Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[AVGresponding]

Ok, I fixed the broken TO-5 tranny leg. In case you haven't figured it out yet, I am a master of ghetto fab...

The two dead digits are confirmed deader than dead things, I'll buzz the trannys out but I suspect a case of terminal inside-the-potted-box-itis, which is to say the interface between the drivers and the nixies is that weird lamp box that has to do with the
Well this is strange, one of them is trying to light now... time to start buzzing out trannys and especially those carbon craposition resistors. Also "thou shalt check voltages"... hmmm...

[med6753]

Bad word in these parts: HR. They strike again hence my lack of spamming for most of today. Apparently they didn’t read the contract they drafted poorly, issued to me, I joyously signed for while laughing maniacally and that they are now bound by which they violated and I am now ensuring is enforced properly  . Be careful what you sign as they say 

In other words....you've got them by the balls, correct?

Good boy. 

[med6753]

The 2nd scope cart is complete. Reveal tomorrow. 

[AVGresponding]

Some of the dodgy measurements are definitely dirty switch contacts too. I think it's saveable.

Can't test the plug-in though, don't have an (N?) connector or a suitable signal source.

[Cubdriver]

Ok, I fixed the broken TO-5 tranny leg. In case you haven't figured it out yet, I am a master of ghetto fab...

The two dead digits are confirmed deader than dead things, I'll buzz the trannys out but I suspect a case of terminal inside-the-potted-box-itis, which is to say the interface between the drivers and the nixies is that weird lamp box that has to do with the
Well this is strange, one of them is trying to light now... time to start buzzing out trannys and especially those carbon craposition resistors. Also "thou shalt check voltages"... hmmm...

Sometimes old nixies that haven't been used in a long time can take some time to wake up.  It could also be an issue with the decoder/driver circuitry in the black box on the decade board.  Swap the 'dead' tubes to boards where they light to troubleshoot.

-Pat

[bd139]

Bad word in these parts: HR. They strike again hence my lack of spamming for most of today. Apparently they didn’t read the contract they drafted poorly, issued to me, I joyously signed for while laughing maniacally and that they are now bound by which they violated and I am now ensuring is enforced properly  . Be careful what you sign as they say 

In other words....you've got them by the balls, correct?

Good boy. 

Yep that. Pay peanuts get HR monkeys.

[tggzzz]

Bad word in these parts: HR. They strike again hence my lack of spamming for most of today. Apparently they didn’t read the contract they drafted poorly, issued to me, I joyously signed for while laughing maniacally and that they are now bound by which they violated and I am now ensuring is enforced properly  . Be careful what you sign as they say 

Oooohh you tease. You can't leave us hanging like that.

Besides, I need cheering up

I will admit to editing a PDF document (w.r.t a reward for a patent application) to change "all efforts" to "all reasonable efforts", before printing and signing it. Later variants were locked PDF documents

[Cerebus]

Gahh,
NLP AI conference.

mah head hurtz ...

Your head will soon be replaced by NLP AI. Pointy-haired bosses won't be able to tell its output is rubbish, and will resort to "because the computer says so".

Read comp.risks to see how such things appear to "work" for spurious "reasons", e.g. https://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/32/80/#subj4.1
e.g.   
  "Some AIs were found to be picking up on the *text font* that certain
  hospitals used to label the scans. As a result, fonts from hospitals with
  more serious caseloads became predictors of covid risk."

I was first aware of that in the early 80s, when Igor Alexander's WISARD correctly distinguished between cars and tanks in the lab, but failed dismally when taken to Luneberger Heath in north Germany. Eventually they worked out the training set was tanks under grey skys and car adverts under sunny skies.

Heh, heh. I remember that. More than that I knew Igor at the time. Happy bunny he was not when that happened. Jokes may have been made at his expense, people may have pretended not to recognise him on a sunny day (Brunel, where he was at the time was famously wet and grey).  

Igor's over-enthusiasm at what he could do with "black box" models, and the subsequent failures, was one of the reasons that, back when I was doing AI, I chose to work on the "knowledge engineering" and "automated inference" end of things. My personal understanding of how hard that was to do, and why we discounted neural nets as "the answer" is why I am a hyper-sceptic in the face of the current fashion for fools believing that "AI" will solve all our problems.

Accessible references would be welcome; I haven't found any.

Sorry, don't have a single thing. Igor did all the WISARD stuff while he was still at Brunel before he moved to Imperial. The library might be a good place to start (https://brunel.summon.serialssolutions.com/search?spellcheck=true&s.q=Aleksander%2C+Igor#!/search?ho=t&l=en-UK&q=Aleksander,%20Igor or talk to the librarians) or failing that the Computer Science department's Reader might be able to point you in the right direction - no idea who that is these days.

[tggzzz]

Better to ask for any cost-benefit analysis of ML research. I’m not going to use the term AI because that’s just a lie. It’s not artificial and it’s not intelligence.

Ah yes, the old conundrum: in a battle between artificial intelligence and natural stupidity, which will be triumphant?

When trying to get the point across, sometimes it is sufficient to amend a PERT chart to include a task "magic happens".

[tggzzz]

Bad word in these parts: HR. They strike again hence my lack of spamming for most of today. Apparently they didn’t read the contract they drafted poorly, issued to me, I joyously signed for while laughing maniacally and that they are now bound by which they violated and I am now ensuring is enforced properly  . Be careful what you sign as they say 

In other words....you've got them by the balls, correct?

Good boy. 

Yes indeed. Sometimes shooting fish in a barrel is fun and profitable.

[bd139]

Bad word in these parts: HR. They strike again hence my lack of spamming for most of today. Apparently they didn’t read the contract they drafted poorly, issued to me, I joyously signed for while laughing maniacally and that they are now bound by which they violated and I am now ensuring is enforced properly  . Be careful what you sign as they say 

Oooohh you tease. You can't leave us hanging like that.

Besides, I need cheering up

I will admit to editing a PDF document (w.r.t a reward for a patent application) to change "all efforts" to "all reasonable efforts", before printing and signing it. Later variants were locked PDF documents

Edit: I was going to explain this but decided it’s better for private messages

[factory]

Ok, I fixed the broken TO-5 tranny leg. In case you haven't figured it out yet, I am a master of ghetto fab...

The two dead digits are confirmed deader than dead things, I'll buzz the trannys out but I suspect a case of terminal inside-the-potted-box-itis, which is to say the interface between the drivers and the number readout bulb is that weird lamp box that has to do with the
Well this is strange, one of them is trying to light now... time to start buzzing out trannys and especially those carbon craposition resistors. Also "thou shalt check voltages"... hmmm...

The carbon resistors weren't that bad, I had to strip some of them from a later board (from Sphere) & repopulate it with salvaged parts (some slighty out of tolerance), to match the earlier parts list from the 20MHz 5243L, it worked fine after that. 
It got posted here some time ago, the traces on the photo-resistor plate had been eaten by corrosion too.
The transistors got downgraded from Silicon to Germanium as well, as per the original damaged board.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/msg3453170/#msg3453170

Re: the number readout bulbs, two in my 5248M were completely dead, due to the glass being cracked from pin corrosion (BD, the previous owner did what you said, cleaned it & dumped it back on ePay for me to buy) and the 5243L had one bulb that was missing a number 6, it was found to be no longer connected inside the bulb.

David

[mnementh]

Wow...does this bring back memories. IBM SLT logic.

What Fran doesn't realize is that there was a follow on to SLT called MST (Monolithic System Technology) which used the same case style and footprint but rather than discrete transistor chips and resistors used integrated circuits. Most of S/370 mainframes used MST.

Huh... I didn't realize SLT architecture went that far back; I thought they were a 70s technology that was quickly obsoleted (but refused to actually die). Neat.

mnem
I learned something today.

[bd139]

...
Nonetheless, the compliance issue is a sweet twist

If any idiot had tried to enforce one of the standby clauses at one job, I would have instantly resigned. For similar reasons, I have always refuse to have a company cellphone.

Actually could you remove that quote. I’ve sent the original message by PM. Shouldn’t really discuss technicalities in public 

As for standby clauses yes indeed. It came with the danger money though which is needed to shorten the time between now and sticking a middle finger up to the world and surrounding myself with test gear.

Edit: thanks for editing!

[tggzzz]

Edit: thanks for editing!

Entire message deleted, for simplicity. Let people wonder what the hell was going on

[med6753]

Wow...does this bring back memories. IBM SLT logic.

What Fran doesn't realize is that there was a follow on to SLT called MST (Monolithic System Technology) which used the same case style and footprint but rather than discrete transistor chips and resistors used integrated circuits. Most of S/370 mainframes used MST.

Huh... I didn't realize SLT architecture went that far back; I thought they were a 70s technology that was quickly obsoleted (but refused to actually die). Neat.

mnem
I learned something today.

Yep, SLT was developed specifically for S/360 which was first announced in 1964. It was first prototyped in the "Components Division" at the Poughkeepsie, NY site and then mass produced at the East Fishkill, NY Fab when it opened around 1963. 

MST lasted right up to 308X but I think when ES9000 came out it was obsolete. 

[med6753]

...
Nonetheless, the compliance issue is a sweet twist

If any idiot had tried to enforce one of the standby clauses at one job, I would have instantly resigned. For similar reasons, I have always refuse to have a company cellphone.

Actually could you remove that quote. I’ve sent the original message by PM. Shouldn’t really discuss technicalities in public 

As for standby clauses yes indeed. It came with the danger money though which is needed to shorten the time between now and sticking a middle finger up to the world and surrounding myself with test gear.

Edit: thanks for editing!

Discord is the place for airing dirty laundry. 

[mnementh]

"...you know you're a TE addict when you use a new toothbrush to clean rusty transistors rather than your teeth"

'strewth, every word. There's always one or two of 'em in my pen cup that have never touched a tooth. I buy a pack almost every time I go to the Dollarama; seems they're the only place you can get "normal" toothbrushes (without stoopit bits of plastic or rubber squeegee in the middle of the bristles) anymore.

mnem
 

[Cerebus]

Bad word in these parts: HR. They strike again hence my lack of spamming for most of today. Apparently they didn’t read the contract they drafted poorly, issued to me, I joyously signed for while laughing maniacally and that they are now bound by which they violated and I am now ensuring is enforced properly  . Be careful what you sign as they say 

Oooohh you tease. You can't leave us hanging like that.

Besides, I need cheering up

I will admit to editing a PDF document (w.r.t a reward for a patent application) to change "all efforts" to "all reasonable efforts", before printing and signing it. Later variants were locked PDF documents

Edit: I was going to explain this but decided it’s better for private messages

C.C. me, I always enjoy a good laugh at HR's expense. 

[mnementh]

Better to ask for any cost-benefit analysis of ML research. I’m not going to use the term AI because that’s just a lie. It’s not artificial and it’s not intelligence.

Ah yes, the old conundrum: in a battle between artificial intelligence and natural stupidity, which will be triumphant?

When trying to get the point across, sometimes it is sufficient to amend a PERT chart to include a task "magic happens".

I usually referred the sort of people you're talking aboot to the Magic/More Magic page of the Jargon file: http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/magic-story.html

It's fun to watch people who think they're such smart management types try to wrap their brains around it; it's like the inverse function of nerd-sniping. 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Ok, I fixed the broken TO-5 tranny leg. In case you haven't figured it out yet, I am a master of ghetto fab...

The two dead digits are confirmed deader than dead things, I'll buzz the trannys out but I suspect a case of terminal inside-the-potted-box-itis, which is to say the interface between the drivers and the nixies is that weird lamp box that has to do with the
Well this is strange, one of them is trying to light now... time to start buzzing out trannys and especially those carbon craposition resistors. Also "thou shalt check voltages"... hmmm...

My guess is you soldered a bit of capacitor leg to the case of the transistor...?

mnem

[mnementh]

Wow...does this bring back memories. IBM SLT logic.

What Fran doesn't realize is that there was a follow on to SLT called MST (Monolithic System Technology) which used the same case style and footprint but rather than discrete transistor chips and resistors used integrated circuits. Most of S/370 mainframes used MST.

Huh... I didn't realize SLT architecture went that far back; I thought they were a 70s technology that was quickly obsoleted (but refused to actually die). Neat.

mnem
I learned something today.

Yep, SLT was developed specifically for S/360 which was first announced in 1964. It was first prototyped in the "Components Division" at the Poughkeepsie, NY site and then mass produced at the East Fishkill, NY Fab when it opened around 1963. 

MST lasted right up to 308X but I think when ES9000 came out it was obsolete.

Huh again. I've been to East Fishkill. I had my job interview at Philips Lighting there.

mnem
 

[beanflying]

There was a vintage slightly crusty HP current probe available on evilbay in Oz  eBay auction: #165025864057

[mnementh]

Did somebody finally spray the winged monkeys with RAID...?

Welcome back all y'alls... for however long it lasts.

mnem
*toddles off to ded*

[bitseeker]

The shirt isn't directly available at Spreadshirt, you need to design your own version of it by using an alpha-channel PNG.

Oh, I see. I was thinking of putting up designs for everyone to order what they like.

I'll check this evening why is that and will replace it. Thanks for the heads-up. 
Btw, as a plan B, one can use one of the pictures from above and convert the white into transparent (which I did previously).

Yep, can do.

I tried Inkscape and found it worse than gimp using it. 

Steep learning curve, for sure. Fortunately, I'm past it for GIMP, but unfortunately that's not the case for Inkscape (have barely used it).