

Best reply:

On a par with those idiots in lockdown in Spain, bloody muppets the lot of them.

[xrunner]

Idiots down here: https://mobile.twitter.com/CrimeLdn/status/1240376132056342540

 

Best reply:

Yep, it's true all you doubters.

We did evolve from lower forms of animals.

[bd139]

Some of us did. Some of us haven’t yet 

[grizewald]

I'm more than impressed with this 34401A.
...
So it looks like it has been calibrated once at the factory and then one more time before being delivered to the original customer.
...
The fact that it measured my LTZ1000 voltage reference so accurately despite not being calibrated since it was first put into service is quite amazing. The fact that it also measured my 1K, 10K and 100K ultra precision resistors as almost the identical value that the cal lab measured them at is frankly incredible!

Congrats on this 34401A!

Anyway, what you describe is what I expect from a 34401A. At least one of mine is in exactly this state (never been calibrated after initial factory) and still matches the Fluke 5100 to ballpark 10ppm in the 10V range. I don't know the calibration history of the other two, but in terms of accuracy they're quite the same.

Thanks.

Although the reference in the 34401A is supposed to be an LM399, this kind of stability implies some very special, hand selected version of it. I knew that the 34401A is a highly regarded piece of kit, but I didn't realise they were this good!

[Cerebus]

Also while I’m here, argh. Just spent three sodding hours trying to get an STM32 talking to a PCF8574 to no avail. The PCF8574 never acks the first bus command. Bus is properly terminated. Addressing correct. Will attack again tomorrow.

OK lads, I'm taking bets on what BD is doing to dump on ebay to fund buying a logic analyser.

[med6753]

Idiots down here: https://mobile.twitter.com/CrimeLdn/status/1240376132056342540

 

Best reply:

Fucking wanker.

[med6753]

Phil's HP probes are on the way to him much cheaper than what that fool on Ebay wanted to jack him on shipping. 

[Cerebus]

Lidl low-alcohol (3,5%) lager.

You're calling 3.5% beer low strength? What are you, Finnish? 

Here Super Bock, has 5.2%

(Attachment Link)

Oh, everywhere has a local brew of "tramp juice". In the UK it's "Special Brew" currently 7.5% ABV, used to be 9%. (Ob Fact: My ex-wife had a peripheral hand in the making of "Crucial Brew" a 9% ABV variant of Red Stripe which came about when someone accidentality fed neat beer (full brew strength as opposed to diluted) to the Charles Wells canning line. The cans thus created were given away to staff, they developed a taste for it, and a new product was born. The name came from people putting on a fake Jamaican accent and describing the brew as "well crucial", which was faddish slang among British youth at the time for "good".)

What I meant was that by "low alcohol" beer most people mean something < 1.0% ABV that you can have a couple and still safely and legally drive. So calling a 3.5% ABV session beer "low alcohol" suggests the writer has a fondness for strong drink. Mansaxel is Swedish, there his neighbours the Finns have the same humorous reputation in regards to drink as the Irish do here in England. In Sweden they call drinking yourself to death "Finnish Suicide".