Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

Yeah. Probably full of piss and hair as well if the dog is that badly behaved.

Attempting to locate a decent chair for the bench refactor at the moment. Not going well. There was a pretty high end Aeron with a broken base that went round the corner on ebay for £25 which I missed. Could have repaired that for £50. Need to up the game 

[xrunner]

"Lightly chewed" ? 

I see a new market in doggie entertainment - squeaky oscilloscope rubber toys! 

[tggzzz]

Wandering around ebay while waiting for my soup to heat up and found a TG501 for 700USD...

eBay auction: # 124055090591

Here's my favorite part (though the bit about what a bargain it is compared to retail is a close second):

If you make offer less than BIN, I will substitute an earlier TG501 that may have issues/need repair. The only way I will send you the TG501 at a lesser offer is if you are in a foreign country trying to reduce your import tax (based on ebay sell price) but are willing to make up the difference to me in a separate payment.

The seller is also offering an SG504 for, yes, 1000USD. 

eBay auction: #124052539499

I gotta say that is some optimistic pricing. The good news is my stack of TM500 plug-ins looks to be worth close to 13000USD. Who knew? 

Many people have made comments about seller 2465b "uprating" 2445b scopes.

[WastelandTek]

I thought "reforming" was a myth

[Cubdriver]

I thought "reforming" was a myth

Not in my experience.  Old, but otherwise good (as in not dried out) electrolytics have responded well to my efforts.

-Pat

[mnementh]

Fucking hell this is a good one:   https://www.ebay.co.uk   /itm/202898493073   “This has been used for many years, and two of the knobs have also been 'lightly chewed' by the dog!”   

For 25 clams...? If it were within driving distance I'd totally buy it, even with the HANTEK on the bench. A nice little project.

mnem
Bet you a dollar the "dog" in question was one of his own pups...

[worsthorse]

Wandering around ebay while waiting for my soup to heat up and found a TG501 for 700USD...

eBay auction: # 124055090591

Here's my favorite part (though the bit about what a bargain it is compared to retail is a close second):

If you make offer less than BIN, I will substitute an earlier TG501 that may have issues/need repair. The only way I will send you the TG501 at a lesser offer is if you are in a foreign country trying to reduce your import tax (based on ebay sell price) but are willing to make up the difference to me in a separate payment.

If you're going to indulge in conspiracy to fraudulently evade tax it's a little stupid to leave written evidence sitting around in public. However, it is very helpful to any potential customers to clearly indicate up front that you're a crook.

Of course, because ebay is a socially conscious good corporate citizen, it deals with reports of activity like this immediately.

Oh wait, no they don't.

Nevermind.

[mnementh]

I thought "reforming" was a myth

It's like desulfating PbA batteries. If you catch one from a reputable maker just before it completely shits the bed, you can often restore adequate functionality for a while; usually just long enough to make the device in question someone else's problem.  Rarely do they ever come back down to an acceptable ESR, and when they do, it doesn't last long.

However... a lot of older equipment was designed using the mantra "Too much is never enough" re: brute force filtering; therefore often have 2x-10x as much as is absolutely necessary for the device to function. Many of those you could probably restore using the soda-newspaper-foil capacitors we all made in tech school. No surprise then that the "just a little better" you can sometimes get from "reforming" is enough to restore the device to service.

From a service standpoint... taking the capacitor out of circuit to perform the reforming is usually the majority of the hassle; might as well just replace the damn thing as spend hours, days or weeks tickling its tender vittles with varying DC & AC voltages.

mnem
As with all things found on the internet, take with a pinch of salt big enough to pickle a dwagon.

[med6753]

I thought "reforming" was a myth

It is a slow and tedious process involving ramping up voltage and monitoring current over an extended period. But step one of the process is you must disconnect the capacitor out of circuit. Hell...if I have to do that then might as well change it out and be done with it. 

Edit...what the dragon just said above me. 

[mnementh]

Didn't I just say that...? Like... JUST NOW...?

[EDIT]

mnem
*harangue-a-dwagon*

[med6753]

Didn't I just say that...? Like... JUST NOW...?

mnem
*harangue-a-dwagon*

We be on the same wavelength....that's a scary thought!   

[mnementh]

*points up*

 

mnem
I will stalk ONLY YOU.

[med6753]

LMAO.

You'll be bored. 

[mnementh]

Too late. Got so bored I made myself a bowl of chicken soup just so I could go crackers.

mnem
Yeah, yeah, yeah... not every joke is a slam-dunk.

[Cubdriver]

I thought "reforming" was a myth

It is a slow and tedious process involving ramping up voltage and monitoring current over an extended period. But step one of the process is you must disconnect the capacitor out of circuit. Hell...if I have to do that then might as well change it out and be done with it. 

Edit...what the dragon just said above me. 

That's why I like my CV/CC power supplies.  Set the current limit to 5mA or so, and the voltage to the cap's rated max, isolate the cap, turn it on and let it run.  As long as the voltage starts heading north towards the setpoint reasonably quickly, I can then let it do its thing with minimal supervision.  If it reforms, great - little effort was involved and it can stay.  If not, then it gets surgery.  This is really only something I attempt on can type filter caps that are either unavailable or very $$ and in things like test gear that used quality parts.

-Pat

[WastelandTek]

another vote for no stuffing

I do like the way Paul C does it.  He uses insulated standoffs soldered to the existing cans terminals.  The top of the chassis looks original and you don't have to mount terminal strips.

I just wish I knew where to get the standoffs he uses.

I don't know where he gets those standoffs either...

Is anyone in here in his Patreon?  If so maybe you could ask?

[Specmaster]

another vote for no stuffing

I do like the way Paul C does it.  He uses insulated standoffs soldered to the existing cans terminals.  The top of the chassis looks original and you don't have to mount terminal strips.

I just wish I knew where to get the standoffs he uses.

I don't know where he gets those standoffs either...

Is anyone in here in his Patreon?  If so maybe you could ask?

Yes I'm in his Patreon, if you could point me towards the video where he talks about or uses these stand-off's I could then raise the question directly with him?

[WastelandTek]

Yes I'm in his Patreon, if you could point me towards the video where he talks about or uses these stand-off's I could then raise the question directly with him?

  22:26

Thank you, that would be awesome!!

[Specmaster]

With the talk about calculators and all the RPN rubbish  going around here of late, I decided that maybe it would be a good idea to start the restoration of some the calculators I acquired a while back with that in mind These being namely a Commodore PR100 purchased new many years ago but the internal rechargeable batteries died and a Texas Ti58 and Ti59 which were purchased a few years ago as restoration projects.

The PR100 is now up and running nicely, just have to find the mains' adaptor for it and remember how to program it, a couple pics below.

The Ti58 is also fixed and working (I have a master library module for this somewhere) but I need to get a 2 pin plug in order to recharge the battery without having to open the back each time to clip the crock clips from my bench supply up to it. These Texas calculators of the time were different from the rest, they used a mains transformer and took low voltage AC into the calculator via the 2 pin interface onto 4 diodes in bridge configuration. I suppose I could dremmel the side wall just below the card reader to a suitable thickness to accommodate a 2.5 or 3.5mm jack socket and feed a 6VDC into the calculator directly onto the back of the connections to the 2pin interface and the volt drop across the diodes will reduce the voltage fed to the batteries to approx 4.8V. Does anyone know where I could obtain these 2 pin plugs from to fit the interface?

The Ti59 currently has a keyboard fault, only certain keys are being read by the system so more work is required on this one.

[beanflying]

Because sometimes you need a few 

Local trash and treasure market... 

[tautech]

Nice clever ! 

[mnementh]

Ifni Save Me...

How many times I've told myself I wanted to get away from this archaic platform... and today I bought this because A) It was $US34 and 2) It came with my first girlfriend^*.

The Ferengi in me says I should immediately part it out and put the money towards saving up for a PS5. The rest of me says "Fuck that noize... go fondle Lady Croft just one more time; for old times' sake..."

Of course you know it's already connected to the network, downloading updates.

mnem
^{*EVERY true nerd's first "going steady".} 

[mnementh]

   Because sometimes you need a few     Local trash and treasure market...

There is a world of hurt right there on that countertop...   

mnem

[Sam Spastic]

I love my IT-11.  Have a test lead setup to monitor current and voltage, and to insert a decade box for voltage reduction.  So all NOS caps get run thru that setup.  Stuff that looks godawful gets pulled replaced then tested.

[edavid]

In case anyone needs more DMM digits, here's a decent deal on a well-optioned Fluke 8505A ($106ppd) : eBay auction: #184013841856

No relation to the seller, just hoping someone will remove the temptation.