Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[neo]

I was thinking of buying some WIHA screw driver bits, but then i realized that they don't actually have imperial hex bits. WTF?!  I know that these are heathen units and all but I NEED metric and imperial hex bits, metric alone just won't cut it. The little difference matters.

https://www.wihatools.com/tools/screwdrivers/hex-metric/precision-hex-driver-7-028-x-40mm
https://www.wihatools.com/tools/screwdrivers/hex-inch/precision-hex-driver-7-028-x-40mm

Just look, the SKU is the same.

[Brumby]

All this talk about 34401As....

Got me interested, so I had a look around for what was available in Australia and how much they were.

I hate you all.

Starting to think of selling my 'spare' 6 1/2 digit meter in an Advantest 6871E-DC. You want to trade an arm or a leg? 

Sorry, they're needed.

I need one that is either:
 (a) being sold by someone who just thinks of it as another bit of electrical stuff they are disposing on behalf of someone else or
 (b) has a fault that they couldn't be bothered chasing (but which would be within my capabilities to repair).

Then again, Bean has been an enabler for my acquisition of HP badged gear.  (He's been a bit slack lately.)

[beanflying]

As I sort of have a good set of Cal type gear (with a dud Current Amp to fix) the absolute 'need' for new TEA hasn't driven my to evilbay trawling. That and my PC upgrading has made me all but broke in the spare $ account.

Still looking from time to time for the bargains but slim on the ground at present.

[mnementh]

I feel like I brought the 34401As back into the spotlight here... Then everyone started buying them... But I’ve yet to commit to purchasing one. You’re welcome! 

*Raises hand* Still blissfully ignorant over here.

In Other News...


Woke up this morning to find my wife had left this on the couch for me to "sort".  So now y'all know; they aren't just a fig newton of my homungulation, they're REAL. 

mnem
Unlike that girlfriend I had in college...

[bd139]

LMAO I have one of those Heathkit 2.5 digit DMMs on the watch list 

They are terrible but cute!

BTW those FET microntas seem to be worth a few quid. Sold one a few years back for £100!

[xrunner]

Woke up this morning to find my wife had left this on the couch for me to "sort".  So now y'all know; they aren't just a fig newton of my homungulation, they're REAL. 

Yea I remember having one of those Micronta meters when I was a kid - Dual FETs - Kewl stuff.

I also remember the shape of the two smaller knobbies. 

[grbk]

All this talk recently of 34401As and how reliable they are... mine picked last night to decide to start refusing to turn on.

It started rapidly beeping incessantly (each beep accompanied by the asterisk lit up on the display that indicates it's performing a measurement), as if it were receiving spurious triggers. I turned it off and back on, but now it hangs when the VFD turns on all segments, so it's not getting past the power on self test. The buzzer turns on as well which makes debug somewhat painful 

I verified the power rails all look good, and nothing is obviously borked on either PCB. My understanding is that at power up, both the front panel and back processors do a self-check of sorts, and then verify they can communicate with each other, so it seems this is where it's getting stuck. I have a bad feeling this may turn out to be a beyond-economical-repair issue, but I need to look into it further.

And this is my most modern piece of test equipment 

If anyone has any pointers I'm all ears...

[Addicted2AnalogTek]

On a side note, here’s some work fun:

[med6753]

Every time I think "wouldn't it be nice if me and the lady cop moved in to together" I get a dose of reality from you guys and back to my senses. I don't need "Why did you buy that?" or "Sort this shit" or nag-nag or whatever or ...........

 

[bsudbrink]

Speaking of shipping, I didn't know about this:

Match the label to the mail service you buy. For example, FRAGILE labels should only be used if you paid the applicable fee for the USPS® Special Handling-Fragile service at a Post Office location.

https://www.usps.com/ship/packages.htm

Interesting, never heard of it.

I asked the UPS store once if putting "FRAGILE" stickers on the box meant anything to the people handling it.

They said it meant nothing at all to anyone - all packages are handled the same way.

Sure it does.  It means it's Italian:

[worsthorse]

Every time I think "wouldn't it be nice if me and the lady cop moved in to together" I get a dose of reality from you guys and back to my senses. I don't need "Why did you buy that?" or "Sort this shit" or nag-nag or whatever or ...........

 

I dunno. The upside of fifteen years with A has been way way bigger than any downside. Whatever teasing she gives me regarding my, umm, predilections, she's taken more than her share in return.   

[xrunner]

All this talk recently of 34401As and how reliable they are... mine picked last night to decide to start refusing to turn on.

It started rapidly beeping incessantly (each beep accompanied by the asterisk lit up on the display that indicates it's performing a measurement), as if it were receiving spurious triggers. I turned it off and back on, but now it hangs when the VFD turns on all segments, so it's not getting past the power on self test. The buzzer turns on as well which makes debug somewhat painful 

I verified the power rails all look good, and nothing is obviously borked on either PCB. My understanding is that at power up, both the front panel and back processors do a self-check of sorts, and then verify they can communicate with each other, so it seems this is where it's getting stuck. I have a bad feeling this may turn out to be a beyond-economical-repair issue, but I need to look into it further.

And this is my most modern piece of test equipment 

If anyone has any pointers I'm all ears...

Bummer. 

I haven't owned one before (I will in a few days) nor tried to restore or repair one, so I  haven't been down any rabbit holes with one and don't know the existing fixes out there. But I think someone might in this group - let's see what the day brings. 

[BU508A]

All this talk about 34401As....

Got me interested, so I had a look around for what was available in Australia and how much they were.



I hate you all.

How's it going with your Adonstar?   

[mansaxel]

An Avometer, a Hartmann & Braun Elavi 4 or a Simpson 2xx usually give stable, nice, comforting values, and the movement keeps the jitter away, at that.  There is some thing to be said for fully-analog non-sampling low-impedance meters. Precision, and influence on the DUT, OTOH...

Prefer the HP 427A for that, however you can get your lazy response up to spec with an RC filter between the meter and the DUT. You just need to ramp up the settling time to have the same effect basically.

I of course have the 427a as well. In other news; Just ordered new fuses for the 428b, so I'll be trying it out.
I seem to turn into a vintage --hp -- TE hoarder. It feels, hmmm, comfortable

Scopes are Fluke and Tek, though. ß

[AVGresponding]

I was thinking of buying some WIHA screw driver bits, but then i realized that they don't actually have imperial hex bits. WTF?!  I know that these are heathen units and all but I NEED metric and imperial hex bits, metric alone just won't cut it. The little difference matters.

Hmm, interesting interpretation of the word 'precision'.

I used to really like Wiha tools, back in the mid 90s anyway. Their more recent stuff isn't quite as good, I feel.

Those are some very small sizes, not sure I'd trust most of the stuff off ebay or amazon, maybe a local engineering company would be a better bet, you could specify the material for example.

I bet AvE could make one 

[neo]

Hmm, interesting interpretation of the word 'precision'.

I used to really like Wiha tools, back in the mid 90s anyway. Their more recent stuff isn't quite as good, I feel.

Those are some very small sizes, not sure I'd trust most of the stuff off ebay or amazon, maybe a local engineering company would be a better bet, you could specify the material for example.

I bet AvE could make one 

That might be an idea for a later date. Small engineering company I mean, not AVE. For now I'll just buy some cheap crap I know works (even if barely) and make do.

[bd139]

Wera sell imperial drivers / sockets. I have a few.

[mnementh]

Good man!  I’m guessing you learned the lesson of drain plug gaskets the hard way. 

mnem
Everybody who learns that lesson learns it that way.

The problem wasn't the crush washer. The problem was the dumb ass who tightened the drain plug the last time. 

Yup; the lesson in a nutshell: Don’t be that dumbass. 

Woke up this morning to find my wife had left this on the couch for me to "sort".  So now y'all know; they aren't just a fig newton of my homungulation, they're REAL. 

Yea I remember having one of those Micronta meters when I was a kid - Dual FETs - Kewl stuff.

I also remember the shape of the two smaller knobbies. 

Yeah; that meter was, IIRC, a FET adaptation of one of the well-known valve “differential driver” (term? Totally having a brain fart)  meter circuits. It quickly developed a bit of a cult following amongst the old-timers who preferred analog as a “fully portable VTVM”, causing the catalog price to double in like a year.

Those knobs may not be original; they sold them as panel knobs in several sizes for most of the heyday of Radidio Shack.

Okies... off to do family-type stuph...

mnem

[Kosmic]

Got lucky again. Found a broken Boonton power sensor (51100) on ebay. I have couple of meters and i'm always looking for cheap sensors and cables. The Boonton 51100 is a Thermistor based sensor and I only have diode based sensor here. Decided to send a cheap offer since the sensor was described as non working.




I Took a chance on this one since those sensors need to be configurated and calibrated correctly with the meter to work. After proper calibration with my Boonton 4300, the sensor is working fine 

0dBm


10dBm

[bitseeker]

All this talk recently of 34401As and how reliable they are... mine picked last night to decide to start refusing to turn on.

It started rapidly beeping incessantly (each beep accompanied by the asterisk lit up on the display that indicates it's performing a measurement), as if it were receiving spurious triggers. I turned it off and back on, but now it hangs when the VFD turns on all segments, so it's not getting past the power on self test. The buzzer turns on as well which makes debug somewhat painful 

I verified the power rails all look good, and nothing is obviously borked on either PCB. My understanding is that at power up, both the front panel and back processors do a self-check of sorts, and then verify they can communicate with each other, so it seems this is where it's getting stuck. I have a bad feeling this may turn out to be a beyond-economical-repair issue, but I need to look into it further.

And this is my most modern piece of test equipment 

If anyone has any pointers I'm all ears...

I haven't encountered that particular behavior, but if it is because the front and rear panels aren't talking to each other correctly, try disconnecting and reconnecting the ribbon cable between the display assembly and the main board. I've run into a couple that were having issues because of oxidation. A few re-insertions cleans them off. You can also try some DeoxIT.

[mnementh]

Got lucky again. Found a broken Boonton power sensor (51100) on ebay. I have couple of meters and i'm always looking for cheap sensors and cables. The Boonton 51100 is a Thermistor based sensor and I only have diode based sensor here. Decided to send a cheap offer since the sensor was described as non working.

     0dBm      10dBm   

I Took a chance on this one since those sensors need to be configurated and calibrated correctly with the meter to work. After proper calibration with my Boonton 4300, the sensor is working fine 

w00t!      How cheap an offer? Was it      cheap...? 

mnem
*toddling off to ded*

[Brumby]

All this talk about 34401As....

Got me interested, so I had a look around for what was available in Australia and how much they were.



I hate you all.

How's it going with your Adonstar?   

Still on the wish list - as are several other things.

Thinking about a GPSDO (it's been one of the higher interest items), but then I still have to house the OCXO Bean sent up to me.  Getting anxious about slipping into the time nut rabbit hole, which is tempering my enthusiasm.

[bd139]

Do it. I fell down the voltnut and timenut holes at the same time. 34401A, OCXO, GPSDO in house 

Talking of which I'd just like to explain my frustration here about putting the OCXO in my 5334B. Turns out I need 2x 6-32 inch long UNC screws to put the damn thing in. Guess how many I have got? NONE because they are weird ass American threads and we're all metric over here. I have bags of M3/M4 hardware but no nothing in groats per dyne. And it takes 3-4 days turnaround to get any here. There goes my weekend timenuttery idea!

[Specmaster]

Hmm, are there any other rabbit holes that you could slip into 

[tggzzz]

Getting anxious about slipping into the time nut rabbit hole, which is tempering my enthusiasm.

Just think of all the beautiful glowing trailing 0s (or 9s). Becoming fixated on the slowly changing last digit induces a state of peaceful meditation.

Orange displays are especially restful, especially if the digits also move backwards and forwards.