Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[AVGresponding]

Hold it, we need to regroup. The question was not about the cheap miniature Chinese LCD scopes. Mnem muddied the waters by tossing them into the conversation. I'm not interested in those but thanks for the info.  My question is about the NLS mini CRT scopes you used to see advertised in the back of electronics magazines in the 1980's. There's one for sale on my local CL and while I realize it's usefulness is extremely limited it might be fun to play with.

My bad, misread the convo a bit.

@mnementh I would rather plug the TDS420 into my arse than touch another of those pocket DSOs. After all, easy enough to badge a
 bad copy as a DSO213, and though I'd likely get my money back, the hassle ain't worth it. If I really needed a battery portable scope I'd hunt around for an older Fluke

[mnementh]

Your plug, your privilege, your choice. 

I was ONLY speaking of a single use case... Automotive Diag. And since I already have a perfectly serviceable ToughBook for that kind of work, in all reality if I DID get back into Auto Mechanicking, I'd probably just buy a bottom-of-the-line USB scope from Hantek or Pico.

mnem
 

[bd139]

I've sent a PM to a few people with today's science museum trip gallery in it. There are 342 images so I don't want to post the link here otherwise my transfer will get eaten in 2 minutes by robots/scrapers. If anyone else wants to have a look, PM me and I'll send you the link. Preview:

Spacecraft, measurement, electrical items, dangerous flying machines, robots, old transistors and valves/tubes, time standards, vintage computers, crypto machines, enigma communications, old radios, amateur radio equipment from the dark ages, a bit of the moon, big scary transmitters, telephones and exchanges, supercomputers, old mobile phones, historic computers, calculators, jet engines, aircraft, difference engine, gold plated bbc micro and a wannacry infected laptop. Some captures of info cards but most if it is a case of playing guess what it is

Not much TE in there. There's an Advance oscilloscope lurking in one photo however. Slightly disappointed by that

[GreyWoolfe]

Naaahhh, it's good... when I click on it, it comes up vertically aligned. Fuck that fucked-up thumbnail.

It seems that Fry's are struggling to keep alive in the USA just the same as many of our hobby stores over here.

https://www.youtube.com/wzQRwwi6rw8

Yeah, they've been following the same course as CompUSA for at least a decade; relying on closeout sales cash flow to keep the doors open. As long as they keep following the established corporate business model, they're doomed to die by it.

mnem
As long as we allow "Corporation" to run our lives, humanity is doomed too.

I got to see Fry's for the first time last year when Mrs GreyWoolfe and I visited her oldest and husband in Houston.  I have to admit, I got a bit tingly all over there.  I hope they stay open a few more months as we are going back in October.  Maybe I can get some deals on closeout.

[BU508A]

I would rather plug the TDS420 into my arse [...]

Why do you want to do this? This is painful, I can imagine. 
Poor little Tekscope ...

 

[BU508A]

"Mercury is no longer favoured as it corrodes the spacecraft."



And this is also the deeper reason, why they don't like to fly to Mercury? 

Edit 1:
I cannot help myself, but this Rolls Royce Flying Bedstead reminds me to one of these:

[worsthorse]

Why I haven't been around (apropos of nothing)...

As I pull myself out of the Tibetan translation rabbit hole I fell into last week, swerve around the one marked, ebay-IT3121-that-doesn't-power-on, and look warily at two others masquerading as repair projects sitting on, and next to, my test bench, I realize that... My "problem" is not so much TEAS as it is an endless sense of wonder that transforms anything I don't understand into a irresistible shiny bauble that remains forever a bit out of reach.

One of the results is I've never attained excellence in any particular way; mostly I am kinda average at whatever I do. While I wouldn't trade sense of curiosity and need-to-know-ness for being a superstar at x or y, I wonder what it might be like to get really good at something.

/me wanders off to peer into a few holes...

[bd139]

"Mercury is no longer favoured as it corrodes the spacecraft."



And this is also the deeper reason, why they don't like to fly to Mercury? 

Edit 1:
I cannot help myself, but this Rolls Royce Flying Bedstead reminds me to one of these:

JLCPCB probably send their PCBs there for etching based on how long my current run takes 

Ahh Space 1999 eagle. Now that was some proper cheesy sci fi

[med6753]

Edit 1:
I cannot help myself, but this Rolls Royce Flying Bedstead reminds me to one of these:

Why is that pole transformer mounted so close to the ground? That's normally the area reserved for phone/cable TV copper. Looks real sloppy and unsafe to me. 

[BU508A]

Ah, they have my very first computer there. 



A friend of mine an me, we bought one in 1985 and modded it from 48k to 96k RAM 

Beautiful thing, liked it. But the programming language which comes with it (FORTH) was always a complete mystery to me.
The only command I can remember from this area is "forget forget"    

[bd139]

Edit 1:
I cannot help myself, but this Rolls Royce Flying Bedstead reminds me to one of these:

Why is that pole transformer mounted so close to the ground? That's normally the area reserved for phone/cable TV copper. Looks real sloppy and unsafe to me. 

That's clearly so it doesn't kill the DUI driver who hits the pole due to increasing gravitational potential energy if it's higher up

Ah, they have my very first computer there. 



A friend of mine an me, we bought one in 1985 and modded it from 48k to 96k RAM 

Beautiful thing, liked it. But the programming language which comes with it (FORTH) was always a complete mystery to me.
The only command I can remember from this area is "forget forget"    

I had one too. I think I had it for about a month before I wanted to murder people irrationally due to the keyboard and got a BBC B. I thank a dead relative for that one (most of my early computer purchases were due to dead relatives!)

[mnementh]

I got to see Fry's for the first time last year when Mrs GreyWoolfe and I visited her oldest and husband in Houston.  I have to admit, I got a bit tingly all over there.  I hope they stay open a few more months as we are going back in October.  Maybe I can get some deals on closeout.

Oh, the sad thing about Fry's demise is the clever interior decorating, which is always based on local color. Fry's Houston is of course decorated with faux oil wells and cowboy-style... but the one in Webster (South of Houston) is all Space Age with mockups of the Apollo-Soyuz link and a near-life-size model of the X-38 re-entry vehicle hanging from the ceiling. Other salesfloor sets mockup space station modules and EVAs in progress. My favorite is probably Burbank; it's front is a life-size mockup of a flying saucer crashing into the building, and the entire interior is decorated with restored sets from the golden age of Hollywood Sci-fi horror moviemaking. Even if Fry's goes belly up, they'll probably keep that building intact as a historical landmark. I hope.

mnem
 

[BU508A]

I've sent a PM to a few people with today's science museum trip gallery in it. There are 342 images so I don't want to post the link here otherwise my transfer will get eaten in 2 minutes by robots/scrapers. If anyone else wants to have a look, PM me and I'll send you the link. Preview:

Spacecraft, measurement, electrical items, dangerous flying machines, robots, old transistors and valves/tubes, time standards, vintage computers, crypto machines, enigma communications, old radios, amateur radio equipment from the dark ages, a bit of the moon, big scary transmitters, telephones and exchanges, supercomputers, old mobile phones, historic computers, calculators, jet engines, aircraft, difference engine, gold plated bbc micro and a wannacry infected laptop. Some captures of info cards but most if it is a case of playing guess what it is

Not much TE in there. There's an Advance oscilloscope lurking in one photo however. Slightly disappointed by that

Thanks for sharing the photos, much appreicated it! 
Was a bit surprised to see an old Heinkel (or is it a Junkers?) plane dangling from the ceiling.
And those stupid Germans who considered their Enigma code to be "unbreakable". 
Arrogance is one of the brothers of foolishness.  But after all it was a good thing, imho.


But one thing makes me wonder: Why did you move your old bench to the museum?     

Edit:
Ah, another thing I wanted to ask: This high voltage thing, is this a Marx-generator?

[Specmaster]

Ah, they have my very first computer there. 



A friend of mine an me, we bought one in 1985 and modded it from 48k to 96k RAM 

Beautiful thing, liked it. But the programming language which comes with it (FORTH) was always a complete mystery to me.
The only command I can remember from this area is "forget forget"    

Forth? That was my second computer but it came with Sinclair Basic was the built-in programming language. I did buy a version of Forth to experiment with but never got on with it, in the end I also dabbled with machine code which typed in as Hex and ran through a basic compiler which did work quite well. I used to type in loads of programs as Hex and compile them and did thinks things like space invaders and databases etc, great fun but that keyboard was a horrible thing and I replaced it with one of these DkTronix keyboards with custom keyboard  interface then later on I acquired a duff Memotech MTX512 computers and threw the MB and retro fitted the Spectrum inside the keyboard with yet another custom keyboard interface and expanded the memory to a whopping 96K and I still have one of these floating around somewhere in the garage. In the fullness of time I also added a 3.5" floppy drive and parallel printer interface.

[bd139]

I've sent a PM to a few people with today's science museum trip gallery in it. There are 342 images so I don't want to post the link here otherwise my transfer will get eaten in 2 minutes by robots/scrapers. If anyone else wants to have a look, PM me and I'll send you the link. Preview:

Spacecraft, measurement, electrical items, dangerous flying machines, robots, old transistors and valves/tubes, time standards, vintage computers, crypto machines, enigma communications, old radios, amateur radio equipment from the dark ages, a bit of the moon, big scary transmitters, telephones and exchanges, supercomputers, old mobile phones, historic computers, calculators, jet engines, aircraft, difference engine, gold plated bbc micro and a wannacry infected laptop. Some captures of info cards but most if it is a case of playing guess what it is

Not much TE in there. There's an Advance oscilloscope lurking in one photo however. Slightly disappointed by that

Thanks for sharing the photos, much appreicated it! 
Was a bit surprised to see an old Heinkel (or is it a Junkers?) plane dangling from the ceiling.
And those stupid Germans who considered their Enigma code to be "unbreakable". 
Arrogance is one of the brothers of foolishness.  But after all it was a good thing, imho.


But one thing makes me wonder: Why did you move your old bench to the museum?     

Edit:
Ah, another thing I wanted to ask: This high voltage thing, is this a Marx-generator?

Not sure what plane it was. We're still very proud we broke the Enigma encryption here. It will be a thing of legend until the end of the United Kingdom (so about a month  ). People forget that we chemically castrated the guy who did the legwork and he killed himself in the end. Being British was about being proud and unkind . We all have our national problems

LMAO at the bench comment. I wish

The high voltage generator was a giant Cockroft-Walton multiplier which was apparently used as an accelerator drive to split atoms.

[BU508A]

Forth? That was my second computer but it came with Sinclair Basic was the built-in programming language. [...]

Mine came with a Forth implementation. Cannot remember the details (I'm an old geezer, too  ).
Could be that I had to load it from compact casette, which was always a bit of a gambling if it'll work or not.   
Wikipedia seems to agree with my dusty memory:

"Despite the fact that the ZX Spectrum hardware was limited by most standards, its software library was very diverse, including programming language implementations (C,[1] Pascal,[2] Prolog,[3] Forth,[4]), [...]"

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

[bitseeker]

And I stumbled over this, maybe one of you Nixie fanboys find it interesting: 
It is a "Vintage Bell Howell Heathkit IMD-202-2 Nixie-Multimeter"

https://www.ebay.com/itm/123771125240

Have one. And that asking price of $69.95 USD is nucking futs. At the most it's worth $30 USD.

Someone will buy it because of the nixies, I wouldn't though.

Agreed. Contrast that with a Keithley 160 and its quite respectable 3.5 digits, 100 nA current range and 1 GΩ resistance range. I should start using it more often. Poor little guy will feel left out otherwise.

[bitseeker]

I cannot help myself, but this Rolls Royce Flying Bedstead reminds me to one of these:

Space 1999! That show was a looong time ago. I can barely remember watching it.

[bitseeker]

It seems that Fry's are struggling to keep alive in the USA just the same as many of our hobby stores over here.

Fry's is mainly in California and a few stores in Texas. And a few stores in the Mid-west. None on the East Coast except Georgia. Never been in one.

They also had a policy of stopping you at the exit and searching your bags AFTER the purchase and verifying the receipt to the contents which used to piss off a lot of people.

They also checked the trash for inventory being snuck out of the store, or so I was told many moons ago.

[tggzzz]

Space 1999! That show was a looong time ago. I can barely remember watching it.

Whereas I can remember barely watching it. Complete and utter rubbish - so it is currently being rerun over here

[bd139]

It certainly was rubbish.

Interestingly I noticed my new dryer sounds like a Cylon mothership. 

[BU508A]

It certainly was rubbish.

Interestingly I noticed my new dryer sounds like a Cylon mothership.

Space 1999 (in Germany "Mondbasis Alpha 1") - Wasn't it a running gag, that someone of the crew wanted to brew beer and failed regularly?

@bd139: have you checked your dryer for something like this?

[BU508A]

Space 1999! That show was a looong time ago. I can barely remember watching it.

Whereas I can remember barely watching it. Complete and utter rubbish - so it is currently being rerun over here

So, I assume, you are no fan of the "Star Maidens" either?
This British-German gem of a sci-fi series in the 70's?

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



And another sci-fi series, from the 70's, the predecessor of Space 1999: UFO

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(TV_series)

[med6753]

Don't you just hate it when a minor maintenance task turns into a troubleshooting hassle? 

The 475A had some noise on the bandwidth limit switch. No biggie. Common issue. Pull it out of the case. Deoxit on the leaf contacts. Quick check. No more noise. Put it back in the case.

Do a quick check. Find channel 1 completely dead. Trace in center of screen. Position control inoperative. Not passing any signal either. Channel 2 is OK. 

Pull it back out of the case. Start signal probing to find out where it's dropping out. After probing a few points and finding a signal I look at screen. Channel 1 is back!  Damnit.  So I start tapping and moving stuff around and it's still OK. Short of dropping the damn thing on the floor I can't get it fail again.  Gonna do some tapping and let it sit for a while then put it back in the case and see what happens. I hate it when a trouble goes away because you know Murphy sez it's gonna come back. 

[0culus]

Sounds about like my exploits with the 7104 SMPS once I figured out the short was mechanical, but hadn't yet found it.