Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

Got a collection date and time for when I can collect my 3390B from the auction, tomorrow at midday, yay another new toy to play with 

[bd139]

Whats the make of monitor?

PENI - Sfingers edition.

Lenovo. ThinkVision. Will buy another one. Not expensive. You can get a good 22" jobby for 40 smackers now.

[Specmaster]

Whats the make of monitor?

PENI - Sfingers edition.

Lenovo. ThinkVision. Will buy another one. Not expensive. You can get a good 22" jobby for 40 smackers now.

Yeah, I'm using 22" as well, mine are LG, a few years old now but are very good

[Mr. Scram]

Lenovo. ThinkVision. Will buy another one. Not expensive. You can get a good 22" jobby for 40 smackers now.

You can get them for free and that's without sticking it in your bag when nobody's looking.

[capt bullshot]

IMO the acceleration is fucking up the usability. Having keys to select the digit, and then doing steps by the encoder is OK since you can select the resolution that way. The encoder of a HPAK 33120 or the more modern 33522 Generator works that way, and I find it quite useful. The encoder of the HPAK 36312 power supply is not useful for me. It always steps the least significant digit and accelerates if you turn if faster - you don't have any control over the resolution. A 10 turn pot is still the best way for me, since it gives you decent resolution and you've got all the control within your fingers in a predictable way. Accelerating encoders are quite inpredictable for my human intuition. Even with the CMU200's encoder, which is high qualtity and gives a pretty good feedback when operating it.

Do you have the means to select just which digit to adjust with the encoder and then that digit is highlighted while selected ?

The E36312 doesn't, the 33120, 33522 and CMU200 have.
R&S CMU200 also has that acceleration feature additionally, and this totally messes up your setting if you rotate the knob to fast (80% of usage, 20% it's just what you want).
E36312 is completely useless (accelerates only), 33120 and 33522 are fine (they don't accelerate).

[Specmaster]

Lenovo. ThinkVision. Will buy another one. Not expensive. You can get a good 22" jobby for 40 smackers now.

You can get them for free and that's without sticking it in your bag when nobody's looking.

Indeed you can on the freecycle websites and sometimes even bigger one at that.

[bd139]

I can't get the ones I want, as I'm a fussy bastard, for free on demand which is the thing otherwise I would

[Specmaster]

I doubt that you'll get a 22" ThinkVision for 40 smackers now.

[bd139]

Recon I will. Looking at sold prices £38 inc courier is possible. Message a few high volume sellers and see if they will do a deal outside.

[Specmaster]

Where can you get recon monitors then?

[bd139]

eBay. Have messaged three sellers.

[bd139]

Boom. Got one for £37.90. Last one in stock refurb 

Arriving 48 hours.

Seller said not to list their ID in case ebay find out they have been selling outside.

[Specmaster]

Wouldn't you have prefered a nice shiny new one then?

[bd139]

No point in buying new PC stuff ever. Same as new cars. Literally 2-3 year old stuff is fine. Mainly due to the volumes of it available kicked out of corporates.

Doesn't work for test gear as availability is limited as it isn't exactly ubiquitous.

[Specmaster]

22" Thinkvision in Brentford for £25 starting id or make an offer, COD zero bids ends tomorrow, I reckon you have got that today for £25 or thereabouts.

I'm not to sure about the 2nd hand computer bits TBH, I have brought some in the past ut things like MB's, CPU and Monitors I much prefer to buy new, no telling how long the other items have been run for, overclocked etc.

[bd139]

yeah probably would have. Didn’t look too hard

I don’t buy parts second hand. I usually buy refurb ex corporate business laptop, desktop and workstation class machines and monitors only. New RAM goes in and a new disk, a Samsung SSD, gets chucked in it and bob’s your uncle. Amazing what you can get for bugger all if you can stay slightly behind the curve.

Killers: anything already custom built, no brand shit, consumer grade junk, anything that isn’t HP/Lenovo usually

Less I spend on this the more I can spend on things I give a crap about, like knackered old scopes

[Specmaster]

I stay behind the curve when it comes DSLR's and accessories, my Canon 50D cost me £250 3 years ago with a warranty as well but when it was new in 2011 it cost £830 for the body. Cameras don't really get used that much with cameras on the phone for most people, that becomes their camera so DSLR's tend to be the enthusiast such as aviation enthusiasts who in large part will be walking around 2 or 3 cameras slung around their necks and professional lenses attached, all costing into the thousands. When a newer piece of kit comes they must have it and so the price of their old, out of fashion kit comes tumbling down.

When I got my camera body it only had 560 shutter operations on it, I hate to think what it has now and I CBA to get it out now and find out either. 

[Specmaster]

Talking about being behind the curve, I'm always well behind it when it comes to serious test gear as new prices are way out of my league.

I saw on Ebay today a Fluke 8840A being sold by Microlease Ltd for £562 still after all these years and it was far worse condition than mine apart from the VFD. I wonder they cost when new then?

Today I was putting it through its paces and comparing it with the HP3478A and they agree almost down to the last digit in lots of cases and considering I did the calibration on the 3478A myself it really can't be that far off if the 8840A matches it. There was a slight error on one of the resistance ranges of 3478A, on the 30 to 300 Ohm range I noticed it was almost exactly 10 Ohms down.  I was flicking through my decade box and noticed that when incrementing the 10 Ohm decade 10 to 30 was fine, flicking on 40, the range on the meter changed but reading was showing 30, I made short work of correcting that and now they are back in harmony again, so I'm more than happy with the purchase of them both.

[bd139]

You did good with that Canon. My father was a part time pro photographer (made enough to pay the cameras off only)  and yes they get through cameras like mad. I think there was a 6 month cycle on bodies. Not because they’d worn the old ones out.

Microlease are rip off merchants. You’ll get a battered piece of shit for 562 quid and they only price it like that to make their lease price look good.

Good win though that 8840. Especially after Dave said good things about them. That usually knocks the prices right up

[Specmaster]

Yeh, it was after watching Daves video that made me want one, although TBH, I've always wanted one, the same with the 3466A and 3478A which Dave also likes strangely.

I don't think that the seller was even aware of the significance of what they were selling TBH, like I said after talking with them on the phone, the price fluctuating all the time so I just told them to sell to the other chap who wanted it posting and left it at that. a couple of hours later I got call from the seller offering it to for £35, didn't want the hustle of posting. I thought then maybe it might be hooky and I was nervous as I hadn't seen it working so I played it cool and said that I'd think about it and let them know later.

The rest is history just maybe they were really desperate for some money, who knows, but it taught me lesson in playing it cool and bargaining. 

[mnementh]

yeah probably would have. Didn’t look too hard

I don’t buy parts second hand. I usually buy refurb ex corporate business laptop, desktop and workstation class machines and monitors only. New RAM goes in and a new disk, a Samsung SSD, gets chucked in it and bob’s your uncle. Amazing what you can get for bugger all if you can stay slightly behind the curve.

Killers: anything already custom built, no brand shit, consumer grade junk, anything that isn’t HP/Lenovo usually

Less I spend on this the more I can spend on things I give a crap about, like knackered old scopes

https://www.ebay.com/itm/123002587449

I just picked up one of these for my son's upcoming birthday; Ex-corporate, US$105 delivered in an original Lenovo carton. Aside from a few shiny spots on the touchpad, it looks like new; nicer than the photo. Got a second 4GB RAM on the way for $28. I figured it was time for a real laptop to replace his aging Aspire netbook; he's proven himself reasonably responsible with it, and has lately been pretty frustrated by its utter weaksauce in today's e-world.

I'll keep that netbook for nuking CISCOs and wardriving site surveys as it's Win7 32-bit. I keep an archive of old-school utilities and hackery tools/hardware that are still useful but really dislike Micro$uck's idiotic Jihad against open-channel serial comms. 

Monitors though... they're one thing I prefer to not buy used, at least the cheapies like Acer and Lenovo. They're built to a price point, and reasonable life expectancy is 3-5 years, with the latter half of life typically being barely tolerable brightness and contrast. I don't game, so don't need to get high dynamic contrast or fast refresh; the cheapest on sale from NewEgg or Fry's around the holidays is right for me, which is usually some Acer last-year's model for $79-99.

I usually get one for myself and on for my wife at the same time. The better part of that for me, aside from getting the nice bright crispy screen, is always being somewhat in step with current monitor size at least on my primary display. We've been at 24" for two monitors now; I expect the next replacements to be 27". Of course my "Extended desktop" is always the living room flat-screen for when I want to couch-potato or play my flight sims. 

[EDIT]

So what happened to your Apple Cinema display project? Still no joy on the T-con?

NM; Brain-fart, that was Specmaster.

[/EDIT]


mnem
*Currently installing build 1803*

[Specmaster]

Hers are just a few of my better photos from the Fly Navy airshow at Old Warden recently If anyone wants a high res version for a wallpaper etc, PM me with your personal email address and I'll gladly send one to you.

[bd139]

Nice work. Some good photos there. Professional quality.

@mnementh: can’t go wrong with anything thinkpad on it from experience. Monitors I’ve never had any problems with. I’ve had this thinkvision one for about 3 years and it was 3 years old when I got it. No dead pixels, nice bright panel. Had a duff cap in it a year ago and that was a £0.50 fix.  If you go for LED backlit ones with 1000:1 contrast they seem to live longer. The thinkvision ones are also terribly over engineered compared to most brands. Can’t go bigger than 22 here - not enough room!

Did my full license exam this evening and passed. That means I can have a slightly more legitimately poor excuse to buy lots of RF test gear and play with it. Ho Ho Ho 

But alas slacking is over as everything is unblocked so I shall return to computerland and slog out these problems for a few days at least. The eBay engine is still hammering away looking for bargains on my behalf though thus TEA is automated while my attention is diverted.. It found a couple of monster HP supplies this evening but they are too damn big and heavy to justify purchasing. I got the tape measure out and checked 

Going to bed! 

[Specmaster]

Congratulations on passing the exam, I take it that means that you can get on the air start making contacts with some pretty powerful rugs rigs, yes?

[Cerebus]

Congratulations on passing the exam, I take it that means that you can get on the air start making contacts with some pretty powerful rugs, yes?

That's a misnomer. It is not true that all radio hams wear hairpieces, not all of them - some small number of them are women.