Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bitseeker]

Public Service Announcement

eBay's Buyer Protection works, but you're not guaranteed to have it as a buyer on eBay. If eBay determines (the criteria for which is a secret, apparently) that your purchases have been "risky," then they'll revoke Buyer Protection on your purchases without warning.

I discovered this recently when an item from China was overdue by a month. Going to "Item didn't arrive" greets you with a message that Buyer Protection is not available on your purchase. Thanks, eBay, for punishing me for things outside my control.

Thankfully, the item arrived after all. I guess it's AliExpress from now on for buying goods from China.

Does AliExpress have buyer protection?

Yep. I've had to use it only a couple of times. It works. For how long, though, who knows.

https://sale.aliexpress.com/__pc/v8Yr8f629D.htm

[bitseeker]

Not pictured is another massive bag of Sphere free goodies, ranging from various ICs, to LEDs of many colors, diodes, switches, pots, capacitors....

Is that Sphere Research in Canada?

[0culus]

Not pictured is another massive bag of Sphere free goodies, ranging from various ICs, to LEDs of many colors, diodes, switches, pots, capacitors....

Is that Sphere Research in Canada?

Yessir. It's a dangerous place. God help me if I'm ever able to go up there with a truck... 

[0culus]

Got the 5326A connected to the distribution amplifier. It initially was not working at all (edit: on external timebase), but then I realized the gain was set too low on the channel it is connected to. Adjusted that, and it works great, agrees with everything else that's on the GPSDO. 

[tggzzz]

Public Service Announcement

eBay's Buyer Protection works, but you're not guaranteed to have it as a buyer on eBay. If eBay determines (the criteria for which is a secret, apparently) that your purchases have been "risky," then they'll revoke Buyer Protection on your purchases without warning.

I discovered this recently when an item from China was overdue by a month. Going to "Item didn't arrive" greets you with a message that Buyer Protection is not available on your purchase. Thanks, eBay, for punishing me for things outside my control.

Thankfully, the item arrived after all. I guess it's AliExpress from now on for buying goods from China.

Ouch. That deserves to be propagated widely.

Is there any "documentation" available, e.g. a screenshot showing the eff-off message?

[bd139]

Just a point to make here. PayPal and eBay are separate businesses. Go complain to PayPal preferably by phone. They will refund.

[factory]

Public Service Announcement

eBay's Buyer Protection works, but you're not guaranteed to have it as a buyer on eBay. If eBay determines (the criteria for which is a secret, apparently) that your purchases have been "risky," then they'll revoke Buyer Protection on your purchases without warning.

I discovered this recently when an item from China was overdue by a month. Going to "Item didn't arrive" greets you with a message that Buyer Protection is not available on your purchase. Thanks, eBay, for punishing me for things outside my control.

Thankfully, the item arrived after all. I guess it's AliExpress from now on for buying goods from China.

Ouch. That deserves to be propagated widely.

Is there any "documentation" available, e.g. a screenshot showing the eff-off message?

This isn't new, I found this out 8 months ago, for international purchases you only have 30 days to raise a INR claim, after that the dispute process is meaningless as it can't be escalated to ePay.

David

[Specmaster]

Public Service Announcement

eBay's Buyer Protection works, but you're not guaranteed to have it as a buyer on eBay. If eBay determines (the criteria for which is a secret, apparently) that your purchases have been "risky," then they'll revoke Buyer Protection on your purchases without warning.

I discovered this recently when an item from China was overdue by a month. Going to "Item didn't arrive" greets you with a message that Buyer Protection is not available on your purchase. Thanks, eBay, for punishing me for things outside my control.

Thankfully, the item arrived after all. I guess it's AliExpress from now on for buying goods from China.

Yes, I have always found the customer service from AliExpress to be first class.

[factory]

The rest of the stuff. 8082A pulse generator joining my RF and microwave experimentation "tower of power".  Got to wanting this after seeing CuriousMarc use two of them for his core memory demonstration video a while back. The killer feature for me is directly controllable rise and fall times...perfect for situations where really fast pulses will just ring. Should be very useful for the low-power radar experimentation I play around with sometimes.

Not pictured is another massive bag of Sphere free goodies, ranging from various ICs, to LEDs of many colors, diodes, switches, pots, capacitors....

I've recently acquired a pair of those 8082A's & a 8005B in a job lot of TE (mostly), I was thinking of reselling those but I may have to hang on to them after reading your post. 

I finally got the TE unloaded from my small van yesterday, it's in a temporary space in a shed while I sort through it, anything I'm keeping will go to the storage unit I'm now renting.

Not in the picture are the remains of a HP 5245L & 8614A the guy had parted out.




David

[BU508A]

The rest of the stuff. 8082A pulse generator joining my RF and microwave experimentation "tower of power".  Got to wanting this after seeing CuriousMarc use two of them for his core memory demonstration video a while back. The killer feature for me is directly controllable rise and fall times...perfect for situations where really fast pulses will just ring. Should be very useful for the low-power radar experimentation I play around with sometimes.

Not pictured is another massive bag of Sphere free goodies, ranging from various ICs, to LEDs of many colors, diodes, switches, pots, capacitors....

I've recently acquired a pair of those 8082A's & a 8005B in a job lot of TE (mostly), I was thinking of reselling those but I may have to hang on to them after reading your post. 

I finally got the TE unloaded from my small van yesterday, it's in a temporary space in a shed while I sort through it, anything I'm keeping will go to the storage unit I'm now renting.

Not in the picture are the remains of a HP 5245L & 8416A the guy had parted out.




David

    

[tggzzz]

I finally got the TE unloaded from my small van yesterday, it's in a temporary space in a shed while I sort through it, anything I'm keeping will go to the storage unit I'm now renting.

There's some nice looking stuff there. Let us know what you aren't keeping.- regrettably one or two of those things might complement my stuff

What's in that big mahogony box at the bottom?

[bd139]

Gah screw that. Get the beebs out and fire 'em up (after replacing the RIFAs in the power supplies)

[tggzzz]

Gah screw that. Get the beebs out and fire 'em up (after replacing the RIFAs in the power supplies)

Boring - you know what the beebs are and what they might be able to do. 

The other stuff has capabilities, as per Lancelot Brown.

[bd139]

Can't play Exile on the other things though 

I'm actually missing having a "lab computer" like the bbc with some crap hanging off the user port

[tggzzz]

Can't play Exile on the other things though 

I'm actually missing having a "lab computer" like the bbc with some crap hanging off the user port

That's what emulation is for, and get a Commodore PET and control your non-crap instruments.

[Robert763]

What model is the Racal / Aim "Databridge" slab LCR meter? The  6451 / 451 9343M is very nice with 0.1% accuracy (401 / 9341 is 0.24%). Shame they take up so much bench space.

[Robert763]

looks like a couple of Smiths 400Hz test set there too. I might be interested in those if you arn't keeping them.

[tonyalbus]

Guess what...huge hangover.....
Yesterday i was close to meltdown and relexed a bit to much
hope i was not to annoying..

[Cerebus]

Public Service Announcement

eBay's Buyer Protection works, but you're not guaranteed to have it as a buyer on eBay. If eBay determines (the criteria for which is a secret, apparently) that your purchases have been "risky," then they'll revoke Buyer Protection on your purchases without warning.

I discovered this recently when an item from China was overdue by a month. Going to "Item didn't arrive" greets you with a message that Buyer Protection is not available on your purchase. Thanks, eBay, for punishing me for things outside my control.

Thankfully, the item arrived after all. I guess it's AliExpress from now on for buying goods from China.

In the UK I suspect eBay doing that would fall foul of the "Unfair Contract Terms Act". Applies to consumer contracts only, not purchases for professional use where you're deemed to have sufficient savvy to understand and negotiate contract terms yourself - chance'd be a fine thing, getting any corporate behemoth to actually negotiate rather than dictate a contract.

[Cerebus]

The rest of the stuff. 8082A pulse generator joining my RF and microwave experimentation "tower of power".  Got to wanting this after seeing CuriousMarc use two of them for his core memory demonstration video a while back. The killer feature for me is directly controllable rise and fall times...perfect for situations where really fast pulses will just ring. Should be very useful for the low-power radar experimentation I play around with sometimes.

Not pictured is another massive bag of Sphere free goodies, ranging from various ICs, to LEDs of many colors, diodes, switches, pots, capacitors....

I've recently acquired a pair of those 8082A's & a 8005B in a job lot of TE (mostly), I was thinking of reselling those but I may have to hang on to them after reading your post. 

I finally got the TE unloaded from my small van yesterday, it's in a temporary space in a shed while I sort through it, anything I'm keeping will go to the storage unit I'm now renting.

Not in the picture are the remains of a HP 5245L & 8416A the guy had parted out.

What's that?:



That has got to be the biggest panel meter that I've seen outside a power station control room.

[tonyalbus]

Public Service Announcement

eBay's Buyer Protection works, but you're not guaranteed to have it as a buyer on eBay. If eBay determines (the criteria for which is a secret, apparently) that your purchases have been "risky," then they'll revoke Buyer Protection on your purchases without warning.

I discovered this recently when an item from China was overdue by a month. Going to "Item didn't arrive" greets you with a message that Buyer Protection is not available on your purchase. Thanks, eBay, for punishing me for things outside my control.

Thankfully, the item arrived after all. I guess it's AliExpress from now on for buying goods from China.

Does AliExpress have buyer protection?

Yep. I've had to use it only a couple of times. It works. For how long, though, who knows.

https://sale.aliexpress.com/__pc/v8Yr8f629D.htm

Yes works well, i used it also

[SilverSolder]

Public Service Announcement

eBay's Buyer Protection works, but you're not guaranteed to have it as a buyer on eBay. If eBay determines (the criteria for which is a secret, apparently) that your purchases have been "risky," then they'll revoke Buyer Protection on your purchases without warning.

I discovered this recently when an item from China was overdue by a month. Going to "Item didn't arrive" greets you with a message that Buyer Protection is not available on your purchase. Thanks, eBay, for punishing me for things outside my control.

Thankfully, the item arrived after all. I guess it's AliExpress from now on for buying goods from China.

Ouch. That deserves to be propagated widely.

Is there any "documentation" available, e.g. a screenshot showing the eff-off message?

This isn't new, I found this out 8 months ago, for international purchases you only have 30 days to raise a INR claim, after that the dispute process is meaningless as it can't be escalated to ePay.

David

30 days from the time of purchase??  -  Sometimes things take more than 30 days to arrive...

All this said, I have never had the eBay dispute process fail, and have never been fobbed off no matter where the item was from...

"Risky purchase" is an interesting concept - really, eBay owes its customers to define what that means up front!

[Cerebus]

"Risky purchase" is an interesting concept - really, eBay owes its customers to define what that means up front!

Indeed, I can't think of a more blatant unfairness than to say "We won't cover 'risky' purchases, but we won't tell you up front which ones are 'risky'.".

[bd139]

Dang need an AWG for something. Function generator eBay juggling time plus cracked DG811 methinks 

[factory]

I finally got the TE unloaded from my small van yesterday, it's in a temporary space in a shed while I sort through it, anything I'm keeping will go to the storage unit I'm now renting.

There's some nice looking stuff there. Let us know what you aren't keeping.- regrettably one or two of those things might complement my stuff

What's in that big mahogony box at the bottom?

It's a Tinsley Phase splitting and change-over board, need to find out more about that one.

Gah screw that. Get the beebs out and fire 'em up (after replacing the RIFAs in the power supplies)

The magic RIFA stench has already escaped from one of them, shame they used marker pen to note this on the case. I need to figure out a replacement for the 5 1/4" drives as there are none with them, I do have plenty of 3 1/2" drives if they could be used. There is one Trinitron monitor in the pile, I'll be amazed if it isn't knackered.

What model is the Racal / Aim "Databridge" slab LCR meter? The  6451 / 451 9343M is very nice with 0.1% accuracy (401 / 9341 is 0.24%). Shame they take up so much bench space.

It's a Racal 9343M, we had the lower end AIM version at work, which was the only LCR meter I trusted for testing & matching capacitors.

What's that?:



That has got to be the biggest panel meter that I've seen outside a power station control room.

Are you referring to the RE IM6 Megommeter on the left hand side of the first picture or something else?

David