Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

https://www.gofundme.com/f/lets-get-right-to-repair-passed

“We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which furious party cries will be raised against anybody who says that cows have horns, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening mob with the news that grass is green.”

― G.K. Chesterton

Repair is a sure way to reduce the ever-growing mountains of e-waste with all of its toxins polluting the environment. A few years ago I recall that there was a movement to send out to 3rd world countries the old out of date mobile phones that fashion and innovation made their owners go out and buy newer models, so that they may enjoy another lease of life before they became more e-waste, what became of that?

Instead of these large corporations building ever larger cash mountains as their greed grows ever larger, they should be forced to actually pay their correct amount of taxes instead of dodging it by whatever means they can contrive to avoid doing so and also forced to do something constructive about cutting the amount e-waste their business models generate.

After all is said and done, isn't this essentially what we are striving to do with our love of old vintage test gear, keeping it from becoming land fill?

That is the antithesis of the corporate business model, which for all intents & purposes is viral and consumes the host. You'll not fix that until you fix the public perception that since they have all the money, they should make all the rules.

But human beings, when put together in large groups, generally tend (out of inertia, I suppose... ) towards a patriarchal, authoritarian & punitive social structure... so odds of that kind of enlightenment happening before we destroy ourselves and most of the life on this planet are pretty small. 

mnem
 

[Specmaster]

Thanks for reminding me why I shouldn't come to Oz...

Oh Germany has it's fair share of oversized arthropods too you know. Even if they don't have the ability to kill you. This thing has been hanging around the walls of my workroom for several days. I estimate it at about 7cm foot-to-foot.

McBryce.

Likely a cousin of mine looking at it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntsman_spider

It's a Tegenaria, which is a type of funnel spider. They get up to about 10cm and can bite you, but they're not poisonous.

McBryce.

If you ever come to Sydney - watch out for this blighter....


Those fangs are at least a quarter inch long - and will swing out forward to give an excellent angle of attack..... and, yes, they will stand up to you like that if you piss them off.  I know - I caught a pair of them many years ago.  They were not afraid of me.

If I were to come across them, I think that they would soon be meeting their maker as I'd be wacking the blighters with something solid enough to crush them, feisty little buggers.

[mnementh]

If you were to come across them, I'm pretty sure that alone would be enough to kill them. 

mnem
or at least incapacitate...

[Specmaster]

https://www.gofundme.com/f/lets-get-right-to-repair-passed

“We shall soon be in a world in which a man may be howled down for saying that two and two make four, in which furious party cries will be raised against anybody who says that cows have horns, in which people will persecute the heresy of calling a triangle a three-sided figure, and hang a man for maddening mob with the news that grass is green.”

― G.K. Chesterton

Repair is a sure way to reduce the ever-growing mountains of e-waste with all of its toxins polluting the environment. A few years ago I recall that there was a movement to send out to 3rd world countries the old out of date mobile phones that fashion and innovation made their owners go out and buy newer models, so that they may enjoy another lease of life before they became more e-waste, what became of that?

Instead of these large corporations building ever larger cash mountains as their greed grows ever larger, they should be forced to actually pay their correct amount of taxes instead of dodging it by whatever means they can contrive to avoid doing so and also forced to do something constructive about cutting the amount e-waste their business models generate.

After all is said and done, isn't this essentially what we are striving to do with our love of old vintage test gear, keeping it from becoming land fill?

That is the antithesis of the corporate business model, which for all intents & purposes is viral and consumes the host. You'll not fix that until you fix the public perception that since they have all the money, they should make all the rules.

But human beings, when put together in large groups, generally tend (out of inertia, I suppose... ) towards a patriarchal, authoritarian & punitive social structure... so odds of that kind of enlightenment happening before we destroy ourselves and most of the life on this planet are pretty small. 

mnem
 

Then perhaps they should think about what happens if they pay their fair and due taxes, it would reduce the tax burden on the little people, you and me who cannot avoid paying taxes due to PAYE schemes, and then they pile on even more taxes when you spend the money that you very often sweated buckets to earn in the first place. The end result of them paying proper taxes is that there would more money in circulation, more and better public services for the greater benefit of everyone, regardless of their personal wealth, everyone sooner or later requires assistance in some form or other. But the upshot of all the corporations paying their taxes, is that there would be more money in circulation that could be spent on purchasing their products all over again, its the great circle of life.

[mnementh]

Yes, but you and I are reasonably intelligent people with a grasp of enlightened self-interest. These are selfish, small-minded people who can only manage to get a fucking MBA, for Ifni's sake.   

They have no problem not seeing the big picture, nor with flushing the rest of the world down the toilet as long as they get to stay on top of their particular little dungheap; FFS, most of them can't see past the tip of their own penis anyways.

mnem
 

[factory]

Last teardown from the stuff acquired last weekend, this is the one now I'm working on repairing, it's an Ericsson counter from the 1950's?? using neon bulbs (sorry don't want to use the correct term & help bulb thieves  ).

Inside the power unit & input section, lots of dubious old paper capacitors and some selenium rectifiers. 






The strange small bulb is a voltage reference for approx 86V, took me a while to find that out.


Complete with specially aged dry jointing compound. 


David

[factory]

Part two of the Ericsson teardown, the scaling & selector sections, these are similar except the selector counting stage has outputs on the back, also in each section is a trigger bulb.


They both have connectors to feed more sections, no idea if they made any other types, or how many the power supply can run in total.




The selector stage outputs, lot of missing screws as usual.


First test with lamp limiter/dim bulb tester, not working very well, took quite a while for the first stage to operate, not enough voltage to strike the voltage reference, other stages not working at all, suspect some paper capacitors are loading the supplies down. The switches all required freeing off as they were all seized from years of storage.


David

[mnementh]

So it uses the firing voltage of a neon (or other noble gas...?) bulb as a voltage reference? Clever!

mnem
 

[Specmaster]

<snip>
The issue is everything is a race to the bottom. It is designed for cheap manufacturing and a cost adjusted failure rate. And the manufacturer never has to deal with the tonnes of trash it produces.

Right to service is a far better concept than right to repair.

The problem really is right there "designed for cheap manufacturing and a cost adjusted failure rate", it is geared up for their benefit, the cost to the consumer just gets more and more each year, the true benefits of such advancements never make their way through to the end consumer.

And isn't the "Right to service" just another way of saying the right to repair. By repairing you are regaining the service that the repaired item was designed to provide you with, be it a phone, TV, car, washing machine or vacuum cleaner?

Nobody is suggesting that the right to repair has to be done by the owner of the gear, as already mentioned and taken for granted that very few would have the required skills anyway. But those with the skills required could be employed by businesses who would be able to afford the right equipment and that they should be able to source the required parts from the manufacturers at realistic prices.

The dude at the local market doing things on the cheap, even such things as replacing watch batteries carry their own risks as I know first hand at my cost when I took an old but much loved Accurist watch to the guy in the market who replaced watch batteries, the watch shown below. He completely and utterly fucked it up, lost hands etc because he could not believe that it only had a single battery as the cheaper ones have 2 as they are essentially, 2 watches in the same case. He took it to many jewellers for repair, and they said beyond repair. I sent in desperation back to Accurist who did manage to repair it at a very affordable price, despite it being a very old model and had not been in production for some time.

As a result, I now collect Accurist watches and also Citizen watches, who likewise have repaired watches inexpensively for me. I have since acquired the correct tool to unscrew watch backs and can replace my own batteries now, but a Citizen Eco-Drive model goes back to Citizen for replacements.

These are companies with some ethics and deserve supporting.

[factory]

So it uses the firing voltage of a neon (or other noble gas...?) bulb as a voltage reference? Clever!

mnem
 

It's a smaller version of the B7G & octal voltage references (but not the smallest), this one appears to be neon based, data sheet from Ericsson attached, the Ericsson counter & the parts were made in Beeston near Nottingham in the UK and at the time this was made they were a separate company from the Swedish Ericsson.

David

[Specmaster]

Yes, but you and I are reasonably intelligent people with a grasp of enlightened self-interest. These are selfish, small-minded people who can only manage to get a fucking MBA, for Ifni's sake.   

They have no problem not seeing the big picture, nor with flushing the rest of the world down the toilet as long as they get to stay on top of their particular little dungheap; FFS, most of them can't see past the tip of their own penis anyways.

mnem
 

Granted, but that doesn't stop people in their masses from supporting such people / corporations in their masses, all in the belief that their products are wonderful and so much better and make their owners look cool etc. It is the great unwashed that allow them to get away with things because governments are themselves suffering from the self same problem of being "selfish, small-minded people" .

[Specmaster]

Karma for that last comment was swift when this medium sized one nearly dropped in my Gin. I detect a change in the weather is coming 

+1 for Karma!!


.... and don't hurt the Harry!

I'd do my best to squash that bugger real quick if I was there.

[factory]

Here is how far I got with the Ericsson counter on Wednesday (before I returned to work on Thursday).
As previously mentioned it wasn't working very well, the input stage & first counter was running after a bit of a wait, the voltage ref & other stages were not working at all.

First thing I checked were the resistors & all seemed fine, a few of the smaller ones were reading a little high but not enough to prevent it from working, I also resoldered the dry joint on the voltage reference


On to the capacitors, first to get tested were the three smaller ones underneath, all were now resistors, no surprise as they turned out to be Hunts. Once these were replaced the counter stage took a little less time to operate.
Next were the larger Dubilier capacitors, these also tested as nice resistors, once replaced normal operation of the input section was possible (without a long wait).



And the voltage reference had enough voltage to strike (note I still have the lamp limiter connected).


The failed parts so far.


Still to repair are the non-working scaling & selector stages and I need to change the mains input selector on the transformer to a higher tapping for the 245V we have here.

David

[25 CPS]

There are some smaller pieces of test gear that use them, too - Data Precision put them in some at best rowboat anchor meters - the 3500, for instance.


I have a calculator floating around here somewhere that has them, too.  They're a cool stepping stone between the stacked digits of the nixie and the planar seven segment LED, but as far as spares go they do make nixie tubes look plentiful.

-Pat

Yes, it's amazing how plentiful nixie tubes are compared to panaplex and numitron displays.  Both of those had an incredibly short period of existence before 7 segment and other arrangements of LEDs and LCDs replaced everything.

On an unrelated note, is that a Dynaco ST-70 in the background to the left of the scope and meter?

Good eye - it's a kit built ST-70 clone - the VTA ST-70.  Built it in 2014, and it was my first attempt at powder coating (did the transformer end bells).  Love it - it's a great amplifier.





-Pat

Cool - I started out working on ST-70s when I was in high school back when very few people wanted these after hearing one at a friend's house.  "Cheap" and "Plentiful" are not words I'd use to describe vintage tube audio gear anymore but back then, that was the case.  I still have a bunch of H. H. Scott gear plus a pair of Dynaco MK IVs.  At the time I got them, I wanted a pair of MK IVs for myself over an ST-70 since they avoided easily bottoming out the 5AR4 in the B+ supply driving both channels into inefficient speakers since each MK IV had its own B+ supply with its own 5AR4 so it was a lot harder to hit the limit of what it could deliver.  Ever since then, I've been kicking myself for not keeping one of the ST-70s that passed through my hands as well since they used to be available for cheap.  I've been thinking about picking up an ST-70 clone kit like that off and on but I need to get some work done on the house so that's going to be a bit down the road.

I was going to ask about the shoulder type tube where the 5AR4 would normally be but you explained that in one of the later posts.  The kit nicely avoided the whole 7199 conundrum with the original driver board.  The 7199 situation's always puzzled me.  Were they manufactured in lower volume compared to other triode/pentode tubes?  Or used more commonly than the others, or run at the ragged edge in some equipment causing frequent replacement that's depleted the NOS stock?

As far as I know, none of the current tube manufacturers make any of the triode/pentode tubes so it's expensive NOS 7199s, repin the socket for a more common 6U8, 6GH8 etc. type, or go with a different driver board design like your kit has with some dual pentodes.  Even 6U8s are starting to get expensive now and those show up in a lot of H. H. Scott amplifiers as the splitter/driver, even if they're not approaching 7199 prices.  I've been picking up 6U8s whenever I have a chance to get a couple at reasonable prices for that reason.  I'm going to have to decide fairly soon if I want to keep the circuit in my MK IVs original and suck up the cost of buying some spare 7199s for them or look into aftermarket or design my own driver boards using something else that's in current manufacture.

[25 CPS]

Absolutely.  The only way to learn is to get experience and the only way to get experience is to get experience, and that means using real live patients.  It's the medical equivalent of a "live fire exercise" in the military.

There's an old saying among surgeons here about learning to do any particular operation: "Watch one, do one, teach one.".

And "Read the Haynes manual"?

Haynes manuals were books of photos/drawings/descriptions that enabled amateurs to mend their own car. They were most useful when the drawings and texts were actually related to the car stated on the cover. Analogy: a Tek 465 service manual where some of the pictures and descriptions showed a 475.

Never heard of either.

[mansaxel]

It's a smaller version of the B7G & octal voltage references (but not the smallest), this one appears to be neon based, data sheet from Ericsson attached, the Ericsson counter & the parts were made in Beeston near Nottingham in the UK and at the time this was made they were a separate company from the Swedish Ericsson.

David

What time are we talking about? 50s?

If connected to Ericsson the caps would most likely have been RIFA. (From 1947 on, until sold to Finvest, Ericsson was the sole owner of RIFA)

[tggzzz]

Absolutely.  The only way to learn is to get experience and the only way to get experience is to get experience, and that means using real live patients.  It's the medical equivalent of a "live fire exercise" in the military.

There's an old saying among surgeons here about learning to do any particular operation: "Watch one, do one, teach one.".

And "Read the Haynes manual"?

Haynes manuals were books of photos/drawings/descriptions that enabled amateurs to mend their own car. They were most useful when the drawings and texts were actually related to the car stated on the cover. Analogy: a Tek 465 service manual where some of the pictures and descriptions showed a 475.

Never heard of either.

Good decision. Keep it that way if you value your sanity.

[mnementh]

So it uses the firing voltage of a neon (or other noble gas...?) bulb as a voltage reference? Clever!

mnem
 

It's a smaller version of the B7G & octal voltage references (but not the smallest), this one appears to be neon based, data sheet from Ericsson attached, the Ericsson counter & the parts were made in Beeston near Nottingham in the UK and at the time this was made they were a separate company from the Swedish Ericsson.

David

Huh... neat. A hollow-state zener. 

mnem
I learned something today! 

[capt bullshot]

[...]
BTW. I've replaced the components just above the 7k32 and 13k3 resistors (4k7 and 8k2) - similar enough, the channel still worked and passed cal.

That 7.32kOhm resistor sounds familiar ...
[search mode=ON]

Could it be, that you have built a 10V reference from Mr. Geller (Geller Labs, the SVR and SVR-T references)? 

[search mode=OFF]

No, I didn't. To me it's just a random resistance value ...

[mnementh]

Yes, but you and I are reasonably intelligent people with a grasp of enlightened self-interest. These are selfish, small-minded people who can only manage to get a fucking MBA, for Ifni's sake.   

They have no problem not seeing the big picture, nor with flushing the rest of the world down the toilet as long as they get to stay on top of their particular little dungheap; FFS, most of them can't see past the tip of their own penis anyways.

mnem
 

Granted, but that doesn't stop people in their masses from supporting such people / corporations in their masses, all in the belief that their products are wonderful and so much better and make their owners look cool etc. It is the great unwashed that allow them to get away with things because governments are themselves suffering from the self same problem of being "selfish, small-minded people" .

Well, now you're talking aboot the nature of intelligent people, who tend to self-moderate in all things including procreation, vs the tendency of dumb people to breed like rabbits. By being sensible and doing our part to limit population growth, we ensure that we will be increasingly outnumbered by those lacking sense enough to not drown in the rain like farm-raised turkeys.

Now compound that with the fact that these stupid, selfish people are usually the product of stupid, selfish people themselves... and now you understand why the last two generations have deliberately eviscerated public education. As they themselves have grown less and less intelligent and not been forced to become educated as with prior generations, they have had to ensure that those masses they seek to subjugate are less and less educated/intelligent in their own right.

You can't fleece someone who's smarter than you are... well, not easily anyways. And attempting to fleece large groups of people who are smarter than you are... well, that's how we wound up with Trump. They had to find someone that stupid and that selfish to take the gig; nobody smarter would've touched it unless they had a plan to fleece the people who put him in the White House.

mnem
https://www.gutenberg.org/files/51233/51233-h/51233-h.htm

[factory]

It's a smaller version of the B7G & octal voltage references (but not the smallest), this one appears to be neon based, data sheet from Ericsson attached, the Ericsson counter & the parts were made in Beeston near Nottingham in the UK and at the time this was made they were a separate company from the Swedish Ericsson.

David

What time are we talking about? 50s?

If connected to Ericsson the caps would most likely have been RIFA. (From 1947 on, until sold to Finvest, Ericsson was the sole owner of RIFA)

No this was made in England by a separate company (at the time it was made) sharing the same name, they became separated in 1948 before this counter was made.
https://www.gracesguide.co.uk/Ericsson_Telephones

And this counter dates from the 1950's, all components are typical of what you would find on other British made stuff of the time, no Swedish or RIFA parts to be seen.
Capacitors are Hunts, Dubilier, TCC, Suflex and one I can't read the full name of. Resistors are JG Welwyn and Erie.

Forgot to mention the old wiring colours for the Bulgin mains inlet, black for earth/ground, red for live and brown for neutral.



David

[med6753]

Here's what happens to our stuff when we pass. The vultures circle and pick it clean.

Although in this case it appears the stuff is way over priced.

The TE stuff is about 10 minutes in.

[mnementh]

LOL... I'd have been hauling drawer units & boxes of components out of there by the handtruck-full at those prices. And a few of the meters.

mnem
And then my wife would have to whack me upside the haid widda fryin' pan... and then I'd have to go fryin' pan shoppin'...

[Vince]

As for the Tek-scopes: occasionly, Martin from the German site "Wellenkino" (wave cinema) is showing up here from time to time.
I can imagine, that you and him are having something in common ... 

OH yeah, I remember German cousin Martin vividly ! He posted once, in my type 317 restoration thread. He gave me good advice on why the cooling fan motor would have trouble starting, and behave apparently ramdomly...
Sent him a PM as a consequence, but never replied. Busy he must be indeed.
Now I think of it, that fan problem is still not solved... must get back to it some day. In the meantime I bought 4 more 317 so hopefully with 5 scopes I can get one working fan....

Again, welcome to the TEA-house, have a seat, some cookies and a drink. Enjoy!

Indeed it's like a show ! So much traffic, so many varied subjects... I can't even keep up !   
It's more like a live chatroom !  Had to scroll back 3 full pages just to find your post, which is not even 24 hours old !

I am already spending more time reading TEA, than I am fixing stuff on my workbench....maybe I can install a monitor on the bench, that would display TEA and refresh the messages automatically. Would look like a chat room with messages popping up all the time.. would look at it from time to time between two solder joints or something...

[mansaxel]

And "Read the Haynes manual"?

Never heard of either.

Good decision. Keep it that way if you value your sanity.

*shudder* The Volvo V70 one is full of stupid mistakes. And as I tried to tell them, they replied "noone else has complained". 

Now I mostly use it for torque reference.