Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Saskia]

thanks. Tomorrow some TEA, they will throw him into the MRT. Depending on the outcome there's a chance they'll put him under the knife again for additional heart surgery.
FML ...

btw. I know it is blatantly off topic, but daughter's MRT was inconclusive in so far as they have not found anything (which on the positive side means that they found neither brain tumor nor multiple sclerosis indications). I would very much like to know however what's going on.

Yet another positive thing: last week was the 1st week that I did more than 100 km of walking and burned > 24500 kcals. currently at 29 kg weight loss since I started out in May. 11 kg until my 1st objective is reached, have lost about 3 sizes already.

[med6753]

Yet another positive thing: last week was the 1st week that I did more than 100 km of walking and burned > 24500 kcals. currently at 29 kg weight loss since I started out in May. 11 kg until my 1st objective is reached, have lost about 3 sizes already.

Don't you need to go clothes shopping rather than TEA? 

[Saskia]

the benefits of Home Office 

Yes, but not intermediate sizes. I plan to get back to a size 14 (less is not really possible given my size and frame ...) whereas I am currently headed for 18. I will not waste mah mullah on stuff I can only wear for like 2 months.

[med6753]

the benefits of Home Office 

Yes, but not intermediate sizes. I plan to get back to a size 14 (less is not really possible given my size and frame ...) whereas I am currently headed for 18. I will not waste mah mullah on stuff I can only wear for like 2 months.

Makes sense. That's same size as lady cop (14) with her size and frame. Petite is not in her vocabulary but she's not fat either. 

[Saskia]

I would most certainly not want to compete with her. No, we are not getting a room 

[med6753]

LMAO. 

[xrunner]

I think you can set the brightness in the library? Writing a full screen took a second or so if I remember correctly.

No, it's a monochrome display. There are no grayscale functions for it. That's why I'm going to blank it during non-usage hours.

[mnementh]

Another thought might be a simple adaptive brightness control for when it is on. Add a photodiode/CdS cell to a unused ADC with polling at the lowest priority so it doesn't use ticks needed for the main process...?

Just anything to reduce the amount of time spent at high drive levels seems to be the main trick for making OLED live long & prosper.

mnem
 

[Specmaster]

the benefits of Home Office 

Yes, but not intermediate sizes. I plan to get back to a size 14 (less is not really possible given my size and frame ...) whereas I am currently headed for 18. I will not waste mah mullah on stuff I can only wear for like 2 months.

Quite correct, anything less than size 14 will make you look like a bean pole as you are a very tall lady, besides, its nice to have a woman who is well, woman shaped rather than a twiggy stick insect. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twiggy)

[xrunner]

Another thought might be a simple adaptive brightness control for when it is on. Add a photodiode/CdS cell ...

I'm just going to blank it because during the night the only entity that would look at it is my cat Maxim. 

[mnementh]

thanks. Tomorrow some TEA, they will throw him into the MRT. Depending on the outcome there's a chance they'll put him under the knife again for additional heart surgery.
FML ...

btw. I know it is blatantly off topic, but daughter's MRT was inconclusive in so far as they have not found anything (which on the positive side means that they found neither brain tumor nor multiple sclerosis indications). I would very much like to know however what's going on.

Yet another positive thing: last week was the 1st week that I did more than 100 km of walking and burned > 24500 kcals. currently at 29 kg weight loss since I started out in May. 11 kg until my 1st objective is reached, have lost about 3 sizes already.

So... since the MRI didn't find evidence of lesions... is the next step CAT to look for abnormal neurological activity?

Good going on the weight loss. Looks like you are at your second plateau; don't give up. That is usually the hardest one to get past because of how fast progress has been up to this point, so it's pretty disheartening.

A lot of the initial weight loss is fluid shift brought on by the transition to ketosis; it feels real good but sets your expectations higher than is reasonable. That's a known "gotcha" with the  low-carb lifestyle. Just stay hydrated and do your blood & pee work religiously. Hard keto does beat up the liver and kidneys; done wrong it can put you on dialysis for the rest of your life.

 

Right now I'm eating bacon/eggs a lot; seems to be the one thing I don't get tired of. ~15 grams/1700kC/day. I've been pretty active with moving furniture and unpacking, but sometime this week I need to get the exercise space set up for myself and the boi.

mnem

Ugghh... this new brand of sweetener tastes like ass.

[mnementh]

Another thought might be a simple adaptive brightness control for when it is on. Add a photodiode/CdS cell ...

I'm just going to blank it because during the night the only entity that would look at it is my cat Maxim. 

Well, yeah, I was thinking in addition to that. But yeah, try the simple stuff first.

I'm not certain if the single vertical line failure you posted a pic of was caused by a fault in the OLED matrix or the controller; don't know enough aboot how they work together.  I know that on a LCD TV, that kind of fault can be caused by the T-Con board; might be similar failure mode here as well.

mnem
 

[Zucca]

the idea of facebook (and other crap) being down returns some brightness to my life.

Looks like many here in USA uses Facebook marketplaces to buy and sell stuff. This is the only thing that attract me back to Facebook. Ebay still works good here in USA, craigshorrorlist is too sketchy
Whatsapp [WA] was also down, Telegram is picking up and I very very pleased. In November I will install on my parents mobile Telegram and happly leave WA behind as well.

[Zucca]

the benefits of Home Office 

Yes, but not intermediate sizes. I plan to get back to a size 14 (less is not really possible given my size and frame ...) whereas I am currently headed for 18. I will not waste mah mullah on stuff I can only wear for like 2 months.

There is something beautiful inside us.

[Vince]

Hell reading over and over again about Saskia's diet success might motivate me... need to lose 50kg of fat. target / fit weight is about 100kg. Yes I am tall and wide frame, a big guy.

453 : see ? I told I needed the bench space and had no time for it... I just didn't know how right I was !  A couple hours ago a friend just paid me an impromptu visit, he brought me lots of stuff from a friend og his, to fix ! 

A DVD player, an ASUS mini laptop, tablet size, and a couple big 600 Watt Somfy electric motors (with built-in control electronics and user interface) that drive electric fences.

DVD player, guy said he looked at it (every time they that, it scares the shit out of me.. it means it's a can of worms...) and all it was is a cap that leaked.
Yeah right... sorry bob the filter cap in the SMPS is just fine, what you see on its side is not a leak... it's just the dab of old cooked hard dark brown glue that's there to hold it in place ! But yeah, you must have watched a youtube video telling you it was the cap... according to YT you could fix a cancer just by replacing the caps, always the caps right ?!

Then noticed he replaced the fuse, he fitted a fuse holder (old fuse had terminals on it so was soldered straight to the PCB). The solder job was not exactly the best, but was good enough for the purpose. However he failed to see that his replacement fuse was blown.. even though when you look through the glass... it looks fine. This happens sometimes...

So replaced the fuse, checked that the primary side was no shorted, was not, so I powered the thing up. Instant massive fireworks, scared the shit out of me !    Inspected the thing.... filter cap was still good, though half burned by the component that caught fire... was the PWM  controller / voltage regulator chip. A TNY717, 7 pin DIP package. Yes 7 not 8, one of the pins is not implemented. The package looked fine from the TOP, however on its side, where the built-in power MOSFET is located, you could see it was burnt and cracked. FET measured 30 ohms, not good, and the pin where it's source goes, the pin that drives the primary of the transformer... is no longer there. It completely vaporized. There was just enough metal left inside the package for me to stick my sharp "SMD" friendly test probe in there and get a good enough contact to be abel to measure the drain/source resistance.

Transformer looks like it survived... measures 1+ ohm. It's not a dead short nor an open circuit. Still, might be partially shorted, who knows.. I don't know my SMPS transformer, I don't know what a typical resistance value would be here.

So I told the guy it's repairable (TNY 716 is available at Farnell for one Euro + 10.60 Euro shipping), for 30 Euros (need to make 10+ Euros profit, I am not a slave, don't work for free...), and since you get a brand new DVD player, with warranty, for the same price or almost... they guy was kind enough to abandon his DVD player to me, so I could salvage the parts.  So that's a winner for me.



Then the ASUS tablet. It's so crap that there is not even a model number on it, nowhere. It just says "ASUS".. great, how helpful...

Guy said he wanted to replace the battery. Looked at said battery, it's a C11P1328 , still available today for 25/30 Euros on Amazon, and Google found me one from a local French shop specialized in consumer batteries, for only 18 Euros frees hipping, cool.
The problem is that I am not 100% sure the battery is at fault ! I unplugged it, was at 3,1 Volt . fast charged it at 2 amps for a few minutes. That brought it back to 3,7+ Volts. Plugged it back into the computer, now it starts up and works, great. Says batter charge is at 7%.
I plugged the charger... well there is no charger acutally, just a USB port. Don't know my USB ports but I don't think it's a fancy USB-C. It's must be older because my ancien Smartphone USB charge cable fits just fine. So I used my phone cable. Coptuer does detect that the USB cable is plugged in, and does say that now its charging the battery... all good so far I hear you say ! but wait ! I left it for 10 minutes and the charge does not build up, it stays at 7%... then eventually it suddenly dropped to 0% and then it shut down !
So even though it pretends it's charging... it's really not, it's draining the battery !  Even with the USB cable plugged in, not only can't it recharge the battery, but it can't even power the machine ! If I unplug the battery and just use the USB cable, the machine simply won't turn on at all ! 

Now I know/heard that some crap-sumer products now do that these days... even the battery is dead as a dodo, the computer still NEEDS it to be present or else it won't work even if you plug the charge cable ! 

So.... I fear it could be more than just a dead battery. Maybe the charging chip/circuitry inside the machine is defective and won't allow to charge the battery nor even to run the machine on off of the USB cable.  I understand charging chips going south is an extremely common failure on smartphones.... so maybe why not on computers too ?! 

OR... it's just my USB cable and/ or 15 year old desktop computer that are so crap they can't even supply enough current to  get that laptop to power up or even sustain operation once booted from the battery.

So I told the guy yes I can replace your battery but I am not 100,00% sure it will fix your problem ! And if if does not, sorry I can't fix your motherboard...

NOW... as I am typing this I guess there would be a simple way to rule out my USB cable / old computer !  I could just solder a couple wires to the motherboard, and just feed +5V through my lab power supply, as it can delivers 3amps or so, should be plenty enough to boot the machine.
Yeah I guess I could try that....



Then the two Somfy electric fence motors. Now that's the more interesting part ! That, I am OK to spend a little time on...

Model ELIXO 503S io

Guy said that one of them is dead, motor doesn't work from the remote, and doesn't either using the local user interface. says the LCD doesn't even display anything.
Other motor, he says motor doesn't work either, but the LCD is alive and display some error code.

So I will look at that...


See, told you, no time to fix my scopes !! 

[med6753]

Work on the mini 212, round 3. Replaced all the tants on the PSU board. Still need to do the other boards. Checked all the power buses for shorts and are clean. So why not...let's give it a power up on the hp 6215A. Holy freaking surprise Batman, we have a trace!    Two actually, both channels present and accounted for. Power consumption sitting at about 150mA.

Need to test bringing it up on mains as well as just batteries. And excise the rest of the tants. Then testing. But it's certainly looking good. 

[Cubdriver]

Sweet!  Great to see, Mike!

-Pat

[med6753]

453 : see ? I told I needed the bench space and had no time for it... I just didn't know how right I was !  A couple hours ago a friend just paid me an impromptu visit, he brought me lots of stuff from a friend og his, to fix ! 

........major snip, slash, and burn.

That's exactly why I have an extremely short list of people (mostly just family) that I'll be willing to look at and fix their stuff. I can't be bothered and it usually turns into a major hassle. 

[nfmax]

And here's me, with nothing more exciting to mend than the microwave oven. The little plastic peg that holds the spring that retains the door catch that engages the safety microswitch is broken. After a session of disassembly-foo, some plastic glue, Araldite and a sawn-off nail as reinforcement, we may have a fix. Got to wait for the glues to dry first

[Saskia]

my new dust sucker arrived. a whee bit overbombing, but ...
Festool CTH 26 E

[25 CPS]

453 : see ? I told I needed the bench space and had no time for it... I just didn't know how right I was !  A couple hours ago a friend just paid me an impromptu visit, he brought me lots of stuff from a friend og his, to fix ! 

........major snip, slash, and burn.

That's exactly why I have an extremely short list of people (mostly just family) that I'll be willing to look at and fix their stuff. I can't be bothered and it usually turns into a major hassle. 

Two radios and a custom build.  Once those are out of here, the length of the list of people I'm going to do work for goes down to zero and it's going to stay there for a while.  I want to have some quality time for my own projects that have been long neglected.

[Neomys Sapiens]

453 : see ? I told I needed the bench space and had no time for it... I just didn't know how right I was !  A couple hours ago a friend just paid me an impromptu visit, he brought me lots of stuff from a friend og his, to fix ! 

........major snip, slash, and burn.

That's exactly why I have an extremely short list of people (mostly just family) that I'll be willing to look at and fix their stuff. I can't be bothered and it usually turns into a major hassle. 

Uhuh. Two houses further is a vet. When you walk by, you see the people in the waiting area with their pets. Often I was greeted with a similar scene at home, with appliances of any sort. Just yesterday, another audio amplifier inpatient was brought in.
At least, the bloody answering machines are gone. Also, long time since I've seen a fax.
Worst thing ever was an inverter from a wood turner. That cabinet shed a disgusting amount of sawdust.

[Cerebus]

I would most certainly not want to compete with her. No, we are not getting a room 

Room? Sounds like you need a suite...

[mnementh]

my new dust sucker arrived. a whee bit overbombing, but ...Festool CTH 26 E

Oh, would you lookit that nice 11-bit $$$ pricetag...? 

I just spent a couple hours yesterday booty-fabbing our dirtsucker because I'm damned if I'll spend 8 bits $$$ on a new hose for it, no matter how good it sucks dirt. Which it does; just the hose no longer provided power for the beater head.

Of course, this was, as usual, dropped in my lap as my wife was headed out the door, and I had a bench covered with other projects in progress...

mnem
*adds another item to his Thrifting hit list*

[Neomys Sapiens]

Guys, is there anyone with a Tek 22xx parts mule? Transparent dial for a 2232 Ch2 vertical selector needed!