Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

The far side of the moon has been illuminated monthly for many millions of years.

Just because humans weren't able to observe it, doesn't mean it didn't happen   

In past times they used to write "Here be Dragons" on map sections where the terrain was unknown. That doesn't mean that mnem was lurking there   

But sometimes I WAS! Muahahaha!!!

mnem
One little tryst with Nessie and they NEVER let you live it down...

[Specmaster]

Aaaaand I've lost my new PC. Middle child has stolen it and is playing Fortnite 

Haha, been there, ad to go and build more for them, had to build 3 more so I could get mine back. These days if they want an upgrade they go and buy the bits and I get the job of installing them.

I'm slightly tempted. It was fun building a PC for a change. As I mentioned before, last one I did was about 15 years ago.

Hah, you guys have it easy, once I felt like an IT manager with 5 PC's, one for each of us and all hobbled together and administered by yours truly and hard wired to our growing LAN. Those days we only had dialer modems and ~40kbs peak speeds so if anyone needed to go on the 'net they had to take turns or it ground to a crawl.
A network printer was a thing of dreams and the only switch we had back then was a 4 port PC card but at least it allowed printer access for all through the parallel port of the office PC that was always ON.
Used to take most of my spare time keeping everything in some sort of running order.

Thank gawd all the youngsters have flown the nest and there's only 2 PC's left to keep sorted of which W10 has drastically reduced admin workload. 

Yep, been there as well and over the years that has now grown considerably in size and diversity till today I have 4 desktops, and 3 laptops connected to the wired network, connected to a 1GB 16 port switch in my lab, a main Wi-Fi router in my sons bedroom, connected to 2 Wi-Fi repeaters in at different points in the house so we have good coverage all other for Wi-Fi. Both repeaters have 8 port switches also connected to accommodate, things like 3 game consols, 3 smart TVs, Blu Ray player, 2 Tivo boxes and Internet Radios / streamer, 6TB of network storage spread over 3 devices, networked scanner / fax and printer, IP Camera and 10 tablets and mobile phones and 2 Alexa smart speakers also connected, 

EDIT.
I only use Windows 10 on my desktop, I7 laptop and a windows Tablet everything else is running Windows 7 or, Android / IOS or whatever they came with. When I first switched over to W10, I had all kinds of issues but as they released updates it did get better.

[mnementh]

Y’all already know my solution: (Last year’s, fresh off corporate lease) LAPTOPS FOR EVERYBODY!!! And your little mother-in-law, too! *Cackles maniacally*

mnem
Eh, it’s Friday.

[bd139]

@bd139 My own case is a Corsair Obsidian 750D case and I have a water cooled AMD FX 8350 4GHz 8 core CPU with 5 x 140mm fans in the case, 2 at the front, 2 on the top with a double radiator and 1 at the rear. There is another built into the Corsair RM850W modular PSU and the case sits under my bench/desk and I have to say that even with all of those fans it is whisper quiet. The graphics card (Nvidia Geforce GTX960 2GB) also has 2 built in fans. I have had this now for 5 years and the same case will be used again when I upgrade the MB and CPU. Mind you it is far cheaper then when I brought it, as it always when your on the cutting edge. 

https://www.ebuyer.com/579787-corsair-obsidian-series-750d-full-tower-atx-case-cc-9011035-ww

That's a pretty hefty bit of kit that!

I used to have a mighty twin processor Xeon Dell tower as an office PC. The cooling fans were so noisy I hid it round the corner of the partition with just the front face peeping out. Except in the winter. In this position, the exhaust from the fans blew directly onto the TRV which controlled the heating in my corner of the office, thus freezing me by means of hot air. For several years the PC made a sort of seasonal migration, like an Alpine herdsman.

I had a similarly warming machine for a bit. I came across a Sun SPARCserver 1000E  discarded by my employer so took the opportunity of nabbing it. It was bought approximately three years before it landed in the skip and cost a quarter of a million quid including the disk enclosures. No disks in it as they'd all been crushed. Kept me warm one winter. Then I got the electricity bill 



Sold it for £1000 on Yahoo Auctions in the end. Terrible terrible depreciation.

Aaaaand I've lost my new PC. Middle child has stolen it and is playing Fortnite 

Haha, been there, ad to go and build more for them, had to build 3 more so I could get mine back. These days if they want an upgrade they go and buy the bits and I get the job of installing them.

I'm slightly tempted. It was fun building a PC for a change. As I mentioned before, last one I did was about 15 years ago.

Hah, you guys have it easy, once I felt like an IT manager with 5 PC's, one for each of us and all hobbled together and administered by yours truly and hard wired to our growing LAN. Those days we only had dialer modems and ~40kbs peak speeds so if anyone needed to go on the 'net they had to take turns or it ground to a crawl.
A network printer was a thing of dreams and the only switch we had back then was a 4 port PC card but at least it allowed printer access for all through the parallel port of the office PC that was always ON.
Used to take most of my spare time keeping everything in some sort of running order.

Thank gawd all the youngsters have flown the nest and there's only 2 PC's left to keep sorted of which W10 has drastically reduced admin workload. 

Yep, been there as well and over the years that has now grown considerably in size and diversity till today I have 4 desktops, and 3 laptops connected to the wired network, connected to a 1GB 16 port switch in my lab, a main Wi-Fi router in my sons bedroom, connected to 2 Wi-Fi repeaters in at different points in the house so we have good coverage all other for Wi-Fi. Both repeaters have 8 port switches also connected to accommodate, things like 3 game consols, 3 smart TVs, Blu Ray player, 2 Tivo boxes and Internet Radios / streamer, 6TB of network storage spread over 3 devices, networked scanner / fax and printer, IP Camera and 10 tablets and mobile phones and 2 Alexa smart speakers also connected, 

EDIT.
I only use Windows 10 on my desktop, I7 laptop and a windows Tablet everything else is running Windows 7 or, Android / IOS or whatever they came with. When I first switched over to W10, I had all kinds of issues but as they released updates it did get better.

I'm feeling I live in the dark ages here 

[Specmaster]

Y’all already know my solution: (Last year’s, fresh off corporate lease) LAPTOPS FOR EVERYBODY!!! And your little mother-in-law, too! *Cackles maniacally*

mnem
Eh, it’s Friday.

Cant beat wired networks for security and also speed, laptops aren't designed to be as powerful as desktops anyway, my pc goes on and around 8.30 most mornings and stays on till around 2am, most laptops will have bitten the dust long ago given that duty cycle, 7 days a week 52 weeks a year. 

[tggzzz]

(I'm not sure what you are responding to)

"Dark" has multiple meanings.

In the case of the moon (and Africa), meaning 4 is key https://www.lexico.com/en/definition/dark "Hidden from knowledge; mysterious.", or "in the dark", or "a dark secret".

So yes, there was a "dark side of the moon".

I was referring to the literal meaning, not any of the metaphorical ones.

I'm an engineer; I like metaphors, but only when they are safely contained within works of fiction.

Ah, the Humpty Dumpty argument. That's fine if you state which meaning you are using. Without that people can legitimately use a different meaning. Have fun communicating with other people with a different background.

If we were down a pub, I would ask you to define the meaning of "and" - and would then ask subsequent questions Hint:  the answer must include "it depends; if..." 

[tautech]

Hell Spec that's some heap of HW you have today ! 

Careful placement of our 4 port wireless modem, an 8 port and 4 port switch has allowed our setup to remain mostly unchanged for a couple of decades except for the addition of more LAN cabling to accommodate the TV, Apple TV and cameras.
These days things are pretty much set and forget. 

mnem
Eh, it’s Friday.

Nah, Sat here ! 

[AVGresponding]

@bd139 My own case is a Corsair Obsidian 750D case and I have a water cooled AMD FX 8350 4GHz 8 core CPU with 5 x 140mm fans in the case, 2 at the front, 2 on the top with a double radiator and 1 at the rear. There is another built into the Corsair RM850W modular PSU and the case sits under my bench/desk and I have to say that even with all of those fans it is whisper quiet. The graphics card (Nvidia Geforce GTX960 2GB) also has 2 built in fans. I have had this now for 5 years and the same case will be used again when I upgrade the MB and CPU. Mind you it is far cheaper then when I brought it, as it always when your on the cutting edge. 

https://www.ebuyer.com/579787-corsair-obsidian-series-750d-full-tower-atx-case-cc-9011035-ww

A fellow 8350 owner!

Mine runs cool and quiet with a cobbled together liquid cooling system, but tbf I don't cane it; most abuse is from an mmorpg called PWI which uses but 1 core and does most of the rendering using the CPU 

I used cheap Chinesium parts; pump, radiator, hose, a standard 80mm 4 wire pwm fan like this, can't find the water block but it's just a universal copper base/plastic one.
Filled it with auto coolant (uses way less than I expected to fill, cue nasty sticky spillage  ).

I monitor it with a couple of cheap Chinesium LED temperature gauges, red on hot side (stuck to the rad inlet), blue on cold side (stuck to the pump reservoir tank).
The biggest delta t I've seen is 15 degrees C or so, with a peak hot side t of around 50C.

The whole cooling system cost me about £40. It's run without any problems for nearly 2 years now.

Needless to say it runs pretty damn quiet, waaaaay more than with the previous conventional setup.

Just in case anyone cares about such things, my mb is a Gigabyte GA 990X, with 2x 8GB HyperX DDR3, 238GB Gigabyte SSD, and a 3GB GTX 1060, running 8.1 Pro


@tggzzz, if we were down the pub, and you asked me such a question, I would pick up my pint, and go and sit somewhere else 

[Specmaster]

@bd139 My own case is a Corsair Obsidian 750D case and I have a water cooled AMD FX 8350 4GHz 8 core CPU with 5 x 140mm fans in the case, 2 at the front, 2 on the top with a double radiator and 1 at the rear. There is another built into the Corsair RM850W modular PSU and the case sits under my bench/desk and I have to say that even with all of those fans it is whisper quiet. The graphics card (Nvidia Geforce GTX960 2GB) also has 2 built in fans. I have had this now for 5 years and the same case will be used again when I upgrade the MB and CPU. Mind you it is far cheaper then when I brought it, as it always when your on the cutting edge. 

https://www.ebuyer.com/579787-corsair-obsidian-series-750d-full-tower-atx-case-cc-9011035-ww

A fellow 8350 owner!

Mine runs cool and quiet with a cobbled together liquid cooling system, but tbf I don't cane it; most abuse is from an mmorpg called PWI which uses but 1 core and does most of the rendering using the CPU 

I used cheap Chinesium parts; pump, radiator, hose, a standard 80mm 4 wire pwm fan like this, can't find the water block but it's just a universal copper base/plastic one.
Filled it with auto coolant (uses way less than I expected to fill, cue nasty sticky spillage  ).

I monitor it with a couple of cheap Chinesium LED temperature gauges, red on hot side (stuck to the rad inlet), blue on cold side (stuck to the pump reservoir tank).
The biggest delta t I've seen is 15 degrees C or so, with a peak hot side t of around 50C.

The whole cooling system cost me about £40. It's run without any problems for nearly 2 years now.

Needless to say it runs pretty damn quiet, waaaaay more than with the previous conventional setup.

Just in case anyone cares about such things, my mb is a Gigabyte GA 990X, with 2x 8GB HyperX DDR3, 238GB Gigabyte SSD, and a 3GB GTX 1060, running 8.1 Pro


@tggzzz, if we were down the pub, and you asked me such a question, I would pick up my pint, and go and sit somewhere else 

My cooler is a Corsair one, not sure of the model number but the double rad sits at the top of my case and blows air out through the top vent, just checked the temps on my CPU and the highest its been all day is 40C and the lowest is 33C so that's a delta of just 7C. Its a sealed for life system.

Yours looks to be quite interesting, I might go down your route if this one lets me down.

[xrunner]

NanoVNA Battery Indicator

Since the latest firmware there has been shown a red battery indicator which does not show activity. Turns out there is a diode missing from the NanoVNA board - D2, which, according to the schematic, is a SD103AWS Schottky Diode SOD-323 package. This seems to be a known condition of shipping boards - do not know why it was left off.

I hacked on a 1N914 diode to see if it enabled the indicator, and it did. But this is just a temp hack. I ordered the correct diode, which being a Shottky diode would have a lower forward voltage drop. I would think that would be sensed as a more accurate max charge indicator because of the lower forward drop.

[worsthorse]

The second 191 is done. I had a bad moment:



When the variable amplitude control knob came loose in my hand while I was turning it



When I looked at the pot, it looked like the shaft was press fit in place, which made me very sad:



It turned out that the set screw was hidden from view, which I found out by removing the pot from the unit.     That turned out to be okay because it gave me a chance to measure and clean it. 

Reinstalled the pot, finished the frequency calibration procedure, ran through the checklist, and this one, like the first, is calibrated to better than factory specification.  I replaced the old style Tek plug (the one with the prongs sticking out the back of the unit, surrounded by a plastic bale) with a modern IEC socket, which required drilling larger holes in the backplate, after which it went in without a hitch.

Both the 191s are in the simple two piece metal case that actually doesn't attach to the unit anywhere. I think I am going to see if I can fashion a solution to that in the morning.

As soon as the right sized caps get here (Tuesday says UPS), I will get back to the 106.  Tomorrow I will decide what's next in the queue.

[mnementh]

Y’all already know my solution: (Last year’s, fresh off corporate lease) LAPTOPS FOR EVERYBODY!!! And your little mother-in-law, too! *Cackles maniacally*

mnem
Eh, it’s Friday.

Cant beat wired networks for security and also speed, laptops aren't designed to be as powerful as desktops anyway, my pc goes on and around 8.30 most mornings and stays on till around 2am, most laptops will have bitten the dust long ago given that duty cycle, 7 days a week 52 weeks a year. 

Not my f$%& problem. They don’t like the laptops I give ‘em, they can go git their own PC.

I think my boi is about halfway there; he was all “Ooooh... Ahhhhh!!!” With his Lenovo, but when mommy got a 15.6” Lenovo, he was all spooty about his “only” being a 13” model. 

mnem
Oh well... they make new ones every day. I have higher priority flounders a floppin’.

[mansaxel]

I had a similarly warming machine for a bit. I came across a Sun SPARCserver 1000E  discarded by my employer so took the opportunity of nabbing it. It was bought approximately three years before it landed in the skip and cost a quarter of a million quid including the disk enclosures. No disks in it as they'd all been crushed. Kept me warm one winter. Then I got the electricity bill 


I'm feeling I live in the dark ages here 

Never had the SparcServer, but I do have most Sparc architectures;
Sparcstation IPC (my first Real Computer, ie. Big-Endian and not a PC)
Sparcstation 5
Ultrasparc 1 (with 3D card and red logo, that is the fast one @200MHz)
Ultrasparc 5 (also with 3D card but IDE drive.)
SunBlade 150 (with 3rd party GE card and dual 120G IDE drives, the largest possible)
Sun Netra 1
Sun Netra T1405 (An ultra 60 in a telco chassis. Definitive boat anchor material, 6HE, lots of steel. )
Sun T5220 Niagara-class.

All are in storage, sort of got disgusted with working in the sunos ecosystem when Oracle killed the Real SUNW.

Nowadays it is all PC's. Main compute in colo is an old Dell 1850, with a Supermicro storage server adjacent. At home, another Supermicro is file server (FreeBSD, zfs and OpenAFS) with a Dell 710 as Vmware host. The 1850  and the storage node are both going to be replaced with a Dell 610 (96G RAM, 24 thread CPU, yay!) running FreeBSD and vm hypervisor. Round tuit supply, allowing, that is.

The network is the complicated part  I've got a 7200 router, and 5 different Cisco switches around the house and datacenter^W^Wgarage (but with raised flooring! Gotta have it!) and the wireless is built with Cisco gear too, 2702 access points and a WLC in vmware.

Definitive, major, obsolency overkill. Sort of fits in this thread, I suppose.

[mansaxel]

Cant beat wired networks for security and also speed, laptops aren't designed to be as powerful as desktops anyway, my pc goes on and around 8.30 most mornings and stays on till around 2am, most laptops will have bitten the dust long ago given that duty cycle, 7 days a week 52 weeks a year. 

My private machine, a 2015 Macbook Pro 13" is on 24/7. Has been since I bought it, used, early summer 2016.

With the exception of the keyboard on later models, Apple portables are very, very reliable machines.  My work machine, a 2018 MBP 15", has that keyboard. It is not nice. But it's been on or in suspend since the day I was handed it, August 20 2018.

The plastic laptops with "design"  people are fooled into buying at large electronics chains are another story. Horrible crap.

[beanflying]

Not sure if this is sad or not. Saturday Night at home alone but this selection will help and maybe a touch of something alcoholic

[VK5RC]

I remember taking my now wife, who came from quite a conservative background, to the 'meaning of life', she just about wet herself laughing - a great sign -
how she still puts up with me I don't understand!

[Martin.M]

When I looked at the pot, it looked like the shaft was press fit in place, which made me very sad:

This plastik parts are much desired from friends who own a 3D printer

[bd139]

Cant beat wired networks for security and also speed, laptops aren't designed to be as powerful as desktops anyway, my pc goes on and around 8.30 most mornings and stays on till around 2am, most laptops will have bitten the dust long ago given that duty cycle, 7 days a week 52 weeks a year. 

Totally agree with networking. I HATE wireless networks with at the level of ISIS's treatment of captives 

Not my f$%& problem. They don’t like the laptops I give ‘em, they can go git their own PC.

Totally. My eldest is happy with her T440 now. If she isn't then it's tough bananas. It's that or SFA.

Never had the SparcServer, but I do have most Sparc architectures;
Sparcstation IPC (my first Real Computer, ie. Big-Endian and not a PC)
Sparcstation 5
Ultrasparc 1 (with 3D card and red logo, that is the fast one @200MHz)
Ultrasparc 5 (also with 3D card but IDE drive.)
SunBlade 150 (with 3rd party GE card and dual 120G IDE drives, the largest possible)
Sun Netra 1
Sun Netra T1405 (An ultra 60 in a telco chassis. Definitive boat anchor material, 6HE, lots of steel. )
Sun T5220 Niagara-class.

All are in storage, sort of got disgusted with working in the sunos ecosystem when Oracle killed the Real SUNW.

Nowadays it is all PC's. Main compute in colo is an old Dell 1850, with a Supermicro storage server adjacent. At home, another Supermicro is file server (FreeBSD, zfs and OpenAFS) with a Dell 710 as Vmware host. The 1850  and the storage node are both going to be replaced with a Dell 610 (96G RAM, 24 thread CPU, yay!) running FreeBSD and vm hypervisor. Round tuit supply, allowing, that is.

The network is the complicated part  I've got a 7200 router, and 5 different Cisco switches around the house and datacenter^W^Wgarage (but with raised flooring! Gotta have it!) and the wireless is built with Cisco gear too, 2702 access points and a WLC in vmware.

Definitive, major, obsolency overkill. Sort of fits in this thread, I suppose.

Nice collection . Good to hear of some more Unix geeks 

SPARCserver was usually just a label stuck to a normal desktop. Shipped with more RAM and no monitor. The only exceptions were the SS1000E and SS2000E which were XDbus based (backplane) based on something Xerox came up with when they wanted more oomph. Cray actually sold a machine, the CS6400 which used the same architecture so it was like having a small Cray in your room!

My favourite machine was the SPARCstation 2 (pizza box IPX). Standard SIMs, standard SCSI, standard AUI, standard RS232.

Peak "home network" I had a Sun E450, a Compaq Deskpro AP230 running OpenBSD as a router, a home built PC as main desktop and a Sun Ultra 10 desktop. That was fun.

Now it's all in AWS! Cheaper, faster and you only have to pay by the hour 

Cant beat wired networks for security and also speed, laptops aren't designed to be as powerful as desktops anyway, my pc goes on and around 8.30 most mornings and stays on till around 2am, most laptops will have bitten the dust long ago given that duty cycle, 7 days a week 52 weeks a year. 

My private machine, a 2015 Macbook Pro 13" is on 24/7. Has been since I bought it, used, early summer 2016.

With the exception of the keyboard on later models, Apple portables are very, very reliable machines.  My work machine, a 2018 MBP 15", has that keyboard. It is not nice. But it's been on or in suspend since the day I was handed it, August 20 2018.

The plastic laptops with "design"  people are fooled into buying at large electronics chains are another story. Horrible crap.

I had a 2013 MacBook Pro until recently. The power supply exploded and I fell asleep one night and it slid down my leg and popped the screen. Oops. Replaced the screen and decided to just buy another one. So I bought a 2018 MacBook Air. And they keyboard packed in ... back to the "spare T440".

My office machine, which I never use because I don't go in, is an HP Z-series. Think it's a Z4.

Agree with plastic laptops. My mother in law forced my father in law to buy one because she thought the T420 ThinkPad I built for him was dull. They learned that lesson the hard way  . Fecking blue POS HP thing with 32Gb of SSD and only upgrade is an SD card slot 


Anyway today's jobs:

Firstly, I need to shift a couple of items on eBay which as much as I love I don't use and I can't justify collecting stuff until I've moved into a house with some room in it.

Secondly, printing a 3d topographic map of Eyjafjallajökull volcano for a school project. Biggest print yet at 14 hours. Has been going for 4 already.

Thirdly, I'm spending some time in FreeCAD so I can make some proper feet for the mid 80-s HP chassis' with modular tilt/stand feet.

[mansaxel]

Märklin Digital conversion about done. Of course the engine ran beautifully (albeit backwards wrt lights) without the body fitted, but as soon as the body was fitted it simply refused. Oh, well. Lunch is through, another try at the bench. And 428b, you are next!

/keeping things marginally on topic.

[med6753]

You guys are running some powerful stuff on your home networks. Mine is a little more modest. The newest piece is this Acer laptop at 1 year old. The oldest is the Toshiba laptop at almost 10 years.

Seasons are changing. First frost this morning. The A/C unit is coming out of the window today and put away until next year.

[mansaxel]

You guys are running some powerful stuff on your home networks. Mine is a little more modest.

Your network diagram is much nicer, though.



Edit: 428B ground fault is in the mains transformer. Wonder what happened to it. Need me a parts unit, because that transformer surely is unobtanium without a donor.

[Neomys Sapiens]

One never ceases to wonder:
https://www.ebay.de/itm/Lambda-Differential-Voltmeter-Model-LSDM5-0-120-VDC/312563309565
I had no idea that Lambda made a foray into instruments apart from PSUs.

[mnementh]

You guys are running some powerful stuff on your home networks. Mine is a little more modest. The newest piece is this Acer laptop at 1 year old. The oldest is the Toshiba laptop at almost 10 years.

Seasons are changing. First frost this morning. The A/C unit is coming out of the window today and put away until next year.

*So biting my tongue right now...*

Now that’s what I’m talking about... I so miss actual WEATHER (natural disasters don’t count). Been 20 years of Blazing sun, hot & muggy or raining like hell, hot & muggy. I’ve been trying to breathe liquid air so long, I’m starting to grow gills...

mnem
*GAAAAASP!!!* Okay... I tried... potato.

[mnementh]

Not sure if this is sad or not. Saturday Night at home alone but this selection will help and maybe a touch of something alcoholic

When my mom was still alive, that was the “time to decompress” lineup. Spend a weekend  every solstice or so stoned out of our gourds, watching Python and listening to Beatles, Eagles, Clapton & Floyd. 

mnem
Mmmm... lumpy brownies...

[bd139]

Nothing sad about it. Got myself a nice bottle of red to neck tonight 

Trick is not to murder yourself in the progress. A lot of people round here will blow a bottle a night away which is seriously bad for you