Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

I've never had the pleasure of assembling IKEA stuff but I've heard that sometimes their instructions are 

Later today I hope to reveal what I've been working on for the past few days. It's TEA related. Hint: the last coat of poly is currently drying.

Thinking about pulling the RCA WO-505A up on the bench and troubleshooting it's issues. The parts for the OL-1 won't be here until Tuesday.

[bd139]

They’re fine. If anyone tells you the instructions are shit they are not the instructions and you should never let them get a screwdriver in their hands 

Beds done here.

Sounds interesting 

[Specmaster]

Agree with the Ikea instructions, very short on actual words but big on graphics and we all know a picture says a thousand words so true, they are very verbose 

[Housedad]

FINALLY going to start soldering and assembly of my friends PDP-11 and PDP-8 simulator kits this afternoon.  My dang laptop has been at Best Buy with warranty repairs for a month and I just got it back.  I needed it for programming the Pi 2 and 3, and assembly instructions online.

They should have just replaced it.  New hard drive, memory, main board, LCD, and battery.  I think they just kept the shell and keyboard.  Nuts!!

[med6753]

Honestly, what did you expect from the Geek Squad? You're lucky you got it back functional at all. They are as useless as tits on a bull.

A family member brought their Sony laptop for warranty repairs. Geek Squad replaced defective hard drive. Gave it back to them without guess what? Yep....no OS. Just an empty hard drive.  I got the job of installing the OS for them.

[Housedad]

I agree. My wife bought this for me as a gift of course she ended up paying for the warranty. This is the third time I've used the warranty. They should have replaced it already just based on that. I did learn one thing about this: never let a loved one by an Acer laptop. This is the second LCD screen, third hard drive and second battery.

Oh, yeah, and stay away from best buy.

[med6753]

I agree. My wife bought this for me as a gift of course she ended up paying for the warranty. This is the third time I've used the warranty. They should have replaced it already just based on that. I did learn one thing about this: never let a loved one by an Acer laptop. This is the second LCD screen, third hard drive and second battery.

Oh, yeah, and stay away from best buy.

Interesting. Typing on an Acer E15 Aspire laptop and it has been excellent. No issues. Over a year now and it get's daily use. Purchased through Amazon.

Agree, stay away from Best Buy.

[mnementh]

Second furphy (look it up non Aussies) was the distance to the diode is irrelevant. The data needed was how far was the grating from the page which was 13cm.

so θ = 19.1 give or take.

λ = d sin θ (an approximation) where d is the slit width

654 nM which is close to correct for a Red Laser.

Normal level of  will resume as my coffee/blood level is now in balance.

   While I did vaguely remember the mathematical relationship of the puzzle posed, I'll admit I had to go looking for the actual maths involved. Thank Ifni for Study.com; more than once I've found there the TL/DR version of what I was trying to recall from the mental fog of my college daze. 

   They also have a very concise presentation on the subject here (also in the page linked above).

   And for a bonus point the Wavelength is what with a page to diode distance of 20cm? 

In there somewhere ~~~~> yn=nλD/d   And that is a correct answer.

mnem
* shamelessly math-defective *

No points for you for failure to use the Metric System and do the numbers

Well I award bonus points on the strength of his use of binary numbers and the most certainly for the use of = 

Thank you for noticing... 

mnem

[bd139]

I agree. My wife bought this for me as a gift of course she ended up paying for the warranty. This is the third time I've used the warranty. They should have replaced it already just based on that. I did learn one thing about this: never let a loved one by an Acer laptop. This is the second LCD screen, third hard drive and second battery.

Oh, yeah, and stay away from best buy.

Interesting. Typing on an Acer E15 Aspire laptop and it has been excellent. No issues. Over a year now and it get's daily use. Purchased through Amazon.

Agree, stay away from Best Buy.

Acer are a dice roll. I had a couple of very low power ones a few years ago that were quite good but snuffed it after a year. Sony are a guaranteed failure. Sony are the only vendor I've actually taken a cricket bat to and smashed the fucking thing until it's a pile of powder. I will NEVER buy another Sony product ever at all after the AIO desktop and TV I had.

Lenovo ex corp since. Never a trouble. Not one failure even through beating the crap out of them.

[Housedad]

I agree. My wife bought this for me as a gift of course she ended up paying for the warranty. This is the third time I've used the warranty. They should have replaced it already just based on that. I did learn one thing about this: never let a loved one by an Acer laptop. This is the second LCD screen, third hard drive and second battery.

Oh, yeah, and stay away from best buy.

Interesting. Typing on an Acer E15 Aspire laptop and it has been excellent. No issues. Over a year now and it get's daily use. Purchased through Amazon.

Agree, stay away from Best Buy.

Mine is r15.  Just wait.  First time mine died was 14 months.  It has major cooling issues.

BTW, I consider my laptop as part of my test equipment since the only way I can program microcontrollers and link to my other test equipment is through it.

[mnementh]

Second furphy (look it up non Aussies) was the distance to the diode is irrelevant...

During the Eureka War, the Australian freedom fighters found themselves seeking a ballistic material for their mortars that provided good anti-personnel coverage, yet was plentiful and cheap. To make limited ferrous metal reserves go as far as possible, they started experimenting with "shells" comprised of water in a metal envelope; these served, however  didn't provide much anti-personnel coverage, simply making a largish hole in the ground. Experimentation resolved that by pressurizing the vessel with a small amount of airspace and adding alcohol, the blast radius was greatly increased while providing ice shrapnel as the mortar impacted and the alcohol evaporated at supersonic speed.

Using typical Ozzie ingenuity, it was soon derived that the alcohol required could be controlled as part of the manufacturing process, and existing distillation facilities were pressed into service to make these new munitions in their war for freedom. They served well, and the Revolutionaries eventually did win their independence; however the alcohol content of these "shells" was discovered by the infantrymen, who soon developed a taste for the warm brew of questionable quality and high alcohol content.

The largest of these distilleries absorbed most of the others immediately after the war thanks to large cash infusion from two Irish-American entrepreneurs from New York, feeding this newly emergent market; a few years later Foster Bros was formed, soon developing export channels for the brew just in time to supply Ozzie soldiers fighting the Boer War. Veteran of multiple incursions Captain RD Doyle noted the morale support provided by the steady flow of this single product from home; purportedly remarking that "As long as it keeps pouring, our boys will fight to Hell and back; Foster's is our most important armament."

mnem
Foster's: Australian for AMMUNITION.

[med6753]

This is what I've been working on. A shelf unit to go above the TV. Purpose is to put some of my scopes on display rather than collecting dust under the bench. They can now get dusted once a week.  And every once in a while I'll rotate which scopes are on display. Also, that will be an excellent location for the etched Tektronix logo when Bean let's me know how much he wants for one.

Some guys put sports trophies on display or animal heads. I beg to be different. That picture behind will move when I repaint the living room later this Summer.



And yes, I have.......   

[Specmaster]

I agree. My wife bought this for me as a gift of course she ended up paying for the warranty. This is the third time I've used the warranty. They should have replaced it already just based on that. I did learn one thing about this: never let a loved one by an Acer laptop. This is the second LCD screen, third hard drive and second battery.

Oh, yeah, and stay away from best buy.

Interesting. Typing on an Acer E15 Aspire laptop and it has been excellent. No issues. Over a year now and it get's daily use. Purchased through Amazon.

Agree, stay away from Best Buy.

Acer are a dice roll. I had a couple of very low power ones a few years ago that were quite good but snuffed it after a year. Sony are a guaranteed failure. Sony are the only vendor I've actually taken a cricket bat to and smashed the fucking thing until it's a pile of powder. I will NEVER buy another Sony product ever at all after the AIO desktop and TV I had.

Lenovo ex corp since. Never a trouble. Not one failure even through beating the crap out of them.

Wow that's an interesting statement, Lenovo are a Chinese manuefacturer so it just goes to prove that Being made in China is not necessarily a bad thing after all.

[Housedad]

Mnem -  I wish my math skills were even half as good as yours.  I have forgotten so much from college days (getting systemic dain bramage along the way didn't  help) that I started reviewing with my old (ancient) high school algebra texts last summer.  I figger I'll  be done algebra, trig/geom, and calc 101  in another 2 years.  It sucks getting old and forgetful.

OMG  I just laughed my ass off about that fosters story!! 

[Housedad]

 that looks awesome, Med!

[med6753]

I agree. My wife bought this for me as a gift of course she ended up paying for the warranty. This is the third time I've used the warranty. They should have replaced it already just based on that. I did learn one thing about this: never let a loved one by an Acer laptop. This is the second LCD screen, third hard drive and second battery.

Oh, yeah, and stay away from best buy.

Interesting. Typing on an Acer E15 Aspire laptop and it has been excellent. No issues. Over a year now and it get's daily use. Purchased through Amazon.

Agree, stay away from Best Buy.

Mine is r15.  Just wait.  First time mine died was 14 months.  It has major cooling issues.

BTW, I consider my laptop as part of my test equipment since the only way I can program microcontrollers and link to my other test equipment is through it.

My E15 is on a tilted laptop stand at all times to insure adequate airflow underneath. Hopefully that will help prevent heat related failures.

[bd139]

Lenovo ex corp since. Never a trouble. Not one failure even through beating the crap out of them.

Wow that's an interesting statement, Lenovo are a Chinese manuefacturer so it just goes to prove that Being made in China is not necessarily a bad thing after all.

China is excellent. They make things to such a high specification that no one else can beat them at the high end. What's more is they innovate way faster than everyone as they have a society which supports that through education, research and manufacturing.

But what we do is pay them to produce bottom rung shite so it can be sold with adware or ridiculous markup, then have the cheek to complain about what we asked them to make because it makes our own awful manufacturing sound better than it actually is. Customers: "These dancing flowers are shite". Some dude in China: "hahahaha we sold them 2 million dancing turds and they paid us for it ... hahaha eggs"

At this point, learn Mandarin. I'm working on it. The insults are the best, even if most of them are associating you with eggs.

Just remember eggs.

Now I'm hungry.

Edit: why dancing flowers? Was a craze in the late 1980s here and my father being an idiot shrugged off about 20 containers of them for bugger all which he could have retired on.

[med6753]

Lenovo ex corp since. Never a trouble. Not one failure even through beating the crap out of them.

Wow that's an interesting statement, Lenovo are a Chinese manuefacturer so it just goes to prove that Being made in China is not necessarily a bad thing after all.

China is excellent. They make things to such a high specification that no one else can beat them at the high end. What's more is they innovate way faster than everyone as they have a society which supports that through education, research and manufacturing.

But what we do is pay them to produce bottom rung shite so it can be sold with adware or ridiculous markup, then have the cheek to complain about what we asked them to make because it makes our own awful manufacturing sound better than it actually is. Customers: "These dancing flowers are shite". Some dude in China: "hahahaha we sold them 2 million dancing turds and they paid us for it ... hahaha eggs"

At this point, learn Mandarin. I'm working on it. The insults are the best, even if most of them are associating you with eggs.

Just remember eggs.

Now I'm hungry.

Edit: why dancing flowers? Was a craze in the late 1980s here and my father being an idiot shrugged off about 20 containers of them for bugger all which he could have retired on.

But let's not forget that Lenovo had an excellent base to start from when IBM sold them their PC division lock, stock, and barrel. 

[bd139]

This is true!

[Specmaster]

No complaints here from me on Chinese quality despite the fact that I have taken delivery of an ergonomic mouse, 5 button plus 3 dpi settings where the forward and back buttons are useless as the mouse has been designed to suit far smaller hands then I have so the forward / back buttons I have had to disable because my thumb operates them both even when I didn't want to 

[mnementh]

Lenovo ex corp since. Never a trouble. Not one failure even through beating the crap out of them.

Wow that's an interesting statement, Lenovo are a Chinese manufacturer so it just goes to prove that Being made in China is not necessarily a bad thing after all.

China is excellent. They make things to such a high specification that no one else can beat them at the high end. What's more is they innovate way faster than everyone as they have a society which supports that through education, research and manufacturing.

But what we do is pay them to produce bottom rung shite so it can be sold with adware or ridiculous markup, then have the cheek to complain about what we asked them to make because it makes our own awful manufacturing sound better than it actually is. Customers: "These dancing flowers are shite". Some dude in China: "hahahaha we sold them 2 million dancing turds and they paid us for it ... hahaha eggs"  At this point, learn Mandarin. I'm working on it. The insults are the best, even if most of them are associating you with eggs. Just remember eggs. Now I'm hungry. Edit: why dancing flowers? Was a craze in the late 1980s here and my father being an idiot shrugged off about 20 containers of them for bugger all which he could have retired on.

But let's not forget that Lenovo had an excellent base to start from when IBM sold them their PC division lock, stock, and barrel.

Agreed. My last Sony was a C1 picturebook with XP I kept in my networking bag for nuking CISCOs. It needed constant repair due to flimsy chassis/self-disconnecting internals, the proprietary RAM limited it's upgradability, and the charging circuit destroyed cells approx every 6 months. But it weighed a pound and a half in a day of 2-3kg brickbooks, and had built-in serial... When I sold it off, it brought me enough to pay for an open-box ASUS laptop I used all through college.  Good riddance, and fuck that little purple POS with a shovel.

Lenovo has carved itself a good niche as a solid, everyday laptop expressly made to be as rugged as a plastic chassis (for education tier machines) can manage for corporate and educational fleet use. Their machines bought off-lease are probably the best bang-for-buck option available ANYWHERE; less than $200 gets you a 2-4 year old machine that will remain competent for daily driver use for at least a couple years. If you want to spend a little more, you can get just-last-gen hardware corporate tier machines for about twice that if you shop carefully.

Acer... I have one of their 2GB Win7 Aspire netbooks I bought because it was $20 at the Goodwill. It served my son for about a year before he discovered yooToob. Now he, his mother and my dad have 8GB Win10 Lenovos. The Aspire still works to stream Amazon Prime music.  One thing they ARE good at is cheap, large-for-the-dollar "BIC Lighter" monitors that serve well for 2-4 years before winding up in a landfill.

mnem
Wuh duh ma huh tah duh fong kwong duh wai shung!!!

[mnementh]

mnem -  I wish my math skills were even half as good as yours.  I have forgotten so much from college days (getting systemic dain bramage along the way didn't  help) that I started reviewing with my old (ancient) high school algebra texts last summer.  I figger I'll  be done algebra, trig/geom, and calc 101  in another 2 years.  It sucks getting old and forgetful.

OMG  I just laughed my ass off about that Fosters story!! 

I never had the knack for math; though if the problem is couched in the right terms, I can still usually muddle through. Okay, sometimes. 

However, the mental exercise of creative writing is something I do to try to keep my wit sharp. The "Fosters: Australian for Ammunition." thing was something I came up with years ago as a quip; today it struck me funnier than usual so I decided to fill out the story. 

mnem
"Of all the things I've lost; it's my mind I miss the most."

[bd139]

Bic lighter laptops. I’m gonna steal that 

[Specmaster]

Ya might get burnt fingers, better wear gloves I think 

[bd139]

Used to blow the buggers up all the time when I was a kid. Harmless 

This is rather interesting: http://www.hfsignals.com/index.php/antuino/

Edit: gone off the above already after finding the schematic. As Farhan's stuff always does, it's kicking out a square wave which means you can't use it effectively for wideband sweeps due to the harmonics. Plus there's no way that power output calibration is any good. Plus the UI is clunky as fuck.