Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

How the hell did you manage to futz that up then, you had it set perfect before 

May I kindly remind you that you are actually asking this our beloved bd139 from the TEA forum?   

You sir, do have a point, I wonder how long it will be before we see the demise of the Rigol and the Siglent then 

[bd139]

Hold my beer! 

How the hell did you manage to futz that up then, you had it set perfect before 

I don't think I had it right before. Problem was it has variable bandwidth IF filter and a narrow audio filter. I mostly ran it in 0.7KHz width and never at 1.5KHz. But now I've recalibrated the audio filtering I prefer that to the IF filtering for band scanning so I have left it in 1.5MHz IF mode while scanning. So something I missed to start with. Also the original cal was done without a signal generator using the internal birdy but the moment you put the AF board in it, you can't hear the damn thing!  . I think the 1.5KHz filter is set on the wrong sideband. Working it out now.

[Specmaster]

£8 more from Telonic plus I get it tomorrow 

Edit: just ordered it. Anyone want a Tek 2245? 

Tautech: I now own something Siglent 

At least it looks like a normal scope, if a little gaudy with its pinkness, should have been a manly blue 

[mnementh]

Come on, man... I have a wife & kids with all their smartpwns, iPuds, faptops and random bits of IoT buggery. If I tried to force them all into ONLY hardline-capable devices, they'd Zergling rush my fat ass and hang me up by my nutsack in a tree until I came to my senses. 

I picked this up at the Thrift because A) CAD$7 & 2) similar to the one in my living room owned by Rogers Communication, so curious about what is inside & whether it can run OPEN-WRT (appears no...  ) or at least maybe configured to serve VPN to the whole house.

(SNIP)
mnem
 

LMAO at the thought of a dwagon being suspended by his nutsack  .
Hmm, I never said you had to have a wired system, hell does anybody rely on just a wired system at homes these days  I know only too well just how much wireless gear you have in your household, but its only advantage is its sheer convenience, it sure as hell is no , even if he is as red as the Welsh dwagon 

Dude... lookit the specs. Sure it's no Aruba modular mesh WiFi network, but for home WiFi it has more than average throughput and independent connections. Sure, if I wanted to spend $300 on something from ASUS I could get better; but not by a lot. Plus, MY VR machine and the TV in the LR are connected via hardline to GBe. 

To get any more real throughput I'd have to go 10GBe... and to utilize that would require bumping up to commercial ISP or at least a frac t1.

mnem

[AVGresponding]

    This https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/USB-Electric-Rechargeable-ARC-Flameless-Windproof-Plasma-Lighter-Aluminum-Metal/123937087472 arrived earlier, and it didn't take long to confirm something I suspected already.   I am not a "responsible person"      It set the packaging on fire with impressive speed, and will happily make holes in about anything that will fit between the electrodes...   

@mnem, since you seem to always have your snout in some not-quite-new pc or other, I'm asking your advice; which will give better results, dvi to hdmi, or dp to hdmi adaptor?

Depends. If a very expensive GPU, definitely zap the fuck out of all DisplayPorts with extreme prejudice FIRST. DisplayPort connects direct to the GPU so it can provide full HDCP and high refresh rate up to 4K (now 8K, I understand) high BW video. DVI is usually buffered by a scan-converter chip so it can also deliver analog VGA with the correct adapter. 

THEN... if you haven't been discovered... you can nuke the video ports on the MB, then USB ports. Ethernet ports are pretty well hardened against HV; and it's easy to get around a fried one: Just let it run until the chip melts itself off the MB, then plug a NIC in a PCIE slot. Even if you are successful in killing the MB, it can usually be replaced cheaply and Ram/Processor recycled so not a lot of real destruction for your efforts.

If it's an APU-based workstation, you should consider very carefully: Using that machine is an ongoing daily punishment; killing it MAY be doing your victim a favor.

mnem

I don't want to kill it, I want to use it   

The adaptors seem cheap enough on fleabay, I guess I'll try a dp to hdmi first.

[Specmaster]

Come on, man... I have a wife & kids with all their smartpwns, iPuds, faptops and random bits of IoT buggery. If I tried to force them all into ONLY hardline-capable devices, they'd Zergling rush my fat ass and hang me up by my nutsack in a tree until I came to my senses. 

I picked this up at the Thrift because A) CAD$7 & 2) similar to the one in my living room owned by Rogers Communication, so curious about what is inside & whether it can run OPEN-WRT (appears no...  ) or at least maybe configured to serve VPN to the whole house.

(SNIP)
mnem
 

LMAO at the thought of a dwagon being suspended by his nutsack  .
Hmm, I never said you had to have a wired system, hell does anybody rely on just a wired system at homes these days  I know only too well just how much wireless gear you have in your household, but its only advantage is its sheer convenience, it sure as hell is no , even if he is as red as the Welsh dwagon 

Dude... lookit the specs. Sure it's no Aruba modular mesh WiFi network, but for home WiFi it has more than average throughput and independent connections. Sure, if I wanted to spend $300 on something from ASUS I could get better; but not by a lot. Plus, MY VR machine and the TV in the LR are connected via hardline to GBe. 

To get any more real throughput I'd have to go 10GBe... and to utilize that would require bumping up to commercial ISP or at least a frac t1.

mnem

Oh yeah, the specs read alright, but how much of that is marketing wank?

[bd139]

K2 now calibrated properly. You can slice through the noise with this thing like nothing. Best filters on a radio ever. No horrible muddy ringing DSPs - variable bandwidth crystal filter and two stage LC active audio filter and fully analogue noise blanker FTW 

[med6753]

If you recall several weeks ago I swapped out the vertical board from a parts mule to my 2nd 485 in an attempt to fix a peaking issue in the final vertical output. That swap was unsuccessful and the scope refused to power up. And after putting the old vertical board back in the scope still refused to power up. I determined that the +25V was causing the PSU to trip but I did not find any shorts. I did extensive resistance comparisons with my other functional 485 and found nothing to indicate why it was tripping. I thought it might have been the final vertical amp IC improperly mounted  but that's OK too. So I tossed it into the TE closet to work another day and today was the day.

And today I found the cause. This delay line is partially open. Across the 2 center conductors it should read 54 ohms. This one is reading 100 ohms. From the center conductors to ground should read 155 ohms. This one is reading 330 ohms. So why is that causing the PSU to trip? Simple. It's a transmission line. The drivers are seeing high SWR. As a result they draw high current which in turn causes the +25V to trip.

I do have a spare delay line in the parts mule. But do you see what it's gonna take to swap it over? Would you feel like doing it when you already have a functional 485? Not this boy. At least not right now. Perhaps after I catch up on all the other pending stuff I'll tackle this cluster.   

[mnementh]

@mnem, since you seem to always have your snout in some not-quite-new pc or other, I'm asking your advice; which will give better results, dvi to hdmi, or dp to hdmi adaptor?[/color][/b]

Depends. If a very expensive GPU, definitely zap the fuck out of all DisplayPorts with extreme prejudice FIRST. DisplayPort connects direct to the GPU so it can provide full HDCP and high refresh rate up to 4K (now 8K, I understand) high BW video. DVI is usually buffered by a scan-converter chip so it can also deliver analog VGA with the correct adapter. 

THEN... if you haven't been discovered... you can nuke the video ports on the MB, then USB ports. Ethernet ports are pretty well hardened against HV; and it's easy to get around a fried one: Just let it run until the chip melts itself off the MB, then plug a NIC in a PCIE slot. Even if you are successful in killing the MB, it can usually be replaced cheaply and Ram/Processor recycled so not a lot of real destruction for your efforts.

If it's an APU-based workstation, you should consider very carefully: Using that machine is an ongoing daily punishment; killing it MAY be doing your victim a favor.

mnem

I don't want to kill it, I want to use it      The adaptors seem cheap enough on fleabay, I guess I'll try a dp to hdmi first.

The information you need is still in there. 

Yes; DisplayPort provides the equivalent of a dual-link HDMI connection, so definitely the better choice; also, DisplayPort by default also carries digital audio over HDMI, which DVI cannot do. 

mnem
No  for YOU!!!

[Cerebus]

Got the DG822 and my word it's one ugly motherfucker. It is however refreshingly silent.

Well, thanks to McBryce above, we now know who the product designer was:

[mnementh]

LMAO at the thought of a dwagon being suspended by his nutsack  .
Hmm, I never said you had to have a wired system, hell does anybody rely on just a wired system at homes these days  I know only too well just how much wireless gear you have in your household, but its only advantage is its sheer convenience, it sure as hell is no , even if he is as red as the Welsh dwagon 

Dude... lookit the specs. Sure it's no Aruba modular mesh WiFi network, but for home WiFi it has more than average throughput and independent connections. Sure, if I wanted to spend $300 on something from ASUS I could get better; but not by a lot. Plus, MY VR machine and the TV in the LR are connected via hardline to GBe. 

To get any more real throughput I'd have to go 10GBe... and to utilize that would require bumping up to commercial ISP or at least a frac t1.

mnem

Oh yeah, the specs read alright, but how much of that is marketing wank?

None of it on that sheet is marketing wank... it's all technical specs & I understand what it means. Cable MODEMS work similarly to how a T1 is broken up; the main difference is a much more advanced channel modulation scheme.

   I'm paying for 100/10 & I'm getting 190/16 right now, often as high as 225/20. My Rogers Cable MODEM has 8 live channels on the wire, which is typical for up to 250/50 service.

None of that makes ANY difference to THIS router tho... what I want to do is reconfigure it for a closed subnet over GBe with VPN so I can manage my own home network AFTER the Rogers MODEM.

It has great hardware with plenty of horsepower to do what I want; The only thing that stands in the way of doing THAT is software... even if I CAN configure the stock FW to do what I want, I'm not sure I want to trust the ISP-designed FW in this thing, which doubtless is full of backdoors for their mismanagement team and already has a well-known WPS exploit (which I always turn off by default anyways).

*sigh*

I got my money's worth just tearing it apart to see what's inside.  Worst case, I'll still get a nice compact 60W PSU and $5 worth of cords out of the deal if I can't find/install a generic FW on the thing.

mnem

[tggzzz]

And today I found the cause. This delay line is partially open. Across the 2 center conductors it should read 54 ohms. This one is reading 100 ohms. From the center conductors to ground should read 155 ohms. This one is reading 330 ohms. So why is that causing the PSU to trip? Simple. It's a transmission line. The drivers are seeing high SWR. As a result they draw high current which in turn causes the +25V to trip.

Why do you think the reading between delay line conductors should be anything other than very high? Apart, of course, from the components outside the delay line.

Is it 100ohms when measured at both ends of the delay line? Might not be if there's a break where the delay line is attached to the board (which is more likely than an internal break).

Do you have a TDR that could look at the delay line to see if there's a break/short somewhere?

Have you tried using ext trig? The ext trig relay K410 (implies +15V power ) changes what's driving the delay line, thus isolating U410 R418 R419.

[mnementh]

I've got to admit I have a hard time believing in a delay line with a center conductor that's actually open... they're armor-shielded coax in a completely protected stationary installation. Insulation burned away causing a short from HV abuse, yeah... but hard to believe open.

mnem
Of course, if ANYbody could make it happen, it's med. 

[med6753]

And today I found the cause. This delay line is partially open. Across the 2 center conductors it should read 54 ohms. This one is reading 100 ohms. From the center conductors to ground should read 155 ohms. This one is reading 330 ohms. So why is that causing the PSU to trip? Simple. It's a transmission line. The drivers are seeing high SWR. As a result they draw high current which in turn causes the +25V to trip.

Why do you think the reading between delay line conductors should be anything other than very high? Apart, of course, from the components outside the delay line.

Is it 100ohms when measured at both ends of the delay line? Might not be if there's a break where the delay line is attached to the board (which is more likely than an internal break).

Do you have a TDR that could look at the delay line to see if there's a break/short somewhere?

Have you tried using ext trig? The ext trig relay K410 (implies +15V power ) changes what's driving the delay line, thus isolating U410 R418 R419.

When I measured the delay line end to end one of the conductors is open. So it's FUBAR. Which explains why it's reading 100 ohms on the other conductor because I'm not seeing the other driver.

[mnementh]

Well done. You've lived up to my hype. 

mnem
 

[med6753]

Well done. You've lived up to my hype. 

mnem
 

I swear this 485 is jinx'ed or has a witches hex on it. It's the same one that I fought with the trigger issue for months until I finally gave up and swapped out the entire trigger board and THEN still crapped out after a day with a bad IC.

[BU508A]

Have you checked the serial number for a "666" pattern?   

[med6753]

Have you checked the serial number for a "666" pattern?   

No "666" in the S/N but right now an exorcist couldn't hurt. 

[mnementh]

    Just have Phil come visit with his Zap-a-ma-doodle and put the final nail in the coffin... 

mnem
Seriously... It's time to cut your losses on this psycho bitch. Are you sure there isn't some redhead DNA in that thing...?

[med6753]

It's back in the TE closet to work another day. Or I may decide screw it and have 2 parts mules to support the good 485.

Tomorrow I plan to further abuse myself by putting (again) the 535A on it's side to perform the compensation adjustments on the 1A2 plug-in. I hope that is the LAST time I have to do that shenanigans.     

[bd139]

Sell the tunnel diodes and buy some beer

[mnementh]

+1!!! 

mnem
And I don't even LIKE beer...

[bd139]

You don't have to worry about liking it after a couple of cans 

[tggzzz]

And today I found the cause. This delay line is partially open. Across the 2 center conductors it should read 54 ohms. This one is reading 100 ohms. From the center conductors to ground should read 155 ohms. This one is reading 330 ohms. So why is that causing the PSU to trip? Simple. It's a transmission line. The drivers are seeing high SWR. As a result they draw high current which in turn causes the +25V to trip.

Why do you think the reading between delay line conductors should be anything other than very high? Apart, of course, from the components outside the delay line.

Is it 100ohms when measured at both ends of the delay line? Might not be if there's a break where the delay line is attached to the board (which is more likely than an internal break).

Do you have a TDR that could look at the delay line to see if there's a break/short somewhere?

Have you tried using ext trig? The ext trig relay K410 (implies +15V power ) changes what's driving the delay line, thus isolating U410 R418 R419.

When I measured the delay line end to end one of the conductors is open. So it's FUBAR. Which explains why it's reading 100 ohms on the other conductor because I'm not seeing the other driver.

The most likely place for a break is at the end connection.
If the end isn't socketed, the first thing I would do is resolder any connection - easy and there's a small chance it might help. Is it possible to shorten the cable slightly?
A TDR might indicate where the fault is.

[WastelandTek]

Does anyone remember what these crappy old connectors were called?



And does anyone want some?