Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

Look at this. Was in Michigan. You don't how bad I wanted to make a road trip but realized....where would I put it all?? 

https://www.facebook.com/marketplace/item/863047330818573/ 

Its sold now, so did you get it after all?

I wish. 

[bd139]

Okay. The issues you described puzzled me, especially the "it is drawing power but not oscillating or doing anything else" bit.  When I run into that, it is almost always because some active component isn't what I think it is.  Which W7ZOI design are you going to use?

I figure it must be oscillating but I can't see it. It's running in common base which can oscillate at much higher than FT frequency which may be the issue.

Will use the TIA design for it: http://www.n6qw.com/TIA.html

Already made one that worked fine! Relatively flat gain and good match to filter!

[tggzzz]

Zweik anal verstärkerein schübe

It is similar to my "internal tokenizer". My advantage is: it is much higher trained for the patterns of german words. That's why, when Germans reading such huge words (known as "compounds" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compound_(linguistics) ), they easily spot the correct words in the compund and grasp their meaning.

Sometimes it's just fun to tokenize such compounds wrong intentionally, and also pronounce them that wrong way giving the word a different or non-understandable meaning E.g. Schulzen-trum instead of Schul-zentrum or Urin-sekt instead of Ur-insekt ...

English has similar games, e.g. in-VALid vs INval-id.

For computer word processing word splitting, a standard test used to be "therapist"; "the-rapist" was not acceptable

English spelling is tricky at first. It can be understood though, through thorough thought.

OK, time to wheel out the perennial list from alt.folklore.urban...

From: raymond@pepto-bismol.berkeley.edu (Raymond Chen)
Date: Wed, 19 Dec 1990 09:50:07 GMT
Subject: Pronunciation in the English language (How do you pronounce kilometer?)
Newsgroups: alt.folklore.urban

Subject: English poem

 Multi-national personnel at North Atlantic Treaty Organization headquarters
 near Paris found English to be an easy language ...  until they tried to
 pronounce it.  To help them discard an array of accents, the verses below
 were devised.  After trying them, a Frenchman said he'd prefer six months at
 hard labor to reading six lines aloud.  Try them yourself.
 
       ENGLISH IS TOUGH STUFF
        ======================
 
       Dearest creature in creation,
       Study English pronunciation.
       I will teach you in my verse
       Sounds like corpse, corps, horse, and worse.
       I will keep you, Suzy, busy,
       Make your head with heat grow dizzy.
       Tear in eye, your dress will tear.
       So shall I!  Oh hear my prayer.
 
       Just compare heart, beard, and heard,
       Dies and diet, lord and word,
       Sword and sward, retain and Britain.
       (Mind the latter, how it's written.)
       Now I surely will not plague you
       With such words as plaque and ague.
       But be careful how you speak:
       Say break and steak, but bleak and streak;
       Cloven, oven, how and low,
       Script, receipt, show, poem, and toe.
 
       Hear me say, devoid of trickery,
       Daughter, laughter, and Terpsichore,
       Typhoid, measles, topsails, aisles,
       Exiles, similes, and reviles;
       Scholar, vicar, and cigar,
       Solar, mica, war and far;
       One, anemone, Balmoral,
       Kitchen, lichen, laundry, laurel;
       Gertrude, German, wind and mind,
       Scene, Melpomene, mankind.
 
       Billet does not rhyme with ballet,
       Bouquet, wallet, mallet, chalet.
       Blood and flood are not like food,
       Nor is mould like should and would.
       Viscous, viscount, load and broad,
       Toward, to forward, to reward.
       And your pronunciation's OK
       When you correctly say croquet,
       Rounded, wounded, grieve and sieve,
       Friend and fiend, alive and live.
 
       Ivy, privy, famous; clamour
       And enamour rhyme with hammer.
       River, rival, tomb, bomb, comb,
       Doll and roll and some and home.
       Stranger does not rhyme with anger,
       Neither does devour with clangour.
       Souls but foul, haunt but aunt,
       Font, front, wont, want, grand, and grant,
       Shoes, goes, does.  Now first say finger,
       And then singer, ginger, linger,
       Real, zeal, mauve, gauze, gouge and gauge,
       Marriage, foliage, mirage, and age.
 
       Query does not rhyme with very,
       Nor does fury sound like bury.
       Dost, lost, post and doth, cloth, loth.
       Job, nob, bosom, transom, oath.
       Though the differences seem little,
       We say actual but victual.
       Refer does not rhyme with deafer.
       Foeffer does, and zephyr, heifer.
       Mint, pint, senate and sedate;
       Dull, bull, and George ate late.
       Scenic, Arabic, Pacific,
       Science, conscience, scientific.
 
       Liberty, library, heave and heaven,
       Rachel, ache, moustache, eleven.
       We say hallowed, but allowed,
       People, leopard, towed, but vowed.
       Mark the differences, moreover,
       Between mover, cover, clover;
       Leeches, breeches, wise, precise,
       Chalice, but police and lice;
       Camel, constable, unstable,
       Principle, disciple, label.
 
       Petal, panel, and canal,
       Wait, surprise, plait, promise, pal.
       Worm and storm, chaise, chaos, chair,
       Senator, spectator, mayor.
       Tour, but our and succour, four.
       Gas, alas, and Arkansas.
       Sea, idea, Korea, area,
       Psalm, Maria, but malaria.
       Youth, south, southern, cleanse and clean.
       Doctrine, turpentine, marine.
 
       Compare alien with Italian,
       Dandelion and battalion.
       Sally with ally, yea, ye,
       Eye, I, ay, aye, whey, and key.
       Say aver, but ever, fever,
       Neither, leisure, skein, deceiver.
       Heron, granary, canary.
       Crevice and device and aerie.
 
       Face, but preface, not efface.
       Phlegm, phlegmatic, ass, glass, bass.
       Large, but target, gin, give, verging,
       Ought, out, joust and scour, scourging.
       Ear, but earn and wear and tear
       Do not rhyme with here but ere.
       Seven is right, but so is even,
       Hyphen, roughen, nephew Stephen,
       Monkey, donkey, Turk and jerk,
       Ask, grasp, wasp, and cork and work.
 
       Pronunciation -- think of Psyche!
       Is a paling stout and spikey?
       Won't it make you lose your wits,
       Writing groats and saying grits?
       It's a dark abyss or tunnel:
       Strewn with stones, stowed, solace, gunwale,
       Islington and Isle of Wight,
       Housewife, verdict and indict.
 
       Finally, which rhymes with enough --
       Though, through, plough, or dough, or cough?
       Hiccough has the sound of cup.
       My advice is to give up!!!
 
                       -- Author Unknown

[med6753]

Final compensation adjustments on the 485. There's some peaking on the 50 ohm input @ 10MHz that I adjusted out as much as possible. Not perfect but good enough. I think this scope has mucho hours on it and I don't think it's worth pursuing further. If I need to make real critical high frequency measurements I have the other 485 plus the 7904 with the 7A24 plug-in.

This 485 by far has been the longest, and most frustrating, troubleshooting project so far. It even exceeds the 465B with the fubar'ed attenuator switch deck. The initial trigger issue really had me going around in circles. Did I learn anything from it? In a word, no. I still don't understand how the tunnel diode trigger circuit works with it's “negative resistance” and other assorted voodoo functions. And I really hated to resort to the “shotgun” approach and swap out the entire trigger board rather than fix at component level but there was really no other choice. And then to have the replacement board starting going weird after a few days and I thought for sure I was going to wind up with 2 parts mules. But those trouble symptoms were rather obvious and a replacement U780 fixed it.

So this one is done except for eventual replacement of the balance of the PSU caps. That will be part of routine maintenance.

Next on the agenda is to start replacing the electrolytics in the 535A. That is going to be a challenging endeavor.     

[Cerebus]

Is that an old photo? I thought you'd got rid of that PSU - I know it was sitting on eBay for ages.

[tggzzz]

New toy just arrived (despite the best endeavours of UPS) - Power Designs 2005A. It's not that the other 8 1/2 power supplies I have here are in some way inadequate, it's just being able to dial in a voltage and get to within a millivolt or so is cool TEA!

Don't forget the pot has a resolution of 10µV! But there will be some drift with load/temperature since it (well a 2020 anyway) "only" has an LM399 reference

The ergonomics are delightful, almost as good as some of my KVDs.

[Cerebus]

       Now I surely will not plague you
       With such words as plaque and ague.

Unfortunately ague is normally pronounced to rhyme with Hague (the city).

Ob fact: Prior to the little ice age in Britain there was a feared disease know as the "Essex ague". It turns out this was malaria, transmitted - as it classically is - by the Anopheles mosquito. With the little ice age the mosquitoes died out, so did the disease, and now travelling to Essex is without fear of catching malaria. However, with climate change there is a risk that endemic malaria will once again return to Essex.

[bd139]

Is that an old photo? I thought you'd got rid of that PSU - I know it was sitting on eBay for ages.

Yes it’s an old photo. I do still have that power supply actually. In the cupboard of doom

Proof 



Still need to bounce all those ARRL books I’ve been scamming of people at hamfests. 

[AVGresponding]

You mean: Like asking a bunch of TEA members, if they are interested in buying this palette full of test gear for USD 50.-   

I'd be saved by the shipping costs, in that circumstance...

I see so much nice gear from Fluke and Keithley etc at nice prices, then I look at the shipping costs from the US and I go away and cry inside a little...

You just take a van across the Channel to pick it up!  (assuming this is permissible in the new free Britain of course)

In 2021 there will be extra car insurance, customs duty, and a lot more red tape paperwork. Didn't see that on the side of a bus.

Hah, didn't notice at first that pallet of gear was in Germany. It already costs extra to insure your car to drive outside the UK if your starting point is the cheapest policy you can find on (insert comparison site of choice here). In any case, if I was driving in any country where they drive on the wrong side of the road, I wouldn't take my own car, I'd hire a LHD one locally.
Vehicles with the steering wheel on the wrong side are a serious safety issue.
Customs duty isn't something that worries me; it's a tax, and taxes are what pay for national infrastructure and public services. It'll be interesting to see if we keep VAT, as that applies to shipping costs as well as the purchase cost of the item, unlike customs duty (as far as I'm aware), though if that means lost revenue I've no doubt they'll claw it back somehow.
I could care less about having to do a little extra paperwork.

99% of the cheap gear I see that I would buy is in the US and has crazy shipping prices (or hidden ones), so Brexit isn't likely to have any effect on that unless Bojo the Clown sells the UK to The Fart King...

[med6753]

Yes it’s an old photo. I do still have that power supply actually. In the cupboard of doom

Proof 

(Attachment Link)

Still need to bounce all those ARRL books I’ve been scamming of people at hamfests. 

Timber!! 

[alextwin007]

I love the PD precision power supplies.  I have a 4010 and it is my go to supply, just because it's so fun to use.  I saw one at a hamfest and just fell in love with it (never even knew they existed), luckily I got a good deal on it because it was "broken" and I was buying a tek 214 from the seller.  Once I fixed it ( a resistor replacement, internal fuse replacement and some de-oxit) I went to try and calibrate it, but I realized it's as precise as the best meters I have, so I decided to leave it as it was .
It was literally beyond my capability to measure its accuracy 

New toy just arrived (despite the best endeavours of UPS) - Power Designs 2005A. It's not that the other 8 1/2 power supplies I have here are in some way inadequate, it's just being able to dial in a voltage and get to within a millivolt or so is cool TEA!

Must do something about the infuriatingly buzzy step-down transformer that came with it, though.

[tggzzz]

Final compensation adjustments on the 485. There's some peaking on the 50 ohm input @ 10MHz that I adjusted out as much as possible. Not perfect but good enough

I'd be more worried by that oscillation on the negative edge. Why aren't you using the 485's cal out - that is very good with a 50ohm input, and entertaining with a 1Mohm input.

This 485 by far has been the longest, and most frustrating, troubleshooting project so far. It even exceeds the 465B with the fubar'ed attenuator switch deck. The initial trigger issue really had me going around in circles. Did I learn anything from it? In a word, no. I still don't understand how the tunnel diode trigger circuit works with it's “negative resistance” and other assorted voodoo functions. And I really hated to resort to the “shotgun” approach and swap out the entire trigger board rather than fix at component level but there was really no other choice. And then to have the replacement board starting going weird after a few days and I thought for sure I was going to wind up with 2 parts mules. But those trouble symptoms were rather obvious and a replacement U780 fixed it.

Oh, but don't you feel good now that you've stopped banging your forhead agains a wall?!

In one of my 485s, a resistor inside one of the vertical amplifier ICs had gone open circuit. Fortunately I was able to replace it with a modern SMD resistor mounted externally, and the risetime only modestly increased to 1.25ns.

[med6753]

Final compensation adjustments on the 485. There's some peaking on the 50 ohm input @ 10MHz that I adjusted out as much as possible. Not perfect but good enough

I'd be more worried by that oscillation on the negative edge. Why aren't you using the 485's cal out - that is very good with a 50ohm input, and entertaining with a 1Mohm input.

This 485 by far has been the longest, and most frustrating, troubleshooting project so far. It even exceeds the 465B with the fubar'ed attenuator switch deck. The initial trigger issue really had me going around in circles. Did I learn anything from it? In a word, no. I still don't understand how the tunnel diode trigger circuit works with it's “negative resistance” and other assorted voodoo functions. And I really hated to resort to the “shotgun” approach and swap out the entire trigger board rather than fix at component level but there was really no other choice. And then to have the replacement board starting going weird after a few days and I thought for sure I was going to wind up with 2 parts mules. But those trouble symptoms were rather obvious and a replacement U780 fixed it.

Oh, but don't you feel good now that you've stopped banging your forhead agains a wall?!

In one of my 485s, a resistor inside one of the vertical amplifier ICs had gone open circuit. Fortunately I was able to replace it with a modern SMD resistor mounted externally, and the risetime only modestly increased to 1.25ns.

The oscillation on the trailing edge is a normal characteristic of the Heath IG-4244 Scope Calibrator. No issues. 

[tggzzz]

Customs duty isn't something that worries me; it's a tax, and taxes are what pay for national infrastructure and public services. It'll be interesting to see if we keep VAT, as that applies to shipping costs as well as the purchase cost of the item, unlike customs duty (as far as I'm aware), though if that means lost revenue I've no doubt they'll claw it back somehow.

I tend to agree.

I could care less about having to do a little extra paperwork.

As someone that has (when forced and there was no alternative) moved stuff across frontiers professionally, that little paperwork can be a major pain in the arse.

See grizewald's opinions about what will happen with stuff sent to Sweden.

Remember that in the 1980s France wanted to protect its VCR industry, but couldn't legally impose an import tariff. So they insisted that all Japanese VCRs had to be imported via Poitiers. Go and look at a map to see how obvious that was, and how non-tariff barriers are a major pain.

99% of the cheap gear I see that I would buy is in the US and has crazy shipping prices (or hidden ones), so Brexit isn't likely to have any effect on that unless Bojo the Clown sells the UK to The Fart King...

The clown has already started down that path. Today's papers report "The PM shrugged off 'hysteria' over issues like chlorinated chicken, joking that he thought Americans looked 'pretty well nourished'." He (and we) are about to find out how little bargaining power the UK has.

[AVGresponding]

As someone that has (when forced and there was no alternative) moved stuff across frontiers professionally, that little paperwork can be a major pain in the arse.

See grizewald's opinions about what will happen with stuff sent to Sweden.

The clown has already started down that path. Today's papers report "The PM shrugged off 'hysteria' over issues like chlorinated chicken, joking that he thought Americans looked 'pretty well nourished'." He (and we) are about to find out how little bargaining power the UK has.

Yeah I guess if you have to do it as part of your job on a daily basis it's going to be a pain; for someone that might have to do it once a blue moon, it's less of an issue.

I have seen and puzzled at the reasons for the situation is Sweden. Bearing in mind they are part of the EU, I suspect the problem is some local peculiarity, and could be solved if there was a political will to do so.

Chlorinated chicken and farming standards are quite emotive issues, and like the NHS, if he is seen to be bowing down to the US, he might find his majority evaporating like dew on a sunny day.

Equally annoyingly, the rhetoric between the UK and EU seems to be continuing around things like standards and whether they'll have to be followed/met. Given the nature of the global market meaning that certain standards have to be met if you want to export to anywhere, it seems to be a pointless and stupid argument, at least to me anyway.   

[nfmax]

New toy just arrived (despite the best endeavours of UPS) - Power Designs 2005A. It's not that the other 8 1/2 power supplies I have here are in some way inadequate, it's just being able to dial in a voltage and get to within a millivolt or so is cool TEA!

Don't forget the pot has a resolution of 10µV! But there will be some drift with load/temperature since it (well a 2020 anyway) "only" has an LM399 reference

The ergonomics are delightful, almost as good as some of my KVDs.

The 2005A has a discrete component ovened Zener, it well pre-dates the LM199. It's been sat in various UPS warehouses and trucks for the last 6 days. Plug in, switch on, and within about 45 minutes it was within 1.5mV of an arbitrarily-chosen setpoint, as measured on my 34401A (last calibrated January 2019).

I blame the TEA thread - I'd never heard of these little gems before I was lured in. This is the sort of technology that put a man on the Monn...

[AVGresponding]

In the same vein as those £10/MHz used scopes on fleebay, here's an old DMM for £152.44 per digit!    

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FLUKE-8800A-8800A-USED-TESTED-CLEANED/392414593947

At least it's been tested and cleaned! And ships free (economy delivery)!   

[bd139]

Ugh there’s a lot of shit on eBay at the moment. The £150 tek 453A is killing me. It has been bid up to that ffs

[PA0PBZ]

In the same vein as those £10/MHz used scopes on fleebay, here's an old DMM for £152.44 per digit!    

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FLUKE-8800A-8800A-USED-TESTED-CLEANED/392414593947

At least it's been tested and cleaned! And ships free (economy delivery)!   

Don't forget to mention the 2 year warranty!

[tggzzz]

As someone that has (when forced and there was no alternative) moved stuff across frontiers professionally, that little paperwork can be a major pain in the arse.

See grizewald's opinions about what will happen with stuff sent to Sweden.

The clown has already started down that path. Today's papers report "The PM shrugged off 'hysteria' over issues like chlorinated chicken, joking that he thought Americans looked 'pretty well nourished'." He (and we) are about to find out how little bargaining power the UK has.

Yeah I guess if you have to do it as part of your job on a daily basis it's going to be a pain; for someone that might have to do it once a blue moon, it's less of an issue.

Arguably not.

If you look at customs declaration CN22 (that you put on the outside of something you send), you need to fill in the "HS tariff number", and sign that it is correct. If someone decides it is wrong, you have committed a criminal offence against a state. If that state is the UK, then you may find out just how powerful HMRC can be. Hint: they can do many intrusive things that the police cannot, e.g. bash your door in without any form of warrant.

Consider selling a nonfunctional Solartron 7081. Is that a DVM? (It doesn't work). Is it an antique? (It is certainly obsolete)

Consider selling a Julie Research VDR107 7 decade kelvin  varley divider. There's no category for that, so what do you put? If you think of it a potentiometer, it might be 85 33 39, or 85 33 40 90, etc. Or using a different search path, it might be a 90 30 33 20 90, or 90303900 or 90308900. But the latter may provoke immune responses!

Remember the penalties for getting it wrong. The principals in the Matrix Churchill affair only narrowly escaped long prison sentences when a minister (Alan Clarke) admitted he had been "economical with the actualité". None of the current bunch would think twice about lying through their teeth!

So, more than a little pain for the occasional user.

P.S. the Matrix Churchill example isn't too far fetched. I once had to import an HP8770, which turned out to be classed as a munition requiring heavyweight authorisation!

[AVGresponding]

This all seems to place the onus on the vendor rather than the recipient.

I'm aware of the powers of HMRC, I've even visited the bowels of Customs House in dear old Londinium, back in the way-back-when.

Given the quantity of stuff passing across borders nowadays, and the somewhat cavalier attitude to the description of what lies within (oft to be observed upon those little grey/black plastic bags from China), I think it unlikely to see much of an impact, save perhaps from people with an axe to grind and the occupation whereby they can exercise said grudge.

For the more specialised and small volume stuff you seem to be describing, I expect there may well be an additional paperwork burden; but again I say, is it really that large? And is having to do a little more paperwork a reason to vote one way or another?

I can see it having an impact in that prices might have to go up a little; after all, if the vendor has to spend more time doing paperwork, they are going to want to pass that on rather than absorb it. I don't see it completely destroying trade.

Hell, if prices do go up some, maybe it will persuade people not to buy so much shit that just ends up in landfill (not gonna hold my breath).


EDIT: I don't think the current bunch can even tell the difference between truth and lies, they seem to be firmly part of the "post truth" political generation.

[tggzzz]

This all seems to place the onus on the vendor rather than the recipient.

If you didn't realise that before making your statements, then you are like David Davies one month before the referendum. He confidently stated it would be easy to make trade agreements with Slovakia - the cretin didn't realise that would be illegal!

I'm aware of the powers of HMRC, I've even visited the bowels of Customs House in dear old Londinium, back in the way-back-when.

Given the quantity of stuff passing across borders nowadays, and the somewhat cavalier attitude to the description of what lies within (oft to be observed upon those little grey/black plastic bags from China), I think it unlikely to see much of an impact, save perhaps from people with an axe to grind and the occupation whereby they can exercise said grudge.

For the more specialised and small volume stuff you seem to be describing, I expect there may well be an additional paperwork burden; but again I say, is it really that large? And is having to do a little more paperwork a reason to vote one way or another?

I can see it having an impact in that prices might have to go up a little; after all, if the vendor has to spend more time doing paperwork, they are going to want to pass that on rather than absorb it. I don't see it completely destroying trade.

Hell, if prices do go up some, maybe it will persuade people not to buy so much shit that just ends up in landfill (not gonna hold my breath).

Well there are several straw man arguments there. Which bit of "non-tariff barrier" do you think doesn't apply to the likes of thee and me?

[med6753]

In the same vein as those £10/MHz used scopes on fleebay, here's an old DMM for £152.44 per digit!    

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/FLUKE-8800A-8800A-USED-TESTED-CLEANED/392414593947

At least it's been tested and cleaned! And ships free (economy delivery)!   

My 2nd 8800A cost $67 USD including tax and shipping. Granted, I had to replace a shorted cap in the power supply but after that it came up and is accurate.

[AVGresponding]

Of course I realised it; I'm pointing out that it isn't going to impact me personally, aside from the likelihood of some price changes. I can't see it affecting the price and shipping time of Chinesium gee-gaws one whit, though this corona-virus business likely will.

I also never said that non-tariff barriers won't or don't affect either myself or anyone else; clearly they do, and will. I merely believe that they are not national-economy breaking factors.

The French action regarding their VCR industry is an interesting example of why the EU works better for some people than others. It's a nice example of following the letter of the (EU) law whilst disregarding the spirit. The French are far from alone in this practice; indeed, if our spineless politicians had bothered to indulge in some of this instead of putting all their eggs in the City of London/Banking basket, there would probably have never been a need or even a call for a referendum. Farage would be a marginalised nutter with no real platform that no-one ever took seriously.


EDIT: I only came on to post an update on that 2.5kV bench PSU   

The vendor offered me 15% back (£6) which I accepted. They are happy to cut the plugs off any future heavy gear   

Not quite TE, but "vintage electronics", I bought (coincidentally from the same evilbay seller) a Marantz 5 disc CD player. Someone tried to elbow me off it, so I ended up having to pay £36.01 + £11 p&p.
Wouldn't you know it, the damn thing weighs a ton! Why do I keep doing this to myself?   
Poor thing is a bit beat up, and I'd say the laser needs a good clean, but works. I'll post pics at a later date, need some beauty sleep right now!   

[Specmaster]

       Now I surely will not plague you
       With such words as plaque and ague.

Unfortunately ague is normally pronounced to rhyme with Hague (the city).

Ob fact: Prior to the little ice age in Britain there was a feared disease know as the "Essex ague". It turns out this was malaria, transmitted - as it classically is - by the Anopheles mosquito. With the little ice age the mosquitoes died out, so did the disease, and now travelling to Essex is without fear of catching malaria. However, with climate change there is a risk that endemic malaria will once again return to Essex.

Bang goes the tourist trade then