Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[dl6lr]

My HAMEG wants to wish you a happy new year:

[med6753]

Looking for suggestions... I know none of us here usually need motivation to acquire more TEA, but I've been assessing my lab over the last few days and have decided that the obvious missing device on my bench is a VTVM. What VTVM would you guys recommend? Keeping in mind - It shouldn't be the size of a truck. It shouldn't be some rarity that goes for silly money. It should be relatively easy to find in Europe. It should be a device where the schematics and parts are readily available.

McBryce.

The best fit for your requirements would be Heathkit. Readily available in the UK. Not sure about the rest of Europe. So you may have to deal with VAT, Brexit, and all that bullshit. 

[McBryce]

Looking for suggestions... I know none of us here usually need motivation to acquire more TEA, but I've been assessing my lab over the last few days and have decided that the obvious missing device on my bench is a VTVM. What VTVM would you guys recommend? Keeping in mind - It shouldn't be the size of a truck. It shouldn't be some rarity that goes for silly money. It should be relatively easy to find in Europe. It should be a device where the schematics and parts are readily available.

McBryce.

The best fit for your requirements would be Heathkit. Readily available in the UK. Not sure about the rest of Europe. So you may have to deal with VAT, Brexit, and all that bullshit.

Any particular model, or are they all good?

McBryce.

[TERRA Operative]

This will take a while... Famous last words. 

mnem
*sent by threatening my smartPwn with cold oscilloscope probes* 

I think I could post you a surplus SSD from work via boat and it'll arrive before your updates have finished.

[med6753]

Looking for suggestions... I know none of us here usually need motivation to acquire more TEA, but I've been assessing my lab over the last few days and have decided that the obvious missing device on my bench is a VTVM. What VTVM would you guys recommend? Keeping in mind - It shouldn't be the size of a truck. It shouldn't be some rarity that goes for silly money. It should be relatively easy to find in Europe. It should be a device where the schematics and parts are readily available.

McBryce.

The best fit for your requirements would be Heathkit. Readily available in the UK. Not sure about the rest of Europe. So you may have to deal with VAT, Brexit, and all that bullshit.

Any particular model, or are they all good?

McBryce.

They are all good. Same basic design from the mid 1950's until they quit making them in the 1980's. One 12AU7 twin triode and one 6AL5 twin diode.

[TERRA Operative]

Been a productive couple days for me...

Got the old HP 4145A Semiconductor Parameter Analyser all working ready to sell, ended up needing a new 7.5Mohm resistor in the CRT focus circuit, I happened to have an 8Mohm resistor of the exact same type, so that went in and it's working perfectly. On to the 'for sale' pile with that one, along with the hard-to-get boot disks.

Then I had a poke at the 4145B too, it got some love and the CRT all adjusted nice and crispy. Just need to wait for a PS2 keyboard to arrive so I can boot the old PC that has a floppy drive so I can make a 4145B boot disk, then I can see if this thing actually works. I plan to keep this one. I have the whole test fixture setup, minus the 4 triax cables. Still looking for a good/cheap set...

Also got the second 3325A all working with the HV option. That's on the bench now to get a quick tweak against the GPSDO reference tomorrow, and then onto the 'for sale' pile with that (I already have a fully rebuilt and optioned out 3325A in the rack).

Next was a Tek TM503 mainframe, it had burnt out traces on the PCB (someone seems to have either used a stuffed module, or plugged something a bit naughty into it), so that got a complete replacement PCB (you'll find it in my youtube history if interested) but it needed a PCB revision due to some borked part pinouts. It is all running perfectly now as tested by my TM500 mainframe tester. It's back on the TM500 mainframe pile ready to be sorted for what to keep and what to sell.

And finally, the HP 334A Distortion Analyser will get a final tweak and adjustment, and will NOT be sold... That will go on the shelf of using to be used for useful uses.

Next up after all that will be to finalise the PCB designs for the two common Dallas NVRAM modules as used in Tek gear to revive a TDS744A scope (also to be put on the 'for sale' pile), and keep my TDS784C scope running all happy.
I'll release the gerbers for those for whoever is interested.

[mnementh]

Ummm... you do know that pizza pie as it is now known is not an actually an Italian dish, but rather originated as street vendor/micro-eatery food invented by Italian immigrants in New York City?

[Citation Required] 

Required...? pfffft. Do your own research. 

What they made in Italy "back in the day" bears very little resemblance to what we call pizza nowadays, which is a New York City invention. This is pretty common knowledge. The part about evolving from Calzone (actually, it was a meat pie of a completely different name that didn't use tomato sauce, which I cannot remember at all)  is conjecture taken from a lengthy and scholarly debate over this subject I read many years ago; you can discount this as hearsay, but of all the discussion I've read on the subject, it certainly fits the best. 

Not trying to pick a fight with Z, but seriously... wood-fired oven as a baseline criteria? Ridiculous. Entirely too much distraction from the real work of properly preparing the pie. The crucial part of making a evenly-cooked and properly crispy pizza is a) consistent temp and humidity and 2) marble or granite cooking surface.  This is best accomplished with a thermostatically-controlled gas-fired pizza oven with the  requisite granite cooking surface, as both temp and humidity can be fine-tuned and then maintained automatically.

Yeah, yeah... I hear the whole argument over wood-fired being part of the "art"; well, my grandma made coffee and bread on/in a Kalamazoo wood-fired stove well into my teen years. Even she admitted years later that the gas range grand-dad bought her was better for baked goods, and that was her "thing".

And I'll never miss the flavor of coffee left on the hot corner too long so it got burnt to death.

mnem

[Neper]

What VTVM would you guys recommend? Keeping in mind - It shouldn't be the size of a truck. It shouldn't be some rarity that goes for silly money.

Simple answer: Heathkit. Many schools in Germany had them and there's still a lot around. If you want to spend a little more, look for Sennheiser, Grundig or H&B.

[mansaxel]

Looking for suggestions... I know none of us here usually need motivation to acquire more TEA, but I've been assessing my lab over the last few days and have decided that the obvious missing device on my bench is a VTVM. What VTVM would you guys recommend? Keeping in mind - It shouldn't be the size of a truck. It shouldn't be some rarity that goes for silly money. It should be relatively easy to find in Europe. It should be a device where the schematics and parts are readily available.

McBryce.

Easy, in Germany, at least: Grundig / H&B / Sennheiser RV55 et c.
Cheapo completeness: RCA VoltOhmyst or Heathkit stuff. (Will give DC Volts, Ohms, et c.)
The real deal:  [(hp)] 400 series, especially 410B.
Esoteric: Marconi or Metrix.

In my experience, the [(hp)] are the ones to go for; they're the best instruments, hands down. I've bought an essentially working 410B for ~85€ in Europe; broken probe cables exchanged for new and new HV caps was what it took to get it back on track.

With that in mind, the German family are no bad meters; they're usually AC-only though.

The esoteric ones usually aren't as naturally superior as the [(hp)] ones, but they can be interesting nevertheless.

Some outliers do exist, like Radiometer, Bang & Olufsen, and Brüel & Kjær; but those are more often than not transistorised and AC-only.  And with that in mind, the [(hp)] 410C and 427A (I still have one, BD, if you're lurking!) become possible. (And then, there are the other "Electronic VOM" too, like Norma and the different Japanese brands where Leader turns up pretty often.  )

The transistor meters are continuations of the VTVM spirit, highly sensitive meters for things like audio work, low burden on DUT, et c. Which is why they're in my exposé. But they're only the same idea, not the same thing.

[mnementh]

   This will take a while... Famous last words. 

mnem
*sent by threatening my smartPwn with cold oscilloscope probes* 

I think I could post you a surplus SSD from work via boat and it'll arrive before your updates have finished.

LOL... if I'd waited for Windoze Update to do it, yes... there would have been at least 3 major version installs over a period of days. I installed directly from the media D/L page, and here I am, 12 hours later safe on the installed side of 20H2.

I have lots of room on this drive, and this particular build is entirely UPGRADE installs going all the way back to my first Win7/64 install on a Athlon2/X64 when I went back to university the 2nd time, cloned over and over to new HDDs as needed. I find that sense of continuity oddly comforting.   

Now that it's updated, only my cold boot times will suck out loud; unless some update borks suspend/resume, which never seemed to be as much of a problem with spinning rust as with SSD.

My big problem now is this 32"/720P Digital Signage monitor; it's a good thing my desk is so deep, or that grainy-ass text would drive me batshit insane. 

mnem
"Pffft... that's a short walk for you; no driving required." ~grand-dad

[Saskia]

Happy New Year everybody !

Just finished bringing about 2 tons of moving boxes up north and relocating my David Harleyson ...
4 days, 2200 km.
Ouch.

[mnementh]

Looking for suggestions... I know none of us here usually need motivation to acquire more TEA, but I've been assessing my lab over the last few days and have decided that the obvious missing device on my bench is a VTVM. What VTVM would you guys recommend? Keeping in mind - It shouldn't be the size of a truck. It shouldn't be some rarity that goes for silly money. It should be relatively easy to find in Europe. It should be a device where the schematics and parts are readily available.

McBryce.

...The transistor meters are continuations of the VTVM spirit, highly sensitive meters for things like audio work, low burden on DUT, et c. Which is why they're in my exposé. But they're only the same idea, not the same thing.

Yeah, I meant to ask McB if what he really needed was a VTVM, or if one of the more recent Dual-FET sand-state meters might be a better choice, but you sortof beat me to the punch. 

He mentioned bench space being an issue, and mostly they have a) usually a very large movement with modern mirror-backed panel, 2) usually very high ratio of meter size to cabinet displacement/footprint, and c) are often offered in a bespoke case as they are a portable instrument which is nice to be able to file away in a drawer if needed, and 4) being usually battery-operated are by nature electrically isolated.

Of course, once you get to a certain point in your TEA habit, certain things become very noticeable in your collection more by absence and tradition than by absolute need; I feel a VTVM falls squarely in that category.

mnem
"Food for thought; thought from food."

[mansaxel]

...if what he really needed was a VTVM, or if one of the more recent Dual-FET sand-state meters might be a better choice;

There, in the rest of the world exists this strange distinction between "want" and "need" that we need not entertain in here. 

Today, if we're in spite of above are going to introduce the distinction, the VTVM is something that you want. The "need" function, bar the big wiggly meter, i.e. low burden precision measurement, is better handled by a DMM, hands down.

To soften that, there are not so many DMM that measure well above a few KHz (the [(hp)] 974 is an exception with it's 100KHz response; there are a few others, like the 8060A et. c. ) and the DC resistance of the 410B is about 121 MΩ, which is also pretty uncommon today.

[Cerebus]

Ummm... you do know that pizza pie as it is now known is not an actually an Italian dish, but rather originated as street vendor/micro-eatery food invented by Italian immigrants in New York City?

[Citation Required] 

Required...? pfffft. Do your own research. 

You make an extraordinary claim, contrary to what the rest of the world believes, and when someone asks for some sort of proof you say "Do your own research"? Have you joined Q-Anon? All it takes is one reference to a URL that someone would regard as well-sourced and believable.

I don't hold with "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", but some plausable evidence would help to convince us that you're not just blowing smoke up our collective arses.

What they made in Italy "back in the day" bears very little resemblance to what we call pizza nowadays, which is a New York City invention. This is pretty common knowledge.

Agreed, with the qualification that "we" is New Yorkers. So the debate isn't the origin of pizza, but "Whether that thing they make in New York and call a pie can be called pizza".

Flatbread cooked from raw with a topping of cheese has existed at least since the time of the Achaemenid Empire and is almost certainly older. The canonical cheese and tomato pizza and such being called pizza has been around in Italy since at least the 18th century when there was only a New York province. The first New York Pizzeria opened in 1905, at which time there was already a pizzeria in Naples that had existed since before 1889, with a pizzaiolo so famous that in 1889 the King and Queen made a special visit to it* and the Margherita got its name. There's evidence of the Sicillian style deep pan pizza being common from the 17th century in Sicily.

*"Esiste poi la vera storia della pizza Margherita che non possiamo tralasciare: Raffaele Esposito, il pizzaiolo dell’Ottocento napoletano più famoso, viene incaricato di far assaggiare alla Regina Margherita in visita a Napoli nel 1889 con suo marito il re Umberto I, proprio la pizza napoletana."

[AVGresponding]

Seller responded quite quickly, and asked for video of the problem sent to an external (from ebay) email, along with a repeat of the description of the problem and the order number.

...the usual tactics of letting people jump through a succession of hoops in the hope that they'll eventually give up. Have they already offered you a refund of something like 1 percent of the auction price?

They haven't offered anything as yet. I'm certainly not paying anything for this one, they can send me a return label. It may or may not be fixable, in point of fact the PLL lock LED actually comes on properly now, but the performance otherwise is unchanged.

The fact they asked me to communicate outside ebay undermines their case massively; ebay will frown deeply when they see that and likely come down 100% on my side regardless of anything else.


Oh, here are the pics I sent. You can see the frequency is miles off, and the waveform at the lower frequency is horrible.

Wow, it goes down to millihertz!

Which is a serious insult to proper sig gens like my HP 3325A which goes down to 1 microhertz (one cycle per 11.57..407.. days).

My TTi TG2511 goes from 1uHz to 25MHz, I have the ULF covered. I need 300MHz to 3GHz (more or less) to test the frequency converter plug-in for the 5245L.

[AVGresponding]

Oh, and there are a number of reprobates on Discord.

[mnementh]

Ummm... you do know that pizza pie as it is now known is not an actually an Italian dish, but rather originated as street vendor/micro-eatery food invented by Italian immigrants in New York City?

[Citation Required] 

Required...? pfffft. Do your own research. 

You make an extraordinary claim, contrary to what the rest of the world believes, and when someone asks for some sort of proof you say "Do your own research"? Have you joined Q-Anon? All it takes is one reference to a URL that someone would regard as well-sourced and believable.

I don't hold with "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", but some plausable evidence would help to convince us that you're not just blowing smoke up our collective arses.

What they made in Italy "back in the day" bears very little resemblance to what we call pizza nowadays, which is a New York City invention. This is pretty common knowledge.

Agreed, with the qualification that "we" is New Yorkers. So the debate isn't the origin of pizza, but "Whether that thing they make in New York and call a pie can be called pizza".

Flatbread cooked from raw with a topping of cheese has existed at least since the time of the Achaemenid Empire and is almost certainly older. The canonical cheese and tomato pizza and such being called pizza has been around in Italy since at least the 18th century when there was only a New York province. The first New York Pizzeria opened in 1905, at which time there was already a pizzeria in Naples that had existed since before 1889, with a pizzaiolo so famous that in 1889 the King and Queen made a special visit to it* and the Margherita got its name. There's evidence of the Sicillian style deep pan pizza being common from the 17th century in Sicily.

*"Esiste poi la vera storia della pizza Margherita che non possiamo tralasciare: Raffaele Esposito, il pizzaiolo dell’Ottocento napoletano più famoso, viene incaricato di far assaggiare alla Regina Margherita in visita a Napoli nel 1889 con suo marito il re Umberto I, proprio la pizza napoletana."

FFS, C... pizza is itself an Italian-American-English word; supposedly a bastardization of pita.

Everything else here is a matter of evolution... and when I was a kid, we didn't say "New-York-style pizza" we fricking said "pizza". And it meant the same thing pretty close to everywhere in the developed world; the only variation being thin or thick crust. "New-York-style pizza" is a contrivance of the "Politically Correct"-ness movement we generally abhor in here. 

This is not "an extraordinary claim, contrary to what the rest of the world believes"; it is, as I said, common knowledge. Well, okay; as we have lots of internet evidence to the contrary, I suppose it is what used to be common knowledge.

Of course, what is "common knowledge" and what is "internet evidence" often has very little to do with fact... so I again invite you to do your own research. I'm a wee bit busy ATM. When I get around to it, I may or may not follow up.

"Citation required"...? No, thank you; too many lazy-bastard trolls out there use that to demand that they be spoon-fed proof, only so they can nit-pick it to death. "Citation requested"... maybe. If I have time.

mnem
*currently un-binning the ToD*

[Specmaster]

Ummm... you do know that pizza pie as it is now known is not an actually an Italian dish, but rather originated as street vendor/micro-eatery food invented by Italian immigrants in New York City?

[Citation Required] 

Required...? pfffft. Do your own research. 

You make an extraordinary claim, contrary to what the rest of the world believes, and when someone asks for some sort of proof you say "Do your own research"? Have you joined Q-Anon? All it takes is one reference to a URL that someone would regard as well-sourced and believable.

I don't hold with "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", but some plausable evidence would help to convince us that you're not just blowing smoke up our collective arses.

What they made in Italy "back in the day" bears very little resemblance to what we call pizza nowadays, which is a New York City invention. This is pretty common knowledge.

Agreed, with the qualification that "we" is New Yorkers. So the debate isn't the origin of pizza, but "Whether that thing they make in New York and call a pie can be called pizza".

Flatbread cooked from raw with a topping of cheese has existed at least since the time of the Achaemenid Empire and is almost certainly older. The canonical cheese and tomato pizza and such being called pizza has been around in Italy since at least the 18th century when there was only a New York province. The first New York Pizzeria opened in 1905, at which time there was already a pizzeria in Naples that had existed since before 1889, with a pizzaiolo so famous that in 1889 the King and Queen made a special visit to it* and the Margherita got its name. There's evidence of the Sicillian style deep pan pizza being common from the 17th century in Sicily.

*"Esiste poi la vera storia della pizza Margherita che non possiamo tralasciare: Raffaele Esposito, il pizzaiolo dell’Ottocento napoletano più famoso, viene incaricato di far assaggiare alla Regina Margherita in visita a Napoli nel 1889 con suo marito il re Umberto I, proprio la pizza napoletana."

Perhaps this may provide the answer, but as far as I can see it is not definitive.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/263732/where-does-pizza-pie-originate

[AVGresponding]

Flippin' heck, we need more English on Discord, the Americans are spelling things incorrectly!   

[Cerebus]

This is not "an extraordinary claim, contrary to what the rest of the world believes"; it is, as I said, common knowledge. Well, okay; as we have lots of internet evidence to the contrary, I suppose it is what used to be common knowledge.

In my entire experience so far, only you have claimed a New York origin (while 'schooling' an Italian on the proper origin no less) and cite no more evidence than "Everybody knows" and anyone who disagrees is too lazy/ignorant to do their own research.

Ah, forget I brought it up. I ought to know by now that disagreeing with "the Dragon" says, no mater how misguided, is a fruitless exercise. You're right, or course pizza comes from New York.

[Cerebus]

Perhaps this may provide the answer, but as far as I can see it is not definitive.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/263732/where-does-pizza-pie-originate

Don't be foolish, we have the definitive word from the Dragon, there is no need for further debate. It was indeed truly genuinely stupid of me to challenge any claim from him and expect anything good to come of it.

[AVGresponding]

For me, pizza comes from the freezer

[Cerebus]

For me, pizza comes from the freezer

Oh, I thought it was Deliveroo.

[Specmaster]

Perhaps this may provide the answer, but as far as I can see it is not definitive.
https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/263732/where-does-pizza-pie-originate

Don't be foolish, we have the definitive word from the Dragon, there is no need for further debate. It was indeed truly genuinely stupid of me to challenge any claim from him and expect anything good to come of it.

Harsh words..... he might just be yanking on your chain of course, he is known, like you, for your dry humour. Other than that, I have zero idea personally. I didn't use Google, I used DuckDuckGo and that doesn't seem as good as Google me, but perhaps Google might just hold the key. Try this out, does it help?

https://www.crustkingdom.com/why-is-pizza-called-pie/

[Specmaster]

For me, pizza comes from the freezer

What is going on here, have the Americans and their bad spelling driven you off discord?