Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Cubdriver]

They DO tell you. Every upgrade of iOS I've ever seen has the same "This upgrade may make older devices run slower." disclaimer. And it's really NOT rocket surgery; EVERY OS released since the dawn of bits needs newer, more powerful hardware to run on. The difference is Apple took a proactive approach to keep from having another "exploding iPwn battery debacle".

Well, yes, they do make that generic statement.  And I expect and understand that if you put more lines of code in the software that it will take more clock cycles, which means more time at a given clock rate to execute.  Fine, understandable and perfectly acceptable.  I disagree that this is the same as having the software actually, intentionally slow the phone down because it doesn't like the condition of the battery in the phone WITH NO NOTICE OR INDICATION THAT THIS IS WHAT IS HAPPENING.  Then a year later to reluctantly acknowledge that what some suspected is in fact what's happening, though perhaps not for the exact reason that they were suggesting.

Proactive would be stating "This new IOS update monitors battery health, and will slow the processor of an old phone if the battery is weak.  This is done to ensure that the phone continues to operate properly even with a degraded battery."  This would permit the user to make an educated choice if they find that their phone has become mired in molasses after the firmware update.  It might be "Hey, this phone is getting old, and the battery is growing tired.  I think it's time to get a new phone."  It might be "The phone battery is weak, but the phone still suits me - I'm going to put in a new battery."  Or, for someone like me, it might be "The phone still suits me, it's running just fine and I'm not going to upgrade the OS."

Smeesh. I sure wouldn't want to be in their shoes... fix a problem or not, everybody is going to be up their butts screaming about imagined evil intent. "Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." applies here; there's enough horror out there without freaking MAKING IT UP.

Again, if you do this sort of thing (intentionally slowing things down, not having it happen as a simple result of more code taking longer to run) without letting people know what is happening or why, with the predictable result that some may decide that the old phone just won't cut it anymore and they give you $$ to upgrade, I can see bad intent being imagined whether it's there or not.  I doubt Apple shed any tears if folks upgraded as a result of the slowdown, and they didn't seem to be particularly forthcoming about what was actually happening.

Here's something you need to understand about LiPo batteries: they are LIVESTOCK, just like bread and vegetables.

From the day they are manufactured, their chemical makeup starts to deteriorate and the IR of the cell begins to increase, even when being used with optimal charging/battery maintenance processes (which Apple has been on the cutting edge of since the first flaming battery debacle) it is pretty much a statistical certainty that the battery in a 2-year-old iPwn is going to be operating at a given percent LESS maximum current draw AND total mAH capacity than a new one, OR WORSE. If a user keeps a phone on a charger or runs it dead and leaves it in a drawer for months, either way that battery will SUFFER even more than one that is used normally.

Yup, I'm familiar with LiPos and their foibles.  My iPhone 5S is going on two years old (got it as a refurb replacement when the old one died in early 2016).  I've little doubt that its battery has degraded in performance.  The thing is that for my purposes, it is still just fine.  It needs a charge every few days.  I don't watch movies or do extensive web surfing on the phone.  In my opinion, it doesn't need a new battery, and I can't recall the last time I downloaded an app for it.  Yes, I may be an exception today considering how many wander around with their noses glued to their phones, but I've no desire to download an 'update' that hamstrings my hardware without explanation.  Once again - transparency - warn people - if your battery is weak, this upgrade WILL slow your phone down.

Add to that the fact that due to hardware technology and the inexorable march of software development, the real usable life of ANY smartphone is about 2 years; the buttons and ports get worn and full of human "bathtub ring" type muck and pocket crud, and the ever-increasing processor demand of applets running EVERYWHERE on the internet means you need more processor, RAM and storage for a phone to work acceptably.

Really, for a smartphone, a design life of 2 years is pushing it; I just replaced an android phone with quad-core processor and 1.5 GB RAM with another that has a 2x as fast quad-core 64-bit processor and 3GB of RAM. Using it, it feels just like every other phone I've owned when it was new, while my old phone felt slow and cramped even after a complete wipe/reinstall. It was an 11 months old Samsung.

In your case, and likely in many others as well.  As I previously stated, I'm currently perfectly happy with what at this point is four year old hardware.

There's a good argument for non-user-replaceable batteries. The battery in my new phone (a semi-permanent bare lipo) is a 4.4V/3.85V Nominal HV cell approx 120% as large as the one in my previous phone, yet has 150% as much capacity. There is a HUGE variation in the quality of LiPo batteries available to the public right now; the cheap batteries on fleaBay are just that: CHEAP BATTERIES. A manufacturer has no QC over those aftermarket batteries, whether they have proper protection or BMS PCBs installed, or even if they are anywhere near advertised dimensions or capacity or even nominal voltage.

Making the battery "non-replaceable" means the manufacturer doesn't have to pay oodles of support agents to listen to every ignorant dumbass whining about poor performance in their year-old phone which was actually caused by the cheap-ass battery they bought off fleaBay that voltage-sags every time the processor hits more than 70% load. And they don't have to worry about arguing with said dumbass and paying to ship the phone back unfixed because of said POS battery.

It's the same argument they have against making their portables so the USB connection supports "Host" mode; as soon as you do that, you have every idiot and his brother whining about poor performance/short battery life from their iPud that is actually caused by the USB back massager and/or coffee-cup-warmer they plug into it every day.

IMO, particularly for a brand selling an "upscale" product experience, these are valid and important arguments.

I'll not dispute the wisdom of the non user replaceable battery used.  There are a lot of monumentally stupid people running around, and everything you stated here makes perfect sense.

Merry Christmas!

And a merry Christmas to you and yours, too!

mnem
*Waiting by the chimney with a shotgun across my knees glee*

I hope Santa's wearing his ballistic undies!!   

-Pat

[bd139]

Well screw Christmas here. My DG1022Z has a bug in the arb importer. I spent three fucking hours of my life kicking out interpolation code to generate vector graphics of a Christmas tree. It just reports “please select valid file”. I’ve written an antlr based verification parser for the file and it’s fine and in spec. the damn sack of dicks will not import one of my files for some reason although all the bloody thing does is read a list of numbers out of a file. X channel reads fine. Y channel won’t read the file. Can’t for the life of me find out why because there are no errors other than the loose suggestion that the file is invalid. All values are in range, file is the correct length. All hoops have been jumped through.

My old signal generator, which roughly consisted of a 741 and a light bulb and a few discrete parts was less of a dick. In fact that was so undicky that I am starting to miss it.

[Specmaster]

Oh dear, sorry to hear that. I've long been a fan of having dedicated kit for dedicated duties in much same way as I prefer to have hi-fi separates, not only can you then pick and choose which piece of kit you want for numerous reasons, but also of course the obvious one, if something fails, you only need to replace / repair that item. There is a downside, space required, number of sockets required to power them and of course the wallet gets a big punch if you need to replace a combined all in one unit like your DG1022Z.

On the bright side however you can play hunt the suitable replacement on Ebay over the holidays.

[bd139]

Indeed. The DG1022Z is the signal Swiss Army knife but it’s chock full of bugs.

[Specmaster]

Indeed. The DG1022Z is the signal Swiss Army knife but it’s chock full of bugs.

That's what makes it so attractive to beginners as it offers lot on paper and indeed in reality but sooner or later its shortcomings are found out, hopefully it might only be the one area but if it's in multiple areas it can and will get costly to eradicate with seperate units.

[bd139]

It’s a professional bit of lab kit in theory, same line as the £1500+ Keysight equivalent. It’s just buggy.  I’ll whine at Rigol

[Berni]

Well im sure its still better than the Hantek signal generators. They are cheap and have excellent hardware inside, but the software bugs oh my god are there many of them. Managed to even make it output the wrong frequency square wave. A frigin SQUARE WAVE!

[djos]

Back to IOS v Android earlier posting. Apple has admitted that it has deliberately slowed down older products when IOS 11 was released because it was thought that older devices with ageing batteries couldn't cope with it. They say it was "Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices," it said.

This has a huge smell of Bullshit about it, people could if after upgrading to IOS 11, problems arose due to poor battery performance, have a new battery fitted but that would not have increased sales of their new phone, I suspect it has much more to do with their sales war with Samsung then anything else.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/technology/apple-slows-down-old-iphones/index.html?sr=fbCNN122117apple-slows-down-old-iphones0728AMStory

It's not BS, it's just sensible battery management policy - I had a 6s Plus that after 2 years was resetting itself occasionally and then went into a reboot loop from which it never recovered - Apple gave me a new phone and then 4 weeks later this update comes out, clearly I wasnt the only one having these issues.

[xrunner]

Indeed. The DG1022Z is the signal Swiss Army knife but it’s chock full of bugs.

It is. I had one and found that it won't actually sync to an external 10 MHz reference properly - not because it was broken but because the design is flawed.  The thread is here on the forum -

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/rigol-dg1022a-function-gen-frequency-counter-function/msg926368/#lastPost

I got in touch with Rigol and showed them some data and screen shots off my scope and they worked out a deal to trade it in directly to them for a DG1032Z, plus a little bit of money. 

[djos]

Still think that Android (at least the way Samsung implement it) is perhaps the best way, after a phone gets to a certain point, stop supporting OS updates for it, at least the performance does not suddenly deteriorate and also most of their phones have user replaceable batteries. The user should have the decision of if they wish to upgrade, and that will depend on what and how they use the phone, is it just a phone to them or or is media device like a mini tablet etc, all will have a bearing on their decisions.  Many IOS users it seems (if reports are correct) suing Apple because they cannot (allegedly) use the phone as a phone, it is too slow to respond to inputs.

I'm glad that I personally have Samsung phones, and even older ones are still capable of being used as daily phones etc, I know, I have an old one and a new one, the new one was only purchased in a panic because I needed a phone to contact my wife at Gatwick last year after I accidentally dropped my other phone in the bath  rending it useless until I could replace the sim holder and charging port. I needed a phone that same day as I was due to pick her and sister in law up from holiday.

Old phone successfully repaired and now is fitted with a PAYG card and works perfectly despite no longer supported for OS updates. 

Actually it's my understanding that Android has had this kind of current throttling for at least a year to prevent the same issues Apple has had with degraded batteries.

[Specmaster]

Had another look at the T12 solder station and it looks like a relatively simple cure both for the IEC connection to the PCB and also the earthing. the live tag of the IEC connector could be bent at right angles towards the fuse holder which is integrated with the connector as it only connects to the PCB on a short trace before connecting to the fuse, so the plan is to make this connection directly. The Neutral could be connected via a flexible cable if the IEC is removed from the backplate and rotated 180 degrees and snapped back. This leaves space to the left of the top smoothing cap to fix a long earthing stud which will also double up as a PCB movement prohibiter to prevent it moving backwards. It cannot move forwards as it comes up against the power sockets to the controller board at the front. The earth and neutral will need to be recabled and soldered to the PCB along with the return from the fuse.

It also turns out that they have infact tried to earth the case but failed miserably. There is a trace that runs the full length of the PCB on both sides, exposed, this is the earth trace. The idea being that when located in the case channels this connects to the case and earths it. Problem is that the board is a rather loose fit in the channels and also it is black anodized and so acts like an insulator.

I will carry out this modification and put photos up here once completed.

[bd139]

Indeed. The DG1022Z is the signal Swiss Army knife but it’s chock full of bugs.

It is. I had one and found that it won't actually sync to an external 10 MHz reference properly - not because it was broken but because the design is flawed.  The thread is here on the forum -

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/rigol-dg1022a-function-gen-frequency-counter-function/msg926368/#lastPost

I got in touch with Rigol and showed them some data and screen shots off my scope and they worked out a deal to trade it in directly to them for a DG1032Z, plus a little bit of money. 

Is the 1032Z different hardware then? If it is I’ll talk to Rigol UK (Telonic) and see if I can swap it out. 30Mhz would be nice as that’s the top end of the HF bands.

[Specmaster]

Back to IOS v Android earlier posting. Apple has admitted that it has deliberately slowed down older products when IOS 11 was released because it was thought that older devices with ageing batteries couldn't cope with it. They say it was "Our goal is to deliver the best experience for customers, which includes overall performance and prolonging the life of their devices," it said.

This has a huge smell of Bullshit about it, people could if after upgrading to IOS 11, problems arose due to poor battery performance, have a new battery fitted but that would not have increased sales of their new phone, I suspect it has much more to do with their sales war with Samsung then anything else.

http://money.cnn.com/2017/12/21/technology/apple-slows-down-old-iphones/index.html?sr=fbCNN122117apple-slows-down-old-iphones0728AMStory

It's not BS, it's just sensible battery management policy - I had a 6s Plus that after 2 years was resetting itself occasionally and then went into a reboot loop from which it never recovered - Apple gave me a new phone and then 4 weeks later this update comes out, clearly I wasnt the only one having these issues.

The update had nothing to do with your problem and judging by the comments from others with more experience than I have, was probably due to the battery aging process according to their theory which sounds plausible.

My eldest son is I think on his 3rd 6s Plus because of various quality issues, see my earlier post where he went through a whole load the 5S in the Apple shop before he found one that was satisfactory, we spend about 3 hours in there trying to get 1 phone resolved. My wife had a iPad, only a couple of months old and we had to return to the Apple store again, (about 50 mile trip) because the return / back button refused to work. I on the other hand of had no issues with my Samsung phones or my Galaxy tablet.

I know of other family members who have had to make the pilgrimage to Apple store in Lakeside for various problems with all their Apple products. I myself also happen to have an iPod Touch which I replaced the battery on and had no other problems with and I also have iPad Air 2, a present and I have had no issues with that, but then I don't use if much as the screen is both smaller and of lower picture quality then the Samsung and of course has lower sound quality (mono) as opposed to stereo and has no expansion capability either.

[Specmaster]

Still think that Android (at least the way Samsung implement it) is perhaps the best way, after a phone gets to a certain point, stop supporting OS updates for it, at least the performance does not suddenly deteriorate and also most of their phones have user replaceable batteries. The user should have the decision of if they wish to upgrade, and that will depend on what and how they use the phone, is it just a phone to them or or is media device like a mini tablet etc, all will have a bearing on their decisions.  Many IOS users it seems (if reports are correct) suing Apple because they cannot (allegedly) use the phone as a phone, it is too slow to respond to inputs.

I'm glad that I personally have Samsung phones, and even older ones are still capable of being used as daily phones etc, I know, I have an old one and a new one, the new one was only purchased in a panic because I needed a phone to contact my wife at Gatwick last year after I accidentally dropped my other phone in the bath  rending it useless until I could replace the sim holder and charging port. I needed a phone that same day as I was due to pick her and sister in law up from holiday.

Old phone successfully repaired and now is fitted with a PAYG card and works perfectly despite no longer supported for OS updates. 

Actually it's my understanding that Android has had this kind of current throttling for at least a year to prevent the same issues Apple has had with degraded batteries.

I think you will find, that was for one specific Samsung model only, the Note because the battery had a habit of bursting into flames so they throttled it back while they tried to find a proper cure, which resulted in a recall of all Notes and a swop for another model. No other Samsung phones to my knowledge have been throttled. There is never a general release of an update for Android phones, it is always done phone model by model / brand etc and is the manufacturer's responsibility to roll out updates for their phones and sometimes a service provider is also tied in.

The situation is not as tidy as it is with Apple which has a strict policy over who can interface with their OS etc, Android is more open source type of thing and different people try to extract extra from it.

[xrunner]

Is the 1032Z different hardware then? If it is I’ll talk to Rigol UK (Telonic) and see if I can swap it out. 30Mhz would be nice as that’s the top end of the HF bands.

Yes, that's what I was told. As you can see in the thread, it performs correctly where the DG-1022 did not. I'm happy with it. 

[bd139]

To note, mine is the Z not the straight 1022 which is in theory the same as the 1032Z.

[Specmaster]

To note, mine is the Z not the straight 1022 which is in theory the same as the 1032Z.

What does the Z mean, is it a software upgrade to unlock the extra features by any chance?

[bd139]

Completely different hardware and interface.

Merry TEAmas all! Just hit midnight here. Time to eat Santa’s mince pies and knock back the rest of the bottle of wine already out for him. Ho Ho Ho bleurgh.

[Specmaster]

Completely different hardware and interface.

Merry TEAmas all! Just hit midnight here. Time to eat Santa’s mince pies and knock back the rest of the bottle of wine already out for him. Ho Ho Ho bleurgh.

And the same to you and that would have been my next task but kids grown up.

[bd139]

Even my youngest has worked out it’s bollocks but hey, mince pies and wine. Poor excuse I know but anyway 

[Specmaster]

Even my youngest has worked out it’s bollocks but hey, mince pies and wine. Poor excuse I know but anyway 

I know, just had a mince pie, I'm a sucker for them. [emoji319][emoji319]

[mnementh]

Even my youngest has worked out it’s bollocks but hey, mince pies and wine. Poor excuse I know but anyway 

I know, just had a mince pie, I'm a sucker for them. [emoji319][emoji319]

Mince pie? Chopped up raisins & nuts & brown sugar in a flaky crust like apple pie or graham cracker crust?

My grandmomma made such things for Thanksgiving dinner; was a favorite. I never found her recipe for them, though I inherited her cookbooks.


mnem
moo?

[beanflying]

Merry Christmas to the believers and those who remember before "Happy Holidays" and the PC tossers who have no clues of what the day means to most.

Hope you are all about to have or are having a great day with those you care about and those who care about you.

If all else fails hug your favorite bit of test gear and give it a clean or make it a new shelf

[neo]

Merry Christmas TEA.

[bitseeker]

Merry TEAmas all! Just hit midnight here. Time to eat Santa’s mince pies and knock back the rest of the bottle of wine already out for him. Ho Ho Ho bleurgh.

I like it! Merry TEAmas and Happy New Gear!