Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[factory]

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

There are two small Smiths items which look to be part of something much bigger. I'll try and add some pictures later.

David

[Cerebus]

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

As I don't know what it is I can't say if it is the "RE IM6 Megommeter". If that's the device I drew a bright orange box around, then yes.

Anyway, I wants it; I loves big analogue meters.

[factory]

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

As I don't know what it is I can't say if it is the "RE IM6 Megommeter". If that's the device I drew a bright orange box around, then yes.

Anyway, I wants it; I loves big analogue meters.

I don't know why but I don't see an orange box in the picture.

Some better pictures of a RE IM6 Megommeter here;
https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/radiometer_megohmmeter_im6_im.html
Sorry to say it's now back in my van to go into storage for future repair & use.

David

[mnementh]

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... 

Yup. I'm lucky they're on the other end of the Great White North, or I'd be broke as a stoke and living in a cave... all by myself... with nothing but a monstrous pile of moldy old TEA for company...

mnem
*gazes wistfully off into the distance...*

[mnementh]

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

Yup. That's why they're getting rid of PP; being expected to provide customer service and actually pay off on their "buyer protection" was costing them... *GASP!* real money. 

mnem
The Race to the Bottom is now a hole-digging contest...

[mnementh]

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

Translation: All this plus about 2 more truckloads will be going into storage until discretionary fundage to fix it manifests.

mnem
Carry on, soldier! *salute*

[mnementh]

"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'.".

I'm guessing here, but I think you'll find that the ones they consider "risky" are the ones where they require ePay. I almost never buy anything online without PP anymore; if a vendor doesn't want to accept PP, it's fair odds they are either such cheap-ass skinflints they refuse to give PP their cut (which is STILL considerably cheaper than any merchant CC processing account, FFS) or they're afraid of the customer actually having recourse when they don't fulfill the purchase.

Fuck 'em all.

mnem
 

[bd139]

So much that.

Talking of shit, Amazon just did a dump and run. Fortunately no porch pirates today 

[mnementh]

Anything fun, or just the usual mundane sundries...?

mnem
Yes, I'm procrastinating. Nobody likes moving...

[Saskia]

burn in test of the Hi End Audio Streamer built yesterday. Noticed the power on LED is busted. *sigh* Shit happens.

Playback quality is fine. Only *issue* I might have foreseen is that with this particular mainboard the inside temperature is a bit high, CPU sensor says 54 Centigrades....
Given the fact that I am ripping 2 CDs simultaneously plus playing back another this appears to be somewhat ok.

I am thinking of building one with an external DAC to satisfy Zucca's desires and offer him more apples.

Or should I offer him cookies to bring him to the dark side ?

[bd139]

Anything fun, or just the usual mundane sundries...?

mnem
Yes, I'm procrastinating. Nobody likes moving...

Kettle for my Trangia

[Cerebus]

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

As I don't know what it is I can't say if it is the "RE IM6 Megommeter". If that's the device I drew a bright orange box around, then yes.

Anyway, I wants it; I loves big analogue meters.

I don't know why but I don't see an orange box in the picture.

Some better pictures of a RE IM6 Megommeter here;
https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/radiometer_megohmmeter_im6_im.html
Sorry to say it's now back in my van to go into storage for future repair & use.

David

Either you've got a unique kind of colour blindness, or more likely, the forum's playing silly buggers with images again 'cause it looks fine here. I'll upload it again as an attachment to this message and we'll see if that does the trick.

[SilverSolder]

"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'.".

I'm guessing here, but I think you'll find that the ones they consider "risky" are the ones where they require ePay. I almost never buy anything online without PP anymore; if a vendor doesn't want to accept PP, it's fair odds they are either such cheap-ass skinflints they refuse to give PP their cut (which is STILL considerably cheaper than any merchant CC processing account, FFS) or they're afraid of the customer actually having recourse when they don't fulfill the purchase.

Fuck 'em all.

mnem
 

Agree - if an online business doesn't take PayPal it is a red flag to me as well.  You do, of course, always have recourse via your credit card company, but that can be slow and cumbersome compared to eBay and possibly PayPal dispute resolution.

I've never used the PayPal resolution process -  I guess I've been lucky in never needing to! 

[mnementh]

Anything fun, or just the usual mundane sundries...?

mnem
Yes, I'm procrastinating. Nobody likes moving...

Kettle for my Trangia    

Priorities, of course!     

mnem

[tggzzz]

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

Tuesday auction, FYI:

https://www.bidspotter.co.uk/en-gb/auction-catalogues/timed/hunt4auctions/catalogue-id-hunt-410057?searchTerm=generator&whereToSearch=%2Fen-gb%2Fauction-catalogues%2Ftimed%2Fhunt4auctions%2Fcatalogue-id-hunt-410057

[mnementh]

burn in test of the Hi End Audio Streamer built yesterday. Noticed the power on LED is busted. *sigh* Shit happens.

Playback quality is fine. Only *issue* I might have foreseen is that with this particular mainboard the inside temperature is a bit high, CPU sensor says 54 Centigrades....
Given the fact that I am ripping 2 CDs simultaneously plus playing back another this appears to be somewhat ok.

I am thinking of building one with an external DAC to satisfy Zucca's desires and offer him more apples.

Or should I offer him cookies to bring him to the dark side ?

I suggest a nice miserly Ryzen 3500 HTPC build in that form factor as bait... 

mnem

[bd139]

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

Tuesday auction, FYI:

https://www.bidspotter.co.uk/en-gb/auction-catalogues/timed/hunt4auctions/catalogue-id-hunt-410057?searchTerm=generator&whereToSearch=%2Fen-gb%2Fauction-catalogues%2Ftimed%2Fhunt4auctions%2Fcatalogue-id-hunt-410057

Pah DG811 is 217 shipped next day and you can crack it to two 100MHz channels. Hardly worth throwing the money at those.

[mnementh]

Yebbutt that's only a few functions, IIRC... Arb and some other functions are all much lower, aren't they?

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

Tuesday auction, FYI:

https://www.bidspotter.co.uk/en-gb/auction-catalogues/timed/hunt4auctions/catalogue-id-hunt-410057?searchTerm=generator&whereToSearch=%2Fen-gb%2Fauction-catalogues%2Ftimed%2Fhunt4auctions%2Fcatalogue-id-hunt-410057

Ooooh... those ISG-LF44 inline tracking generators looks to be going much too cheaply; but reserve auction too, so...

https://docs-emea.rs-online.com/webdocs/1406/0900766b81406e03.pdf

mnem
 

[tggzzz]

Yebbutt that's only a few functions, IIRC... Arb and some other functions are all much lower, aren't they?

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

Tuesday auction, FYI:

https://www.bidspotter.co.uk/en-gb/auction-catalogues/timed/hunt4auctions/catalogue-id-hunt-410057?searchTerm=generator&whereToSearch=%2Fen-gb%2Fauction-catalogues%2Ftimed%2Fhunt4auctions%2Fcatalogue-id-hunt-410057

Ooooh... those ISG-LF44 inline tracking generators looks to be going much too cheaply; but reserve auction too, so...

That bloke is prefectly happy to fail to sell X, and then put X in his next auction in a month's time. I would be surprised if you got a bargain from him, although I did get 90m of desoldering braid at a pleasant price.

[Saskia]

@mnem a Ryzen is the absolutely wrong CPU for this kind of endeavor.

I would vote for an i3-4150T and a H81T mainboard with a heatpipe cooling system.
Alas, the case alone for this kind of build will set him back about 300€

[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?

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

 

I guess I shall have to take a closer look. I haven't before because of the anticipated shipping premium.

[bitseeker]

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. 

A nice 3440A I see down there, too.

[bitseeker]

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

Correct. I should've included that in my original post.

[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.

Ouch. That deserves to be propagated widely.

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

Unfortunately, I didn't save a screenshot and the items have since arrived.

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.

I had also assumed it was because it was too late after the estimated arrival time, so I checked another one that was within the range of the arrival estimate and it also returned the same message: No longer covered by Buyer Protection.

That's when I dug up many posts in the eBay Community forums complaining about not having coverage and some threads saying that eBay has revoked Buyer Protection before. Some cases were pretty clear-cut in that the buyer had very bad feedback history or waited too long to open an INR case. I don't fit either. So, the only conclusion I could come to was that I had triggered some limited due to orders from China not arriving. From memory, I think I've used Buyer Protection two or three times.

[bitseeker]

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

Wow, that's a lot of goodies. Well done, David!