Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Zucca]

Nine gone, six left.  I wonder if she's surprised that they're selling so quickly?

And on that note, time to hit the sack.  I really need to try to quell my nocturnal tendencies.  (Of course I say that every day, then wind up staying awake until after four AM anyway.    )

-Pat

10 gone, you TEA monsters even a cup I had to buy. Please stop it..... 

I love you all.

[BU508A]

I don't. Still haven't finished my first coffee yet 

You probably need the right mug?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/CafePress-Fourier-Transform-Unique-Coffee/dp/B00Q61E4WC


https://www.redbubble.com/i/mug/Square-Wave-Fourier-Transform-by-Kontakr/30354492.9Q0AD


https://www.redbubble.com/i/mug/What-part-of-the-Fourier-transform-don-t-you-understand-by-coffeeandspace/37817100.9Q0AD


 

[BU508A]

Today arrivals:

- a new keyboard from Logitech

Please tell me they are red cherry key.

From their website:

Mechanische Romer-G Switches

    Strapazierfähigkeit: 70 Millionen Tastenanschläge
    Betätigungsweg: 1,5 mm
    Auslösungsdruck: 45 g
    Tastenhub insgesamt: 3,2 mm

https://www.logitechg.com/de-de/products/gaming-keyboards/g413-mechanical-gaming-keyboard.920-008304.html#product-tech-specs

[Zucca]

Mechanische Romer-G Switches

    Strapazierfähigkeit: 70 Millionen Tastenanschläge
    Betätigungsweg: 1,5 mm
    Auslösungsdruck: 45 g
    Tastenhub insgesamt: 3,2 mm

https://www.logitechg.com/de-de/products/gaming-keyboards/g413-mechanical-gaming-keyboard.920-008304.html#product-tech-specs

Ummm so Logicrap is trying to steal cherry business?

Interesting

[bd139]

They didn’t want to pay for cherry switches so came up with their own. They feel pretty good. I tried them out in PC World here but as they wouldn’t price match amazon I went home and bought a cherry red based board for the same money as pc world.

[AVGresponding]

Hmm, picked up the TDS210 from the sorting office on my way to work.
Limited on what I can check at work, but looks like the rotary encoders are very iffy.
Are they cleanable or are they going to be borked?

[bd139]

They’re not “great” encoders. Better than the Rigol ones. Let us know how it goes later when you get home.

[med6753]

Bonus round.  Triangle and Square wave. 




And there go the slide rules and calculators again. 

[tonyalbus]

Therapy not working to stop buying frequency counters....
yesterday and today a nasty side-effect raised its head..



Analog powersupplies   


lucky for me, i almost only paid shipping so cheap

status: un-known..
seller: turn knob..meter move, thats all i tested. 

[tonyalbus]

Bonus round.  Triangle and Square wave. 

And there go the slide rules and calculators again. 

Cool   

[MathWizard]

With 6.5d  DMMs like 34410A, 8445, 34465A and DMM6500, whats the warm-up time like for them like, if you don't want to use the full 6.5d, and/or faster rdgs/s ?

Like if you use it as your main DMM, and don't want to wait 30min-1h, each time for 6.5d to settle, what are they like cold, on the lower resolutions ?

I won't have any reason to have the DMM running most of the time....so I'd hate to find excuses not to use it. Otherwise I'm back to getting a new 4.5 or 5.5d DMM for day to day use.

[bd139]

34401A specifies 2 hour warm up time. I'd expect that from all >5.5 digit meters realistically.

Edit: if anyone here won that 8060A, sorry if I cost you more money by being too cheap 

[MathWizard]

Like if most days as a hobbyist, using under 30V, and I only really care about mV or 100's of nV accuracy when they are 1st turned on......they can all do that cold, right ?

But I see tho, I have DMMs that can do 4-5d pretty good, but none are a modern bench DMM. IDK, maybe I really should just get an older 6.5d meter, and get a new 5.5d meter.

[AVGresponding]

They’re not “great” encoders. Better than the Rigol ones. Let us know how it goes later when you get home.

I'd expect them to be functional though.
These are sending the scales in random directions and magnitudes.

Are they mechanical or optical?

[mnementh]

Up on the bench today:



Picked these up the other day because 8 bux, plus there were like 5 more loose in the two baggies; already deployed around the house. Each box has 2 units; 5V/2A USB. Does quick-charge my daughter's new Christmas 2018 iPad; I think I may have enough USB juice for the foreseeable future. 



Picked this up the other day because... 5 bux. And looked like new.




Picked these up yesterday because 5 bux and apparently brand new 7200RPM Barracuda drives. Yeah, a whopping 120GB of spinning rust each, but I figured it would give me a chance to tinker with DLNA; a quick Gurrgle on my phone at the time of purchase showed the DNS320 supports up to 4TB drives and FTP, DLNA, Time Machine out of the box. w00t!




Replaced/cleaned up slightly crusty NVRAM battery; popped in the new drives. Time for the PEEL!!! SQUEEEE! Now let's go online and find the latest firmware...




https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/cr1ptt0r-ransomware-infects-d-link-nas-devices-targets-embedded-systems/

Well.... FUCK.         Why the FUCK didn't THAT come up when I Googled the damn thing before I bought it?      

...forum members offer information suggesting that the attack vector is most likely vulnerabilities in old firmware. A member of the Cr1ptT0r team confirmed this to us, saying that there are so many vulnerabilities in D-Link DNS-320 NAS models that they should be built from scratch to make things better. Although old versions of the firmware for DNS-320 are known to be vulnerable to at least one bug leading to remote code execution, a hard-coded backdoor was published in 2018 for ShareCenter DNS‑320L.

Good thing I haven't allowed it anywhere near my network yet.  I guess I can still safely use the power brick for somethinnn... KILL IT. KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!   

mnem
Ummmm... Anybody need a really good present for a rotten ex-boss...?

[bd139]

They’re not “great” encoders. Better than the Rigol ones. Let us know how it goes later when you get home.

I'd expect them to be functional though.
These are sending the scales in random directions and magnitudes.

Are they mechanical or optical?

They are Bourns mechanical encoders which were specifically designed for the scopes and are contacting the board. If you get get under one, switch cleaner will work. They are plastic pin welded to the board and unobtanium usually but you can regularly find recycled TDS parts on ebay.

Picture of a "naked" board - encoder plugs into it and is melted behind.



The front of the encoders looks like this (my old TDS210):



That one was a bit dicky but nothing I couldn't deal with.

Have attached the encoder datasheet as well.

[Saskia]

I guess, 50 g of ceefour would make that thing pretty unhackable.

[tggzzz]

They’re not “great” encoders. Better than the Rigol ones. Let us know how it goes later when you get home.

I'd expect them to be functional though.
These are sending the scales in random directions and magnitudes.

Are they mechanical or optical?

On my relatively new Tenma PSU the voltages are controlled by rotary mechanical quadrature switches. At one stage rotating the control caused somewhat random magnitude changes and direction changes. Not good in a PSU, but tolerable if you remember to switch off the output.

Anyway, a good repeated flushing with IPA solved the problem.

After disassembling the PSU to access the control, I found I could insert the IPA via the shaft.

[mnementh]

They’re not “great” encoders. Better than the Rigol ones. Let us know how it goes later when you get home.

I'd expect them to be functional though. These are sending the scales in random directions and magnitudes. Are they mechanical or optical?

They are Bourns mechanical encoders which were specifically designed for the scopes and are contacting the board. If you get get under one, switch cleaner will work. They are plastic pin welded to the board and unobtanium usually but you can regularly find recycled TDS parts on ebay.

Picture of a "naked" board - encoder plugs into it and is melted behind...   

Oh, that is positively Satanic in design. Yet ANOTHER reason to not get too excited about the breed unless you can STEAL the fucking thing.

mnem
I think I may have said this recently but... KILL IT. KILL IT WITH FIRE!!! 

[mansaxel]

I'm having a little ohms-nut moment:



Close-up:



Warms them cockles, it does. Of course I had to jiggle the battery in the Elavi, but that was good to find while playing. Not while doing potentially let-the-magic-smoke-out things.

[pico61]

Edit:
This is 100V (noisy): https://cb.wunderkis.de/wk-pub/mvi/100V.ogg
This is 10V (stable): https://cb.wunderkis.de/wk-pub/mvi/10V.ogg

Hope the videos work, with my Firefox they do. Don't nail me on the 40ppm @10V, the Keithley 196 doesn't do that and it's drifting anyway (and is on my repair stack), but it has a nice red LED starburst display and shows nicely the noise / unstability of the 5100B @100V.

Unfortunately the drift of Fluke 510XB, on voltages from 20V onwards, seems to be intrinsic of this calibrator. 
Indeed the ripple at the output of the high voltage module can have a value of max 30 mV peak-peak.
Also for this reason this calibrator is declared from Fluke up to 4.5 digits.
However, an anomalous ripple is often due to the degradation of the two capacitors C10 and C11 on the A16 Extended High Voltage board

[Specmaster]

They’re not “great” encoders. Better than the Rigol ones. Let us know how it goes later when you get home.

I'd expect them to be functional though.
These are sending the scales in random directions and magnitudes.

Are they mechanical or optical?

I have seen an article on this problem in the past but cannot remember where it was. IIRC the cure was to carefully drill a very small hole in the encoder housing and only allowing the drill to just break though and no more, sucking the swarf away as you dill slowly to keep it from entering inside and the dowsing the inside with contact cleaner and operating the control a few times, after which it worked perfectly. Do a Google search and you might be lucky and find the article.

[Specmaster]

mnem
I think I may have said this recently but... KILL IT. KILL IT WITH FIRE!!! 

Just the response we come to expect from a fire breathing dwagon 

[BU508A]

They’re not “great” encoders. Better than the Rigol ones. Let us know how it goes later when you get home.

I'd expect them to be functional though.
These are sending the scales in random directions and magnitudes.

Are they mechanical or optical?

I have seen an article on this problem in the past but cannot remember where it was. IIRC the cure was to carefully drill a very small hole in the encoder housing and only allowing the drill to just break though and no more, sucking the swarf away as you dill slowly to keep it from entering inside and the dowsing the inside with contact cleaner and operating the control a few times, after which it worked perfectly. Do a Google search and you might be lucky and find the article.

You mean this one?
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/the-old-crazy-tektronix-td-210-rotary-encoder-problem-solution/

Found this one as well:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/rotary-encoders-for-tds210/

[capt bullshot]

Edit:
This is 100V (noisy): https://cb.wunderkis.de/wk-pub/mvi/100V.ogg
This is 10V (stable): https://cb.wunderkis.de/wk-pub/mvi/10V.ogg

Hope the videos work, with my Firefox they do. Don't nail me on the 40ppm @10V, the Keithley 196 doesn't do that and it's drifting anyway (and is on my repair stack), but it has a nice red LED starburst display and shows nicely the noise / unstability of the 5100B @100V.

Unfortunately the drift of Fluke 510XB, on voltages from 20V onwards, seems to be intrinsic of this calibrator. 
Indeed the ripple at the output of the high voltage module can have a value of max 30 mV peak-peak.
Also for this reason this calibrator is declared from Fluke up to 4.5 digits.
However, an anomalous ripple is often due to the degradation of the two capacitors C10 and C11 on the A16 Extended High Voltage board

Thanks, I'll check that. I've seen another 510x which had a more stable 100V output, so I suppose there's something bad with mine. To me it looks like an unstable voltage control loop, so there might be capacitors to check too.