Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Update on the 4265 stack. Recapped a PSU of a unit that doesn't have a trace. Racapped about 90%, couldn't find the small caps so went with it. No change. Then took that PSU to another unit that mostly works but has a jittery readout. When opening up that machine, it was obvious someone already worked on this machine. Fan was replaced by a regular axial fan. Some caps have already been replaced.

(Attachment Link)

This part of the board has clearly seen heat. In addition, the diodes are clearly corroded. Looks like a previous owner has already replaced the offending caps (didn't bother to get them flush with PCB though).

(Attachment Link)

He also replaced some RIFAs but he didn't bother with the ones under the shield.

(Attachment Link)

Other side of the board. Left upper corner has been hot, clearly. At the bottom its clear RIFAs have been replaced. Anyhow, plugging in my recapped board

(Attachment Link)

The red and black caps are new, the blue ones original (can't find the Farnell envelope  ).

The readout is actually no longer jittery, just dim. Works fine otherwise. Unfortunately, the trace cuts out for a fraction of a second from time to time when you leave it running. So close, yet so far away 

I feel bad for those poor 2465s.... and I wouldn’t mind having that R&S multi unit either. But shipping... I get heart palpitations just thinking about that and import duty...

mnem
 

[Ice-Tea]

R&S multi unit?

EDIT: for some reason, shipping to Canada is twice the price as shipping to the US. Never quite got that.

[med6753]

While I'm waiting for the 560 series plug-in extension to show up I figured I'd try some shot gunning first to see if I can get the Type 3B3 Time Base plug-in to sweep. So far it's totally dead. So I swapped out all the tubes, which aren't many. This plug-in is heavily sand state plus 2 nuvistors which I don't have spares. Anyway, no joy. Still won't sweep. I'll have to wait for the extension. It's currently in San Jose, CA but USPS says it will be delivered Saturday. Yea, right! 



But here's an interesting development. When I pulled out the Type 2B67 Time Base plug-in I found this. A gassy 6BL8. Close examination found it to have a crack at the base. I thought great....this is why this time base won't trigger.  Installed new tube. Didn't fix it, still won't trigger.  Oh well.

     

[Neomys Sapiens]

The Fluke/Philips PM6654C is actually a very nice counter. Both of mine have the high stability timebase. Here's a photo of the counter and some of its friends.

This penduluum is looking very similar to my Fluke PM6681:

No, no, no. It's the other way round. Your Fluke PM6681 is looking very similar to my Pendulum CNT-81 ! 

At least Fluke updated their industrial design when they aligned with Philips 

(This was before I repainted the case. The blue helped but not much)

The Fluke 7260A is just plain UGLY and no matter how well it worked, I wouldn't own one. Plus they wouldn't stack well which is a requirement of mine. .  One old Fluke counter I always liked was the 1953A.

Ugly stacks with ugly. That's the reason they made a series of them. But the description of mutant turtle procreating with a shoebox was still the best shot at them.

[tonyalbus]

2 days of cleaning.... taking apart and back together... i left a note under the window corner ;-)

[worsthorse]

So... yesterday's post brought this enigmatic grey baggie from downtown... 

But there's still a lot of fun to be had with the tinies, and tiny quads means tiny LiPos and motors; this translates into smaller, cheaper everything which reduces cost-of-entry greatly. I'm loving it. 

mnem

that looks like fun. i know even less about copters and drones than i do 3DP which i know is hard to imagine but true. where would a man wanting to get started in a hobby like that find a rabbit hole in which to peer?

Start Here:

https://oscarliang.com/

And here:

https://www.fpvknowitall.com/

  *
  *
  *
  *

All the quads you'll see in that section of Banggood are going to be the latter; particularly the brushless models. They all run on Betaflight firmware (or something similar) and the most popular radios for FPV are FRSky and Spektrum. Right now my new baby is a RadioMaster TX16S with TBS Crossfire TX module; before that I was a FRSky Taranis hacker of some small reknown.

Cheers,

mnem

thanks mnen.  there's hours and hours of procrastinating, um, new learning opportunities in all that.  fun!

[bd139]

Today's pr0n. A contrast from yesterday's fucked up mess of a board. Mac Mini 2018/2020. Apple put together some pretty nicely engineered bits of kit (when they don't use glue  )

Whole thing is standard Torx screws, easy to get into and easy to service. I am impressed. Now rocking 32GB of RAM.





There's something a bit HP about all the gold.

[nixiefreqq]

could be over there in about 50 minutes in light traffic......but.....

my basement is a tek free zone.

not opposed to their stuff......just never floated my boat.

[mnementh]

R&S multi unit?

EDIT: for some reason, shipping to Canada is twice the price as shipping to the US. Never quite got that.

Sorry; I confused myself. I was thinking of the R&S CRTU that Robert763 described a while back. THAT sounds like a nice bit of kit.

Yeah, I feel bad for so casually dismissing Kosmic’s complaints about how much more expensive his TEA habit is JUST because he lives on the other side of Tesla’s Heartbreak.  I figured if I could get anything I wanted with free-to-$3 shipping from China and Taiwan, surely shipping up here had to be similar to the US. 

Part of it is Canada Post; they are still a govt service, so they don’t feel compelled to join the race to the bottom which fact does tend to set the bar a bit higher. This seems counterintuitive; but the net result is the other carriers can charge more and still undercut them, AND they can charge some pretty egregious fees for handling import duty and taxes. And then there’s the duty and sales taxes on top of those fees, of course. 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Today's pr0n. A contrast from yesterday's fucked up mess of a board. Mac Mini 2018/2020. Apple put together some pretty nicely engineered bits of kit (when they don't use glue  )

Whole thing is standard Torx screws, easy to get into and easy to service. I am impressed. Now rocking 32GB of RAM.

     There's something a bit HP about all the gold.

I like the glued-together stuff. Keeps the penis-fingers out. 

mnem
 

[bd139]

TBF I've never had to go inside anything glued together yet. It's either got AppleCare or ends up on eBay just after that has run out. I'm about as risk averse when it comes to tech as anything 

(although that doesn't explain the tektronix death machines).

BTW there's a Tek 465 listed here today in UK North London buyer collects. Do not touch it with a 20 foot stick. I know the seller and he's a meddler and much bad juju.

[Saskia]

Busy day. Woke up late and needed 5 coffees. Packed my new high end audio Streamer and went to visit my buddy. Fixed his Linux machine and presented my streaming solution. When hooked up to the proper amp there is no clipping whatsoever, it sound great. Picked up the anritsu sa from that eBay offer. The 10hz - 30 MHz one. For 270€ I could not resist. Got a nice Hifi rack as thanks for helping out with that Streamer and got my pynq fpga dev board back. Also got applauded for my itx streaming server build.
Now driving home.

[Robert763]

Time zones and work delaying responses :-(

What, you get sleep at night?? 

The biggest problem with the 8922x is that - it's BIG.

Ah, it's actually less wide, less high and slightly deeper than a CMU200/CRTU

.. and while the SA works I would not call it full featured or high accuracy. Only 10MHz to 1015MHz, fixed span/bandwidth, very limited maximum span (4MHz, 10MHz overrange)  <70dB dynamic range, 2.5dB accuracy etc). The signal generator is CW only too. Yours is an S so not even FM demodulation. 

Granted. Still makes sense if you don't want to spend too much and are looking for a single instrument to cover a lot of bases.

Better than nothing, but a R&S CRTU will give a full featured  SA to 2.7GHz (same 10MHz lower limit), colour display, full function signal generator (100kHz to 2.7GHz) 50W input capability and power meter in a smaller, lighter box for a similar price.

No argument there. Even though there's a marginal added value in some of the audio features.

EDIT: it doesn't have an HP sticker though. That seems to matter a lot to a lot of people. 

Hmm, they are both 19" x 4U so not sure why the data sheet says the CRTU is taller and wier, maybe they count the feet and handles. 8922 is about 30lbs heavier depending on options in the CRTU.
I have more HP kit than R&S and it would be a tought choice if I had to choose between my 8568B and the CRTU-RU.
I did pick up 2 CRTU-RUs a CMU-CU and a APU UPS dirt cheap on ebay last year, got my money back selling the UPS on ebay
 

[bd139]

2 days of cleaning.... taking apart and back together... i left a note under the window corner ;-)

Nice job. The replacement knob you need is made by Sifam. I think RS stock them. No idea which part number it is though!

Edit: correct shameful use of the English language

[nixiefreqq]

was curious about a place in the uk called "bromley", and somehow the googles came back with this very strange and incomprehensible video.

if such a thing is possible......could one of you limeys please explain it? 

[0culus]

585A update: got the two NOS 6CL6 tubes I ordered today. Used one of them to replace V161 in the time base A Miller runup circuit. I believe this has fixed linearity issues below 50 uS/cm, as all are in spec now according to the manual. Beyond that, I need med's package (hopefully not lost) to replace C348 and hopefully be able to verify that that is the only remaining problem in the A time base.

[Cerebus]

Still having no luck on eBay with TEA, but I sure am having success with tools.

New toy - teaser:



New toy, contents:



A Mitutoyo depth gauge with a full set of rods for 0-150mm (0.01mm resolution). Posted as "Garage Clearout ... This was my father in laws - I’m not too sure if it’s ever been used. Some of the protective sponge has started to deteriorate a bit.".

Well, the foam in the lid was shot - I've replaced it with some polythene foam and some nice wool felt I had sitting around waiting for a job like this. Three of the rods are still in their original sealed Mitutoyo packaging, complete with VCI paper. Two rods were in open packs, but still with (now exhausted) VCI paper. There were a few minor rust spots, none in measurement critical locations, that soon went away with a gentle touch-up with a 9um diamond lapping stone. A quick clean of the box, a wipe with fresh shellac, a wipe of tung oil on the unfinished bottom, and she's near as good as new.

Mitutoyo still sell this set new for ~£250. Mine for £50 plus postage of £4.99. My last TEA score this good was that TTI counter that several of us managed to grab. That's what, 2-3 years ago?

[Cerebus]

was curious about a place in the uk called "bromley", and somehow the googles came back with this very strange and incomprehensible video.

if such a thing is possible......could one of you limeys please explain it? 

Soft Southern 'folk' dancing known as Morris Dancing. A pale imitation of the the true (northern) art of Clog Dancing, as regularly documented by the cartoonist Bill Tidy in "The Cloggies":

[BU508A]

Quick update from my R&S NGB 32/10:
today I've put the power module with the fan back to its place and did a little testing with some new fuses.
The output jumped immediately to 55V which is not a good sign. But the fuses didn't blow, that's good.

The cleaned fan:


Some flux residue from R&S:


The replaced GI826 (replacement: 1N5408, D203 in the schematics)


I checked further, looking for the reason why I'm seeing 55V on the outputs and found this:
a blown tantalum (C10) and a broken BD139 (T1) + BD136 (T2).
The BD139 was here in my stock but the complement not. So I ordered it too at Reichelt together with the tants and other capacitors and some LM741, just in case.



to be continued ...


Another project was this modification of my PM6681 counter. Here are the pictures:

This is a very nice 3GHz prescaler from coyotech (forum fellow jadew) which fits nicely. Did not test it jet, because I don't have a signal source up to 3GHz right now.
 

And this is the ovenized 10MHz crystal oscillator for improved stabilty

[tautech]

Still having no luck on eBay with TEA, but I sure am having success with tools.

New toy - teaser:

(Attachment Link)

New toy, contents:

(Attachment Link)

A Mitutoyo depth gauge with a full set of rods for 0-150mm (0.01mm resolution). Posted as "Garage Clearout ... This was my father in laws - I’m not too sure if it’s ever been used. Some of the protective sponge has started to deteriorate a bit.".

Well, the foam in the lid was shot - I've replaced it with some polythene foam and some nice wool felt I had sitting around waiting for a job like this. Three of the rods are still in their original sealed Mitutoyo packaging, complete with VCI paper. Two rods were in open packs, but still with (now exhausted) VCI paper. There were a few minor rust spots, none in measurement critical locations, that soon went away with a gentle touch-up with a 9um diamond lapping stone. A quick clean of the box, a wipe with fresh shellac, a wipe of tung oil on the unfinished bottom, and she's near as good as new.

Mitutoyo still sell this set new for ~£250. Mine for £50 plus postage of £4.99. My last TEA score this good was that TTI counter that several of us managed to grab. That's what, 2-3 years ago?

Nice score. 
Wipe the insides of the box too to prevent any staining of the timber.
Tung oil is neat stuff. 

[ArthurDent]

Another project was this modification of my PM6681 counter. Here are the pictures:

This is a very nice 3GHz prescaler from coyotech (forum fellow jadew) which fits nicely. Did not test it jet, because I don't have a signal source up to 3GHz right now.
 

And this is the ovenized 10MHz crystal oscillator for improved stabilty

Here's a photo of the onboard oscillator and the replacement I added to one of my PM6680 counters.

[nixiefreqq]

was curious about a place in the uk called "bromley", and somehow the googles came back with this very strange and incomprehensible video.

if such a thing is possible......could one of you limeys please explain it? 

Soft Southern 'folk' dancing known as Morris Dancing. A pale imitation of the the true (northern) art of Clog Dancing, as regularly documented by the cartoonist Bill Tidy in "The Cloggies":

still don't get it.  is it supposed to be a blackface thing?  are they dressed as girls?  is it part of a drinking game?  does it symbolize something?  or is it just general weirdness?

[bd139]

Black face was rebellion. Rub coal and soot on it to hide your identity in the Middle Ages while lynching the local royalty or tax collectors. As for the purpose, fuck knows but it’s the sort of thing I’d end up doing after a couple of pints.

Google for “Border Morris” for some more scary looking ones.

[nixiefreqq]

oh.....they are mummers!

got it!

(was born at broad and catherine in filthydelphia and should have seen the similarity)


edit   ooooops,  went to google maps.  nothing at broad and catherine but a popeyes chicken.   make that broad and wolf (methodist hospital).

[mnementh]

And y'all think a Smurf-licking dragon is weird... when you got that shit lrrrking in yer closet...? 

mnem
*couch-tuber time widda boi*