Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

Quick diversion back to phones. Windows Phone up to and including 8.1 was the best compromise I had used. Handset for under £100 and it just worked. Then they went and fucked it right up with 10.  I had a Lumia 710, 630, 730 and 650.

Talking of annoying things; I still can’t get OSX to talk to my TF930. 

1000x THIS. That's mostly, I think, because the UI was laid out by Nokia engineers; they were masters of making a powerful, intuitive UI and making a phone that was a phone FIRST, not a little tablet PC with a phone added on as an afterthought. ALL OSes currently in use (on whatever platform) could learn a LOT from them.

mnem
OS/2 Warp for teh WIN! 

Hmm Nokia, yep you're right, a phone should be a phone first and foremost, I loved my Nokia 6320, it could go for days without having to go anywhere near charger, and when used in a car with its proper cradle and wired in system, fantastic, everything just worked, no Bluetooth rubbish, no pairing etc, drop the phone in the cradle and press, click in it went, connected to the cars speakers and the battery was on charge. Push of a button and it was disconnected from cars speakers and battery and any telephone discussion currently in being undertaken was transferred smoothly to the phones speaker and microphone, no fuss or drama.

[bd139]

Indeed. My backup phone is a Nokia 105 if that’s any recommendation. Weighs nothing. Doesn’t need charging more than once a month. . Before smartphones it was a 6303

[Specmaster]

Back to topic again, I find myself checking many times a day now checking on thew progress or otherwise of my hugely anticipated new T12 soldering station through the UK airfield of entry's system of handling cargo and the customs process. I cannot remember the last time I was so eagerly awaiting the arrival of something, so I really hope and pray that it is going to be as revolutionary as everyone was saying it is going to be.

Based on the time it took to be dispatched from China and actually leaving China, then applying a similar time scale since it arrived here in the UK, it should be with me sometime tomorrow, I'm getting quite excited by it too, so I really hope I'm going to be as impressed as I think I am, time will tell....

[Specmaster]

Talking of annoying things; I still can’t get OSX to talk to my TF930. 

Have you considered speaking directly with AimTTi about this? They may be able to offer you some assistance with getting the correct code to allow communications between the 2?

[djos]

That will be iOS

(although you'll find I use google stuff all over it instead of the apple stuff)

Android is by Google isn't it?

The irony is that Googles apps on iOS usually have much better UI designs than on their own platform, Android.

[bd139]

Talking of annoying things; I still can’t get OSX to talk to my TF930. 

Have you considered speaking directly with AimTTi about this? They may be able to offer you some assistance with getting the correct code to allow communications between the 2?

I have considered it but I’m unlikely to get anywhere further than where I have. I did however add the device entry to uftdi (FreeBSD), rebuilt the driver and plugged it in and it was done. This was on my NAS. Literally 5 minutes work.  I was surprised to find that it already had device entries for other TTI products (QL355P) already as well.

OSX is just being a dick.

That will be iOS

(although you'll find I use google stuff all over it instead of the apple stuff)

Android is by Google isn't it?

The irony is that Googles apps on iOS usually have much better UI designs than on their own platform, Android.

This is very true. My iOS device is basically an android phone without android

[djos]

This is very true. My iOS device is basically an android phone without android

The only app of theirs I dont use is the gmail app, but the others are great. 

[Mr. Scram]

I've tried to stay well clear of Google applications for a while now. It's noticeable how they always require a lot more permissions than other similar apps and I'm not quite fond of the tendency of them shipping everything back to Google either.

[Specmaster]

I cant see why they need to have those permissions in reality, but then on the other hand I have nothing to hide on my phone and neither do I have any personal information stored on it either so I don't care what permissions they want.

[Mr. Scram]

I cant see why they need to have those permissions in reality, but then on the other hand I have nothing to hide on my phone and neither do I have any personal information stored on it either so I don't care what permissions they want.

You don't consider who you talk to and where you are at any given moment personal information?

[Specmaster]

Yes I do, but in reality what is the harm in it? I'm not doing anything illegal and neither are the people whom I talk to I suspect seeing as they are in the main either companies or family members??

[Mr. Scram]

Yes I do, but in reality what is the harm in it? I'm not doing anything illegal and neither are the people whom I talk to I suspect seeing as they are in the main either companies or family members??

That's not a trivial discussion, which I don't quite think is suited here. However, since it's basically the "I have nothing to hide" argument, all the answers to that statement apply. The long story short is that to have an open, fair and balanced society, there can't be a huge mismatch between what you know about a party and what that party knows about you. Knowledge is power in the most literal sense. There are very poignant real world examples of how things can end up being very ugly.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_to_hide_argument

[tggzzz]

Yes I do, but in reality what is the harm in it? I'm not doing anything illegal and neither are the people whom I talk to I suspect seeing as they are in the main either companies or family members??

Point 1: you assume that They only collect correct data and make correct inferences. Meanwhile, back on planet Earth...

Point 2: As Cardinal Richelieu is supposed to have said, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.".

Point 3: traffic analysis is both revealing and imperfect.

[Specmaster]

How do you know the info is not being being extracted even if you say no? There has to be a certain amount of trust or otherwise you would end up with effectively a bricked product surely?

[mnementh]

Yes I do, but in reality what is the harm in it? I'm not doing anything illegal and neither are the people whom I talk to I suspect seeing as they are in the main either companies or family members??

Point 1: you assume that They only collect correct data and make correct inferences. Meanwhile, back on planet Earth...

Point 2: As Cardinal Richelieu is supposed to have said, "If you give me six lines written by the hand of the most honest of men, I will find something in them which will hang him.".

Point 3: traffic analysis is both revealing and imperfect.

The difference is simple; and as fundamental as civilized Society itself. Having the right to say "That's none of your damned business." is part and parcel of one of the core tenets of codified Justice anywhere you go; the concept of "Innocent until proven guilty".

Allowing unknown entities to collect such personal information without legal due process is no less invasive than allowing wiretapping without a warrant. Of course, here in the US we've been moving towards  just such a bipolar justice system for decades; so we are no worthy example. This is usually one of the first warning signs of institutionalized corruption leading to a Police State; I hope I don't live to see it, but Herr Chumph seems damned and determined to single-handledly put an end to that pesky ol' Constitution of ours.


mnem
In the year 2525... If man is still alive...

[bd139]

Just to add, Trust is owned by you. You can architect away trust so you don’t have to trust the vendor. For a large chunk of our user base we don’t have access to any of our clients’ data at all even though we wrote the code and we host it. We simply don’t have any ability to see it because it’s is encrypted via PKI and we don’t hold the keys.

Problem is a lot of vendors are making money out of a combination of a low expenditure up front,  your trust in them as a large name and your apathy towards understanding what they are obtaining from you and how they are using it. They are doing this because no one cares and people’s eyes glaze over if you start talking about it. Grab a copy of “IBM and the holocaust” as a historical lesson

This is however going to become a massive issue in the next few months with GDPR coming in from the EU. The US companies are currently shrugging a lot over this but this is some serious shit going down that most people don’t even know about. Collect data unlawfully in the EU, 20,000,000 EUR fine or 2% of global turnover or you will be hard shut down. This will force US companies to comply as well or leave the market. The laws are so tight in our 200 man company we have 5 people dedicated to compliance as we handle personal data (financial data, identity etc)

The scariest companies out there are Facebook and Amazon. Google and Apple pale in comparison to the power those two orgs have.

Really though you’re walking around with a pocket telescreen that knows who you are; where you are and can infer what you are doing. If you want to do something dodgy, you just don’t violate your standard pattern which google has inferred from recording your location data.

Anyway this is way away from TEA. Or is it? How long before your Rigol phones home via Ethernet to make sure you paid for those options and didn’t use riglol...

[mnementh]

I need a disk 20,6 mm in diameter and 0,6 mm thick. Even though I'm all for putting in a bit of elbow grease, I don't really see that ending up looking good. They're oddball dimensions too, but I'll have a gander and'll see whether eBay has anything to offer.

K&S Metals sells 4" x 10" (Approx 100mm x 250mm) sheets of aluminum as hobby metal for approx US$4 ea; it comes in 0.016" (approx 0.4mm) and 0.032" (approx 0.8mm) thickness. To my knowledge, they are sold in Hobby Shops and Hardware Stores pretty much worldwide as well as on fleaBay.

I've made filler discs by cutting to approximate diameter with a sheet metal nibbler or tin snips, then flattening with a rubber mallet or scrap of 2x4 and a hand maul then epoxying it to a roofing nail. That I chuck up in a drill (preferably a drill press) and finish to size by cutting against the turning metal with a medium or fine bastard file. A little steel wool or sandpaper against the outer surface to make the brushed aluminum finish (you may have to experiment with different grits) and then heat the aluminum over a gas flame or with a heat gun and the epoxy will usually pop right loose leaving little residue.

Yes, one of those "fiddly bits"; but I've had very good results.

[beanflying]

Android is for the users

I anything is for those programmed by the Apple MCP 

[bitseeker]

Oof, too much phone and spy talk. My electrometer arrived. Yay! I won't have time to check it out tonight. Boo.

[Ero-Shan]

When I arrived home on Tuesday, I could see it from the street: My HP5325B had arrived. A crude looking biggish packet was sitting right in front of my front door. I know everybody is cross with DHL/Hermes/DPD/UPS/younameit people, but, at least here in Germany, they're really poor sods. Especially before Christmas, they do work their ass off for very little money. Where I live, the risk of a packet getting stolen is actually quite low, and as I usually come home rather early in the afternoon, I don't mind too much for things that didn't cost too much. It also saved me going to the post office, standing there in line for half an hour and dragging it back home.

The outer box was in fact made of 2 smaller boxes, held together at a slight angle by liberal use of adhesive tape. But the counter itself was in a Playstation 4 box, and this was padded quite well (with what looked like he was glad to get rid of). Despite the looks, that was very effective.



The HP5325B lacks its feet and the tilting stand (was likely mounted in a rack), and it does have that dreaded oblong power jack. Worst of all, it does not work.  All I get is a decimal point that can be switched and an overflow indication. (I only did a very quick test in CHECK mode.)

Now, Keysight really must be commended for not only keeping manuals for all their ancient gear, but especially for making it available. Alas, the scan quality is so poor that the schematics are almost unreadable, at least for me. Does anyone have scans where the part and pin numbers are readable? I feel those Nixies want to light up again in all their glory! 

[Cubdriver]

Beautiful!!!

I am 98% certain that I have a manual for the 5325B, but will have to dig tomorrow (it's 0330 here and I need some sleep...)  I'll look during the day and let you know what I find.  It's unfortunate that a lot of them get rack mounted and the feet go away - those old black ones with the spring button go for a fortune on the 'bay when they show up.  Pity the newer ones don't fit; you can get them easily.  A little naptha will get that sticker off and it'll look like new!

Yours looks a whole lot cleaner than the one I rescued a year and a half ago from the yard at Apex:


-Pat

[rachaelp]

Hi All,

It's been a while since I last came for some TEA group therapy! I thought I had my addiction under control but I recently had a Keysight E36313A arrive and have been doing some testing on that unit and this has fanned the test equipment collecting desire again.... I fear there is no hope this time....

Best Regards,

Rachael

[bd139]

A relapse! Welcome back

[Mr. Scram]

Hi All,

It's been a while since I last came for some TEA group therapy! I thought I had my addiction under control but I recently had a Keysight E36313A arrive and have been doing some testing on that unit and this has fanned the test equipment collecting desire again.... I fear there is no hope this time....

Best Regards,

Rachael

Welcome to Hotel California once more. Or still. However you want to call it.

[Specmaster]

Hi All,

It's been a while since I last came for some TEA group therapy! I thought I had my addiction under control but I recently had a Keysight E36313A arrive and have been doing some testing on that unit and this has fanned the test equipment collecting desire again.... I fear there is no hope this time....

Best Regards,

Rachael

Its like trying to kick smoking, after a relapse, the addiction gets stronger so I also welcome you back into the fold and we can comfort each other.