Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[beanflying]

It was so much much fun today, I was in heaven


spolier just for the TEA dragons:



much much more to come.

Next year you have to come with me.

Well the Keysight is clearly useless it won't match the beige of my other gear 

Easily fixed. 

Heretic  Keep your crazy blue ideas to your own kind 

[Mr. Scram]

Beta or VHS? 

Either, with some application of force.

[bitseeker]

It was so much much fun today, I was in heaven

(Attachment Link)

spolier just for the TEA dragons:

(Attachment Link)

much much more to come.

Next year you have to come with me.

One would think that they could at least call it a 3458B now, with the third name and another coulour and all.

My first thought as well when I saw the pic of it. How new can it be if they can't even increment the model suffix? Strange.

[beanflying]

Lunchtime 'bacon substitution'  Some alternatives to Bacon  are appropriate and can be even superior to Bacon, Turkey, Tofu and other non Pork is not and will never be those alternatives 

Smoked Chorizo (Spanish Pork, Paprika and other assorted spices) Sausage, Free Range Eggs (because I like animals  ) and a touch of cracked papper and HP Sauce.

Get in my Belly 

[beanflying]

It was so much much fun today, I was in heaven

(Attachment Link)

spolier just for the TEA dragons:

(Attachment Link)

much much more to come.

Next year you have to come with me.

One would think that they could at least call it a 3458B now, with the third name and another coulour and all.

My first thought as well when I saw the pic of it. How new can it be if they can't even increment the model suffix? Strange.

Best in the world bar none for a few decades and still the same basic spec and operations so branding it the same makes sense sort of.

The thing that really sucks is they haven't modernised the interface or front panel. There is sometimes when it is time to leave backwards compatibility to one side. Then there would be a reason for a B or even dare they an X.

[mnementh]

It was so much much fun today, I was in heaven

(Attachment Link)

spolier just for the TEA dragons:

(Attachment Link)

much much more to come.

Next year you have to come with me.

Well the Keysight is clearly useless it won't match the beige of my other gear 

Easily fixed. 

Yeah... paint it ALL Smurf-Smear Blue...

Nice VCR.

Beta or VHS? 

V2000...

Lunchtime 'bacon substitution'  Some alternatives to Bacon  are appropriate and can be even superior to Bacon, Turkey, Tofu and other non Pork is not and will never be those alternatives 

Smoked Chorizo (Spanish Pork, Paprika and other assorted spices) Sausage, Free Range Eggs (because I like animals  ) and a touch of cracked papper and HP Sauce.

Get in my Belly 

If I NEVER taste Chorizo again it'll be too fukkin' soon. Damn Texicans are the worst thing to happen to sausage since Hormel; I swear they could fuck up a wet dream. 

Polacks know how to sausage tho.  Got a fair contingent of them up here.

mnem


  *gettin' ready for The HoliDaze*

[beanflying]

Texican is not Spanish and I am sure like most things 'mericanised is kind of sort of NOTHING LIKE THE REAL THING 

[Brumby]

Well the Keysight is clearly useless it won't match the beige of my other gear 

Easily fixed. 

As others have responded:

[Brumby]

(But, the truth be known - if I had one that was in working condition, I wouldn't care too much about the colour.  )

[mnementh]

Texican is not Spanish and I am sure like most things 'mericanised is kind of sort of NOTHING LIKE THE REAL THING

Like you'd know... Ya toilet swirlin' backwards, drop-bear huggin', dunny-spider pettin', pervy little 'roo-dancer you. 

mnem
"Enough with the compliments... you gonna pour that coffee sometime this life-cycle...?"

[beanflying]

Back when I was looking for a 'good' Chorizo to use in the Cafe and for Paella Catering jobs we went through 8-10 different offerings. Some bounced like rubber balls so clearly were not all meat, some were just bland, some were all heat but bland and only one was jusssttttt right for balance

We actually blind tested a few on some customers and they picked the same one as the pick of flavours.

We finished up with Chorizo from a Spanish owned Deli in Melbourne that one of the local refrigerated foodies would call on for us when needed. These days the same person stocks and sells it and a few of there other lines including an imported Jamon Spanish Ham but only the 'cheap one' as the good one tops $100/kg.

In the case of Melbourne a lot of the larger smallgoods makers are Italian origin and while they are good at their own it is better they don't play with Spanish.

I shall now taunt you a third time 

[Brumby]

^ ^ ^ An old Aussie curse. ^ ^ ^

[mansaxel]

@mansaxel: Sounds like the idiots who wired a DC up I saw. All redundant circuits were on the same two phases 

A lot of IBM power distribution units in their midrange (RS/6000 or AS/400 from early 2000s) series racks were like that. Six, if memory serves, outlets with half on L1 and half on L2.  L3 was left unconnected. And a 16A 3-phase plug.  I, who by then already had done lots of live sound and lights mains distribution, opened the plug of the second PDU and moved the L1 wire to L3 and tagged it as "improved".

Probably an artefact of the irrational fear of three-phase in  UK corraborating with the technical debt of the brain-dead Edison DC distribution in US.

Tesla was right. Of course.

[mansaxel]

@mansaxel: Sounds like the idiots who wired a DC up I saw. All redundant circuits were on the same two phases 

Clearly cowboys, a good installation is one that has all 3 phases balanced so quite possibly a bunch of house bashers who have never come across 3 phases before, or under the impression that only machinery needs 3 phases to give the motors more grunt?

That is certainly so.

Then, I read an article in a swedish electrics online publication the other day about the unbalanced loads resulting from sparkies wiring kitchen range and washer on same phase (L1, of course ) in every flat of an entire apartment block, out of sheer ignorance.  There are too few ampère meters around.

[mansaxel]

Well the Keysight is clearly useless it won't match the beige of my other gear 

I think there is a can of blue around to fix that.

[mansaxel]

Beta or VHS? 

Digital BetaCAM. Matches the price, at least.

[mnementh]

I shall now taunt you a third time 

If you'd stop feeding the little bastards Chorizo, they wouldn't grow up to be dunny-killing monsters, ya hoser!!!

mnem
No moleste del pollo!

[bd139]

@mansaxel: Sounds like the idiots who wired a DC up I saw. All redundant circuits were on the same two phases 

A lot of IBM power distribution units in their midrange (RS/6000 or AS/400 from early 2000s) series racks were like that. Six, if memory serves, outlets with half on L1 and half on L2.  L3 was left unconnected. And a 16A 3-phase plug.  I, who by then already had done lots of live sound and lights mains distribution, opened the plug of the second PDU and moved the L1 wire to L3 and tagged it as "improved".

Probably an artefact of the irrational fear of three-phase in  UK corraborating with the technical debt of the brain-dead Edison DC distribution in US.

Tesla was right. Of course.

The system I saw installed was clearly irrational fear of effort and competence. It had a trunking system over the cabinets and two tap off boxes per pair of racks. Each tap off box was supposed to have one PDU in each rack so you can plug redundant supplies one into each PDU. Alas someone just wired both PDUs in the same rack off the same tap off box. There wasn’t much interest in fixing it from the DC or the client so I left it to their legal guys to sort out some time in the future. Advice: avoid data centres in Woking.

At least it’s not as bad as Host Europe’s old DC in Beeston. That was a fucking nightmare. They sheepishly let me in once after they had an APC UPS explode and do some damage and it turned out the whole damn thing was like a snake pit of trailing cables to the point you actually had to walk on a carpet of them and they only had two bar telecoms racks in it. They hadn’t racked out kit - it was just piled up. Cue the day I had to get the bottom DL380 out of a pile of them.

Ugh someone else’s problem now! I’m only interested in hypervisor and above!

@mansaxel: Sounds like the idiots who wired a DC up I saw. All redundant circuits were on the same two phases 

Clearly cowboys, a good installation is one that has all 3 phases balanced so quite possibly a bunch of house bashers who have never come across 3 phases before, or under the impression that only machinery needs 3 phases to give the motors more grunt?

That is certainly so.

Then, I read an article in a swedish electrics online publication the other day about the unbalanced loads resulting from sparkies wiring kitchen range and washer on same phase (L1, of course ) in every flat of an entire apartment block, out of sheer ignorance.  There are too few ampère meters around.

That happened here. I assume it was the new flats opposite as there were several sparky vans in it during the couple of weeks after the event.  I assume due to an overload condition, a manhole down the road was spitting fire for a few minutes and then they spent 6 weeks digging it all up.  Surprisingly we didn’t lose power once over that period.

[Marck]

I just bought an Anritsu MF57A 600Mhz frequency counter like i said in the what did you buy today thread its a bit of a nostalgic item for me.  I would like to make sure its in good shape.  In the service manual that came along with it it says that you can tune the oscillator with a reference and a cro by connecting cro to the ref and then matching the wave form of the ref and the cro.  I have a rigol 1052e but no 10 mhz reference.  So can you just measure the 10mhz output of the Anritsu with the DSO to confirm that its in spec or do you really need the 10 mhz ref to be sure ?

If i need a gpsdo to tune it looks like i could be on the slippery slope of becoming a TEA member. 

Also seeing i don’t really know much about test equipment is there anything special about this little anritsu device that is worth noting? One thing i thought was pretty cool was it came with the original operation and service manual with schematics.   Is there anywhere that i can upload a scanned version to preserve the data incase anyone ever wants access to it?



Thanks
M

[beanflying]

And you darkened the TEA  Of course you NEED a GPSDO if not two 

The cheap and dirty way to get an OK reference is buy one of the UBlox Modules which are a bit of fun to play with regardless. They will have jitter issues at 10MHz because of the way they divide up the internal oscillator but they will get you a reasonable divisions of the 24MHz based clock https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/msg2246022/#msg2246022 The general idea is generate an 8MHz with the UBlox and pick off the one from the counter and feed your Scope in XY mode.

Plenty more threads on the forum about them and several projects on making them into a GPSDO. IMO just buy a GPSDO 

[beanflying]

I shall now taunt you a third time 

If you'd stop feeding the little bastards Chorizo, they wouldn't grow up to be dunny-killing monsters, ya hoser!!!

mnem
No moleste del pollo!

Seems they also kill weasels 

[Zucca]

One would think that they could at least call it a 3458B now, with the third name and another coulour and all.

My first thought as well when I saw the pic of it. How new can it be if they can't even increment the model suffix? Strange.

Do you really (I mean really?) think I just looked at it without asking?

1) They need to hunt for retired Keys... ehm HP eng. to design the black version. That thing is a glorious masterpiece like the SR-71, and you need eng with serious balls to design it. Not everyone can do it.
Amazing.
2) Keysight already tried to design in the past one with a touch screen (no VFD) and "Apple Steve Jobs" feeling for the users. It did not went good they needed to stop the project.
I think bd139 would say "they fell flat on their arse".
3) They can change the color but not the name. If they do all the certifications (i.e. for military) need to be re-done as well, a lot of papers and a pain in the ass for them and the customers.
By keeping the same name they can sell the unit immediately.
4) If took so long to find the Rohs components that when they decided to use some rohs parts were already obsolete. Back to square one.
5) No it is not the biggest project at Keysight, UXR1102A is the winner. This 8,5 puppy is an easy lego game compared to the 110GHz scope.
6) Now they are still trying the 2), go go Keysight you can do it!

More to come!



One day I will have it on my bench.

PS: you need wash your mouth before to call  it "Mathsalem" or "VCR" (that's what italians in naples say in this situation). I almost reported your post to the admins...   

[Zucca]

@Zucca: As I have the impression that HTB is closing shop silently, did any new names in the serious pre-owned T&M business pop up?

Do you mean

http://www.htb-elektronik.com/

I have no idea...

[bd139]

Happy happy joy joy my Ender bed is warped  . Ordered glass one.

[Black Phoenix]

One day I will have it on my bench.

You and I, you and I...