Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

LOL! Speaking of cable Internet, when my neighbor got cable a few years after I did, the genius tech disconnected my line in the process. I had to wait all weekend for them to get another tech out to fix their mistake.

Boot to the head!

Back when we had DSL here I had a similar problem. It ended up being not in my end, because when we swapped the pair coming in to the house (We, for some unknown reason, have 6 pairs, and it's no add-on, it seems like it was built so 50 years ago) it came back without frequent renegotiations and similar. Took 2 iterations of tech visit. I was lucky enough to have the same tech both times, and the second round I wasn't even home, but I was able to convince him that I'd done everything I could and could we please swap blue/white pair for orange/white; he could do his (CO) side and I'd repatch in the LSA-Plus as soon as I got home.

Now we've got fibre, a single-strand line that links at 1Gbit. Problems so far mostly relate to longer power outages (there's an UPS in the concentration node but only with 2h backup time, and I've got perhaps 3h in my end) and last week a fat-fingering incident that required a truck roll to fix..  Slightly shorter drive than between Nottingham and Manchester, though.

Fibre service is practically flawless from a link POV, and performance is OK. I have 1-3ms RTT to services in town, and that is on top of a tunnel I run to get more than one IP address.

We as a world really need to exterminate all those short-haul "cable reuse" schemes (DSL, DOCSIS, etc) based on metal cable in favour of optical. And not do it half-assed with GPON. Point-to-point, with the opto-electrical translation in the home, is the only really good method. It is so much better.

Yeah, that's what Rogers has been rolling out up here. No fucking different in principle from the utter shiteness "satellite internet" schemes they cooked up 20 years ago... still copper uplink, same as fucking forever, just the downlink is fiber instead of µwave. 

mnem
"Mister Watson, can you please come blow me...?!?"

[mnementh]

I think I'll be long dead and buried before Verizon decides to string my neck of the woods with Fiber. My only choice for internet is copper provided by Spectrum. I pay for 60Mps down but typically get 85+Mps. Plenty for me and video streaming no issues. I think they offer 200Mps up to a max of 400Mps. But as of today I don't need it.

Oh, the wonders of continous lobbying by large telcos to get FCC to hand them unsupervised (and more so now, with that sodomised-by-industry Trump puppet as FCC chair) monopolies. Must be a wonderful boost to the free trade and competition by quality that has made USA a prime nation in the world 

Seriously though, this is broken in so many places around the globe. Telia, Telstra, Deutsche Telecom, BT; they all have a lot to answer for.

Edit: There is no such thing as "enough bandwidth". Which is why I'm upgrading my internal network to 10Gig Ethernet at some potential choke points. Also, it's because it is the TEA style thing to do. Remember, "overkill" is interpreted as "enough". Right?

"Too much is never enough." 

mnem
Bigger, faster, louder: All the good things in life.

[mnementh]

So another chinese ebay seller failure:

Bought this charger, was delivered quickly. Label and ebay description clearly say "60W, 2A, 29.4V". Tested this thing before releasing to intended usage, reveals a poor 83% efficiency at 1.25A maxim output current @230V and even less (1.15A, 80% eff. @110V - tested just because I can). This thing also gets quite hot, more than 80 °C at some places, draws a maximum of 41W input power.

Opened a case "item not as described". Sellers asks for photos, which I uploaded (showing the charger w/ electronic load). Seller claimed couldn't find photos, so answered "I've uploaded them to ebay". Offered 30% refund, which I declined because unit isn't suitable for my purpose. Now got an offer for re-sending the unit - thought about it for some time and agreed. Will have then two chinese crap chargers to do and document some smoke testing and Diode gone wild style teardown of a super dodgy chinese charger 

And what are these actually for? eBike charging via pack with BMS? 7S???P construction?

mnem
 

[McBryce]

Public Service Announcement

All HP 3478A owners:

• Clean your front/rear switch
• Replace your RIFA caps
• Back up your cal data
• Check your SRAM battery voltage (replace as needed; see also #3)

Everyone else: Don't forget when the next item on your auction watchlist ends. 

Is there any easy way of backing up the cal data? I replaced the battery last year (without losing the cal data), but it would be nice to have it stored safely somewhere else.

McBryce.

There have been several threads on it. This is one I had handy: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/hp-3478a-how-to-readwrite-cal-sram/

Also, I've seen at least a couple of programs folks have written to download and restore the cal data.

Cal data backed up. I saved it onto a 5.25in floppy, just to keep it authentic

McBryce.

[capt bullshot]

So another chinese ebay seller failure:

Bought this charger, was delivered quickly. Label and ebay description clearly say "60W, 2A, 29.4V". Tested this thing before releasing to intended usage, reveals a poor 83% efficiency at 1.25A maxim output current @230V and even less (1.15A, 80% eff. @110V - tested just because I can). This thing also gets quite hot, more than 80 °C at some places, draws a maximum of 41W input power.

Opened a case "item not as described". Sellers asks for photos, which I uploaded (showing the charger w/ electronic load). Seller claimed couldn't find photos, so answered "I've uploaded them to ebay". Offered 30% refund, which I declined because unit isn't suitable for my purpose. Now got an offer for re-sending the unit - thought about it for some time and agreed. Will have then two chinese crap chargers to do and document some smoke testing and Diode gone wild style teardown of a super dodgy chinese charger 

And what are these actually for? eBike charging via pack with BMS? 7S???P construction?

mnem
 

Yes, it's intended for ebike battery charging. 7S / as needed P was very common with the early (10yrs ago) Panasonic 26V motors. Of course, this particular chargers barrel plug won't match the proprietary battery packs, one has to make an adaptor. See my previous post for the battery and the original charger.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/msg3204520/#msg3204520
This kind of battery is quite smart, it tells the charger when it's fully charged by simple means.
But for the cheap ass crappy chinesium charger, my guess it's intended for some cheap ass chinesium battery packs for some cheap ass chinesium electric whatever ...

[mnementh]

A normal user will 70% do not complain, or thinking the device receiving the power is really damaged.

Bastards.

No, just unscrupulous fraud. Ferengi.

Well... claiming surge power figures for actual power ratings is nothing new; American electronics manufacturers threw that hat in the ring almost a century ago, and before that, it was similar tactics with LRA ratings on electric motors. 

What's annoying is that our Asian cousins do it so much better than we do ; they have absolutely zero compunctions about playing the "playing the percentages" game like Zucca is talking about. 

mnem

[Cerebus]

Public Service Announcement

All HP 3478A owners:

• Clean your front/rear switch
• Replace your RIFA caps
• Back up your cal data
• Check your SRAM battery voltage (replace as needed; see also #3)

Everyone else: Don't forget when the next item on your auction watchlist ends. 

Is there any easy way of backing up the cal data? I replaced the battery last year (without losing the cal data), but it would be nice to have it stored safely somewhere else.

McBryce.

There have been several threads on it. This is one I had handy: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/hp-3478a-how-to-readwrite-cal-sram/

Also, I've seen at least a couple of programs folks have written to download and restore the cal data.

Cal data backed up. I saved it onto a 5.25in floppy, just to keep it authentic

McBryce.

Is that so you can cut out just the file you need with some scissors and save space storing the whole thing? 

[mnementh]

There is "enough bandwidth". You know you've reached that point when the problem is actually "too much latency". You can buy wider bandwidth, but not reduced latency.

I agree there are diminishing returns in bandwidth, yes, but not until you can't saturate the available link with one computer only.

And, you are completely right in the latency discussion. I once made a complicated WAN procurement centered around minimised latencies. There was a formula in the selection process where reduction in latency gave a calculated (not actual) rebate on the price offered when compared to other, longer, cheaper paths. Thus, we stimulated the suppliers to offer a high-quality network and not to go for price only. It was highly successful.

stimulated =   

mnem
 

[tonyalbus]

Public Service Announcement

All HP 3478A owners:

• Clean your front/rear switch
• Replace your RIFA caps
• Back up your cal data
• Check your SRAM battery voltage (replace as needed; see also #3)

Everyone else: Don't forget when the next item on your auction watchlist ends. 

Is there any easy way of backing up the cal data? I replaced the battery last year (without losing the cal data), but it would be nice to have it stored safely somewhere else.

McBryce.

There have been several threads on it. This is one I had handy: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/hp-3478a-how-to-readwrite-cal-sram/

Also, I've seen at least a couple of programs folks have written to download and restore the cal data.

Cal data backed up. I saved it onto a 5.25in floppy, just to keep it authentic

McBryce.

@McBryce, so that link was okey ? wich methode did you use? or you have some tips?

[tonyalbus]

Yes!!..  just in, with the two extraHP knobs!.. 5 star seller.

[mnementh]

Turned out the genius before me had installed a coaxial attenuator on the cable coming in.

Any idea why?

Maybe for TV service only? I have no idea. It certainly interfered with the internet service. I only have cable internet...nothing else. In fact I recently got them to cough up another 12 month promo for me. 

[edit] Gigabit on DOCSIS uses a lot more bandwidth than lower speeds...it might have been that the attenuator is fine on a lower speed plan.

Quite plausible. I had a friend who was near the head end for cable TV and the signal he was getting came through so hot that it completely saturated the input amp on this TV set - looked like a square wave with lots of ringing once we slipped a scope probe in after the input stage. Fixed with a 20 dB pad. Here in the UK some of the cable TV providers skimped on plant and just had stupidly long cable runs with fewer head ends than they should have - result: if you were near the head end it was way too hot, if you were at the far end you could just get a signal that had enough oomph left in it. Must have cost them a fortune in new plant when they started trying to use the same cabling for DOCSIS a few years later as there's no way the existing runs would have met DOCSIS requirements - they probably had to cut each run in half and install 100s or 1000s of new head ends in each town they served.

And I don't feel a fucking bit sorry for the bastards. I'd LOVE to see the days again when fuckerizing the customer actually cost the Telecom something. 

mnem
*pees on all the baby Bells just on GP*

[bd139]

Educational video for everyone.

[McBryce]

Public Service Announcement

All HP 3478A owners:

• Clean your front/rear switch
• Replace your RIFA caps
• Back up your cal data
• Check your SRAM battery voltage (replace as needed; see also #3)

Everyone else: Don't forget when the next item on your auction watchlist ends. 

Is there any easy way of backing up the cal data? I replaced the battery last year (without losing the cal data), but it would be nice to have it stored safely somewhere else.

McBryce.

There have been several threads on it. This is one I had handy: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/hp-3478a-how-to-readwrite-cal-sram/

Also, I've seen at least a couple of programs folks have written to download and restore the cal data.

Cal data backed up. I saved it onto a 5.25in floppy, just to keep it authentic

McBryce.

@McBryce, so that link was okey ? wich methode did you use? or you have some tips?

I used this: https://github.com/pigrew/HP3478Ctrl/releases/tag/v0.20170630

McBryce.

[Cerebus]

Educational video for everyone.

Also in Mjölnir mode it can withstand direct lightning stikes on the input - sweet.

[tonyalbus]

Educational video for everyone.

Kill him!

[tonyalbus]

Public Service Announcement

All HP 3478A owners:

• Clean your front/rear switch
• Replace your RIFA caps
• Back up your cal data
• Check your SRAM battery voltage (replace as needed; see also #3)

Everyone else: Don't forget when the next item on your auction watchlist ends. 

Is there any easy way of backing up the cal data? I replaced the battery last year (without losing the cal data), but it would be nice to have it stored safely somewhere else.

McBryce.

There have been several threads on it. This is one I had handy: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/hp-3478a-how-to-readwrite-cal-sram/

Also, I've seen at least a couple of programs folks have written to download and restore the cal data.

Cal data backed up. I saved it onto a 5.25in floppy, just to keep it authentic

McBryce.

@McBryce, so that link was okey ? wich methode did you use? or you have some tips?

I used this: https://github.com/pigrew/HP3478Ctrl/releases/tag/v0.20170630

McBryce.

Thanks..will try... i do not have any development enviroment...but maybe when i unzip i get some files i can install...thanks 

[mnementh]

Educational video for everyone.

mnem
*plunks down a $2 Canadian coin, 3 assorted species of dimes and a Ricola wrapper fished from my pocket* Worth every penny!

[tggzzz]

Educational video for everyone.

I'm this close to reporting that video as being cruel and anti-religious. Or something. I'll think of something, anything.

[Specmaster]

Educational video for everyone.

I'm this close to reporting that video as being cruel and anti-religious. Or something. I'll think of something, anything.

Those flukes 25 & 27 meters are tough as old boots, as are Volkswagens 

[Robert763]

A normal user will 70% do not complain, or thinking the device receiving the power is really damaged.

Bastards.

No, just unscrupulous fraud. Ferengi.

Well... claiming surge power figures for actual power ratings is nothing new; American electronics manufacturers threw that hat in the ring almost a century ago, and before that, it was similar tactics with LRA ratings on electric motors. 

What's annoying is that our Asian cousins do it so much better than we do ; they have absolutely zero compunctions about playing the "playing the percentages" game like Zucca is talking about. 

mnem

The Americans are still at it. Case in point Lithium battery power tools. I have 4 DeWalt tools and several batteries some bought in the UK some in the USA. It's easy to tell which is which is which, the American ones say 20 V the UK 18 V. They are of course identical. The Americans quote the end of charge voltage while the UK advertising laws say you have to use the nominal voltage.

[Kosmic]

Crap I completely failed at setting a group bid correctly in Gixen.

Was first bidding on some unobtanium power sensor cables and then a lot for the power sensors. So I ended up loosing for the cables but then Gixen still bidded and won the lot for the probes 

I Just received the power sensors I scored on ebay recently. I need to finish testing but everything seems to be in working order. Got enough power meter probes now I also needed some SMA attenuators, it seems I'm all set on that front too Will probably try to sell some. The attenuators on the left are Weinschel 18Ghz, on the right Narda 3Ghz.

[mnementh]

 

mnem

[bd139]

Woops Dave!!
Certificate expires......Thursday, August 27, 2020

Yep, I got similar warning, although my browser was more concerned because the internet times did not agree.

They’re using letsencrypt so someone (gnif) didn’t check the cron job to renew certs worked properly.

[mnementh]

Hey guys... anyone anywhere near my neck of the GWN (Ontario), I need to pick a brain. What are the ISP plans you have available and how much?

We need to get internet at the new place, and our options appear to be Bell FTTN (so TP copper to the house - fuck that noize) and Rogers Cable or some TPIA reselling the same. 

Problem is, cheapest I can find for our new address is 150/15 plan at $99/mo! That is "Are you fucking high on crack!!" rates compared to the $60/mo we're currently paying for the same service from them via the property owner; obviously they're trying to force you to switch up to their .5Gb or 1.0Gb plans for 10/20 dollars more. 

So... any real, current data (not just random pissing/moaning on reddit, etc) would be a great help here.

Cheers,

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Woops Dave!!
Certificate expires......Thursday, August 27, 2020

Yep, I got similar warning, although my browser was more concerned because the internet times did not agree.

They’re using letsencrypt so someone (gnif) didn’t check the cron job to renew certs worked properly.

I figured the hamster just fell off his wheel again. 

mnem
Emergency backup is a little kid on a tricycle, so changeover may be delayed for potty breaks.