Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[nixiefreqq]

was gonna' bid on the heathkit even though my homebrew curve tracer works just fine.

but now that you have pimped it.......maybe not.

[BU508A]

Lord help me I just bought another friggin' power supply - an HP 6228B showed up on eBuy and like a fish to a lure I bit.   

It looks to be in decent shape and is fully shod.  Should be here in about a week.

-Pat

That is a nice power supply. Congrats to your new member in your (constantly growing?) PSU family.   

I have a diy power supply, based on an article in the German electronics journal elrad from Nov. 1985.



It has two channels (+/- 50V, 2.5A per channel) but it is suffering from oscillations, when the CC mode kicks in beyond 600mA.



This weekend I'm attacking the oscillation by applying some ferrite beads to the base of T2/3 T102/103 and some
Miller caps (1nF @ T1/101, T4/104). Also increasing 4 feedback capacitors of four OpAmps (LM324N) from 470pF to 10.47nF
(C3/4 and C103/104). I hope, this will calm down this otherwise very nice linear power supply.

Ah, and adding some LED illumination for the meters. 

I've linked in below the complete article, including schematics, layout and parts list, if you want to have a closer look.

https://elektronik-bastelei.de/schematics/1185/Doppelnetzteil_gesamt.pdf

[bd139]

Bean you got me inspired earlier with that F360 magic. Thus I present my steamer of a Lenovo M600 stand because I'm not paying £15 for one 

[Specmaster]

Looking really good 

[McBryce]

Bean you got me inspired earlier with that F360 magic. Thus I present my steamer of a Lenovo M600 stand because I'm not paying £15 for one 

That's something I've been trying to calculate recently. Price of printer/spare parts/mods, plus reel of PLA, plus delivery costs, plus electricity. How much did the part actually cost to make (assuming your time has zero financial value).

I made a stand for my sons Tablet and wanted to work out at what point it would be cheaper to buy one.

McBryce.

[Mr. Scram]

Bean you got me inspired earlier with that F360 magic. Thus I present my steamer of a Lenovo M600 stand because I'm not paying £15 for one 

Your hourly rate is <30 quid or so? 

[bd139]

Well the positive thing is it's quicker than some random Joe on ebay i.e. it's printing now ETA 4 hours rather than 3-5 days. Plus when I buy another one of these I can print a double sized one that doesn't exist yet.   

Edit: ETA 7pm for print. Correct SSD arrived for the M600 this time . Sitting behind the TV with rsync running from my VM to it. Pulling a whopping 12W out of the wall flat out and around 5W when idle. Not bad for a desktop! Cheaper than leaving my Ryzen on all night with a VM running. I might actually buy another one of these boxes as they're cheap as chips at the moment. I'm quite impressed.

[mnementh]

May not be obvious but that is Fangs out in front to the Camera so it wasn't happy with the rough shaking of clothes to remove it to the floor. Disturbing my Renderings and Port Sippage too 

   Router table adjustable fence ready to build and a Torsion box shelf added to the torsion box top for my Laser plans more or less finished. Over 3 sheets of ply so with Casters and fixings it will weigh in at about 100kg but it should be able to support a small car 

Good on ya fer keeping yer head & not smooshing on sight.     If we ever catch up, I owe ya a pint in the name of all spiders.     

For your woodworking pleasure... or some inspiration... or just so you can drool a little over crazy-precision woodworking tools: https://www.woodpeck.com/

I've been on their mailing list ever since I bought one of their little CNC squares second-hand and invesigated the brand; prices are not cheap, but then again, the quality is first-rate. bean, I know you're a cheap-arse worse than me, but you MIGHT want to take a look at the leather tool-roll they offer ; I can't think of a more worthy place to keep grand-dad's chisels, and considering they employ actual humans in their manufacture, $70 doesn't seem that unreasonable a price. I know I wish I'd had the foresight and spent the money to better keep my grand-dad's tools.

mnem
*back to trying to unscrew the inscrutable config files of my Alpha-3*

[Mr. Scram]

Well the positive thing is it's quicker than some random Joe on ebay i.e. it's printing now ETA 4 hours rather than 3-5 days. Plus when I buy another one of these I can print a double sized one that doesn't exist yet.   

Edit: ETA 7pm for print. Correct SSD arrived for the M600 this time . Sitting behind the TV with rsync running from my VM to it. Pulling a whopping 12W out of the wall flat out and around 5W when idle. Not bad for a desktop! Cheaper than leaving my Ryzen on all night with a VM running. I might actually buy another one of these boxes as they're cheap as chips at the moment. I'm quite impressed.

I'm looking into power consumption too at the moment. There's an order of magnitude difference between laptop and desktop. That's enough to start thinking about some changes. It'll take a while to earn back any money but I don't like the waste, nor the heat. Downside of that little box you bought and many others like it is a lack of HDMI and some have no VESA mount. 12 watt when fully loaded is very nice though.

[mnementh]

   Bean you got me inspired earlier with that F360 magic. Thus I present my steamer of a Lenovo M600 stand because I'm not paying £15 for one 

That's something I've been trying to calculate recently. Price of printer/spare parts/mods, plus reel of PLA, plus delivery costs, plus electricity. How much did the part actually cost to make (assuming your time has zero financial value). I made a stand for my sons Tablet and wanted to work out at what point it would be cheaper to buy one.

McBryce.

Cura will do a very accurate cost of your consumables. You just plug in the total cost of a roll of filament and it does the rest; producing a total amount of filament used and its proportionate cost. Then all you have to do is keep track of your time used designing and setting up an individual print to estimate "cost".

I treat the printer and electricity used as zero; it's a fucking toy, and the time spent fettling with it is my play time. However, ONLY time spent printing USEFUL stuff or stuff for OTHERS is counted against its cost in my books.

Treating it as such, it still doesn't take long to amortize the cost; a few "doesn't exist" figurines valued at half what something similar in the store would cost adds up quickly.

mnem
arrrrggghhh... all the else-ifs and conditional logic... helllllp me!!!!

[BU508A]

arrrrggghhh... all the else-ifs and conditional logic... helllllp me!!!!

If I could then I would else I've got other things to do.   

[Specmaster]

Well the positive thing is it's quicker than some random Joe on ebay i.e. it's printing now ETA 4 hours rather than 3-5 days. Plus when I buy another one of these I can print a double sized one that doesn't exist yet.   

Edit: ETA 7pm for print. Correct SSD arrived for the M600 this time . Sitting behind the TV with rsync running from my VM to it. Pulling a whopping 12W out of the wall flat out and around 5W when idle. Not bad for a desktop! Cheaper than leaving my Ryzen on all night with a VM running. I might actually buy another one of these boxes as they're cheap as chips at the moment. I'm quite impressed.

I'm looking into power consumption too at the moment. There's an order of magnitude difference between laptop and desktop. That's enough to start thinking about some changes. It'll take a while to earn back any money but I don't like the waste, nor the heat. Downside of that little box you bought and many others like it is a lack of HDMI and some have no VESA mount. 12 watt when fully loaded is very nice though.

The ThinkCentre M600 does in fact have HDMI built in https://www.lenovo.com/au/en/desktops-and-all-in-ones/thinkcentre/m-series-tiny/M600-Tiny/p/11TC1MTM600

[bd139]

Well the positive thing is it's quicker than some random Joe on ebay i.e. it's printing now ETA 4 hours rather than 3-5 days. Plus when I buy another one of these I can print a double sized one that doesn't exist yet.   

Edit: ETA 7pm for print. Correct SSD arrived for the M600 this time . Sitting behind the TV with rsync running from my VM to it. Pulling a whopping 12W out of the wall flat out and around 5W when idle. Not bad for a desktop! Cheaper than leaving my Ryzen on all night with a VM running. I might actually buy another one of these boxes as they're cheap as chips at the moment. I'm quite impressed.

I'm looking into power consumption too at the moment. There's an order of magnitude difference between laptop and desktop. That's enough to start thinking about some changes. It'll take a while to earn back any money but I don't like the waste, nor the heat. Downside of that little box you bought and many others like it is a lack of HDMI and some have no VESA mount. 12 watt when fully loaded is very nice though.

It has two DP holes which is good enough for a desktop machine.

Depending on your requirements, a laptop and docking station makes a pretty damn good desktop I find. I spend most of my time using the Thinkpad T470 and docking station with a couple of PuTTY windows, browser, slack and Libreoffice open and that's about it. I switch both monitor inputs to Ryzen desktop when I need some CAD stuff done or fancy a bash at killing things. Still require a USB switch box for keyboard/mouse.

My current "desktop" set up. Just grab the laptop and walk off when you need to go.



Edit: btw that is triple independent displays, not mirrored.

[SilverSolder]

I like the small Dell Optiplex (small form factor, SFF) PCs,  they are dirt cheap on eBay so you can sprinkle them liberally around the house / office wherever you need a PC - no need to carry a laptop around.

Most of them have a real serial port too,  which is great for electronics work.

[Kosmic]

Well, idiots started burning cell phone tower over here too. 

[Specmaster]

Well the positive thing is it's quicker than some random Joe on ebay i.e. it's printing now ETA 4 hours rather than 3-5 days. Plus when I buy another one of these I can print a double sized one that doesn't exist yet.   

Edit: ETA 7pm for print. Correct SSD arrived for the M600 this time . Sitting behind the TV with rsync running from my VM to it. Pulling a whopping 12W out of the wall flat out and around 5W when idle. Not bad for a desktop! Cheaper than leaving my Ryzen on all night with a VM running. I might actually buy another one of these boxes as they're cheap as chips at the moment. I'm quite impressed.

I'm looking into power consumption too at the moment. There's an order of magnitude difference between laptop and desktop. That's enough to start thinking about some changes. It'll take a while to earn back any money but I don't like the waste, nor the heat. Downside of that little box you bought and many others like it is a lack of HDMI and some have no VESA mount. 12 watt when fully loaded is very nice though.

It has two DP holes which is good enough for a desktop machine.

Depending on your requirements, a laptop and docking station makes a pretty damn good desktop I find. I spend most of my time using the Thinkpad T470 and docking station with a couple of PuTTY windows, browser, slack and Libreoffice open and that's about it. I switch both monitor inputs to Ryzen desktop when I need some CAD stuff done or fancy a bash at killing things. Still require a USB switch box for keyboard/mouse.

My current "desktop" set up. Just grab the laptop and walk off when you need to go.



Edit: btw that is triple independent displays, not mirrored.

No need for a KVM switch box, there is software available for it https://www.groovypost.com/reviews/sharemouse-vs-synergy-keyboard-mouse-sharing-review/ When I worked from home I used the free software Synergy which worked really well and allows you to share a mouse and keyboard across many PC's and laptops, just install the software on all devices and connect to your home network and then switch between machines simply by moving the mouse pointer from screen 1 to 2, 3 and so on and the mouse and keyboard are then connected to the device connected to the screen that the mouse popinter is on. This allows free flowing of workload which is seamless.

https://symless.com/synergy

[Mr. Scram]

I like the small Dell Optiplex (small form factor, SFF) PCs,  they are dirt cheap on eBay so you can sprinkle them liberally around the house / office wherever you need a PC - no need to carry a laptop around.

Most of them have a real serial port too,  which is great for electronics work.

I like having separate systems, especially when I'm installing VISA drivers and others things I don't want lumped in with all the other stuff. VMs aren't always a solution either. What I don't like is tending to a herd of computers. I'm growing increasingly weary of the feeling I work for my computers instead of it being the other way around.

[bd139]

I like the small Dell Optiplex (small form factor, SFF) PCs,  they are dirt cheap on eBay so you can sprinkle them liberally around the house / office wherever you need a PC - no need to carry a laptop around.

Most of them have a real serial port too,  which is great for electronics work.

Only problem is you need to actually get the stuff you need onto the right PC which is always a pain in the arse. We have (counting), err 3 laptops, 3 desktops, 2 ipads, 3 iphones here and nothing is ever in the right place.

Well, idiots started burning cell phone tower over here too. 

Oh great. Our local mental going on about this appears to have disappeared for a week. I hope they take out whoever is kicking it of for you promptly.

No need for a KVM switch box, there is software available for it https://www.groovypost.com/reviews/sharemouse-vs-synergy-keyboard-mouse-sharing-review/ When I worked from home I used the free software Synergy which worked really well and allows you to share a mouse and keyboard across many PC's and laptops, just install the software on all devices and connect to your home network and then switch between machines simply by moving the mouse pointer from screen 1 to 2, 3 and so on and the mouse and keyboard are then connected to the device connected to the screen that the mouse popinter is on. This allows free flowing of workload which is seamless.

https://symless.com/synergy

Interesting but I bet there's a lot of pointer lag and stuff with that. All I really need to do is press a button on a KVM to switch the stuff between the docking station and the desktop PC. Can solve that with a 20 quid switch box from amazon.

[Specmaster]

Zero lag between screens / pc's. I have used both KVM's and the Synergy system, the KVM got the boot very quickly from the desk.

Edit. Download the Synergy software and try it for yourself, might be just what you want.

[jsantoro]

Be aware on those Huntron 5100 Trackers, none of them have an analog board in them. From the seller, the Army was required to removed them before they were sold. Unless you need the other parts they are useless.

[Specmaster]

Crap!
Followed the call and also ordered a Xtal tester from ebay. Ordered from the seller pretending to be shipping from the UK because of hopefully shorter shipping times.
Only some ours on the next day (today) I received message from the seller stating he would like to cancel my order because he has none left in stock.
This is the ebay offer I bought from after he wrote me, today, 16:30 GMT, I didn't even order last one offered:


I'm pissed.   
OTH perhaps it's better this way, who knows?   

Yeah, thats the same seller who also cancelled mine. They sell them on BangGood for less money, but they are now I think, only available from their Canada warehouse now.

Ok, so, let's see who's got the crystal tester first.   

(Attachment Link)

Good luck. 

Oh shit, it looks likely that nobody is going to get theirs very quickly at all. When I ordered mine it was showing as being in stock and shipping time from the UK warehouse was 1 to 2 business days. Today I received this email attached below and after a very long live chat with their support dept., it seems that the item is only in stock in China and that China is currently in their Spring Festival Holiday and that there will be about 2 week delay at least. So why the hell do their stock systems only apparently report the China stock situation. I asked if Canada has any in stock and was told no 

Edit:
I just did a bit of digging and it would appear that Dongguan, CN does not refer to a warehouse in Canada at all but it is a warehouse in Dongguan, China that is assigned to Canadain orders, so I suspect that there also exists a Dongguan, UK and a Dongguan, EU, which are quite possibly the same warehouse, split in to sections and all orders placed via that portal are shipped in bulk to a forwarding agent in Canada, UK or the EU accordingly and then forwarding agent has to split apart the bulk delivery and forward each package on to the final destination  Not sure if that is faster or not, maybe they get better rates from the airlines / freight carriers if they offer 1 bulk package rather then loads of smaller packages?

[Ero-Shan]

Yeah well I did a stupid didn't I. BD139/140 for drivers yeah but not finals. I sold all my cool power transistors to AVGresponding  . Think I've got some MJE3055's somewhere but can't find them.

This very morning I re-sorted all my transistors. I have a pair of MJE2955 and MJE3055 (used).
I also have a some BD135..138, but not a single BD139.

And a few where a gurgle search turns up blank. 

[McBryce]

Yeah well I did a stupid didn't I. BD139/140 for drivers yeah but not finals. I sold all my cool power transistors to AVGresponding  . Think I've got some MJE3055's somewhere but can't find them.

This very morning I re-sorted all my transistors. I have a pair of MJE2955 and MJE3055 (used).
I also have a some BD135..138, but not a single BD139.

And a few where a gurgle search turns up blank. 

There can only be one BD139!

(Link to Highlander clip that I couldn't find on YouTube)

McBryce.

[mnementh]

As y'all may know, facemasks are still pretty much unobtanium, unless you had the foresight to mail order them before they ran out. I finally gave up and ordered one of those cloth ones, just to make others feel better when I go out shopping.

So.... whadday'all think...? Pretty stylin', ehh...?

mnem
*impairing productivity since nineteen-mumblety-mumble*

[Specmaster]

Holy Shit Balls, I would never have guessed that was you behind that mask