Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Not really ok with anything. Just everyone sets themselves up for a fight. The three prevailing options are:

1. I want a Mac but I don’t want to pay for one thus I will use a hacked up VM or frankenmac.
2. I want to use Linux and am hiding the complexity and general churn and stack of failure conditions.
3. I want to use windows but it kicks me in the balls once a week.

Cheapest solution at the time is to buy a jock strap and put duct tape round windows’ feet 

A good thing to note is that if you do use something at work, it’s healthy to use something else at home. Keeps the problem domain different so it doesn’t feel like you take work home. I use Linux at work. And Apple can’t make keyboards that work. 

Edit: I watched a Japanese TV game show ages ago where there was a man who lived with a goat for a week in a single room until he basically went insane. I draw parallels to that and computers.

bd answered this one quite succinctly a year ago... this is still my go-to analogy.

It's not that she's the prettiest girl at the ball; or that she's a good girl either. It's that she's a cheap date, is likely to put out, and is most likely not an axe murderess.

mnem
Aaand now we've gone recursive...

[Wolfgang]

All of this talk about Windows 10 V Windows 7, XP etc makes me wonder if you are trying to run software that was written years ago when those other versions were current?
I know that personally in the early days after "upgrading" from 7 to 10, I was having horrendous problems but those have all disappeared now and it seems that whatever I want to run on it, does so very effectively as long as it was written with Win10 in mind. If I fish out a program used to work perfectly on Win7 or even XP then more often then not, it will not run correctly. I have got myself an old Dell Dimension E520 that I intend to install a copy of Win7 on specifically to run my collection of old games.

I also have to say that I made the move from 7 to 10 a week before 7 expired, and I was prepared for the worst. On 8 machines, partly 8 years old, everything just worked, and there was a lot of software on them (IDEs, engineering, math, office, ....). One part that did not want to cooperate was an old USB soundcard, but that was it. In total, its OK, and the transition with reinstalling all software on 8 machines took 2 days in total. Not too bad, IMHO. Now I would like to be left in peace for the next few years to come, regarding OS updates.

[Mr. Scram]

@Specmaster what I hate most is that Microsoft wants to tell me how I should work and that I should trust THEM with my data and everything. Right. I'd rather move my stuff to freebsd. Hell, I'd even prefer OS/390.

That plague is seen across the board now. Relinquishing control and adding complexity and black box dependencies is bound to make things better. 

[Mr. Scram]

I also have to say that I made the move from 7 to 10 a week before 7 expired, and I was prepared for the worst. On 8 machines, partly 8 years old, everything just worked, and there was a lot of software on them (IDEs, engineering, math, office, ....). One part that did not want to cooperate was an old USB soundcard, but that was it. In total, its OK, and the transition with reinstalling all software on 8 machines took 2 days in total. Not too bad, IMHO. Now I would like to be left in peace for the next few years to come, regarding OS updates.

Three years remaining on that one. I bet Microsoft is pretty miffed about having to support an OS for 3 years for the 16 remaining users.

[mnementh]

Worse.... there are STILL people using Nokia 521s out there. Windoze Phone 8/8.1. 

mnem
"Run, you fools!"

[Cubdriver]

@Neomys Sapiens I am bidding for one, currently ...

Look what I found in one of the not yet cleaned corners ...

Nice looking Strat, Saskia!

-Pat

[Specmaster]

@Specmaster what I hate most is that Microsoft wants to tell me how I should work and that I should trust THEM with my data and everything. Right. I'd rather move my stuff to freebsd. Hell, I'd even prefer OS/390.

I do believe that you can stop it phoning home, I think you might find this rather useful.

[Mr. Scram]

I do believe that you can stop it phoning home, I think you might find this rather useful.

Part of the problem is that Microsoft is currently behaving like a toddler after a Red Bull binge. You can stop it from doing what it does currently, but you need to be constantly on your toes for the next thing they try to sneak past you. Microsoft doesn't understand the meaning of no.

[mnementh]

At setup, you have to complete the install with no network connection. Then you will be given the option to install a local user account only. You'll be given a couple pages of security/privacy settings; select the most "NO!" answer you can on all of them. After that, follow the instructions in the above video; it's pretty good.

I ALWAYS uninstall OneDrive, and all the crapware games in the Start menu. Then, once you have that done, download & run O&O ShutUp10 with "Recommended Settings" and toggle off whatever other invasive processes you feel a need to kill as well. It's really good at shutting Cortana up and hogtying her pretty good.  You CAN leave it TSR and it will fix anything Winbloze tries to change; I just run it every other week or so as maintenance.

You can also make Win10 totally your local/domain user bitch by editing Account policies as outlined here: https://www.isunshare.com/windows-10/2-ways-to-disable-or-block-microsoft-account-in-windows-10.html

Good luck and welcome to the age of Winbloze As A Service...

mnem
*makes sign of the cross* Dominy, Dominy, Dominy...

[Specmaster]

I do believe that you can stop it phoning home, I think you might find this rather useful.

Part of the problem is that Microsoft is currently behaving like a toddler after a Red Bull binge. You can stop it from doing what it does currently, but you need to be constantly on your toes for the next thing they try to sneak past you. Microsoft doesn't understand the meaning of no.

While I understand that, how do you know that freeBSD and others are not secretly gathering data and phoning mum with it?

[Wolfgang]

@Specmaster what I hate most is that Microsoft wants to tell me how I should work and that I should trust THEM with my data and everything. Right. I'd rather move my stuff to freebsd. Hell, I'd even prefer OS/390.

OS/390? RACF? Green on Black? Punched Cards? JES2 and JCL? Where are the days gone ... Sniff. I had it all, and I dont miss a bit of the old world. Who does ?

[Mr. Scram]

While I understand that, how do you know that freeBSD and others are not secretly gathering data and phoning mum with it?

Microsoft isn't secretly gathering data. While they regularly obscure the nature and full extent of what is collected they also pretty much tell you to take it or leave it. Their way or the highway. Others not doing that is probably a good start. Monitoring what things are actually doing is also a good idea and has unfortunately become a necessary evil.

[mnementh]

Yeah, that's what ShutUp10 is for. You can pretty much turn Win10 into a domain install of 8.1 with a little tinkering.

mnem
*poot!*

[Cerebus]

While I understand that, how do you know that freeBSD and others are not secretly gathering data and phoning mum with it?

1) If you really want to you can read the source code and prove that. That has a tendency to keep people honest if they claim that it is not phoning home (which given the ethos of FreeBSD/OpenBSD and friends kind of doesn't really need saying).

2) xBSD is not made/produced/promulgated by a bunch of corporate lackeys with their eyes on the bottom line and their stock options. If you ask the standard question "qui bono" with respect to extracting/abstracting as much of your data as possible there is no gain for the xBSD folks in doing so, whereas the answer in respect of Microsoft/Google/whoever is staring you in the face.

[URI]

Ok, I spoke out a wish I feel like I have to go ahead..

..coming back to my new old 6824A Hewlett Packard Harrison amplifier/power supply 50V/1A.

I mostly finished checking and reworking the unit. It's not really a repair since it's working fine to it's specification and I mainly had to clean it up and redo the gorilla-style power cord "strain relief".

I posted pics of the front panel here already: swapped the binding posts and did a rough clean up. Have to get rid of some more stickers and sticker residue:


Left side: The mounting screws holding the big transformer inside were not there except for one. Used four slotted screws  to fix that gaining one original screw I could use to fasten the backplate better (the gorilla was everywhere; inside a screw holding the pcb was missing..) 


Bottom side: the original feet are combined screws holding the bottom plate of the housing and having a rubber head utilized as feet.
The rubber-ness was long gone, two of the screws were missing their rubber head leaving them just being screws -the two other had hard plastic heads -rubber without any elasticity left. I decided to go for self adhesive rubber feet for now:


Top side: cleaned up, nothing exciting except for the fact that all four screws are there...   
In fact, I lost one of the four clips that build the counterpart for the fastening screws for the top plate. Here is one:


I built the missing one from scratch using sheet metal cut out of an empty fish can (part of the dinner..):


Finally the back plate of the unit. I replaced the power cord and mounted it with a matching, nearly authentic strain relief:


Remember that:? (showed it here a couple of days ago and many pages back...):


My impression got even worse after removing the electrical tape:


It was not even soldered!     

I removed the power cord, removed the 5cm long remains of the older power cord, desoldered all power connections related to the mains power in  and rebuilt it with proper heat shrink isolation. Sorry no photos of that -I was so busy putting it back together, I forgot to shoot.

Now, the HP6824A has a nice new power cord H05RN-F 3G1.0.   


Ok, next posting will show some work inside the HP6824A -nothing exciting though.   

[Mr. Scram]

At setup, you have to complete the install with no network connection. Then you will be given the option to install a local user account only. You'll be given a couple pages of security/privacy settings; select the most "NO!" answer you can on all of them. After that, follow the instructions in the above video; it's pretty good.

I ALWAYS uninstall OneDrive, and all the crapware games in the Start menu. Then, once you have that done, download & run O&O ShutUp10 with recommended settings and whatever other invasive processes you feel a need to kill as well. It's really good at shutting Cortana up and hogtying her pretty good.  You CAN leave it TSR and it will fix anything Winbloze tries to change; I just run it every other week or so as maintenance.

Good luck and welcome to the age of Winbloze As A Service,

mnem
*makes sign of the cross* Dominy, Dominy, Dominy...

Shutop O&O worked fine for quite a bit but now has the undesired side effect of sometimes breaking bits of Intune, SSO and O365 because it's all interconnected in often opaque ways. I suspect that Microsoft knows full well people are trying to cripple their nonsense and don't mind at all when it's a huge pain because stuff just happens to break when you do. Whether it's active sabotage or happy accidents and malicious indifference I don't know.

[mnementh]

Yeah, and O&O fixes it a helluvalot faster than MickeySoft does. ANYTHING.    0rifice 365 seems to work fine for me... tho I do need to sign in separately for those and Family services, it does NOT try to make my PC part of the MS domain anymore. If you rely on Intune you should be using a domain build of 10 Pro anyways, which can easily eliminate all that crap and even stuff a sock in Cortana for you while you're at it. I WANT that authentication kept separate, thank you. 

While I understand that, how do you know that freeBSD and others are not secretly gathering data and phoning mum with it?

1) If you really want to you can read the source code and prove that. That has a tendency to keep people honest if they claim that it is not phoning home (which given the ethos of FreeBSD/OpenBSD and friends kind of doesn't really need saying).

2) xBSD is not made/produced/promulgated by a bunch of corporate lackeys with their eyes on the bottom line and their stock options. If you ask the standard question "qui bono" with respect to extracting/abstracting as much of your data as possible there is no gain for the xBSD folks in doing so, whereas the answer in respect of Microsoft/Google/whoever is staring you in the face.

Short version: Follow the money. Where's the money in Open-Source...? Selling you support. Where is it in Windows? Selling YOU. Fortunately, it's not a crime to make a PC your slave. Use Windoze10 like a rented mule, says I.

mnem
 

[VK5RC]

A bit off topic but not too far.
Recently my inherited (about 20yo)Echo ES 2400  2-stroke blower decided not to go. Spark but no smell of fuel, how hard can it be?
The path was similar to many TE repair 'hunts', fortunately Echo made large numbers of these, they use a common Zama carburetor - but unlike most IC manufacturers they decided to only put half of the model number on the side of the carbie. Eventually found the part number C1U 44B and the corresponding carbie rebuild kit.
Armed with the parts - in I went - lit magnification helped but rapidly confronted by rust and a very stuck metering pin valve. The only way to get that b******d out was to drill it out and hope I didn't drill into the valve seat! By using a drill press and removing about a mm at a time, the bits were removed and the seat cleaned. The orifice was full of gelled/waxy petrol (gas) - solvents didn't help and needed to be drilled out with a 0.5mm drill. The final filter screen was also significantly blocked and replaced. All gaskets/diaphragm were replaced as well.
Amazingly it started on the 3rd pull.
I still think that 2 strokes are the work of the devil!
Rob

[mnementh]

Ok, I spoke out a wish I feel like I have to go ahead...      ...coming back to my new old 6824A Hewlett Packard Harrison amplifier/power supply 50V/1A.

Well, technically it's not a "black tape hack"...

mnem

[URI]

...work on HP Harrison 6824A continued:

The 6824A has a fan inside. It's an AC type and not a standard form factor nowadays:


All I did at first was wiping some dust off. Looked fine then.
After reassembling the whole unit I switched it on and was immediately annoyed by a rattling sound of the fan. It didn't rattle at all before I wiped it clean.   

A closer look revealed that this fan is fully serviceable as long as it's only grease missing on the bearings.   
I did only one shot without the blade wheel -after that I forgot to shoot, again, sorry. But one can clearly see that the cap held by the two screws can be removed without destroying the fan (as it is with modern fans used in computers, test gear,...).


Behind that cap there's a spring ring that stops the rotor from slipping off the axle. After removing that I could pull the rotor revealing the axle and bearings were dry like a desert. After applying a fair amount of grease I put it all back together. Now the fan is running smoothly again, the rattling sound is gone.   

That's all, I'm afraid.
I did some testing according to the manual to check if it's still working to spec -and it is.   
I checked all electrolytic caps and they're all fine! That was quality built to last, back then. I'm impressed.
BTW: No Rifas in this unit. Would fail the EMC test for CE conformity today, I guess.   

I also tested thermal stability, here are some extra pics for you.
I checked the 6824A with full power on +50V, -50V and 43V/400Hz. I used my new bipolar load for it:   


I used two 100Ohms/50W resistors in parallel. I mounted them onto a copper CPU cooler using copper wire -I have some of those coolers laying around for building precision shunts sometime in the future. A 12V 80mmx80mm fan is pushing the heat out of the cooling fins. The piece of heat shrink tube was added there as a temperature warning marker.

The CPU cooler is a decent one from rack server units, I guess. For testing a HP Harrison power supply it's appropriate to use a HP cooler, even it's the wrong HP.   

[tautech]

A bit off topic but not too far.
Recently my inherited (about 20yo)Echo ES 2400  2-stroke blower decided not to go. Spark but no smell of fuel, how hard can it be?
The path was similar to many TE repair 'hunts', fortunately Echo made large numbers of these, they use a common Zama carburetor - but unlike most IC manufacturers they decided to only put half of the model number on the side of the carbie. Eventually found the part number C1U 44B and the corresponding carbie rebuild kit.
Armed with the parts - in I went - lit magnification helped but rapidly confronted by rust and a very stuck metering pin valve. The only way to get that b******d out was to drill it out and hope I didn't drill into the valve seat! By using a drill press and removing about a mm at a time, the bits were removed and the seat cleaned. The orifice was full of gelled/waxy petrol (gas) - solvents didn't help and needed to be drilled out with a 0.5mm drill. The final filter screen was also significantly blocked and replaced. All gaskets/diaphragm were replaced as well.
Amazingly it started on the 3rd pull.
I still think that 2 strokes are the work of the devil!
Rob

Nice save. 
In another life I worked on this sort of stuff for a living and a bit surprised the carby was full of rust as if it was equipped with the original Echo tank filter there should be NO water get to the carb.
OEM was a porous nylon jobby and they might be using nylon screen now. They were occasionally replaced with felt filters by those that didn't know any better  as a blocked porous nylon filter is a symptom the gas is contaminated with water or the wrong type of 2 stroke oil had been used.
The strongly dyed 2 stroke oils were the worst for blocking those porous nylon filters.

If it has been replaced with a felt filter, get rid of it as it's no doubt responsible for letting muck through that partially blocked the main jet filter....or is it the main inlet filter before the needle valve that was partially blocked ?

[Neomys Sapiens]

All of this talk about Windows 10 V Windows 7, XP etc makes me wonder if you are trying to run software that was written years ago when those other versions were current?
I know that personally in the early days after "upgrading" from 7 to 10, I was having horrendous problems but those have all disappeared now and it seems that whatever I want to run on it, does so very effectively as long as it was written with Win10 in mind. If I fish out a program used to work perfectly on Win7 or even XP then more often then not, it will not run correctly. I have got myself an old Dell Dimension E520 that I intend to install a copy of Win7 on specifically to run my collection of old games.

You ARE funny. Most SW that I am having such problems with is running under XP, some of it runs under nothing else. As a contrast, my Simatic S5 package runs under W98 but NOT under XP???
(there was not much that did not run under XP). Very much HW-related programs relied on the direct access that was so rudely cut off after XP.
My Micrografx Designer and Flowcharter, which I use for technical illustration, could not be convinced/tortured to run under anything later than XP. Well, you can't throw some hundred bucks away for nothing, especially as most features in newer equivalent SW are of no use to me, like 3D and pseudo-photo rendering. Throwing that SW away would hurt, because I use it for very very complex block diagrams and other related graphics and for explanatory small circuit diagrams. I have a library of stuff I've drawn over 20 years with this SW, including having made a large library of IEC compliant symbols.
On my desk sits a compact tower running W98SE. It contains my Autocad lite and ECS-CAD, which can't be removed. For XP I have a stable and well tended T30, and the T60 running W7 would be probably fine if I could manage to get the memory to 4G. But that would not be comfortable for W10.

I do not have many problems with SW that ran under W7 and does not run under W10. Indeed, some SW (but not much) that did NOT run under W7 ran again under W10. But I have not tried much of it and it was not at home. At work, unexplicably I was able to run a RF simulation aid which could not be run under W8 (which we had only for a year.

[VK5RC]

@tautech - working on 2 strokes for a living - I salute you Sir!
I need to have a look at the tank filter - I don't think it has been touched since new.
I am of two minds how to leave the unit, it will often sit - not used for 3-4months, leaving fuel in it risks gelling, if left dry does it risk more rust ( bit of a damp area in winter)?

[mnementh]

A bit off topic but not too far.
Recently my inherited (about 20yo)Echo ES 2400  2-stroke blower decided not to go. Spark but no smell of fuel, how hard can it be?
The path was similar to many TE repair 'hunts', fortunately Echo made large numbers of these, they use a common Zama carburetor - but unlike most IC manufacturers they decided to only put half of the model number on the side of the carbie. Eventually found the part number C1U 44B and the corresponding carbie rebuild kit.
Armed with the parts - in I went - lit magnification helped but rapidly confronted by rust and a very stuck metering pin valve. The only way to get that b******d out was to drill it out and hope I didn't drill into the valve seat! By using a drill press and removing about a mm at a time, the bits were removed and the seat cleaned. The orifice was full of gelled/waxy petrol (gas) - solvents didn't help and needed to be drilled out with a 0.5mm drill. The final filter screen was also significantly blocked and replaced. All gaskets/diaphragm were replaced as well.
Amazingly it started on the 3rd pull.
I still think that 2 strokes are the work of the devil!
Rob

Nice save. 
In another life I worked on this sort of stuff for a living and a bit surprised the carby was full of rust as if it was equipped with the original Echo tank filter there should be NO water get to the carb.
OEM was a porous nylon jobby and they might be using nylon screen now. They were occasionally replaced with felt filters by those that didn't know any better  as a blocked porous nylon filter is a symptom the gas is contaminated with water or the wrong type of 2 stroke oil had been used.
The strongly dyed 2 stroke oils were the worst for blocking those porous nylon filters.

If it has been replaced with a felt filter, get rid of it as it's no doubt responsible for letting muck through that partially blocked the main jet filter....or is it the main inlet filter before the needle valve that was partially blocked ?

I know you're probably going to hate me, but I usually just get the cheap Chinese equivalent from AliEx anymore. $8-12, takes 10 min to swap it out; it's good for 2-3 years if you replace the filter (they often have a kit of new weighted filter, fuel lines, carb & extra primer bulb(s) at that price) at the same time.

I used to be a true believer in "If a man made it, a man can fix it!"; but they make these fluxing things to be disposable and fixed thusly, and my time is worth something. 

Hell, a brand-new ZAMA C1U-K44 is only $35 right now... how much time can you afford to spend unfluxxorizing the old one for the difference between that and the kit? 

mnem

[tautech]

@tautech - working on 2 strokes for a living - I salute you Sir!

Like any traditional combustion engine simple principles apply for them to operate correctly.

I need to have a look at the tank filter - I don't think it has been touched since new.
I am of two minds how to leave the unit, it will often sit - not used for 3-4months, leaving fuel in it risks gelling, if left dry does it risk more rust ( bit of a damp area in winter)?

If the fuel mix gels use another 2 stroke oil. I know, we all like the dyed stuff as at a glance you can tell it's a 2 stroke mix but I've flushed far too much of that muck from fuel tanks to need to do it with my own equipment. 
Your can empty tanks for storage but DON'T run the carb outta fuel as when you come to refuel it and try for a start the needle valve is often stuck tight as it's dry with no fuel to keep it free. That amounts to another carb strip to free the valve.....another good earner in days gone by. 
Generally I never bother draining fuel mix from tanks as the Castrol Activ we use is well behaved and doesn't gel.
Some of my stuff might not get used for 6 months and they're never any great problem to start.
Edit to add.
Storing with fuel onboard does risk perishing of the tank pickup tube if it's rubber based however fuel or not they do degrade over time.

Although Murphy could be watching (the bastard !) as I dragged my big Husky 3120XP out which needs a start and check before we need to bole a couple of big pines before it gets too wet to deal with them. It's never been a problem in the past but we all know the Murphy !