Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[BU508A]

Today arrival.    

cool, what are you gonna  do with all this nice res?

Some time ago I had the idea to build a little box with some nice resistors, capacitors, diodes, LEDs, voltage reference, current reference, oscillator etc. which I can carry with me. Could be useful when one is visiting flea-markets, e.g. the HAM Radio in Friedrichshafen. I got the idea from joeqsmith (forum fellow as well) when I watched some of his videos.

[tonyalbus]

A duo review of the nice little boxes from China... WB-SG1 and FA-2 from BG7TBL .. Yes i open them..

[Zucca]

Yep. Worked for me. More cash you earn the quicker you can retire. That's my only motivation

I did already some calculations, here my result:

It's never enough, I need more and more.

[Saskia]

I don't. The definition of "enough" would be. sufficient to buy one of the channel islands and declare independence.

[Robert763]

It's not just software that geats out-sourced.
Build hacked up prototype -  Management "need 3 Beta units next month, you're too busy on other bits. We'll outsource the Beta build, they only need a schematic". So after 6 weeks of 2 or 3 "support calls" a day completly disrupting my work three steaming turds turn up. They don't work, and have a build standard that I would not accept for a "my eyes only" hobby project. Spent another week fixing them.

It's always the electronics even on aircraft - "Pilot the Bell 206 won't make power assurance" chief eng - "check the TOT (turbine output temperature) gauge" Me "it's OK, actually a bit low", CE "Check the torque gauge" Me "it's right on the limit do you want me to adjust it?" CE "yes" Me "are you sure, it's reading high?" CE "don't be smart" Me " the engine's knackerd"
Finally they take the engine out and sure enough it needs repair - AOG. I volunteered to drive it 7 hours each way and wait for repair over the weekend. I was younger then, they offered double time and I had a small car style diesel van (fairly rare in 1984) that returned a pretty good profit on the fixed milage rate.

[med6753]

I don't. The definition of "enough" would be. sufficient to buy one of the channel islands and declare independence.

A better choice would be a warm Pacific island. With native Polynesian women running around....with long jet black hair and topless. 

But with my luck they'd turn out to be cannibals.     

[tautech]

I don't. The definition of "enough" would be. sufficient to buy one of the channel islands and declare independence.

A better choice would be a warm Pacific island. With native Polynesian women running around....with long jet black hair and topless. 

But with my luck they'd turn out to be cannibals. 

I can just see Med in a cooking pot with half naked girls surrounding it discussing whether they want your rare, MEDium or well done ! 

[Saskia]

most of them Pacific islands are in the tropics. I prefer moderate climate. Even though ... a while back an island off the tasmanian coast was for sale. It was in fact my favorite ...
came with an air strip.

*sigh*

[McBryce]

most of them Pacific islands are in the tropics. I prefer moderate climate. Even though ... a while back an island off the tasmanian coast was for sale. It was in fact my favorite ...
came with an air strip.

*sigh*

Maybe we can all put some money in and create a TEA island? We'll need a good power source though.

McBryce.

[BU508A]

I don't. The definition of "enough" would be. sufficient to buy one of the channel islands and declare independence.

A better choice would be a warm Pacific island. With native Polynesian women running around....with long jet black hair and topless. 

But with my luck they'd turn out to be cannibals. 

I can just see Med in a cooking pot with half naked girls surrounding it discussing whether they want your rare, MEDium or well done ! 

A Briton was driving through Italy on the motorway. He got hungry and stopped at a truck stop. The operating company of the truck stop was called "Autogrill". He went in and asked the waiter, "Do you really have grilled cars?"
The waiter replied: "How would you like to have your car? English or well done?"

 

[Zucca]

"Never change a running system"

It is just a stupid statement from some tie on neck good smelling management humans.
I reply now with "... I wait until it catch fire then, no problem"

I just find out that the entire production windows PC are logging crucial analysis data using... wait ...wait... BATCH MSDOS .BAT FILES Sure enough a Windows update slammed everything on the floor for 3 weeks. Nobody could fix it, was done 10 years ago.

I will rise my hand and suggest I can do some python magic. Who knows what will be the reaction...

[Saskia]

most of them Pacific islands are in the tropics. I prefer moderate climate. Even though ... a while back an island off the tasmanian coast was for sale. It was in fact my favorite ...
came with an air strip.

*sigh*

Maybe we can all put some money in and create a TEA island? We'll need a good power source though.

McBryce.

Eniwetok ? it has the power source concreted in ...

[Saskia]

@Zucca what could possibly go wrong

[bd139]

Damn. Got a seller offer on something for 100 quid which is fairly decent but supplants two items I already have which are ancient and cranky.

Thoughts? 

Edit: gah did it. Now own an Agilent banded E3630  . May bounce the 6205 now.

[Specmaster]

I don't. The definition of "enough" would be. sufficient to buy one of the channel islands and declare independence.

Well maybe you could buy these 3 forts in the Solent?

https://www.portsmouth.co.uk/business/three-solent-forts-are-sale-and-could-be-yours-aps11ma-226109

[capt bullshot]

"Never change a running system"

It is just a stupid statement from some tie on neck good smelling management humans.
I reply now with "... I wait until it catch fire then, no problem"

I just find out that the entire production windows PC are logging crucial analysis data using... wait ...wait... BATCH MSDOS .BAT FILES Sure enough a Windows update slammed everything on the floor for 3 weeks. Nobody could fix it, was done 10 years ago.

I will rise my hand and suggest I can do some python magic. Who knows what will be the reaction...

Don't do that. Either you'll be turned down or It'll be your baby from then on - from experience being turned down the better option is.

[Saskia]

https://www.vladi-private-islands.de/de/inseln-kaufen/kanada-ostzentral/nova-scotia/kaulbach-island/

@Zucca don't volunteer for stuff like that. It will be yours forever and you will get the blame forever.

[BU508A]

https://www.vladi-private-islands.de/de/inseln-kaufen/kanada-ostzentral/nova-scotia/kaulbach-island/

@Zucca don't volunteer for stuff like that. It will be yours forever and you will get the blame forever.

Master Yoda says: "Idealistic young man he is. Lots of python strengths he has."

[Saskia]

Learn he must. Not ready he is. Life experience he must collect.

[capt bullshot]

Fun it is watching stuff catch fire. Relaxing it is watch people panicking. Only way this is to new stuff in production introduce. Beware he must let others do.

[Cerebus]

As a non-programmer and never been involved in IT support in any format, that meant diddley squat to me but I gathered from reading between the lines that it basically is a huge clusterfuck and that there is some point that all of this clusterfuck is going to come home to roost and that we should be stock piling gold and medicines. Is this something like the millennium bug that has a date and stamp that all this doom and gloom is going to descent upon us   

You've already seen it. Remember all the UK banks that have lost complete access to their computer systems for days at a time recently? Like the TSB in 2018 where customers couldn't access their accounts for 8 days, longer in some cases. Would that have happened 20 years or more ago? Much of it is down to CIOs following fashion in how things are done rather than following good sense and good practice. The "move fast and break things" generation are now writing the code (or more accurately gluing together microservices) that runs society without any adult supervision.

[mansaxel]

I just realised that a 1N4148 that was soldered across a 24V relay coil had turned into a 2Ω resistor. The PSU did not want to pull the lever but instead pulled itself into CC mode. Removed diode complete and without messing with the leads because I wanted to test it out of circuit. Once out I tried the relay and it sure enough works. The de-energising kick from the now undioded relay coil that found its way into my fingers actually hurt a little. We need those diodes, indeed.

[Cerebus]

I once had to wrestle with the OSI IS<->IS routing protocol on a frigging IP network - made me start feeling nostalgic for RIPv1.

And here I am thinking that the ONLY thing that OSI ever produced that I like, is IS-IS. It is just like OSPF (both are Dijkstra graphs) but one instance is so estranged from IP that it routes both v4 and v6 without requiring double amount of config work and resulting mistakes you get in OSPF.  Yes, any IP net I build (and I've done a few) has IS-IS as its IGP. It is much neater than anything else. I've never had to deal with RIP, it's only OSPF, BGP and IS-IS, because that's what drives big nets. And MPLS of course. The ATM crowd's revenge on IP.

The reason I was wrestling with IS<->IS was a consequence of being a very early IPv6 adopter (including native multicast for IPv6 and IPv4, but that's a different story). It's just the incongruity of working with a routing protocol on an IP network that doesn't really want to believe that is it on an IP network. RIP was a nightmare, but I had to deal with it at the edge - because customers. MPLS has its good and bad points - if I were to be the one writing a layer 3 replacement for IP I would use a label switching protocol at its core, but not MPLS as is.

[Cerebus]

I don't. The definition of "enough" would be. sufficient to buy one of the channel islands and declare independence.

And the best bit is that a lot of the coastal defence bunkers are still in surprisingly good condition.  That is, if you don't mind the graffiti about who shagged who there on the walls.

[bd139]

I just realised that a 1N4148 that was soldered across a 24V relay coil had turned into a 2Ω resistor. The PSU did not want to pull the lever but instead pulled itself into CC mode. Removed diode complete and without messing with the leads because I wanted to test it out of circuit. Once out I tried the relay and it sure enough works. The de-energising kick from the now undioded relay coil that found its way into my fingers actually hurt a little. We need those diodes, indeed.

When I was a kid I used to wire up a relay as an oscillator and use that little inductive kick to zap people