Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Also consider this as well, there is the possibility that the person you know might well have parted company with Sinclair under a cloud for some reason if that is the case, is he going to be 100% honest about his relationship with Sinclair, I think not.

People, not person, and both worked for Amstrad after the Sinclair properties they worked for were sold to Amstrad. (If you really want to hear some bad-mouthing, ask either of them about Alan Sugar.) So much for that theory. It's rather unfair to character assassinate people you don't know and ascribe ill motives to them just because their actual first hand experience of Sinclair doesn't accord with your rose-tinted view from a distance.

We all take our turn being the assh'o; each and every one of us. Those with any ambition take their turn more often.

I came to that understanding pretty young, and it really is one of those "if there's anything I can pass on to my kids..." nuggets of wisdom.

I've since tried to always temper my judgements of others with that understanding, and it does make a difference in how I see humanity as a whole, and others as individuals. It's the "always tempering my judgement" part that gets pretty hard sometimes. 

mnem
https://youtu.be/HG6UvDSuoF4
"Every man ever got a statue made of him... was one kind of sumbitch or another." ~Cap'n Mal - Firefly

[Specmaster]

Dodge & International used the same cabs for their forward control trucks in Oz for years.

Before that, Dodge/Fargo/DeSoto trucks shared the same cabs with the Brit designed Ford Thames & Morris Commercial in Oz.

There was and still is I think many similar examples with cars today as well.

[mnementh]

Mini 212, round 4.

...And here's an example of the documentation not matching the board. The trace routing to R141. Those 2 orange tants. One is a 1uf/35V, the other is a 1uf/50V. I'm not sure which one is which and there's a 50% chance of getting it wrong resulting in smoke...

Simple solution to ease your mind and prevent smoky tantrums would be to replace both with 50V tants. Or higher.

mnem

[mnementh]

The batteries are exposed because I originally was going to use the two meters to cross check each other but the Agilent did not like that one bit and freaked out with an A-Err message and beeping when measuring the battery connected to the Fluke at the same time the Fluke was measuring the battery connected to the Agilent.  The Fluke didn’t care but the U1252A didn’t like that cross connected arrangement at all so a bench power supply connected to both solved that problem.

This does not surprise me at all. Come on - the analogy of two surgeons operating simultaneously on each others guts is the kindest picture which I can find for this experiment! All other analogies involve livestock keeping neighbours with unmentionable predilections.

"...Like two monkeys fucking a football." ~grand-dad

mnem

[Vince]

Sadly, Vince gave me some bad news, as I had intended to buy the Tek 2232 from France which he kindly pointed out to us. I asked for his help and he agreed, only to discover that it is a seller which does not react to any messages. So the planned replacement of the mangy 465 with a 2232 or a 2236 is not happening yet. it was one of the UK co-afflicted who got me interested in the 2232 when we discussed its virtues and shortcomings in comparison to the 2430 some years ago in this thread. The fact that it can go fully analogue while still being a nice backup DSO has it's merits.
Meh.

Yep the seller still has not replied to me. As I told you via PM I truly believe he is dead, I mean for real.
Have been sending him messages regularly about another item of his, since May 24th, sent 4 messages, every time he "bumped" his ad, but never a reply. According to the messaging system we use, built into the website, he has not even READ my messages. 4 and half month and still has not connected to the website ? We do get a notification e-mail as well, whenever there is activity in the messaging system. I don't see any reason why he would put stuff for sale, yet not even log to the web site to check messages when buyers contact him... for 4+ months ! So I think he is sadly for him literally dead (it happens to a lot of people after all eh...  ).

So sadly whoever will be in charge of clearing his house will probably toss his gear in the trash 

Yeah the 2232 is a lovely scope, at least I love it. For general purpose work it's great. I love those hybrid scopes, very versatile.

Mine used to be my daily driver, but then after storage for a year due to my house builder problems, it developed a problem with the CRT focus. Impossible to ficus the beam anymore. The control does still react, but the adjustment window it offors has shifted from " crisp to blurry " to  now "blurry to EXTREMELY blurry". So it's become unusable because of that. Probably a simple fix, I will definitely fix it at some point, but since I had another hybrid ready to replace it on the spot, a Philips / Fluke PM3394A, I have not had an urgent need to fix the 2232. Plus the PM3394A though similar in concept, is slightly more recent design, early '90's, and it shows. More refined overall (silent SMPS to start with), more capable (4x200MHz vs2x100Mhz), more memory (32K vs 4K), automatic measurements (2232 doesn't have any), and cursors that work both in analog and digital mode. 2232 the cursors are not available in analog mode. Also more reliable. so for all these reasons I ended up keeping using the Philips rather than the 2232.

Of course it's never all black and white. The 2232, well any Tek, has a big advantage of the Philips : intuitive / user friendly controls and menus.
The Philips have now been using for 3 years maybe, and every time I want to press a button do whatever, I first look at the myriad of push buttons presented to me, an ocean of them, and start "scanning" all of them, wondering where the fuck is the button that I need to do this and that " !
also, probing a Philips, all the rotary knobs you see, are not pots but encoders. The "acceleration" is badly implemented in S/W. It's either way too slow, almost inactive, if you turn it a normal pace, and if you try to crank it fast, suddenly it accelerates 10 times too much. So you end up spending a lot of back and forth to adjust simple things like vertical position or brightness, whereas in a Tek with simple analog pots, it's intuitive and takes a split second.

So I would say the PM3394 is an overall much better scope hence I keep using it, but it's a bit awkward to use and I miss the Tek for its ease of use.
The PM3394 is also usually much more expensive than the 2232, and harder to find in average.

I got mine for only 150 Euros in perfect working condition, so it was a good deal. Soon after I found the 4x100Mhz little brother, the POM3384, for only 30 Euros, untested, 100% unknown condition. turned out it's in perfect condition cosmetically and electrically, everything works 100% on it, so much so that I have never felt the need to open up either of these scopes  to this day !

So I would say keep an eye open for both the 2232 AND the PM33XX series, both are worth it IMHO...

[mnementh]

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.

It's been power inverters here.  An acquaintance, friend of a friend, has an off the grid cottage outside of Ottawa with a solar power lighting system and it's been a parade of blown inverters from that have been dropped off here over the summer and early fall by the mutual friend.  One of them stopped accepting input power from the batteries.  Another blew smoke and burned when the wife plugged in an electric frying pan and switched it on instead of tripping its overcurrent protection.  The wife forgot she could only use it when the generator was running.  There's a third one that I've totally forgotten what it was that went wrong with it.  The kicker is, I never said I was willing to look at these and I've never been a guest at that cottage.

I'm going to do the custom build and the two radios that I agreed to do but enough is enough.  I want to do my own projects and spend some quality time on my own stuff this winter.  I've got test equipment and audio equipment that's been waiting for ages and I'm no longer willing to put other people's repair jobs ahead of my own projects on the bench once those three committed once are finished up and out the door.

Repeat after me: "I have a life, and a wife, and things to get done. My time has value; it is in fact the most valuable commodity I possess."

BER that mofo, man.

mnem
Here's a visual aid for that conversation:

[mnementh]

It also has a familial connection a little closer to home... bd139's mom was a assembly line debugger (IIRC) at Telequipment:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/msg3492346/?topicseen#msg3492346

mnem
 

That must have been "de bugger of a job"!

GROOOOANNNNNNNNNN!!!

No... seriously... that pun caused me actual physical pain.  *pulls rope on skeet-flinger loaded with soggy ol' boots*

mnem
Or maybe is was just gas.

[Vince]

... I'm no longer willing to put other people's repair jobs ahead of my own projects on the bench once those three committed once are finished up and out the door.

My final red line was crossed when a remote acquaintance asked if I would be so nice to have a look at a minor problem his girlfriend was having with her stereo amp. Surely something I could fix in a few minutes. I agreed to have a look.

On the day, she arrived with an amp of some cheap chain store house brand, the thing was a total wreck and looked as if it had been buried under a dungheap which wasn't far from reality - she owned a pub. Switches had lost their click stops, the volume pot was broken and there were a number of black spots on the PCB.

When I suggested we'd better put this thing out of its misery she got all upset. "Well, thanks for nothing, Mister Electronics Wizard!"

My workbench hasn't seen anything that wasn't my own, ever since.

Yeah I have kinda already come to the same conclusion too...

Yesterday spent WHOLE day, 9 Hours straight, working on the two electric fence motors. Managed to get one of them going, jut dirty micro switches that detect the passing of the fence. Opened them up, some Deoxit, exercise... good as new. electronic board two happy and driving the motor.
Other one, not such luck. The circuit board itself was sick, very sick. Supplies look good and CPU is running, but doing strange stuff and fails to drive the front panel board (LCD  Keypad). Obviously no service manual so can't go any further, and even if I could the guy would not want to pay for the time it would take to figure it out, never mind pay for the parts if need be. So I called it quit on that second motor.

So I e-mail my friend saying cool I managed to save one of the motors, taht will be 50 Euros, cheap for 9 hours of work and considering the motor still sells brand new, for 500+ Euros. I have not gotten a reply yet...

As for his Asus tablet, I wanted to be good and check the charging board inside the thing, as it failed to power up the tablet in the absence of the battery, and even when the battery was present and the USB charging cable... it still was draining the battery.
So I soldered a couple wires to the charging board so I could feed it 5Volts via my lab power supply, to monitor the current.... Wanted to the take the board out so I could see the underside, see where the easiest place would be to solder wires to. Removing the board invites unplugging 3 large very high density flat flex cables. First time I see this kind. Connectors too were not the usual flat flex connector we see, so had to figure out how to undo them... but they were so fragile that I fucked one of them. One of the two that handles the touch screeen. SO now the touch screen does not work anymore.
Of course I can't tell him that... so I need to buy a new board, 15 bucks or so, and swallow the cost. So won't male any money on this Asus, well I will even Lose money for sure.

9 hours on these motors, and he won't even pay 50 euros for it by the looks of it... A whole day WASTED when I have so many projects of my own to work on, and a house to work on as well.... all that to either lose money or make 10 bucks for fixing a 500 Euros motor, and the guy not even being grateful ?!

FUCK THAT !!!

I am done... I am waiting for my friend to get back to me, and I will tell him I don't do repairs any more, not worth my time and people just expect miracles for pretty much free, as if electronic skills were totally worthless. If it's worthless then go fix your own stuff, have fun !!!   

[med6753]

Mini 212, round 4.

...And here's an example of the documentation not matching the board. The trace routing to R141. Those 2 orange tants. One is a 1uf/35V, the other is a 1uf/50V. I'm not sure which one is which and there's a 50% chance of getting it wrong resulting in smoke...

Simple solution to ease your mind and prevent smoky tantrums would be to replace both with 50V tants. Or higher.

mnem

You are a day late and a dollar short. 

My mantra.....ALWAYS read ahead before responding. 

[xrunner]

You are a day late and a dollar short. 

My mantra.....ALWAYS read ahead before responding. 

I read your post about those components earlier and I wouldn't insult your intelligence by even recommending that ... 

[Zucca]

the Agilent did not like that one bit and freaked out with an A-Err message and beeping when measuring the battery connected to the Fluke at the same time the Fluke was measuring the battery connected to the Agilent.  The Fluke didn’t care but the U1252A didn’t like that cross connected arrangement at all so a bench power supply connected to both solved that problem.

Yes, I do not remember which one I was using in the past but I also had bad experiences with the DMM measuring his own 9V battery. I think some esoteric designer did not account the possibility of the DMM leads connected to the DMM battery. I remember something bad but I regret not to have further details on that. To me never use the DMM to measure his battery.
As silly it sounds I believe the DMM are not design to measure anything in their own connected battery.

[mnementh]

Add one to the "long string of purchases for projects", "supposed" Matsushita BBD IC's. They come in pairs, one MN3207 which is the actual capacitor array, and one MN3102 which is the clock chip.  Since they were less than 1USD per chip shipped from the Middle Kingdom, the idea that they might be real is bordering on silly. 

Matsushita stopped making the originals in 1999, and since chips of that family are used in modulation stomp boxes "as made famous by men who made goodpopular music and then killed themselves" the actual stock of the parts must have dwindled fast. There are as-such marked clones, and I've paid my dues to the "respectable clone" trade, by buying some of those, branded "Beiling Shanghai". Beiling and Coolaudio are the two current cloners, the latter being a vertical integration in music industry giant Behringer (the company that today owns the British crown jewels Midas, Klark-Teknik and Turbosound.    )

These chips are much more of a gamble, just to find out if there is any meat to the argument that some clones are better than other clones.

On the positive side I notice that the transport company, "Orange Connex" which sounds like a cross between a phone company and a railway mismanager apparently can sneak the little white plastic padded bags past the Postnord protection racket and that I thus avoid extra VAT and a SEK75 handling fee. Or this might be an effect of Ebay VAT rule complicance. 

Now I just need to fail to find the rest of the components in my bins and drawers, order them anew from Mouser, only to find that I already had 52% of them while trying to sort the new purchases into my "system". 

The following is mostly offered here as a PSA for those playing along at home:

I have bought parts through AliEx four times shipped via OrangeConnex from IIRC, Thailand and Korea to the GWN. Actually received one of them, and that was a month overdue.

I'll try to temper my judgment here with the knowledge that this was during the beginnings of the COVID crisis, when nobody knew what the pluck was going on with all of Asia, much less what was going on in there...

...but still, that track record, coupled with absolutely zero follow-through or ability to contact the carrier, has put any sales with them as a carrier in the "Not only no, but hell no!" column for me.

In short, be prepared for at best a 2-3 month wait, and then to have to order parts again when they don't come.

Also, be aware that many of these parts from these vendors are not "new" or "new other" as advertised, but rather harvested from scrap PCBs and it is very obvious once you get them. In some cases, drops of flux residue still on the legs from where they dragged a iron across to clean the excess solder. Always buy 3x as many as you need good parts just to have reasonable chance of getting one good one.

If your repair is in any way hinky; ie, changing the part multiple times carries a increased risk of damaging the PCB, you should look elsewhere unless that would make the job entirely BER.

Cheers,

mnem
*lessons learned the hard way*

[capt bullshot]

the Agilent did not like that one bit and freaked out with an A-Err message and beeping when measuring the battery connected to the Fluke at the same time the Fluke was measuring the battery connected to the Agilent.  The Fluke didn’t care but the U1252A didn’t like that cross connected arrangement at all so a bench power supply connected to both solved that problem.

Yes, I do not remember which one I was using in the past but I also had bad experiences with the DMM measuring his own 9V battery. I think some esoteric designer did not account the possibility of the DMM leads connected to the DMM battery. I remember something bad but I regret not to have further details on that. To me never use the DMM to measure his battery.
As silly it sounds I believe the DMM are not design to measure anything in their own connected battery.

There's nothing esoteric in the design. This behaviour is by design.The DMM has a floating supply (the battery) and the potential of the COM (black / negative) is tied to a potential usually somewhere between battery plus and minus. This way the DMM has some kind of +/- supply in respect to the input terminal. If you connect the COM to one end of the battery, you'd short some of its internal circuitry, no wonder it shows errors or erroneous results.
You could leave the COM open and measure each battery plus and minus with a single test lead, and add these two values - should work.

[mnementh]

... I'm no longer willing to put other people's repair jobs ahead of my own projects on the bench once those three committed once are finished up and out the door.

My final red line was crossed when a remote acquaintance asked if I would be so nice to have a look at a minor problem his girlfriend was having with her stereo amp. Surely something I could fix in a few minutes. I agreed to have a look.

On the day, she arrived with an amp of some cheap chain store house brand, the thing was a total wreck and looked as if it had been buried under a dungheap which wasn't far from reality - she owned a pub. Switches had lost their click stops, the volume pot was broken and there were a number of black spots on the PCB.

When I suggested we'd better put this thing out of its misery she got all upset. "Well, thanks for nothing, Mister Electronics Wizard!"

My workbench hasn't seen anything that wasn't my own, ever since.

I bet it had all manner of spills and cigarette tar and in some cases even a layer of grease from being close to the kitchen...

Jobs like that I've told the customer they'll need to run it through the dishwasher before I'll even touch the thing; that sure, it'll cause a lot of damage but it would literally be less work to sort that damage than the hours and hours of cleanup the poor suffering equipment would need.

Only one ever took me up on the offer.

mnem
 

[med6753]

You are a day late and a dollar short. 

My mantra.....ALWAYS read ahead before responding. 

I read your post about those components earlier and I wouldn't insult your intelligence by even recommending that ... 

I'm not insulted nor offended. I knew the Captain Obvious's would come out of the woodwork and I would have to explain my motivation.   

[Zucca]

There's nothing esoteric in the design. This behaviour is by design.The DMM has a floating supply (the battery) and the potential of the COM (black / negative) is tied to a potential usually somewhere between battery plus and minus. This way the DMM has some kind of +/- supply in respect to the input terminal. If you connect the COM to one end of the battery, you'd short some of its internal circuitry, no wonder it shows errors or erroneous results.
You could leave the COM open and measure each battery plus and minus with a single test lead, and add these two values - should work.

Make sense, see I never repaired some cheap 9V DMM, I usually put my hands on >=6.5 Bench DMMs. Thanks for the clean up the air.

[mnementh]

Mini 212, round 4.

...And here's an example of the documentation not matching the board. The trace routing to R141. Those 2 orange tants. One is a 1uf/35V, the other is a 1uf/50V. I'm not sure which one is which and there's a 50% chance of getting it wrong resulting in smoke...

Simple solution to ease your mind and prevent smoky tantrums would be to replace both with 50V tants. Or higher.

mnem

You are a day late and a dollar short.     My mantra.....ALWAYS read ahead before responding. 

Yeaaaah... that post was more aboot delivering a terrible pun than it was aboot advising papa smurf on how to fix a Tek... That would be like telling your octogen-stripper how to suck... eggs. 

mnem
And now I get to repeat said terrible pun...   

[BU508A]

SCNR

 

[med6753]

Yeaaaah... that post was more aboot delivering a terrible pun than it was aboot advising papa smurf on how to fix a Tek... That would be like telling your octogen-stripper how to suck... eggs. 

mnem
And now I get to repeat said terrible pun...   

You keep mentioning that stripper. Do you require a refresher re-post? 

[BU508A]

Yeaaaah... that post was more aboot delivering a terrible pun than it was aboot advising papa smurf on how to fix a Tek... That would be like telling your octogen-stripper how to suck... eggs. 

mnem
And now I get to repeat said terrible pun...   

You keep mentioning that stripper. Do you require a refresher re-post? 

I can assist with a smurf-licking dragon. 

[Brumby]

I'm going to be scarce for a bit ......... 

[mnementh]

... I'm no longer willing to put other people's repair jobs ahead of my own projects on the bench once those three committed once are finished up and out the door.

My final red line was crossed when a remote acquaintance asked if I would be so nice to have a look at a minor problem his girlfriend was having with her stereo amp. Surely something I could fix in a few minutes. I agreed to have a look.

On the day, she arrived with an amp of some cheap chain store house brand, the thing was a total wreck and looked as if it had been buried under a dungheap which wasn't far from reality - she owned a pub. Switches had lost their click stops, the volume pot was broken and there were a number of black spots on the PCB.

When I suggested we'd better put this thing out of its misery she got all upset. "Well, thanks for nothing, Mister Electronics Wizard!"

My workbench hasn't seen anything that wasn't my own, ever since.

Yeah I have kinda already come to the same conclusion too...
(SNIP Gruesome tale of wasted man-hours for an unappreciative acquaintance)
FUCK THAT !!!

I am done... I am waiting for my friend to get back to me, and I will tell him I don't do repairs any more, not worth my time and people just expect miracles for pretty much free, as if electronic skills were totally worthless. If it's worthless then go fix your own stuff, have fun !!!   

mnem
The Fixer's Lament: You are driven to fix that which is broken; it is a need, not a want. But the conditions under which you are permitted to pursue that occupation are invariably unconducive to keeping one's sanity, and in most cases even to earning enough to survive.

[mnementh]

Yeaaaah... that post was more aboot delivering a terrible pun than it was aboot advising papa smurf on how to fix a Tek... That would be like telling your octogen-stripper how to suck... eggs. 

mnem
And now I get to repeat said terrible pun...   

You keep mentioning that stripper. Do you require a refresher re-post? 

You keep threatening all of us with that stripper. Do you need a refresher repost of Kerm-goatse...? 

mnem
I have a pink frilly tutu and I'm not afraid to use it... 

[Cerebus]

On the positive side I notice that the transport company, "Orange Connex" which sounds like a cross between a phone company and a railway mismanager apparently can sneak the little white plastic padded bags past the Postnord protection racket and that I thus avoid extra VAT and a SEK75 handling fee. Or this might be an effect of Ebay VAT rule complicance. 

It is the VAT rules at work; I looked again at the purchase details and there it is. I must say I like this better than having the shipment delayed, mauled, delayed a bit more and then held ransom by Postnord.

Yeah, I prefer it this way too. With the old system you could get charged the "processing fee" of £8 (Royal Mail) on a £15.01 transaction for collecting £3 of VAT making £26 in total instead of what would now be £18.01. Sure if it was £15.00 and Royal Mail got it right you didn't pay the fee or VAT but with most of my applicable orders being lowish value the new system works out much fairer.

[Specmaster]

Those 2 orange tants. One is a 1uf/35V, the other is a 1uf/50V. I'm not sure which one is which and there's a 50% chance of getting it wrong resulting in smoke. So I'll wait until assembled and powered up then measure voltage on each.
   

Once again in the interests of fairness, I seriously doubt that mnementh would have suggested using 50V rated tants in both locations if med hadn't said that would have to "wait until assembled and powered up then measure voltage on each."

Yes of course it is an obvious solution, but is only applicable if you have both values of tants, rated at 50V to hand.