Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[m k]

Manufacturer :" Axel ", made in France it says on the tin.

Model : " AX 3000 ".

I don't know how "dumb" that terminal is...

It is as you've concluded, basically a serial terminal, where you connect your own screen and keyboard, but some of them could also be connected to a network and use Telnet or SSH to log in to a host. I've got one too.

Wow that's quite a fancy terminal there, impressed    Must be a recent one then, not early '80's stuff, I presume..

Anyway, just figured the echo 

info http://www.axel.com/uk/ax3_unix.html  (Bonus "vintage" webpage  )
manual http://www.axel.com/uk/suppo_uk.html

Thanks for the links. Oh yeah I love and miss the websites of the early days ! When content was clearly laid out, simple UI, just a click away, no bloat, when a slow site was due to a slow server or modem, hence a legitimate reason, rather than because you have to download 50MB of code just to get a button to work, or because the site hangs not because server is slow but because it's tied to a million other useless servers for ads or statistics or whatnot, and any one of them being slow hangs the entire site. Or when you get siolly huge pic files whereas before you HAD to be mindful of pic resolution and compression/size, otherwise it was a show stopper and you would just give up on that website since you can'"t even load the freaking pics fast enough for the site to make any sense...

Oh yes, bring back the old web sites and the common sense that drove them ! 

@Mansaxel : you can bring your pics... it's OK I just have not to click on them, no harm... it's only if I want to enlarge them that it brings suicide (or murder ! ^^) envies...

But you have already been beaten... someone just posted a 2.9MB file for a 1600 wide pic. Size per Megapixel, that's even 10 times worse than your disaster pics ! You have found your master !


DB / cable : I checked pins 2 and 3, RxD / TxD.    Result : the two DB9 plugs at each end of the cable, are NOT crossed, it's a straight cable. So no Laplnk then if I understand well. HOWEVER.... the DB9 and DB25 plugs which are close together on the same end of the cable.. ARE crossed. So I guess you could use that cable to connect to a modem and the extra plug, crossed, could be used to connect to another serial port to get the echo, I don't know... or just "spy" on the link as Robert said.  I do find this possibility quite attractive when debugging / designing stuff...

All this talk about crossed or not, now gives me an idea... have a good number of DB/DB9 cables.... I guess it could be a good idea to test them all so I can sort them : those who are straight and those who are crossed. This way when I need either type, I can find one instantly and be sure it's wired as I need it to be wired. Yeah, will do that...

Can you move around with arrows?
You can't with VT220.

Links were not clear with all terminal emulations.
Google ReGIS, Sixel and Tektronix 4010.

In case you later decide to use the device as your TE console terminal, remember that RS-port doesn't like spikes.
That can happen when you pull out the connector when both ends are powered and ground is disconnecting first.

[Henrik_V]

Here is my RS232 emergency set....
Helped me a lot in the past 25 years...
The QUICK TESTER has my name on the back and like drills: You should not lend it 
[ Specified attachment is not available ]

[Vince]

Anyway, just figured the echo 

Can you move around with arrows?
You can't with VT220.

Yep I could use the 4 arrow keys just fine to move the cursor anywhere I wanted to... yet it's set to emulate VT220.
I guess emulation of anything is always the same story... it's never 100% true to the original, no matter what the S/W or H/W manufacturer claims... it's only a matter of will the user find himself in the corner case where he will actually notice/spot the discrepancies...

In case you later decide to use the device as your TE console terminal, remember that RS-port doesn't like spikes.
That can happen when you pull out the connector when both ends are powered and ground is disconnecting first.

I find this terminal box a cool retro piece of computing, I am happy I can play with it but.... realistically I don't think it's pratical enough for me to use it for actual duties... needs two thick power cables, a monitor, a keyboard... not portable, a mess on the bench, too much work digging out all that stuff, and storing it back, every time I need a terminal....

I think the most practical and realistic way of doing it, from my perspective at least, is to get an old laptop that's recent enough to run Linux, a minimalist implementation of it at least, yet old enough that it offers a real DB9 serial port, and RJ45/ Ethernet and a DB25 Printer port. Then I could run a terminal emulator on it a have all the other benefits like sending and receiving/logging data files, run S/W, debug tools, whatever one might one to do with old TE or development boards or computers or whatnot, over a serial port... all in a laptop, so self sufficient and compact, quick and easy to fire up when you need to. That's my plan anyway.

Of course I would also do that from the future stationary / desktop computer that I will add / dedicate to the lab bench at some point.

[mnementh]

   On another front... I'm having a bit of a fab & repair problem with my BBQ grill. I have a couple of the valves which have suffered impact damage; after two days of searching, it appears this valve is manufactured of weapons-grade unobtanium. 🤣   This little iron casting supports the knob shaft, which is separate from the brass casting which houses the cone valve. It would be a simple thing to whip out a replacement on a lathe...      ....until you look at the business end. This interlock is what turns the cone valve slug in the brass casting still on the grill. Replicating that turns this project exponentially more complicated. I am seriously considering this as my first actual Lost PLA 3DP project... 🙀

That's definitely not a job for PLA. I assume the area gets quite hot too?   McBryce.

Lost PLA. You make a model of PLA and use it to make a sand-casting mold, into which you then pour molten metal that vaporizes the PLA into the casting sand. Not sure how well such a small mass would work with the process, however. 

   

Now that I've disassembled the spindle assembly the solution has become quite obvious, and is something I should be able to hand-fab with tools I have at hand.

1) Grind the little bit that protrudes at the break flush with surface of casting.

2) Find bit of brass or steel tube with ID that matches shaft and cut to length.

3) Find steel washer with OD large enough to cover both screw holes and ID similar to OD of tube. Grind ID of washer with Dremel if necessary.

4)  Partly assemble shaft/bushing; solder washer to tube such that it makes a flanged bushing.

5) Mark for screw holes on washer; drill holes.

6) Assemble with slightly longer screws. Keep found tubing safe for when I need to do this again for other two valves. 

I'll update with pics as I make progress. EDIT: Added mnemCAD scribbled on back of used Hall Pass.

mnem
 

From the FINALLY GETTING ROUNDTUIT Dept...

DISCLAIMER: - this is Jackleg machining/hand-fabricobbling; it is NOT high-precision, it is not the best way or even the right way to do the job... it is just intended to be CLOSE ENOUGH to work and git 'er done. I offer this process here for the same purpose as my splice & solder a busted knob shaft process: For cases where you don't have replacement, or where the subject is rightly borked, but you cannot justify a lot of expense or time fixing it "properly", but you CAN spend a couple hours doing a little empirical engineering.




My searches for a convenient source of bushing material to match the oddball shaft (7/32" ~5.5mm) on this knob assembly were utterly fruitless; I found some 5.5mm bullet connectors to use for metal stock, but they were Chinesium and made just WRONG.
No good for their intended purpose, no good for mine either. 

So I had to drop back & punt... I bought these 5mm x 10mm bushings, and drilled them out using Cerebus' favored manner of embiggening a hole: 1/64th (or whatever set you have) at a time up the drill index until you get to the right size. Time-consuming   , but it does work if you can be patient.

As the bushing was small enough, I used a trick taught me by grand-dad for jackleg machining a bushing: if you can chuck up the bushing in a drill motor, put the drill bit in the vise rather than the usual way, as it makes it less likely to walk and bore crooked. While this technique is usually done with a drill press, the principle still obtains here; it's not perfect, but it does help. It took a few tries, but I got a couple finished bushings that were close enough to straight & square that they could be soldered to a backing plate.




Here I have the washers drilled out for the m3 screws, then screws and nuts holding that to the washer-cum-backplate. After this, I ground the plating down to bare steel in the center of the washer with a Dremel, and a 7/32" drill bit through all of it to align & index the bushing against the hole in the casting.




You may be wondering why I went through the hassle of making the backing plates instead of soldering directly to the iron casting; the answer is, I tried and none of the fluxes I have on hand would give satisfactory wetting, not even this highly aggressive stuff, which is essentially a small tub of plumber's flux. 

I know the soldering looks a bit ugly and lumpy; I've deliberately built-up around the outside with this lead-free silver-bearing solder in hopes of adding a bit of strength to these sintered-bronze bushings, which are essentially porous metal sponge intended to be supported by whatever bit of metal they're pressed into. We'll see how it holds up. 




The backing plates required trimming to allow clearance for the knob trim rings; now that the fabricobbledy is done and the shafts dry-fitted, time to scrub everything with IPA lest that caustic flux come back to bite me in the arse.




And finally a quick spritz with some Dollar-Store Rustoleum to appease the booty-fab gods. A wirebrush & paint to hide the welder I ain't... 


   

Here we are at the moment of truth... mating up the completed parts to the valve body. They warn you to never oil a gas valve, as it can mess up the grease in this precision-machined cone valve. Tinkerdwagon of course doesn't listen, and puts the tiniest drop of Supco ZOOM! Oil on the knob spindle shaft to ensure it can move smoothly. The two parts never actually come in contact; only that little pin which turns the cone slug in the valve body.




There's a little spring goes in there, then put it all together with slightly longer screws.




After that, add the trim rings and knobs...




...and now we're cooking with propane.




And the money shot: 85% lean ground chuck humbugglers with a sprinkle of garlic & onion powder (and my red stuff  ), some Havarti cheese for me and mild Cheddar for the wife & daughter. Added some boutique 100% beef (from cattle raised in a day-spa, if the package is to be believed  ) Polish sausages from COSTCO, and the smell was good enough to actually bring the family all together for a sit-down meal. 

Time and effort well-spent, says I.

mnem

[mnementh]

   A real warrior knows when to show your hand! HiHi

There is no way that you're going to convince us that they're doing anything but rolling on the floor laughing at you. I mean, the guy on top is quite clearly trying to slap the other one on the shoulder. Lockdown pudding basin haircut? 

(Oh lord, I've just realized, I'm making up shaggy dog stories about shaggy dogs.)

And...? 

mnem


"More, please..."

[Kosmic]

"Téton" really ?

I'll let you decipher what it mean in french 

[Vince]

Teton's ranch, where our beef go tits up so they can land in your hamburger...

[Brumby]

I typed number 3 (being the shortest) into Google translate ... and cracked up at the result.   

[mnementh]

Pretty basic outline, but I guess he assumes you have some idea what you're doing. His voice tho... it's like listening to Ben Stein talk tech, but with that accent so thick you need a machete to cut through it...

One thing you have to be aware of is to shop very carefully with the output voltage of your existing charge circuit in mind when comparing specs on these Chinesium BMS modules. Some of them are quite forgiving and have a broad charging input voltage range, some have a VERY narrow range, and if your charge voltage is too high, you can wind up not charging correctly with the primary charging circuit, but rather overcharging up to the point that the total or individual cell OVP kicks in.

mnem
*tzzzzt*

[McBryce]

Someone in Denmark wants to take our last pennies: https://www.ebay.de/sch/analogue-dk/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=

McBryce.

[mnementh]

Did no one see my post #114732?

<snip>

Thought I had covered all that........

Yes, I realised that! A bit too late, though. I'd been away all day yesterday (Vince-scaring pic-heavy post on that coming up) and did not read through posts to end before wanting to impose my version of same.

You were first, that is correct.

Happens to me alla time. I try to let it slide, as when I do occasionally mention it, people act like I'm being a drama-dwagon... 

mnem
"If that's the worst thing that happens tooya in a day... it's been a damn fine day." ~grand-dad

[med6753]

"Téton" really ?

I'll let you decipher what it mean in french 

Follow the bouncing ball. 

[mnementh]

I find this terminal box a cool retro piece of computing, I am happy I can play with it but.... realistically I don't think it's practical enough for me to use it for actual duties... needs two thick power cables, a monitor, a keyboard... not portable, a mess on the bench, too much work digging out all that stuff, and storing it back, every time I need a terminal....

I think the most practical and realistic way of doing it, from my perspective at least, is to get an old laptop that's recent enough to run Linux, a minimalist implementation of it at least, yet old enough that it offers a real DB9 serial port, and RJ45/ Ethernet and a DB25 Printer port. Then I could run a terminal emulator on it a have all the other benefits like sending and receiving/logging data files, run S/W, debug tools, whatever one might one to do with old TE or development boards or computers or whatnot, over a serial port... all in a laptop, so self sufficient and compact, quick and easy to fire up when you need to. That's my plan anyway.

Of course I would also do that from the future stationary / desktop computer that I will add / dedicate to the lab bench at some point.

Naaahhh... not even a little bit of a problem to find a use for it, or even to connect it. You can put it in a corner somewhere and use it to manage a home media/NAS server, and connectivity is easy as it has built-in serial-over-RJ45. Just add an old mono plasma monitor and you get Outer Limits Mad Scientist props for having that retro hardware actually doing something in the TikTok age. 

mnem
 

[BU508A]

Someone in Denmark wants to take our last pennies: https://www.ebay.de/sch/analogue-dk/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=

McBryce.

  
Not my price league (55kEUR) ...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185289999309

[Kosmic]

"Téton" really ?

I'll let you decipher what it mean in french 

Follow the bouncing ball. 

Found a picture of "Teton Waters Ranch"

[mnementh]

"Téton" really ? I'll let you decipher what it mean in french     

Oh, for pluck's sake...   

Teton Waters Ranch, as in The Grand Tetons mountain range, world-famous tourist destination for beautiful lakes with jaw-droppingly majestic mountain backdrops. Pretty sure they've even heard of the region in the GWN, ehhhh...?!?

mnem
Off the deep end, and just kept right on running...

[BU508A]

I'd prefer this anytime:


    

[Cerebus]

Yup 🤣
I had one Airedale who would only do a 'trick' once, after that he would give you the eye and not move at all!

"Alright Governor, I've done the trick. Now I'm on a strict work-to-rule until the snack negotiations are favourably settled. Get my drift?"

Seriously, any dog, cat who has been well cared for generally is a good companion - always exceptions though.

There are no bad dogs, only bad owners. I'm not too sure that I'm prepared to fully extend that to cats, they're a bit too human - some of them are born arseholes who'd shiv you for the price of a cheap meal.

[mnementh]

Oh, come now... let's get a little sense of proportion here...     

mnem

[SilverSolder]

Oh, come now... let's get a little sense of proportion here...     

mnem

Subtle!

[Vince]

Oh boy just when I thought I was done with cable, found one last (I hope it's the last...) big box of cables.... like 10kg worth of cables.

Lots of printer cables, VGA, Ethernet round or flat, a few SCART cables and... this little guy below... wondered what that was.. DB9 one end, audio jack on the other ?! 

The shell on the DB9 plug is quite large and held by clips rather than sealed/molded so...  that was suspicious... could some electronics hide in there... opened it up, oh yeah some stuff to look at 

4 wires, minus the ground that's 3 signal wires..

A couple electrolytic caps on one side, and on the other side, 3 diodes 3 resistors 4 caps, some kinda of tranny or whatnot and... an IC.  SN75C1406... looked at the datasheet, made by TI.
A 3 way transceiver for serial ports.... OK....

So it's just a serial cable, nothing fancy... just with a jack plug on one side, weird... didn't know serial ports used also audio jacks, oh well why not I guess ?! 

Maybe it's meant to interface to tape players on old computers to read data ?!.......

Will keep it just in case...

[BU508A]

[mnementh]

...A couple electrolytic caps on one side, and on the other side, 3 diodes 3 resistors 4 caps, some kinda of tranny or whatnot and... an IC.  SN75C1406... looked at the datasheet, made by TI. A 3 way transceiver for serial ports.... OK....

So it's just a serial cable, nothing fancy... just with a jack plug on one side, weird... didn't know serial ports used also audio jacks, oh well why not I guess ?! 

I'd guess it's a serial programmer cable for some form of radio gear; my Baofeng UV-5R uses a very similar cable only with a CH340 Serial-to-USB chip on it. Here you can see I fabricobbled a substitute out of a old CH340-based ESC programmer and some random 1/8" headphone plugs to get it talking to CHIRP so I could program the radio a few years back.

mnem
hey! I contributed!

[25 CPS]

Someone in Denmark wants to take our last pennies: https://www.ebay.de/sch/analogue-dk/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=

McBryce.

  
Not my price league (55kEUR) ...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/185289999309

One of my friends and I looked up prices of Nagra T machines just before the pandemic started and found some selling for about $26,000 Canadian while we were talking about an amateur musician who got one very affordably via an absolutely epic five finger discount.

Edit:  Now I have a question, should I be saving it for Discord?

[Vince]

...A couple electrolytic caps on one side, and on the other side, 3 diodes 3 resistors 4 caps, some kinda of tranny or whatnot and... an IC.  SN75C1406... looked at the datasheet, made by TI. A 3 way transceiver for serial ports.... OK....

So it's just a serial cable, nothing fancy... just with a jack plug on one side, weird... didn't know serial ports used also audio jacks, oh well why not I guess ?! 

[img width= 200]https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/?action=dlattach;attach=497393;image[/img]

I'd guess it's a serial programmer cable for some form of radio gear; my Baofeng UV-5R uses a very similar cable only with a CH340 Serial-to-USB chip on it. Here you can see I fabricobbled a substitute out of a old CH340-based ESC programmer and some random 1/8" headphone plugs to get it talking to CHIRP so I could program the radio a few years back.

mnem
hey! I contributed!

OK OK... interesting.

Just done zip tying all my printer cables. 13 of them... looks like a tad too much .. should I do like with my power cords and arbitrarily scrap some of them to get the count to a more reasonable and more manageable level ? I don't know... in the future once the attic is turned into a liveable zone, I might consider using the extra space, some of it, to put a few vintage computers I like, on display, but in a 100% working setup of course... other wise what's the point. So I might actually need a few cables one day.... and with this vintage retro computing stuff being so trendy nowadays, who knows maybe in 10 or 20 years people would pay big buck for a printer cable !
... but old computers are already silly expensive so I doubt I will be able to afford them anyway... speculation has already started ruining the hobby :-/
I miss my first computer, a Bull Micral 30.... I so regret scrapping it... now even if I had a million dollar I could not buy one... there is just none for sale. They all ended up in the local scrappies I guess 

Well, correction... not 13 printer cables... "only" 10. The remaining 3 are DB25 to DB 25 cables. I guess they were used to connect peripheral. I remember I had a IOmega 'ZIP' drive, 100MB, that used the parallel port and such a cable. Boy I miss that drive too... regret selling it