Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[URI]

In other news...

installed the Frankenstein-like style built* HP Agilent 8110A 150MHz two channel pulse generator into my rack and ran a quick test with both channels:


I'd like to mod it and make the display switchable on/off to save some of its remaining life -spare parts are available at keysight but over $1k is a bit hefty.   
How could I do that the most easy and less harmful way? Just switch the display modules power? It has a small switch mode ps on board..
Any ideas welcome. 

It has the optional 81106A PLL board in it that improves some performance figures significantly:


Traced on my daily driver oscilloscope for observation:


This is the trace after ~5hrs runtime with infinite persistence display switched on:


Doesn't look too bad, does it?   
Performance checks according to the manual still to be done though.

Hope to be able to use it for the performance checks and calibration of my newold HP 5370B.   

*-Thats for a story to be told in another posting...   

[URI]

My DHL delivery has been at stop 209 of 216 for the last 2 hours 

Stop 209:

...tension rises...   

and after stop 215 the driver ends his shift and hands over the undelivered items to the tomorrow turn...   

[AVGresponding]

This is absolutely normal; a byproduct of oxidation which happens upon exposure to air with ANY baryonic matter to some extent. Carbon is a stable element, but the binders used to keep it on the silicone membrane keypad degrade with age and the surface becomes "glazed".

Add a little electrolysis from the charged PCB contacts and you get this condition which the only real cure is cleaning the carbon pads with alcohol to expose fresh carbon matrix every few years or replacing the silicone membrane itself with a brand-new one. And since they haven't been made in decades, that's pretty hard to make happen; hence the carbon pad repair kits. 

mnem
 

Good luck getting helium to oxidise   :3

Ha-ha... and the list of similar bell-end cases goes on & on. Given the right conditions and enough time etc...

mnem
"The difficult we accomplish as scheduled. Impossible may take slightly longer."

Nope. It takes very special conditions to get helium to bond with anything, and compounds with both helium and oxygen in them are as yet still only theoretical, and rather unlikely to occur in Earth normal air.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helium

[Saskia]

113 GPa is some pressure that you normally don't get in the atmosphere.
You can get He to marry He, but the pressure and temperature required are quite enormous, and you do not want to be in the vicinity when this happens.

[Cerebus]

I could give you some in 7.62x51 with acoustic overload indicator 

He'd never get them in the fuse holder. Some .22 LR on the other hand...

[tggzzz]

Are you suitably prepped?

I wasn't



But then I wasn't surprised either. (A 2465dms I want to flog)

[med6753]

I could give you some in 7.62x51 with acoustic overload indicator 

He'd never get them in the fuse holder. Some .22 LR on the other hand...

I happen to have a big supply of those. 

[Saskia]

pity, I have some fuses here, but sending them overseas does not really make sense.

[med6753]

I should have them Friday.

[bd139]

PC case sorted. Went for the Fractal Meshify C mATX. Running 10oC cooler than the CM S410 was 



Nice cable management in this one



Lots more space inside this case compared to the last one



No LED wank!

Edit: fuck just realised I forgot to stick my media disk back in it 

[tautech]

'oly 'ell, got enough cooling ? 

[bd139]

I have now. The fans are super efficient low noise ones so it runs quiet when going full whack. You can barely hear it all fans maxed out.

[mansaxel]

An actual drawer in my big rollaway 
Pffft... amateur. I am a ASE CERTIFIED Munter.    And that's just the ones small enough to fit in a drawer. 

Yeah, that's a nice collection. Aimed about the same as mine in terms of composition, but, larger. My smallest hammer, which I didn't count, is inherited, from my maternal grandfather, who was the first to work in IT in the family. He serviced typewriters, by Facit, the company that also made the fastest punched tape readers in the world.

A recent interest is the California Framing Hammer (because I saw Larry Haun use it in his classic framing video series.). Should I get one, or should I continue with my current favourite, the Hultafors TS? Or both?

[URI]

And now on to ..the story to my Frankenstein-Agilent 8110A:

All began when I found a used but still intact and offered completely working two-channel/PLL-board-equipped HP 8110A with dim display on ebay for ~$400 plus shipping over the pond (don't ask...   ).
Bought the unit, asked for a sturdy padding and..  -it was delivered with smashed front plate but still working.
I was lucky and got full refund for it and could keep it.

Now I had an "injured" unit that I needed parts for.

Luckily a single-channel/PLL-board-equipped Agilent 8110A with reasonable bright and readable display claimed fully working was offered on ebay some month later.
I bought it for around $350 plus shipping (I had the money left from my first buy-refund action).
I also asked the seller for good and sturdy padding.
You guess it: padding was poor, the unit was delivered with smashed front plate but still working -got full refund for it and could keep it. The signal generator board was faulty btw.   

After that my motivation having a working 8110A lowered somehow.

But in a true TEA moment I began browsing ebay for a 8110A parts unit for replacing the mechanical parts that got smashed and bent and found a single-channel/PLL-board-equipped HP 8110A without front plate as a parts unit!
I instantly went for it. Of course I wrote to the seller that I needed the mechanical parts and because of that he should extraordinarily pad the unit.
He didn't and -you guess it- it was delivered with some cuffs and bent parts of the metal body but the signal generator board was still working without errors! Got full refund for it though and could keep it.   
I could re-bend most of the damaged parts though..

There I was with three 8110A main frame bodies, two front plates, one display dim and hard to read, one display in reasonable shape and three signal generator boards (one makes up one channel).

I put them all on to my TEA stack because my excitement for them had suffered significantly with all that bad luck resulting in damaged parts.

But one day I was lucky stepping over the plastic part of a NOS 8110A front plate!
As a change this part was delivered undamaged (seller was a professional company).

The last thing I missed for building a newold 8110A was the plate sticker to finish the front plate.

I was struck by the idea that I won the lottery when my ebay-search revealed a NOS Agilent-labeled plate sticker for a 8110A!
I bought it right away for ~$40 plus the same amount for shipping and waited happily for its delivery.

You all know what comes next:

I waited.

And waited.

Opened a case. And waited. 

And finally was fully refunded by ebay.
But without any plate sticker.
It was lost and is lost to the day.

Last weekend I thought about reusing the Agilent plate sticker that I already had -sticked to the broken face plate of my second unit.
With the help of my hair dryer I was able to gently pull it off without loosing too much of the adhesive layer and stick it onto my NOS front plate.

That was the begin of it all re-building following:

The metal body of my first unit was too beaten up for any further use.

I re-bent the damaged parts of the second and third unit, swapped the intact memory-card-inlet from the first unit to the second unit and was able to join the plastic mounts of the front plate of my first unit by welding it using a soldering iron with SMD-tip at 260°C.
I swapped the original Papst fans of the second unit into the third unit and put Maglev fans into the second unit.

Then the big swap of boards took place and in the end the first unit had become the scrap unit with one signal generator board with faults in it and no front plate.

The Agilent unit got a new front plate under its reused plate sticker and the signal generation boards of the first (HP) unit.

The third (also HP) unit got the Agilent units Papst fans and kept its one signal generation board and got the re-welded front plate with dim display of the first unit.

After all it was fun to build at least two working 8110As from parts of three 8110As.

I might sell the one-channel unit to get money for future TEA projects.
At the moment I enjoy having not one but two 8110A pulse gens.
-That I don't really need.

Pure TEA.      

[tautech]

I have now. The fans are super efficient low noise ones so it runs quiet when going full whack. You can barely hear it all fans maxed out.

I have a Cooler Master micro box on the bench with a i3 init that's pretty quiet, about the same as a quiet DSO but not as good as your little 2ch X-E.
Maybe you've been spoilt with that ? 

[Saskia]

PC case sorted. Went for the Fractal Meshify C mATX. Running 10oC cooler than the CM S410 was 



Nice cable management in this one



Lots more space inside this case compared to the last one





No LED wank!

Edit: fuck just realised I forgot to stick my media disk back in it 

I usually use Fractal Design. Reasonable quality, fair price, boat anchor like weight if you go for the define R series.

Now let's see if I win the bid for a Quadro RTX 5000 ...

[Zucca]

Pffft... amateur. I am a ASE CERTIFIED Munter.    And that's just the ones small enough to fit in a drawer. 

In hammer we trust.

[bd139]

I have now. The fans are super efficient low noise ones so it runs quiet when going full whack. You can barely hear it all fans maxed out.

I have a Cooler Master micro box on the bench with a i3 init that's pretty quiet, about the same as a quiet DSO but not as good as your little 2ch X-E.
Maybe you've been spoilt with that ? 

Haha that's loud compared to this. The fan curves are now set up so you can't even hear it if you put your head on the case when it's doing light desktop work.

The case I had was lined with noise damping material. Unfortunately not a good outcome for compute loads.

I usually use Fractal Design. Reasonable quality, fair price, boat anchor like weight if you go for the define R series.

Now let's see if I win the bid for a Quadro RTX 5000 ...

Indeed. Perfect balance there. The Define R6 was a contender as was a suitable replacement X570 based board (therefore getting two NVMe slots and some space for a future RTX) but I really don't need it at the moment. I need quiet and small and cool and that's about as good as you can get without going Mini-ITX or getting a NUC or something which is just bleurgh. Also no fucking RGB LED crap.

Good luck with the RTX. If it's auction it'll go significantly cheaper than the BIN prices at the moment.

Have put the media SSD back in it now. Fortunately easy to mount and route the cables even though I admit to just jamming the bloody things in there rather than tying the cables down nicely 

Edit: if anyone wants a coolermaster silencio S400. One previous owner. It's yours for £20 shipped if I can get it in the box the Fractal case came in 

[Specmaster]

Some Dell machines were lined with some sound damping material which over the years absorbed moisture and just turned it into something that resembled soggy biscuits and if you touched it just fell to bits, a black gooey mess, urgh.

[Zucca]

...Because the mech keyboard discussion (thanks bd), I bought a used cherry Mx red switches one (see here). I currently have an unLogictec brown switches one, curious to see how the difference is.

I love everything about that KB (steel frame, genuine Cherry reds, USB-C, reasonable price)

Well just plugged in my new TEA keyboard with red cherry mx keys.
I have the feeling I have found the right mattress to sleep in, not too hard and not too soft...

Coming from the brown ones it's like the fingers are falling into chocolate pudding, and I like this.

It's an older model with mini USB, not C. I do not care too much.

Surprise surprise I measured the current sucked by this keyboard with all back light keys on:



19mA: No back light [BL]
119mA: BL level 1 MIN
169mA: BL level 2
221mA: BL level 3
272mA: BL level 4 MAX (about 1,25W for me wasted!)

The dragon is right blue LED are more sexy, but I agree with bd: PC and LED circus light are not for me either...
So I leave the red LED there, and I keep the BL off.

Let's now see how you TEA gang will drain my bank account again in the next days.

PS: For the arm rest I used my Festool OF1010, the Festool RTS 400 and a 19mm plywood to get the job done. It's like night and day, finally my arm muscles are relaxed while I am typing. 

[BU508A]

And now on to ..the story to my Frankenstein-Agilent 8110A:

[bought three 8110A, built two working units from them]

https://www.ebay.de/itm/383531098542

You are welcome.      

[Specmaster]

@BU508A Many thanks for your piece of filter material, it arrived today along with your surprise package to keep it company during the posting, it does get kind a lonely I guess in an envelope  I'm sure that I can find a use for them somewhere along the way. Here are a couple of photos with the filter installed and lit, beautiful contrast now 

[bd139]

...Because the mech keyboard discussion (thanks bd), I bought a used cherry Mx red switches one (see here). I currently have an unLogictec brown switches one, curious to see how the difference is.

I love everything about that KB (steel frame, genuine Cherry reds, USB-C, reasonable price)

Well just plugged in my new TEA keyboard with red cherry mx keys.
I have the feeling I have found the right mattress to sleep in, not too hard and not too soft...

Coming from the brown ones it's like the fingers are falling into chocolate pudding, and I like this.

It's an older model with mini USB, not C. I do not care too much.

Surprise surprise I measured the current sucked by this keyboard with all back light keys on:

(Attachment Link)

19mA: No back light [BL]
119mA: BL level 1 MIN
169mA: BL level 2
221mA: BL level 3
272mA: BL level 4 MAX (about 1,25W for me wasted!)

The dragon is right blue LED are more sexy, but I agree with bd: PC and LED circus light are not for me either...
So I leave the red LED there, and I keep the BL off.

Let's now see how you TEA gang will drain my bank account again in the next days.

PS: For the arm rest I used my Festool OF1010, the Festool RTS 400 and a 19mm plywood to get the job done. It's like night and day, finally my arm muscles are relaxed while I am typing. 

Welcome to the world of MX reds. Easy on the fingers, ears and relationships 

I keep BL on mine off now I've got used to where all the keys are. Hardly necessary once you've got used to the keyboard. Also I notice on all keyboards because the LEDs are scanned then they make your eyes go funny as you change focus.

[Wolfgang]

Klystron on its way. Run for the hills, the sky is falling 

Noted. Looking for a bigger Klystron.

For the harmless prank at home magnetrons are much more evil than klystrons.
Compare a few 100mW to a few 100W output.
BUT: Idiots hands off. These beast can not just kill weeds, ants, insects, rodents, ... but also YOU if
you dont know how to handle them. Characteristics: a few kV with a lot of punch, the radiation can kill, so
better play safe. 

[xrunner]

My mindset for today -