Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

That fuse with the label is clearly the wrong type.

What's my prize? 

[bd139]

Cisco's pricing on optics was, let's say, imaginatively high. I don't know if they ever saw sense and reduced it any as it was enough to ensure that I never even considered going to Cisco for optics. There's a been a glut of perfectly good 2nd hand optics on the market for the past couple of years, I don't think I've even spent £10 for any of the 10Gb optics I've bought during that time.

They still stick to it, and all the others follow suit. Like it or not, they're the "thought leader" on "silly prices for optics and the associated barrage of FUD about what COULD happen if you DARE to put a Finisar SFP into it instead of a Cisco-rebranded Finisar"   

Post-real -hp- network gear also suffers from it, and is arguably even worse, because you can't type a "secret" command to disable it.

Real HP network stuff is shit. No compatible switches for C7000 chassis aren’t rammed full of bugs and weirdness

[0culus]

So I uhhhh, have another package coming from Sphere.  It may or may not contain an HP 5326A nixie counter and an 8082A pulse generator.

[med6753]

My big spender nuvistors are finally on their way from Wisconsin. 

[mnementh]

Based on that experience and my experience with the Tiffany process, my surmise (as in my post above) was that functionally there was little difference. The stuff bonds pretty well, but certainly can be peeled up if you try to or if you overheat it. I would guess that Tiffany's foil was coated with an organic epoxy based on the time period in which he developed the process; no idea if that is still the case with modern equivalents.

You piqued my curiosity; I went on a hunt. Apparently the original Tiffany process involved wrapping copper foil around the edges of each piece of glass, assembling them all with temporary tacks in a wooden mould and lead soldering the backside of the abutting copper foils together in a way that the lead didn't show on the outside. Then it was all patinated, further hiding the lead soldering.

Close. 3D objects like lampshades are assembled with pushpins and tack joints on a wooden mold. The foil is usually then soldered from both sides, at least that's how we were taught to do it in our classes. This fills all gaps and activates the entirety of the adhesive. Afterwards, both sides are brushed with with the hydrated copper sulphate solution, which patinas both the copper and the lead a dull flat black/dark grey almost instantly. Then everything is rinsed with water liberally, as the patina can eat away the underside of the foil if left behind.

Large flat panels are handled differently; well, I guess the mold is just a sheet of plywood on your work bench. In the traditional form they use brass rods soldered to the outer frame, then anchored with copper rings to strategic points in the body of the work. This keeps a large panel from sagging/bowing out in the middle, the same as the traditional stained glass constructed using lead came. Nowadays, as it is so hard to clean these things safely, it is common practice to sandwich the work between layers of plate glass.

IIRC, my mom did a lot of business with Delphi Glass; pretty sure that's where she got her foils from: https://www.delphiglass.com/search?searchtext=foil

mnem
 

Well if you knew how it was made, why were you proposing that it was done with some sort of "organic epoxy glue"

I know the Tiffany technique, and I know there's supposed to be a heat-activated glue on the back of the foil. This is important, as it gives necessary strength to 3D stained glass articles like lampshades. This differs from previous techniques like lead came construction, which essentially could not support their own weight.

As what that glue IS, I'm not sure; but given the time he developed the process, I'd guess it was some early organic epoxy resin. Some epoxies made today are still organic (okay, okay, it's all organic once you go far enough back in the process) as opposed to the nasty poisonous shit like Bondo and boat resin and can be cured either with an activator or heat.

Like I said... it was a guess. Based on experience, and the fact I've used it to make PCBs and it worked.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Seems I was the only bidder on a 40W Nd-YAG laser system on ebay.    99p The cases are worth a lot more that    www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224106676433   Not sure if there are scanners included.

Hooray for The Green Meanie!!!     Remember how fucking awesome we thought the opening scene from Aliens was with that LASER scanner scoping everything out...?

mnem
Part of me still can't believe I have an actual LASER in my pocket.

[Brumby]

Only just catching up here...

bloody hell.

Hubby in hospital with heart issues. Undergoing angio right now.

Why does my life always kick me in my nonexistent balls ? 

Thoughts with you and hubby.

Life has a habit of sucking balls every now and then - and some are suckier than others.  I like the idea of getting even and rising up against the low blow.  Pity a few grams of carefully placed ceefour can't take care of things.....

Then again, blowing something up (on purpose) may have a useful therapeutic benefit.

[mnementh]

So I uhhhh, have another package coming from Sphere.  It may or may not contain an HP 5326A nixie counter and an 8082A pulse generator.

So your plan is to save all their parts units by buying them whole before they strip them out...? 

Come on everybody... lets pass a hat for Oculus' VERY important work... 

mnem

[nixiefreqq]

So I uhhhh, have another package coming from Sphere.  It may or may not contain an HP 5326A nixie counter and an 8082A pulse generator.

thumbs up on the 5326a.  only negative for them was no option for a 500Mhz C channel. (you needed a 5327 anyway!)

hope your 8082 is not the POS that my 8007 turned out to be.  those slide switches are total bastards.   mine now sports a label that says "to set switches slide past the detent and wiggle until the fucker works"  to remind me not to trust it.

[mansaxel]

Post-real -hp- network gear also suffers from it, and is arguably even worse, because you can't type a "secret" command to disable it.

Real HP network stuff is shit. No compatible switches for C7000 chassis aren’t rammed full of bugs and weirdness

I have no love left for most things -hp- did in computing. They were insanely expensive with their 9000 computers, ie. PA-RISC. Two slow serial ports on an ISA card; 2500USD. The network gear is somewhat reliable but horrible to work with. The pre-Compaq PCs were reliable, slow and expensive.  The hpCompaq servers are OK.

Worst of all: Since Compaq owned d|i|g|i|t|a|l, -hp- became the owner of the Alpha architecture and the Tru64 and VMS operating system(s). I've run them both. Fiorina decided to ditch the Alpha, which was at the time the most impressive 64-bit workstation CPU around. Neither POWER nor SPARC could compete for raw power. And they "replaced" it with the Titanic (intel Itanium). Which, if you remember, noone EVER loved, except a bunch of crazy physicists who only write floating-point math in FORTRAN (the FLOPS in Itanic were plenty, but the rest, not so much).  Also, Tru64 died a horrible death. I've run both H-PUKES and Tru64 in production, and I'd gladly do Tru64 again. H-PUKES not so much.

[0culus]

So I uhhhh, have another package coming from Sphere.  It may or may not contain an HP 5326A nixie counter and an 8082A pulse generator.

thumbs up on the 5326a.  only negative for them was no option for a 500Mhz C channel. (you needed a 5327 anyway!)

hope your 8082 is not the POS that my 8007 turned out to be.  those slide switches are total bastards.   mine now sports a label that says "to set switches slide past the detent and wiggle until the fucker works"  to remind me not to trust it.

Seeing as I have other counters that adequately cover up to 20 GHz, that isn't a problem. I actually wanted a lower-frequency counter.  The 8082A is supposedly fully working...I've not been burned by Sphere yet.

[0culus]

So I uhhhh, have another package coming from Sphere.  It may or may not contain an HP 5326A nixie counter and an 8082A pulse generator.

So your plan is to save all their parts units by buying them whole before they strip them out...? 

Come on everybody... lets pass a hat for Oculus' VERY important work... 

mnem

Why yes, but these aren't supposed to be parts units!

[tggzzz]

1707b home. ... All I want is its organs.

What for?

When I started electronics I had no economic option. Now there has to be a recipient for the donor parts.

I still have a few boards, e.g. with potted flip flops and core memory from an Olivetti (IIRC) computer.

[tggzzz]

Pity a few grams of carefully placed ceefour can't take care of things.....

Wrong explosive. Nitroglycerine is used for heart complaints
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nitroglycerin#Medical_use

[Saskia]

update: myocard infarct. 

This is definitely not good.

[tggzzz]

Fiorina decided to ditch the Alpha, which was at the time the most impressive 64-bit workstation CPU around.

Alpha was interesting but had significant "issues". Word addressing made C-style byte addressing "interesting".

And they "replaced" it with the Titanic (intel Itanium). Which, if you remember, noone EVER loved, except a bunch of crazy physicists who only write floating-point math in FORTRAN (the FLOPS in Itanic were plenty, but the rest, not so much).

I worked in HPLabs and saw the Itanic evolve from a distance, and decided I didn't want anything to do with it. I left HP before the magnitude of the disaster was apparent.

My particular dislikes:

• just as power dissipation was becoming important in server centres, the Itanic throws away power on computations that turn out to be irrelevant
• make one microarchitectural change, and the whole of your inner loops have to be completely re-implemented. Fine if and only if that can be done by machine - but people had been trying that for decades without much success

[mansaxel]

update: myocard infarct. 

This is definitely not good.

Indeed worrying. On the plus side; it was identified, and he is in care. The wikipedia article stresses the time to treatment as important for a good outcome, and from your description, that was taken care of. Thumbs held.

[McBryce]

Thanks for the welcome Guys,

I'm not new to TAS but I'm trying to control myself. ;-)
I already have the following:
- a Telequipment S32a scope circa 1965 (as old as I am) and an AVO model 8 multimeter that one of my dad's friend gave me a long time ago. The S32a is recapped and fully functional.
- 2 Fluke DMMS (one is dark grey).
- 3 years ago I snatched a Tek 2465 in fully functional order off eBay. It had broken feet and 4 missing buttons that  I 3D printed with good results. I already have new caps for it but need time to tackle this.
- I got myself a Rigol DS1057Z with all the options for my birthday in 2018.
- I just got the AWG2021 that works flawlessly as far as I can tell.
- I also have 2 antique radios but I think I'm stretching the WAFs with these! 

So much for purchasing something that needs TLC! I'll try to build the AR488 GPIB-USB interface so I can control the AWG.

I don't like old or vintage computers but I love old analog gear.

Mario

Here is a detailed procedure for re-capping the PSU in the 2465.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/tektronix-2465b-oscilloscope-teardown/msg1658102/#msg1658102

Recapping my 2456 is at the top of my list of jobs I've been putting off forever. Do you have a list of the required replacements so that I can order them before taking everything apart?

McBryce.

[tggzzz]

Recapping my 2456 is at the top of my list of jobs I've been putting off forever. Do you have a list of the required replacements so that I can order them before taking everything apart?

I've seen several, but whether the exact components are still available is a different matter. I've just found decent electrolytic equivalents when I've needed to.

The condoraudio document is beneficial w.r.t. replacing the RIFAs.

[med6753]

update: myocard infarct. 

This is definitely not good.

Indeed worrying. On the plus side; it was identified, and he is in care. The wikipedia article stresses the time to treatment as important for a good outcome, and from your description, that was taken care of. Thumbs held.

Agreed, it was caught and treated almost immediately. Here's hoping for a good outcome. 

[med6753]

Thanks for the welcome Guys,

I'm not new to TAS but I'm trying to control myself. ;-)
I already have the following:
- a Telequipment S32a scope circa 1965 (as old as I am) and an AVO model 8 multimeter that one of my dad's friend gave me a long time ago. The S32a is recapped and fully functional.
- 2 Fluke DMMS (one is dark grey).
- 3 years ago I snatched a Tek 2465 in fully functional order off eBay. It had broken feet and 4 missing buttons that  I 3D printed with good results. I already have new caps for it but need time to tackle this.
- I got myself a Rigol DS1057Z with all the options for my birthday in 2018.
- I just got the AWG2021 that works flawlessly as far as I can tell.
- I also have 2 antique radios but I think I'm stretching the WAFs with these! 

So much for purchasing something that needs TLC! I'll try to build the AR488 GPIB-USB interface so I can control the AWG.

I don't like old or vintage computers but I love old analog gear.

Mario

Here is a detailed procedure for re-capping the PSU in the 2465.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/tektronix-2465b-oscilloscope-teardown/msg1658102/#msg1658102

Recapping my 2456 is at the top of my list of jobs I've been putting off forever. Do you have a list of the required replacements so that I can order them before taking everything apart?

McBryce.

Yep.

[med6753]

This is one of the many reasons I like Mouser. Got this e-mail this morning........

Dear XXXXXXX;

Your purchase order number XXXXX is being processed by our warehouse and will ship out on 08/13/2020

We appreciate you placing this order through our website.

You requested your order be shipped by UPS 2nd DAY AIR.
To ensure that you receive your order on the day you expected it, Mouser has upgraded your order to ship UPS NEXT DAY AIR at no additional charge to you.

You are a valued customer and we appreciate your business.
If you have any questions, comments, or if we can assist you in any way please let us know.
You can reply directly to this e-mail.


Thank you,

The Mouser Internet Sales Team

[bd139]

That's a win. I really need to start using Mouser here as local companies are shit. Will do next order with them

[med6753]

That's a win. I really need to start using Mouser here as local companies are shit. Will do next order with them

Yep, and it's not the first time they have done this. Over the past year or so it's been at least 5 times. 

[mnementh]

update: myocard infarct. 

This is definitely not good.

Indeed worrying. On the plus side; it was identified, and he is in care. The wikipedia article stresses the time to treatment as important for a good outcome, and from your description, that was taken care of. Thumbs held.

Agreed, it was caught and treated almost immediately. Here's hoping for a good outcome. 

Add my continued well-wishes to the pool. Stress of moving on top of this... a double-dose of grief. Be strong.

mnem
"Nobody said it would be easy; but no-one said it'd be this hard..."