Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[BU508A]

Those Prema's went for £190 in the end... £150 or so more than my budget!   

Why get GTA V just because it's free? It's an old game now, get something new!
Oh wait, they don't make new games any more, just re-heat old ones because it's cheaper and easier. My bad.

I thought that was stupid money for what is at least to me, an unknown brand and no info available.

Prema is a German company, nowadays producing semiconductors but in the early days, they produced a lot of good DMMs.

Here you can find further information including the manuals of the 5000 DMM from the ebay auction:

https://www.prema.com/index.php/en/service-en/maintanance-of-measuring-instruments

Edit:

Here are some pictures and explanations (in German) from the Prema 5000:

https://www.amplifier.cd/Test_Equipment/other/Prema-5000.html

[mnementh]

I plan on being on Discord at 2130 UTC today. Anyone else? 

Yeah I've been happily unfuckerizing a $10 bicycle all day; I'm ready for my weekly dose of abuse. 

mnem
Nice pants.

[Wolfgang]

That soldering is crazy fast imagine how hot that iron must be. Think I'll be there on the Discord

Definition of success: 90% of the soldering joints work until a current of max. 100mA and have less than 5Ohms. 

[mnementh]

Geez, the speed of these Chinese doing hand soldering, if you don't want to watch the entire video, skip forward to 23:30, strewth.

... snip soldering video ...

Blimey that's fast. Might explain why half of it doesn't work 

So Saskia mentioned TensorFlow the other day and the discussion over RTX cards has got me humming and hawing over pulling the trigger on an RTX 2060 now. I have had some ideas on the back burner a while about anomaly detection and event classification. I have about 300Gb of raw time-series anomaly data available in Thanos going back 9 months as a training corpus. Both for the purposes of early warning monitoring systems and making some cash through throwing market data into it

This entirely isn't about GTA. Honest 

Didja lookit the ginormous pot of burned-up solder? Pretty sure that guy's running at like 800°... if any temp control at all.

   Also, I saw my mLiNK S4 (rebranded ATTEN) soldering station on the line there... guess they either hacked it like I did or found a way to keep it from eating thermal sensors...   

Go RTX2070 Super with triple fans at MINIMUM (especially if someone else is footing the bill). Unless you play on a VGA monitor, you WILL regret going with less unless you're into OCing and living with jet engine video cards. 

mnem
*toddles off to scrounge some leftover Chinese food*

[BU508A]

Spec, did I miss something -or am I second?      

Here are some information from the guy which invented this frequency counter / crystal tester:

https://www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/freq_counter/freq_counter.html

[beanflying]

So the Sun shone all day and the wind was nil. Unfortunately you can't divorce your siblings (red headed Sister) and my Mums Daughter and the shack was out of Tonic   

So this is a thing and Bundy GB has a proper hit of real Ginger https://www.thespruceeats.com/foghorn-cocktail-recipe-760023 Lemon off the tree because the possums killed the lime one

[Specmaster]

So the Sun shone all day and the wind was nil. Unfortunately you can't divorce your siblings (red headed Sister) and my Mums Daughter and the shack was out of Tonic   

So this is a thing and Bundy GB has a proper hit of real Ginger https://www.thespruceeats.com/foghorn-cocktail-recipe-760023 Lemon off the tree because the possums killed the lime one

Strewth mate, you have real small bottles there don’t yah? What strength is that then, it looks like 1% ot is it 4%

[beanflying]

Gin for the Alcohol the GB is virginal  When a triple-quad goes into a pint glass best not to compound the booze 

[Specmaster]

I’m not following this, you put 3 GBs in a pint glass on their own, what is the Gin for? Over here our GB comes in 500ml bottles, that just about is a pint and that is 4% alcohol, same as any other beer so we need to supplement it with Gin or anything else 

[psykok]

No progress, I just know that blowing fuse is on the -15 unreg
Now I have to study the documentation to understand for what is the -15unreg rail used for.

With no beam, my strong suspicion is to the EHT oscillator.

I managed to reduced the fault tot the HT board.
Know I have to find a way to debug this board. I hate playing with HT.

I just hope that the HT Module is not faulty.

Alex

With another scope you can just hold a probe near the oscillator (Colpits probably) to check it's running but if it's blowing fuses disconnect some loads from the secondary side and see if it starts first.
Usually guys break the connection to the PDA multiplier as their first check.
RTFM 

Oh and find the Trouble shooting Tek scopes pdf.......you have a bit of reading to do. 
Don't overthink it just break it all down into functional blocks and fix them one at a time.

You really  think im troubleshooting a scope without reading the manual !

I was just making this comment because  I'm not so familiar and used to play with HT.
I will try to brake the connection to the PDA multiplier do my tests.

In the worst case I will probably have to replace the full board.

[AVGresponding]

So the Sun shone all day and the wind was nil. Unfortunately you can't divorce your siblings (red headed Sister) and my Mums Daughter and the shack was out of Tonic   

So this is a thing and Bundy GB has a proper hit of real Ginger https://www.thespruceeats.com/foghorn-cocktail-recipe-760023 Lemon off the tree because the possums killed the lime one

Strewth mate, you have real small bottles there don’t yah? What strength is that then, it looks like 1% ot is it 4%

I believe that's why they call them "stubbies"? 375ml is an oddball size, but so is 330ml or 440ml (typical sizes for cans here) if you think about it, given a pint is 568ml, and a litre is, well I expect you already know...

[beanflying]

3-4 shots (80-100ml) of Gin, GB 375 ml, 1/2 a Lemon for Scurvy prevention and just an appropriate amount of room for non slopage 

I specially made this third one for 'science' 

[AVGresponding]

I thoroughly approve of your scientific method.   

[URI]

It's morning time before lunch and you're discussing alcoholic drinks, ts, ts, ts..      

[Specmaster]

I thoroughly approve of your scientific method.   

Nah, can't bet proper men's ginger beer.

[tautech]

It's morning time before lunch and you're discussing alcoholic drinks, ts, ts, ts..      

Not here ! 
Just thinking about finding the scratcher and a pillow. Even though Bean's 2.5 hrs behind us, after his 3rd G&GB he might be looking for a pillow soon too.

[Specmaster]

It's morning time before lunch and you're discussing alcoholic drinks, ts, ts, ts..      

Us Brits are only replying, as usual cobber, its Aussies and their bloody children sized measures that they have down under 

[beanflying]

It's morning time before lunch and you're discussing alcoholic drinks, ts, ts, ts..      

Not here ! 
Just thinking about finding the scratcher and a pillow. Even though Bean's 2.5 hrs behind us, after his 3rd G&GB he might be looking for a pillow soon too.

I have become Comfortably numb.... CAD ability is suffering so it might be nearly to to put the Brain to bed.

[URI]

Spec, did I miss something -or am I second?      

Here are some information from the guy which invented this frequency counter / crystal tester:

https://www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/freq_counter/freq_counter.html

Thanks for the the linking to the author! I was wondering how and where to find information on that little XTAL tester yesterday when I traced down a fault that made it stop working*..

Here is mine:

Used two layers of package tape for masking the LED display for better visibility and readability.

And here it is, checking an 8MHz SMD type quartz:



*- I put the quartz all way in sitting on top of the surface of the PCB. The first run was succesful but when I had it assembled into its housing the little gadget didn't work anymore. Traced it down to the 20MHz XTAL didn't start oscillating. I changed the two resonator caps -no success. I exchanged it with the 8MHz quartz -that worked -but obviously that wouldn't count right.
After putting it back in without soldering I noticed that I could get it working in one position but it was failing in another with the same behaviour as before.
Resolution was: The via soldering points are bigger than the isolation diameter of the quartz's legs and would sometimes cause a short to the housing of the quartz.   
Temporarily put a piece of paper between PCB an quartz that I removed after soldering and it works happily now.   
Nice little piece of kit.

[tautech]

No progress, I just know that blowing fuse is on the -15 unreg
Now I have to study the documentation to understand for what is the -15unreg rail used for.

With no beam, my strong suspicion is to the EHT oscillator.

I managed to reduced the fault tot the HT board.
Know I have to find a way to debug this board. I hate playing with HT.

I just hope that the HT Module is not faulty.

Alex

With another scope you can just hold a probe near the oscillator (Colpits probably) to check it's running but if it's blowing fuses disconnect some loads from the secondary side and see if it starts first.
Usually guys break the connection to the PDA multiplier as their first check.
RTFM 

Oh and find the Trouble shooting Tek scopes pdf.......you have a bit of reading to do. 
Don't overthink it just break it all down into functional blocks and fix them one at a time.

You really  think im troubleshooting a scope without reading the manual !

I was just making this comment because  I'm not so familiar and used to play with HT.
I will try to brake the connection to the PDA multiplier do my tests.

In the worst case I will probably have to replace the full board.

Generally they are not too hard to fix. If the EHT oscillator is not working there are a few reasons why and as there are not to many parts on the primary side you can check each part in quite short time. But the transformers can sometimes fail or a problem on the secondary side can cause them not to start.

I had one years ago that had a break in the secondary winding and luckily it was a 2 piece pot core but all covered in soft white silicon so dismantled it expecting to rewind it and found the break in the top layer of the winding and lost just one turn rejoining it to the breakout lead. 
Put it all back together and it worked fine so sold it for a good bit more than I paid for it. 

It was an English Bradley 200, 100 MHz IIRC and a brand I'd never heard of before.

[tautech]

It's morning time before lunch and you're discussing alcoholic drinks, ts, ts, ts..      

Not here ! 
Just thinking about finding the scratcher and a pillow. Even though Bean's 2.5 hrs behind us, after his 3rd G&GB he might be looking for a pillow soon too.

I have become Comfortably numb.... CAD ability is suffering so it might be nearly to to put the Brain to bed.

Right out of comfortably numb for the last few days but off to the shops tomorrow to post some scopes and get some more liquid anesthetics while venturing out.
Sleep well Bean. 

[Specmaster]

Thanks URI, that looks quite good with the packing tape over LED's. I would have thought though that there should have been a piece or 2 of red plastic sheeting for that job. Good bit of tracking on the strange fault there, well done. Can't wait for mine to arrive now 

[med6753]

It's morning time before lunch and you're discussing alcoholic drinks, ts, ts, ts..      

Not here ! 
Just thinking about finding the scratcher and a pillow. Even though Bean's 2.5 hrs behind us, after his 3rd G&GB he might be looking for a pillow soon too.

I am not well versed in the ways of the drink but I have plenty of relatives who are.....

[bd139]

That's his best one that is. 

[med6753]

I love this one.

CUNTS!