Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

Oh blast it, I forgot about discord yesterday, I was busy on eBay 

[GreyWoolfe]

Restaurant was open here today. I skipped it but did neck some Gifflars on the way back 

Now on to laser printers ... Xerox B215 looking like the least shit option for the budget. Duplex, scan, copy, wireless, not too large, 1.6p/sheet, doesn't come with a half empty toner.

Our Brother is quite nice. I explicitly did NOT want a scanner, and I wanted wired networking. Of course, the as-shipped toner cartridges are Twiggy thin.

For scanners, I've got a Canon flatbed, and have plans to get a sheet-fed Brother. The latter to push all paper invoices and other correspondence into long-time digital storage. I've got friends who've built processing chains with OCR etc, so will try that.

I also do wired networking.  My Brother HL-L 5100DN was purchased on sale for $150 and it does duplexing.  The Epson Workforce 5940 does duplexing and has an ADF.  They both will work wirelessly but I refuse to do so.  I do use a scanner regularly so the document feed is a nice and handy feature.  I have an HP color laser printer for work and that is also networked as I have a limited number of USB ports on the docking station for the company laptop.  I also have a 16 port gigabit switch in the rack over the door in my office where everything is so it makes sense to do wired.

[Brumby]

I also do wired networking.

Same.

I held out against any wireless for long enough to look like the household dinosaur until it just became too impractical.  I then enabled wireless and buttoned it up as much as possible using the equipment supplied by my ISP.  Then the NBN came in and that new equipment didn't have much in the way of securing outside of the access key and being a tightwad, I haven't sprung for my own router .... yet.

Still, anything that has a wired port has wireless turned off.

[Specmaster]

I have both wired and wireless networking. I prefer wired as it is more secure and of course much faster but I have had to cater for wireless as well due to the sheer number of mobile phones, tablets and laptops  in the family and also unless you are near to the router, the wireless signal drops away so rapidly that it was almost useless, so I had to install a number of wireless access points of the wired network at strategic locations, but even with 3 wireless stations it is not enough to ensure a decent strong signal everywhere in the house.

[mnementh]

Submitted a lowball offer for a 3478A. I don't think they'll accept, but hey, gotta try.

They counteroffered with something just $5 down from the stated BIN. No way. Reiterated my lowball.

To get the best deals - you have to be prepared to walk away...

Just HOW lowball?

http://www.ebaystores.com/Alltest-Surplus/_i.html?_nkw=3478A&submit=Search&_sid=1080135082

Seems they can be had for $125 pretty much any day of the week from AllTest...

mnem
 

[mnementh]

*click-click-clicky-clickety-click... click!!!*        Ummm... 

Just try and do that on your smartphone!

Pah! My calculator works better than that:

Don't make me dig out my 2TB of ASCII pr0n... 

mnem
Who else remembers Morgana...?

[mnementh]

Not exactly an calculator:

Hurrr!!!

Now I know why nobody chuckled at my 2TB of ascii pr0n jibe; ya beat me to it! 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

(SNIP)@mnem, best wishes on your upcoming move.  I posted something in your ISP thread for you.

No one probably remembers, but I had what I thought was a problem with my pi-hole back in June. (SNIP)Any recommendations on a router with WiFi and Ethernet for North America use?

Thanks for the feedback, I'm going in a different direction for now.

At my new place, the property owner offered to pull a cable through for the ISP he provided for the condo we just moved into; at first I was reluctant (still am, TBH) but then when I saw the crazy rates I decided to take him up on it at least until we get settled in. Today on my first load of the day I found he had moved the router entire into our space, so I spent my rest time this afternoon shopping Bezos' Brothel and after a quick scan of the UM, I now have one of these on the way:



https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07ZSDR49S/

https://www.tp-link.com/us/user-guides/archer-ax10&ax1500_v1/conventions

From what I can see it has really good hardware specs (1.5GHz 3-Core, MU-MIMO, 4x GBe) for the money (CAD$101.69 all up), WiFi 6 and VPN sandbox supports both Open VPN and PPTP, so should be able to completely isolate from the other half which are using the WiFi only on the gateway router. WiFi MAC filtering and the ability to specify a single local device for management ticked the final boxes for me; I've never managed my own VPN before so this should be an educational experience for me.

OTOH, it could be a little box of Chinese Surveillance; but nowadays, I don't know that I'm not getting that even with the LinkSys WRT3200ACM-CA I was looking at for 3X the price.

mnem
current mood: wiggly

[Saskia]

Over here most providers will open up a public hotspot on your line even without your consent.
Which leads to the stoopeed situation of having a gazillion hotspots in an apartment building where everyone has cable internet. Unfortunately they provide a lot of excuses to not switch it off, and since they are bloody quasi monopolists you honestly don't have a lot of choices.

[tggzzz]

Don't make me dig out my 2TB of ASCII pr0n... 

Mine is on fanfold paper; not a very thick pile

Paper has the advantage that you can increase the contrast by overprinting. I have an impressive nightime view of the GPO(!) Tower in central London.

[mansaxel]

I have both wired and wireless networking. I prefer wired as it is more secure and of course much faster but I have had to cater for wireless as well due to the sheer number of mobile phones, tablets and laptops  in the family and also unless you are near to the router, the wireless signal drops away so rapidly that it was almost useless, so I had to install a number of wireless access points of the wired network at strategic locations, but even with 3 wireless stations it is not enough to ensure a decent strong signal everywhere in the house.

I managed for quite some time on one simple consumer access point, but finally had enough (of course combined with the right amount of gear turning up, free for the taking..) and built a 5 node access point system with Cisco 2702 access points and a controller in a virtual machine. At last, I've got decent connectivity in the garage!  And an access point in visual range at the most heavily frequented areas in the house.  Untuned, TCP, and to a wired workstation on the same net: (ipv6 host parts obscured)

Code: [Select]

iperf3 -6 -c xxxx -b0
Connecting to host xxxx, port 5201
[  6] local 2001:470:28:dead:beef:: port 64471 connected to 2001:470:28:0fad:fede:: port 5201

...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
[ ID] Interval           Transfer     Bitrate
[  6]   0.00-10.00  sec   127 MBytes   106 Mbits/sec                  sender
[  6]   0.00-10.03  sec   127 MBytes   106 Mbits/sec                  receiver

iperf Done.

Could of course be improved on, but still is acceptable for home use.

[mansaxel]

Just HOW lowball?

Very Ferengi.

Edited to add: I've got the extra motivation of properly fuckerized shipping rates, in the Alltest case of course GSP, instantly doubling the price.

[Specmaster]

Don't make me dig out my 2TB of ASCII pr0n... 

Mine is on fanfold paper; not a very thick pile

Paper has the advantage that you can increase the contrast by overprinting. I have an impressive nightime view of the GPO(!) Tower in central London.

You can see it all the way from Brizzle  , you must be pretty high up then.

[Specmaster]

Just HOW lowball?

Very Ferengi.

Edited to add: I've got the extra motivation of properly fuckerized shipping rates, in the Alltest case of course GSP, instantly doubling the price.

Yup, thats the kicker, GSP kills it most times.

[Robert763]

I'm sure I've still got a roll of Baudot (5 bit) teletype image paper tape in storage somewere. No teleprinter though. The old Creed 7E/RP made a hell of  rackect if you printed and duplicated one of those!

[McBryce]

Over here most providers will open up a public hotspot on your line even without your consent.
Which leads to the stoopeed situation of having a gazillion hotspots in an apartment building where everyone has cable internet. Unfortunately they provide a lot of excuses to not switch it off, and since they are bloody quasi monopolists you honestly don't have a lot of choices.

That's why you should never take the "all-in-one device" solution from them. Just let them provide the basic modem and do the Routing/WiFi from a separate box, that way you control whether there's a hotspot or not.

McBryce. 

[ch_scr]

Somehow my lowball offer got accepted
Now to send the money and wait for it to arrive
At least it's a good problem to have, I guess

[AVGresponding]

UNC (american) 6-32 unfortunately.

Are these long enough? £3.33/100 free shipping:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/6-32-UNC-Black-Zinc-Plated-Round-Phillips-Head-PC-Computer-Case-Screw-100pcs/302135310251?hash=item4658aaf7ab:g:PdkAAOSwqA1evQe9


Update on the Keithley 2000. The seller messaged me to ask for payment, despite paypal saying it's sent and waiting for him to accept it...

[bd139]

UNC (american) 6-32 unfortunately.

Are these long enough? £3.33/100 free shipping:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/6-32-UNC-Black-Zinc-Plated-Round-Phillips-Head-PC-Computer-Case-Screw-100pcs/302135310251?hash=item4658aaf7ab:g:PdkAAOSwqA1evQe9


Update on the Keithley 2000. The seller messaged me to ask for payment, despite paypal saying it's sent and waiting for him to accept it...

Ahha good find. They might work. Will order. Thanks for finding that.

Good luck. Sounds like you have a div to deal with 

[tggzzz]

I'm sure I've still got a roll of Baudot (5 bit) teletype image paper tape in storage somewere. No teleprinter though. The old Creed 7E/RP made a hell of  rackect if you printed and duplicated one of those!

And that reminds me of the start/end of the hard  SF novel "The Black Cloud" by Fred Hoyle. I last found a copy of it on a beach "library" in Kerala, and re-reading it was a pleasure.

It is the only novel I know that uses calculus to explain a plot point. (Up yours, Stephen Hawking!)

[mnementh]

Urrrgh... rehanging a picture in the bathroom this morning; fucking thing jumped off the nail, skittered down the wall and left multiple patches of road-rash all the way down behind the toilet.

Gonna be one of THOSE mornings.  *throbbing vein in forehead*

mnem
*nips off to Tim Horton's to salve his misery with a hot breakfast*

[bd139]

 

My sucky task today is organising parts 



The big gap is for the SMD parts which are coming out after I've made myself a nice lunch!

[Zucca]

That's why you should never take the "all-in-one device" solution from them. Just let them provide the basic modem and do the Routing/WiFi from a separate box, that way you control whether there's a hotspot or not.
McBryce.

I would go even further, if "bridge modem" not possible I will not sign up any contract with an ISP.
But you have to chose from what is available, we are still like rats in a cage.

PS: How many ISP offers in 2020 a pure IPV6 service in bridge mode? Probably never change a running system strikes again.

[Cerebus]

*click-click-clicky-clickety-click... click!!!*        Ummm... 

Just try and do that on your smartphone!

Pah! My calculator works better than that:

Don't make me dig out my 2TB of ASCII pr0n... 

mnem
Who else remembers Morgana...?

Ahh, but mine just requires a schoolboy, pencil, paper and the letters x, y, w, two brackets and two full stops; you're going to have to find a real proper line printer from somewhere and a box of fan-fold paper to do real justice to golden age ASCII pr0n. 

[mnementh]

Agreed. *raises a glass to simpler times when it was easier to entertain yourself*   

mnem
   *remembers making music with floppy drive seeks on his SX-64 luggable*