Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mansaxel]

I just plug my dryer in the wall 

As one does when the normal outlet can supply adequate power. A BS1363 outlet not on ring mains will happily supply a little bit over 3KW; that's ~26A at 120V..

[mnementh]

Robert, you jumped into an existing conversation where both 3-wire and 4-wire cord installation were being discussed. You did not specify which you were talking about, nor does your diagram state any such thing clearly.

Yet when I try to clarify, and completely non-confrontationally explain what we were talking about vs what you were talking about, you take offense.

Dood... seriously. Nothing I said deserved that level of response.

mnem
*toddles off to do something... else*

1/The sketch shows 4 wires going to the dryer
2/ The described fault can only happen if the earth and neutral are connected at the dryer so it must be a 4 wire cord
3/ the same issue applies for any equipment if you connect the neutral and protective conductor including 3 wire 110V or european style 240V 3 wire.

How much detail did I have to give?

Obviously it was not obvious what you were talking about, or we wouldn't be having this misunderstanding. There was never any intent to demean, trivialize or in any way attack you here. 

We are not inside your head Robert, we don't all always know what you're talking about. You tend to take shortcuts in the discussion and in this case also the drawing that reflect what you're thinking about, and assume everyone else knows what you mean. ie: including the terminal strip and not including a nonexistent GND as I did would have gone a lot further towards clarifying.

The nature of this medium means you do have to be more specific and more detailed than with "in person" conversations; we don't have the benefit of body language, tone of voice, or facial expression to help us understand what you mean. Even the point of the conversation where you jump in makes a difference here.

At this point all I can do is chalk this one up to misunderstanding and the nature of the medium as above; I encourage you to do the same, as I never wanted to fight about any of this. 

mnem
I think I'm gonna go color some My Little Ponies with my daughter... we NEVER argue when we're doing that...

[tautech]

Ah-ha. Mine have arrived too courtesy Amazon. Very happy 



Absolutely bog standard generic pliers but aren't made out of "bendium" like the Clarke ones are or "snapium" like the Piergiacomis are 

The boss when I was on the tools was a pretty powerful chap with a handshake grip like a vise if he wanted and I witnessed him have the power to bring men to their knees. 
In the tool vans that visited us I would always slip whatever pliers took my fancy back to him 'for testing' while keeping the tool rep chatting.
Occasionally a clack came from behind me however when it didn't those 'tested' pliers went into my buy basket. 
Still have those 'tested' Channellock sidecutters and Diamondalloy long nose pliers 40+ years later. 

[mnementh]

I just plug my dryer in the wall 

As one does when the normal outlet can supply adequate power. A BS1363 outlet not on ring mains will happily supply a little bit over 3KW; that's ~26A at 120V...

240-ish volt Dryer circuit over here is 30A, 240-ish volt Range circuit is 50A. Both use a dedicated dual breaker with internal common trip. Standard 125-ish volt household outlet is rated 15A/1875W, and we also have a standard for 125-ish volt 20A/2500W.

And none of those household plugs qualify as a lethal weapon in most use cases. Our Range/Dryer plugs are as bad as yours, tho... 

mnem
Honestly, I don't know why it isn't a "thing" you hear about in the news all the time; murdering people with those monstrous things...

[tautech]

Calling mnementh, your presence and help is required:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/supporters-lounge/adding-emoji-to-the-existing-list/

Calling mnem......did you miss this ? 

[mnementh]

OHHHH........ OK. Looks like there is some misunderstanding here from both sides ! 

I mean... I never meant to say that these extra eggs were coded / created by HPAK nerds. What I meant was that it looks like there are  2 or 3 eggs (or whatever) but I assumed HP at the factory would ship scopes with any one of those eggs, randomly, so the end user would get one of the 3 (if there are 3 in total, whatever). Like, I don't know, HP decided that Week #1 they would flash egg #1 into the scopes/motherboard F/W, then Week #2 they would ship the scopes with egg #2, then Week #3  with egg #3 then go back to egg #1 and cycle like that....

So I thought that HPAK users today would use GPIB to pull the F/W from their scope, figure out where in memory the egg resides, pull it, upload it to their favorite HPAK forum/server, then every one with an HP scope could go download the eggs he does not have in his scope, and reflash his F/W via GPIB to overwrite his egg with another one ?

Like, say your scope came with Tetris, but you would like to have Asteroid. So you go to the HPAK forum, you download the binary blob for Asteroid, and flash that into your scope via GPIB. over writing your Tetris egg.

But... from what you say, do you mean that it's not like that at all... looks like you mean GPIB is not used as a means to flash a new egg into the scope F/W, no sounds like you mean the GPIB module ITSELF contains a ROM that contains an egg ? So if you plug that GPIB module, the scope can either, using different magic key sequences, either display the scopes's own egg, or go get the one that's stored inside the GPIB module ?? Is that it ? Do I get that right now or ?? 

I guess there are other modules available than just GPIB... does each type of module contain its own egg ? Or was GPIB the only module that had one ?

These 546xx scopes look like a lot of fun... can't wait to receive mine and play with it !!! 

Now you have it, sortof. 

In my case it was not that I was going to use the GPIB to flash newer FW; it was that I was hoping the FW with Tetris might be in the GPIB module. IIRC there was also a Plotter controller/Maths module and probably a few others I can't remember.

The short version is this: The eastereggs (this is a generic nerd term for anything you find that the creator left hidden, or sometimes hidden in plain sight, for the faithful users/viewers to find; also commonly applies to video games and even movies), when they happened, it was because there was unused space in the ROM on a scope or a module that used the interface on the back. Obviously, different scopes have different functionality and different FW, just like the modules.

This means that the "leftovers" the engineers got to play with were not all the same amount of space, so I'm pretty sure that's where the different eastereggs came from. Probably also not the same dev teams, so may actually have been some friendly rivalry to see just what they could cram into a itty-bitty chunk of unused space.

mnem
 

[tautech]

Siglent have their own eggs too. 

[Cerebus]

I just plug my dryer in the wall 

I just pin my washing on the clothes line.

After properly equipotential bonding the clothes line, naturally.

[bd139]

I just plug my dryer in the wall 

I just pin my washing on the clothes line.

After properly equipotential bonding the clothes line, naturally.

Ah you are clearly not blessed with children who change clothes more often than a Eurovision presenter.

As for bonding the clothes line, I actually have one of those big fold up spider ones. At some point in 2019, I successfully tuned mine up as an antenna on 40m and made a WSPR call on it and got all the way to Spain. Then it rained

[mnementh]

Calling mnementh, your presence and help is required:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/supporters-lounge/adding-emoji-to-the-existing-list/

Calling mnem......did you miss this ? 

Duly noted, and inappropriate comments/images applied. 

mnem
*virtual*

[mnementh]

I just plug my dryer in the wall 

I just pin my washing on the clothes line. After properly equipotential bonding the clothes line, naturally.

I cook, my wife does laundry, my son carries the baskets as needed and does dishes.

A perfectly equitable arrangement, IMO.

Oh, and my daughter is cute. 

mnem
Speaking of which... I do believe I hear some leftover pork roast calling my name...

[Specmaster]

Finally managed to get all the footage edited and posted on YT of the Steam Gala. Don't know what I did wrong last time, but only the first few minutes of the compilation worked  The footage shown is a sample of what happened between 1:42pm and 6:36pm. The day started at 10:00am but the car park was rammed so I went to the airfield first.



@bd139 You said that you wanted to visit this sometime, all you need to do is to jump on a Central Line tube to Epping on a day when the EOR line is running, where when you arrive there will old routemasters or possibly and or RTs to take you to North Weald station where it all begins from.

https://www.eorailway.co.uk/

[tautech]

Calling mnementh, your presence and help is required:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/supporters-lounge/adding-emoji-to-the-existing-list/

Calling mnem......did you miss this ? 

Duly noted, and inappropriate comments/images applied. 

mnem
*virtual*

Can we Copy/Paste them...this is a test:

Let's try another:

[mnementh]

I usually go to my little repo, Right click, then Copy Image Link/Location from the drop-down dialog. Then paste that into a img tag, maybe add a little size modifier:

         

mnem

[cyclin_al]

They stood up to my high school electronics class ... I was definitely one of the gentler students (ie. with half a clue what I was doing, instead of no clue).  I want one only for that reason.  This US price is getting more reasonable, but the cross-border shipping kills the deal...

You had electronics in high school?! Jealous

It was the last year they offered that class.  The future was bleak.  The real problem was too few students willing to be labelled as geeks and sign up for the class.
My darkest moment now is that I was far too naive to realize the opportunity when they cleared out the room at the end of the year... I could have brought a lot of that gear home for free.

-- coulda shoulda woulda didn't[/s] 

*raises a paw*   Ummm... wood shop, machine shop, and motorhead shop too... 

Wood shop, electrical and drafting were a combined course.
Electronics was in the last year.

Machine shop, welding shop and automotive shop were another combined course, but I was discouraged from joining the grease monkeys.  Opportunity lost ... could have been useful had I known better.

[cyclin_al]

Please help, I've purchased six ratcheting screwdrivers this week, and I'm planning on buying a seventh. I never knew how good a ratcheting mechanism could be until I used a PB Swiss...

I think you may have the wrong forum. This is not ratchet screwdrivers anonymous 

Although most posts in here are off topic 

Now, now.  You know the next step after ratcheting screwdrivers is torque screwdrivers.
We have already discussed those here... sufficiently more than necessary 
That certainly led me to go out and purchase more than one set of Wera screwdrivers, most with torque settings. 
 

[mansaxel]

Machine shop, welding shop and automotive shop were another combined course, but I was discouraged from joining the grease monkeys.  Opportunity lost ... could have been useful had I known better.

In our system, those were an alternate to second foreign language, in school years 7 through 9; age 13 to 15. That was in some ways tough choice, because I wanted both, but in the end, learning German was more beneficial. Not having had it, I'd been seriously limited in only slightly later career choices. Also, the social ramifications of joining Those People were not insignificant. I'd probably been even more bullied than I was.

[mansaxel]

Now, now.  You know the next step after ratcheting screwdrivers is torque screwdrivers.
We have already discussed those here... sufficiently more than necessary 
That certainly led me to go out and purchase more than one set of Wera screwdrivers, most with torque settings. 
 

Wiha TorqueVario is very addictive.  I actually got my first one because it was necessary for work. The line card fasteners on Cisco ASR 9006 routers shall be torqued to 1,2Nm per the manual. Those cards cost a fortune -- list price on a 8x100G one is around 1,2 MUSD. (Nobody pays that, of course; the prices exist to make it very easy to give everyone a 30% rebate, but Real Users get perhaps 70% off. )
With those kinds of fantasy money involved, one treats stuff considerably more carefully.

[AVGresponding]

Truthfully, ever since it became clear my messages were vanishing into nowhere, I have been thinking about ordering the U1253B package from Transcat since that'd come with a warranty, current calibration, fresh OLED display, plus the carry case etc.

Order placed.  I also ordered a bunch of miscellaneous things I needed that weren't enough to get above the free shipping threshold so that took care of all that.

"Message Again"  It wouldn't be much effort to type something and hit send but I'm not even sure I'm going to bother.

Now I'm tempted to hit the "Message Again" button and send a note saying I bought a new U1253B since he didn't get back to me.

Agilent isn't the current brand name and even then Keysight isn't as widely known as Fluke, and he's got the listed the U1253B at what I'd consider a fairly reasonable price for what it is, but that means it's priced well above the cheap DMMs people flip all the time.  Have fun shifting it.  Could've had cash in hand a week ago.

Hopefully the design of the 1253B is significantly improved over the 1253A that Dave did a teardown of way back when; the continuity function in particular was garbage, and the general design of the front end wasn't great.

[bd139]

Finally managed to get all the footage edited and posted on YT of the Steam Gala. Don't know what I did wrong last time, but only the first few minutes of the compilation worked  The footage shown is a sample of what happened between 1:42pm and 6:36pm. The day started at 10:00am but the car park was rammed so I went to the airfield first.
 


@bd139 You said that you wanted to visit this sometime, all you need to do is to jump on a Central Line tube to Epping on a day when the EOR line is running, where when you arrive there will old routemasters or possibly and or RTs to take you to North Weald station where it all begins from.

https://www.eorailway.co.uk/

Excellent will watch that after I’ve done my chores 

As for getting there, that’s should be fairly easy from here. I can get central line through from Ealing Broadway. Added to the trip list this year 

Was going to jump on the Elizabeth Line today and try it out from Ealing to Bond Street but nope, half of it’s closed. Grr.

[mrjoda]

I brought home some crazy shit Kepco BOP 50-8M.  An four quadrant 50V 8A (bipolar power amplifier) PSU from old times. Such a simple device with a such of variability. Unfortunetaly, programming edge connectors are missing so I have to find a adequate replacement and wire it according to manual.

Sorry but as always here, unless we can see it, it simply does not exist ! 

I was unable to upload photos from some reason. I mean in previous post. Here you go

[Cubdriver]

Now, now.  You know the next step after ratcheting screwdrivers is torque screwdrivers.
We have already discussed those here... sufficiently more than necessary 
That certainly led me to go out and purchase more than one set of Wera screwdrivers, most with torque settings. 
 

Wiha TorqueVario is very addictive.  I actually got my first one because it was necessary for work. The line card fasteners on Cisco ASR 9006 routers shall be torqued to 1,2Nm per the manual. Those cards cost a fortune -- list price on a 8x100G one is around 1,2 MUSD. (Nobody pays that, of course; the prices exist to make it very easy to give everyone a 30% rebate, but Real Users get perhaps 70% off. )
With those kinds of fantasy money involved, one treats stuff considerably more carefully.

I bought one ten years or so ago when I started my house rewire; wanted to be official and properly torque everything.  (Proper torque is often way LESS than you’d expect, so it’s likely in electrical work that if a screw is under torqued, it’s probably because it wasn’t tightened at all.) Handy little tool to have on hand.  Later ended up buying a set of them for a project at work where they've also proved quite useful over the years.

-Pat

[Cubdriver]

I brought home some crazy shit Kepco BOP 50-8M.  An four quadrant 50V 8A (bipolar power amplifier) PSU from old times. Such a simple device with a such of variability. Unfortunetaly, programming edge connectors are missing so I have to find a adequate replacement and wire it according to manual.

Sorry but as always here, unless we can see it, it simply does not exist ! 

I was unable to upload photos from some reason. I mean in previous post. Here you go

Damn!  That thing's a beast!  Impressive - nice score!  Hope finding and setting up the programming connectors goes smoothly.  Thanks for posting the pics.

-Pat

[Cubdriver]

I brought home some crazy shit Kepco BOP 50-8M.  An four quadrant 50V 8A (bipolar power amplifier) PSU from old times. Such a simple device with a such of variability. Unfortunetaly, programming edge connectors are missing so I have to find a adequate replacement and wire it according to manual.

Sorry but as always here, unless we can see it, it simply does not exist ! 

I was unable to upload photos from some reason. I mean in previous post. Here you go

Oh, and based on your avatar, I think you need to join us over here, too:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/post-a-picture-of-a-cat!/

-Pat

[AVGresponding]

I brought home some crazy shit Kepco BOP 50-8M.  An four quadrant 50V 8A (bipolar power amplifier) PSU from old times. Such a simple device with a such of variability. Unfortunetaly, programming edge connectors are missing so I have to find a adequate replacement and wire it according to manual.

Sorry but as always here, unless we can see it, it simply does not exist ! 

I was unable to upload photos from some reason. I mean in previous post. Here you go

Love the warning on the side of those big assed Mallory caps "MISAPPLICATION HAZARDOUS".

I wonder why the socket for IC24 is unpopulated? I'm assuming it works as it should?