Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Neomys Sapiens]

A moron sold .... and I bought. Netted a ACDC Electronics EL-300N yesterday night.
Quite cheap, because 'no output from this power supply'!

Always so satisfying.

Where does the 'N' on the model number come from? Does it actually say EL-300N on the front, or just EL-300 ?
Because when I search for EL-300N, all the pics that come up seem to be of EL-300 units. Same as the one I have. See pic.

And this is relevant to you (if you don't have a manual) because I scanned the EL-300 and EL-301 manuals I have.
  http://everist.org/archives/scans/acdc_electronics/
In RAR-book form, not PDF. The result is much better, just an extra step to unpack them.

Rather disappointingly, my EL-300s are 120VAC mains, and can't easily be converted to 240VAC.

Already sucked from your site and converted to PDF yesterday!
I will not keep it anyway, because I don't have room for a load that can't do dynamic. But I'll give it a short test and it should be easy to turn into cash.

[beanflying]

Here's neoBracket V8-V9; looking a lot better. I think I'm going to declare success at this point and move on with my life. 

mnem
*Off to pick up the kiddles*

Much less ghostly  What you said a while back about Mirror effecting temperature makes sense too I will be keeping my Glass bed.

[0culus]

Seeing as we're having analyser day, departed now (too big) but remembered:

That is one busy user interface for the SA module.

[Specmaster]

A moron sold .... and I bought. Netted a ACDC Electronics EL-300N yesterday night.
Quite cheap, because 'no output from this power supply'!

Always so satisfying.

Where does the 'N' on the model number come from? Does it actually say EL-300N on the front, or just EL-300 ?
Because when I search for EL-300N, all the pics that come up seem to be of EL-300 units. Same as the one I have. See pic.

And this is relevant to you (if you don't have a manual) because I scanned the EL-300 and EL-301 manuals I have.
  http://everist.org/archives/scans/acdc_electronics/
In RAR-book form, not PDF. The result is much better, just an extra step to unpack them.

Rather disappointingly, my EL-300s are 120VAC mains, and can't easily be converted to 240VAC.

Already sucked from your site and converted to PDF yesterday!
I will not keep it anyway, because I don't have room for a load that can't do dynamic. But I'll give it a short test and it should be easy to turn into cash.

How did you manage to suck it from the site and make PDF's? All I get from the site is a small cover as a .JPG. I have Winrar as well but cannot see just how you get at the document in order convert it to a pdf. I cannot even see a document.

[Kosmic]

We have a analyzer day 

Ok mine is a lot younger but still vintage!

[Inverted18650]

Inverted18650's house is going to look like this for a bit 



(from Resident Evil)

I am going to take you all up on the offers!

I am officially extending an invite to three-four-five people to come play with everything and help me find out what is working, whats not, and help with valuation. I just do not think I can do it all myself. Time and date TBD, but in the very near future. I hope it will be a fun meet-n-greet. Almost all the gear is HP, Fluke and Tek. Specifically looking for a person(s) (guy or gal) who can help with the spectrum analyzers and signal generators, HAM radios, and any volt-nuts into DC standards. I will provide the food and beverages and we can all hang out and play with this 'once in a lifetime lot.' Though my wife's cooking is good, since she is allowing me leave the stuff strewn all over the place, quite literally, we will eat out for two meals, on me. Please see the warning below.

Warning: I 'space out' from time to time and the medication I take helps but doesn't cure it (my brain has been irreparably bruised). I grew up a 'shit-kicking surfer' and had a laid back vibe, until the military; now I don't sleep well and suffer severe depression. I am a nice guy in general, but I cannot stand "know it all, do it my way now, closed minded people" and I will quickly put you in your place; I have dealt with enough of that for many lifetimes. If you like to talk down to people, please stay away. I tell you this now so you are aware and know what I expect. Be respectful of everyone and it'll be a blasty-blast. If there are items you want to buy, please talk to me in advance, and we can make it happen. edit* and I have a dog and cat. Husky breed, sheds a lot.

[mnementh]

   Here's neoBracket V8-V9; looking a lot better.
I think I'm going to declare success at this point and move on with my life. 

mnem
*Off to pick up the kiddles*

The bottom one is looking good. What did the trick?

Nothing. They're both just printed in Y axis instead of X axis at 30mm/s. Top one at .2mm LH, bottom at .1mm. Really, I just traded one fault for a another... I can see from these two prints that circles are a little oblong in the Y axis; means I need to get around to calibrating the effing thing a little better.

Much less ghostly  What you said a while back about Mirror affecting temperature makes sense too I will be keeping my Glass bed.

In all honesty, after thinking about it I don't know that I believe the mirror affects it at all... after all, the back of the tile is matte black, and our heating here is primarily by conduction, not radiation. I'm much more inclined to blame the clone BuildTak first, in all honesty.  Or rather, the fact of having so many covalent layers in general.

I am giving serious thought to just peeling the stuff off; lots of folks have warned that it eventually bubbles up and becomes unusable at temps higher than 60° anyways. But I've been running it at 70° for months, and some multi-day prints, with no issues. That may be due to the fact I've never run it at those temps without a tile in place, though.

If I do that I can see if it improves conduction; if not, then I can try printing directly on the ceramic-glass substrate. Pretty sure I won't be able to get better heating than THAT. 

Maybe I'll try cutting a 12 x 12 piece of window glass first though. 

mnem
This space left intentionally blank.

[Inverted18650]

I love your sign off's..now its this space was intentionall left blank...classic

[mnementh]

Some people do sigs, but I always felt it was a little bit presumptuous to think anything important enough to repeat with everything you post could be distilled into a tagline.

My little post-scripts are  just a thing I do to keep my wit sharp. Sometimes it's immediately relevant to the conversation at hand, sometimes it's stream of consciousness, sometimes it's something that the conversation tangentially reminded me of... sometimes it's purely "Random Mode".   

My mother was a hippie, and a soulful blues singer, and crazy wicked smart. She taught me that your mind is your most precious possession, and that if you don't use it, you lose it.

I see it as honoring her and her wisdom in some small way.


mnem
"Every moment deserves its own song." ~ my mom

[Mr. Scram]

Nothing. They're both just printed in Y axis instead of X axis at 30mm/s. Top one at .2mm LH, bottom at .1mm. Really, I just traded one fault for a another... I can see from these two prints that circles are a little oblong in the Y axis; means I need to get around to calibrating the effing thing a little better.

In all honesty, after thinking about it I don't know that I believe the mirror affects it at all... after all, the back of the tile is matte black, and our heating here is primarily by conduction, not radiation. I'm much more inclined to blame the clone BuildTak first, in all honesty.  Or rather, the fact of having so many covalent layers in general.

I am giving serious thought to just peeling the stuff off; lots of folks have warned that it eventually bubbles up and becomes unusable at temps higher than 60° anyways. But I've been running it at 70° for months, and some multi-day prints, with no issues. That may be due to the fact I've never run it at those temps without a tile in place, though.

If I do that I can see if it improves conduction; if not, then I can try printing directly on the ceramic-glass substrate. Pretty sure I won't be able to get better heating than THAT. 

Maybe I'll try cutting a 12 x 12 piece of window glass first though. 

mnem
This space left intentionally blank.

I'm glad my suggestion helped, though it's admittedly not perfect. As you say, it's a trade-off.

[TerraHertz]

Why so hard to convert to 240V? These should draw very little current; you should be able to power all 4 from a travel-size step-up transformer. Since you have them all in a rack-mount bay already, that solution seems exquisitely simple, at least to me.

  Running something on an external mains step-down transformer, is NOT 'converting it to local mains voltage.'

The EL-301 was easy to convert as it has a transformer with taps for 120/240.
The EL-300 doesn't actually have a 'power supply' as such. It takes DC power for its circuitry from the source it loads, or via a ribbon cable from an EL-301.
But it has a mains powered fan. That's the only thing which runs from the IEC mains input. The fan is 120V. So to 'convert' it (all three of them) I have to find three suitable-size 240V fans. Yes I could buy them. Just have been too slack.

Re PDF. It amazes me how people become habituated to wading in shit, and will argue that wading in shit is just fine and nothing could be better. Right now I don't feel like explaining why shit is shit-like.

Have a look at the schematics in those non-PDF manuals if you don't believe me about 'mains only to the fan.'
Notice that you _can_ look at them easily, because they are separate, non-obfuscated plain PNG image files.

Where does the 'N' on the model number come from? Does it actually say EL-300N on the front, or just EL-300 ?
Because when I search for EL-300N, all the pics that come up seem to be of EL-300 units. Same as the one I have. See pic.

I will not keep it anyway, because I don't have room for a load that can't do dynamic. But I'll give it a short test and it should be easy to turn into cash.

Oida! I really want to know why so many net references to the EL-300 call it an EL-300N. Where does the N come from? I can't find any ref to the "300N" anywhere on my units or the manuals. Is there actually a different/later model? Or is it just that it's in a separate case?

[Inverted18650]

It amazes me how people become habituated to wading in shit, and will argue that wading in shit is just fine and nothing could be better. Right now I don't feel like explaining why shit is shit-like.

The most accurate statement I have experienced in a long time. Well put.

[Neomys Sapiens]

A moron sold .... and I bought. Netted a ACDC Electronics EL-300N yesterday night.
Quite cheap, because 'no output from this power supply'!

Always so satisfying.

Where does the 'N' on the model number come from? Does it actually say EL-300N on the front, or just EL-300 ?
Because when I search for EL-300N, all the pics that come up seem to be of EL-300 units. Same as the one I have. See pic.

And this is relevant to you (if you don't have a manual) because I scanned the EL-300 and EL-301 manuals I have.
  http://everist.org/archives/scans/acdc_electronics/
In RAR-book form, not PDF. The result is much better, just an extra step to unpack them.

Rather disappointingly, my EL-300s are 120VAC mains, and can't easily be converted to 240VAC.

Already sucked from your site and converted to PDF yesterday!
I will not keep it anyway, because I don't have room for a load that can't do dynamic. But I'll give it a short test and it should be easy to turn into cash.

How did you manage to suck it from the site and make PDF's? All I get from the site is a small cover as a .JPG. I have Winrar as well but cannot see just how you get at the document in order convert it to a pdf. I cannot even see a document.

When you can see the page pictures, make a consecutive print into one PDF (for example with PDFcreator). The info for decoding the .rar is on the site - just make a copy of the picture and change extension to .rar.

[Neomys Sapiens]

Where does the 'N' on the model number come from? Does it actually say EL-300N on the front, or just EL-300 ?
Because when I search for EL-300N, all the pics that come up seem to be of EL-300 units. Same as the one I have. See pic.

I will not keep it anyway, because I don't have room for a load that can't do dynamic. But I'll give it a short test and it should be easy to turn into cash.

Oida! I really want to know why so many net references to the EL-300 call it an EL-300N. Where does the N come from? I can't find any ref to the "300N" anywhere on my units or the manuals. Is there actually a different/later model? Or is it just that it's in a separate case?

I got the designation from the auction where I bought it. I think the seller read it from the panel.

[beanflying]

Re PDF. It amazes me how people become habituated to wading in shit, and will argue that wading in shit is just fine and nothing could be better. Right now I don't feel like explaining why shit is shit-like.

Have a look at the schematics in those non-PDF manuals if you don't believe me about 'mains only to the fan.'
Notice that you _can_ look at them easily, because they are separate, non-obfuscated plain PNG image files.

Any process that uses an approximation of an approximation is going to potentially suck. I had the Keysight sourced manual for my 5326B open this morning and chunks of the Text let alone the schematics are unreadable mush due to piss poor scanning and or poor PDF creation. My 34401A manuals by comparison (manually scanned schematics still) are fairly readable at 2-500% size, still not perfectly crisp but very very usable. Unfortunately PDF is a convenient wrapper containing a turd sandwich or chocolates depending on who made the contents  .

Still prefer paper manuals and diagrams over on screen however

[mnementh]

Why so hard to convert to 240V? These should draw very little current; you should be able to power all 4 from a travel-size step-up transformer. Since you have them all in a rack-mount bay already, that solution seems exquisitely simple, at least to me.

  Running something on an external mains step-down transformer, is NOT 'converting it to local mains voltage.'

The EL-301 was easy to convert as it has a transformer with taps for 120/240.
The EL-300 doesn't actually have a 'power supply' as such. It takes DC power for its circuitry from the source it loads, or via a ribbon cable from an EL-301.
But it has a mains powered fan. That's the only thing which runs from the IEC mains input. The fan is 120V. So to 'convert' it (all three of them) I have to find three suitable-size 240V fans. Yes I could buy them. Just have been too slack.

Re PDF. It amazes me how people become habituated to wading in shit, and will argue that wading in shit is just fine and nothing could be better. Right now I don't feel like explaining why shit is shit-like.

Have a look at the schematics in those non-PDF manuals if you don't believe me about 'mains only to the fan.'
Notice that you _can_ look at them easily, because they are separate, non-obfuscated plain PNG image files.

And I don't feel like explaining why your condescending, aggro tone made you sound like an utterly boorish, self-important ass right there. But I just did. 

No thanks on hunting down that schematic; I don't feel like sorting through every single .png manually to find the one you're talking about, and that part of the discussion has already gotten away with enough free rent in my head.

[EDIT]   However, I will take the time to turn the .pngs from your Hitachi V202 manual into a searchable .pdf so they can actually be a useful document; which I will keep in the same folder along with the originals as reference. Just in case.    [/EDIT]

You're equating the file-creation software with the format. Adobe sucks. Acrobat sucks like a black hole. They are not the same thing as the format itself.

The format is perfectly usable, has a number of valuable features and text OCR/searchability is part of the sauce. There are a number of 3rd-party readers and compilers that DO NOT SUCK, and you don't have to play by Adobe's rules if you don't want to.

Hell, even Adobe doesn't want to play anymore; they've been trying to abandon or pawn off management of the format to some other party for over a decade. Shocking that nothing they do with the format isn't a suckfest, when they don't want the damn responsibility anymore. 

You can fiddle-fart around with your .pngs scattered loose in a folder like old Polaroids in the bottom of a drawer. I'll keep using dynamic formats like .pdf and .rtf, thank you.

mnem
Everything is relative. Even suckage.

[Inverted18650]

WOW you guys get fired up. I liked the quote about wading through shit, I have no opinion on the PDF vs !@#$%. If you are in school now, everything is computer based, you don't get a choice, there is no loose-leaf. The last thing I scanned in was a photocopy of my butt.

Lets get back to posting pics of ANALYZERS today.

[Kosmic]

Random question. Has anyone bought an OCXO off aliexpress? Need one for a (currently) top secret project.

Not ali but ebay. Somthing like that https://www.ebay.com/itm/1-Bliley-NV47A1282-NVG47A1282-10MHz-5V-Sine-Wave-OCXO-Crystal-Oscillator/332416522967?hash=item4d65919ad7:g:tyQAAOSwFEpakpUG:rk:1:pf:0

Surprisingly it's working pretty well. Not sure about long term stability though. Need take some times to monitor it with the 5335a.

So I did a quick test during the night and after a warmup of 5 hours it was monitored for 12 hours by my 5335A. the Bliley OCXO drifted 0.08 Hz. So it seem pretty stable.

I need to resolve my GPIB situation to record some nice curves 

So after 36 hours the little Bliley OCXO is rock solid and is not moving anymore. got a resolution of 0.01 Hz on the 5335A at 10Mhz.

[Kosmic]

Wooo really some people excel at posting on ebay

[Inverted18650]

I'll go back to shutting up and just reading here. 
Gonna hop over to the Buy/Sell and list some items.

[mnementh]

WOW you guys get fired up. I liked the quote about wading through shit, I have no opinion on the PDF vs !@#$%. If you are in school now, everything is computer based, you don't get a choice, there is no loose-leaf. The last thing I scanned in was a photocopy of my butt.

Lets get back to posting pics of ANALYZERS today.

LOL...  Actually, I don't often get that fired up... unless someone harshes a good mellow. And I'm feeling a good one, since I just had me some slAmazon therapy where I got a steal of a deal on some cardboard crack (Pokemon cards) for my son as a add-on while shopping some housewares, and I just stole a NIB 4GB RX570 for $44 on fleaBay.

On scanning alternate documentation, however... I'll have you know that I have, on at least two (possibly more) occasions, faxed my own arse to a certain major software house's billing dept successfully. And had said arse chewed out for it.  But still totally worth it. 

mnem
She SWORE she'd never tell...   

[beanflying]

Back on topic and one want 'free' rubbish clamp meters from evilbay I have a supplier for you

dear friend ,sorry for the trouble brought you, how about we refund full to you as a compensation and you revise the negative feedback to positive one? if you agree ,we will send you a request revise it. as you know it's very important for a seller. we will improve our service better and better in the future. thanks for your understanding. best regards!

in exchange for my neutral feedback of

Clearly the Item wasn't in Australia at time of order! UBI Logistics from China

Is my feedback worth $8.40USD 

[mnementh]

Re PDF. It amazes me how people become habituated to wading in shit, and will argue that wading in shit is just fine and nothing could be better. Right now I don't feel like explaining why shit is shit-like.

Have a look at the schematics in those non-PDF manuals if you don't believe me about 'mains only to the fan.'
Notice that you _can_ look at them easily, because they are separate, non-obfuscated plain PNG image files.

Any process that uses an approximation of an approximation is going to potentially suck. I had the Keysight sourced manual for my 5326B open this morning and chunks of the Text let alone the schematics are unreadable mush due to piss poor scanning and or poor PDF creation. My 34401A manuals by comparison (manually scanned schematics still) are fairly readable at 2-500% size, still not perfectly crisp but very very usable. Unfortunately PDF is a convenient wrapper containing a turd sandwich or chocolates depending on who made the contents  .

Still prefer paper manuals and diagrams over on screen however

Absolutely agree. It all depends on who creates the document, and what their priorities are. I bought the .pdf service manual from Anatek for my Tek 2230 when I first resurrected it more than a decade ago. Big file. Didn't mind a damn bit.

Not only did it all come through crisp and clear, but searchable too... even the schematics! Well, to an extent... about 10% either not OCRed at all or wrong; but still very helpful. And certainly not something you can get from paper. And the schematics high-enough res to print out crisp and clear on 18" x 24" poster sheets at my local FEDEX.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Back on topic and one want 'free' rubbish clamp meters from evilbay I have a supplier for you

dear friend ,sorry for the trouble brought you, how about we refund full to you as a compensation and you revise the negative feedback to positive one? if you agree ,we will send you a request revise it. as you know it's very important for a seller. we will improve our service better and better in the future. thanks for your understanding. best regards!

in exchange for my neutral feedback of

Clearly the Item wasn't in Australia at time of order! UBI Logistics from China

Is my feedback worth $8.40USD 

I guess the more important question is whether the meter was worth $8.40 to you. If so, then keep it and keep the honest neutral feedback. And your pride. 

Personally, it tends to stick in my craw when people do two things on fleaBay:

1) Post non-positive feedback without at least attempting to contact the other party and resolve.
2) Ignore requests for remedy until after you are forced to post neutral/negative feedback.
C) Attempt to hold the refund they should've sent as an apology for wasting your time with their bunk goods hostage against reversed feedback.

mnem
Also, Garden Gnomes. Fuck every last one of them on eBay. And the demon-larvae who put them there.

[mnementh]

In other News...



Well, fuuuuu... so how exactly is the transaction supposed to "process as normal"?  How am I going to even get shipping confirmation, much less tracking info when you've booted the seller off the platform?

Fuckwits.

*Sigh* So much for my $44 RX570. Guess I knew it was too good to be true... 

mnem
*Now afraid to look at my Amazon dashboard*