Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[BravoV]

... <snip> ...
Yuck. Next, I decided not to repair this pile of crap. I bought some Rigol 1054Z as my swiss knife low profile scope. ...

 What can the old compact Teks do that a modern el-cheapo scope cannot ?

Just a gentle reminder, here in TEA hole, its never about having "one sharp knife is more than enough vs own many blunt knives" thingy. 

Here, it is about having "all cutting tools" (not just knife)  that the pocket/house/space/swmbo allowed. 

And the talk and discussion or even brag, about sharpening and/or fixing the cutting tools (not just knife) is a social activities here.

Pretty sure I'm not alone here. 

[Specmaster]

European HP inlet / switching configuration is completely different to the US one. If you look at some of the EU made power supplies they don't have neon indicators for some reason as well and the front end is wired up differently:



I've had to actually rework a couple of them because they shipped with the neon disconnected at the factory.

Yes even HP had Friday afternoon builds 

I can think of a few reasons why EU sourced gear does not employ neons as ON indicators, the first is that are normally only guaranteed for 90days, secondly they vary in brightness massively and thirdly, they can give false indications. Due to the very low current draw, a neon can glow indicating that the equipment is powered ON and working when in effect either the live or the neutral could have a high resistance connection and the neon would indicate power was normal.

[mansaxel]

There's no bad German beer in general.   
If in doubt it is always just and only the last beer that's bad..      

I've grown to like two different German beers a bit more than the others, Hövels Original and Flensburger ("plop"). No, one rarely gets bad beer in Germany, but sometimes it is better!

[bd139]

I can think of a few reasons why EU sourced gear does not employ neons as ON indicators, the first is that are normally only guaranteed for 90days, secondly they vary in brightness massively and thirdly, they can give false indications. Due to the very low current draw, a neon can glow indicating that the equipment is powered ON and working when in effect either the live or the neutral could have a high resistance connection and the neon would indicate power was normal.

Interesting - never knew that!

[BU508A]

There's no bad German beer in general.   
If in doubt it is always just and only the last beer that's bad..      

Hier. Geht aufs Haus.



 

[tonyalbus]

Pitty i was not in GuestLab in Dave's MailBag last week....
But now my channel showed up on his screen, in the center, by change in his last video :-)



around 2 minutes 

[Saskia]

try Störtebeker beer (out of Stralsund). It is said to be of very high quality.
I am no suitable judge in that matter as the doc said that I am not allowed to drink beer, wine, champagne.
He did ok rum, vodka, tequila, wiski, tho.

[Specmaster]

There's no bad German beer in general.   
If in doubt it is always just and only the last beer that's bad..      

Hier. Geht aufs Haus.



 

Do you work in a brewery then?

[Specmaster]

try Störtebeker beer (out of Stralsund). It is said to be of very high quality.
I am no suitable judge in that matter as the doc said that I am not allowed to drink beer, wine, champagne.
He did ok rum, vodka, tequila, wiski, tho.

Now thats really odd, I've never heard of anyone being banned from beer or wine but OK'd to get stuck into the really bad stuff that can screw you up for your not careful, or are you just joking with us?

And now to show off the translation service from Google 

Nun, das ist wirklich seltsam. Ich habe noch nie von jemandem gehört, dem Bier oder Wein verboten wurde, aber es wäre in Ordnung, in den wirklich schlechten Dingen stecken zu bleiben, die Sie für Ihre Unachtsamkeit vermasseln können, oder scherzen Sie nur mit uns?

[BU508A]

There's no bad German beer in general.   
If in doubt it is always just and only the last beer that's bad..      

Hier. Geht aufs Haus.



 

Do you work in a brewery then?

No. I don't like beer at all. "Geht aufs Haus" means simply: "Here, have one for free."

[Wolfgang]

Well, I learned the hard way. I still have TEKs, and they never needed repair so far. The good old 7104 I sold for a new Tek, fine too.
The "compact" Teks 465 ... are so cramped and full of tants and unobtainium ICs that repair can easily become a nightmare. Same for HPs or Hameg. I once tried to repair a HM740 with a killed FET input stage. The bastards connected their PCBs by edge-soldering them together !
Yuck. Next, I decided not to repair this pile of crap. I bought some Rigol 1054Z as my swiss knife low profile scope. None of them ever gave up.
For better stuff, I use a Tek MSO4104 and for extremely fast stuff a 6GHz Keysight S-Series. Regarding functionality, the dirt cheapo Rigols outperform any old stuff I had. 100MHz BW, 1mV, enough memory, 4 channels, all kinds of trigger gadgets, SCPI programmability (I need that for routine tasks), math functions (no I dont mean FFT), very little desk space, ... all for free, and by far good enough for routine stuff. Total expense 400€. How long can you repair for this ? And is it worth it ? What can the old compact Teks do that a modern el-cheapo scope cannot ?

You are clearly not thinking straight at all here, nobody is claiming that new modern scopes aren't more capable are they  There are many people who would love to have a 6HHz Keysite S-series scope on their bench that they can use, but the real truth is that not many can either afford such luxury, can justify it's expense, or they understand that they don't realistically needs its superior power, its bandwidth or its feature set.

If you spend all your time driving in a city are you really going to buy yourself a 200mph Bugatti Veyron when the best speed you can hope to achieve is 40mph?

To be clear, I was probably unaware of the amount of masochism involved in TEA unworthy scope repairs  .
Of course, there is a difference of getting measurement jobs done and just playing around for fun.  I just was unable to understand why these unworthy scopes are so attractive to the TEA people. Well, true TEA rottenness is in the eye of the beholder  ...

[URI]

There's no bad German beer in general.   
If in doubt it is always just and only the last beer that's bad..      

Hier. Geht aufs Haus.



 

Do you work in a brewery then?

I don't think so. Oettinger Pils might be a beer one wouldn't take as a gift either.
Oettinger is a beer famous for its -errrm, let's say: low price flavour.   
The Oettinger Malzbier (malt beere (?), non-alcoholic, rather sweet) is one of the best Malzbiere I know though.
It's nearer to the flavour of Pilsener/beer because of it's bitterness compared to other Malzbiere. It's still sweet though..

The Stralsund Stoertebeker brewery makes some really good beers. Been there, drank that.   

[Specmaster]

There's no bad German beer in general.   
If in doubt it is always just and only the last beer that's bad..      

Hier. Geht aufs Haus.



 

Do you work in a brewery then?

No. I don't like beer at all. "Geht aufs Haus" means simply: "Here, have one for free."

Arh, Google translates that to "Here. It is for free." hence my question. Good as google is, a slight variation can have a massive difference in the true meaning.

[bd139]

Gah tidy Agilent branded 34401A buyer collects £350 round the corner from me. I don’t need it though 

[BU508A]

There's no bad German beer in general.   
If in doubt it is always just and only the last beer that's bad..      

Hier. Geht aufs Haus.



 

Do you work in a brewery then?

No. I don't like beer at all. "Geht aufs Haus" means simply: "Here, have one for free."

Arh, Google translates that to "Here. It is for free." hence my question. Good as google is, a slight variation can have a massive difference in the true meaning.

The google translation is correct in a more general sense. In this case it is just meant for this single bottle, because it is very unlikely, that URI want to have another one.      

[Specmaster]

Gah tidy Agilent branded 34401A buyer collects £350 round the corner from me. I don’t need it though 

But it has no leads, makes me wonder if it is stolen or something. Even if it is missing the leads, it would certainly add to the appeal of the meter if he added a cheap set of leads to it. Why would you sell a top end meter without the leads??

[Saskia]

try Störtebeker beer (out of Stralsund). It is said to be of very high quality.
I am no suitable judge in that matter as the doc said that I am not allowed to drink beer, wine, champagne.
He did ok rum, vodka, tequila, wiski, tho.

Now thats really odd, I've never heard of anyone being banned from beer or wine but OK'd to get stuck into the really bad stuff that can screw you up for your not careful, or are you just joking with us?

And now to show off the translation service from Google 

Nun, das ist wirklich seltsam. Ich habe noch nie von jemandem gehört, dem Bier oder Wein verboten wurde, aber es wäre in Ordnung, in den wirklich schlechten Dingen stecken zu bleiben, die Sie für Ihre Unachtsamkeit vermasseln können, oder scherzen Sie nur mit uns?

very easy explanation.
Having a houseboat full of allergies I cannot stand anything that has an elevated level of histamins.

With Rum, Vodka, ... those are not coming over to the end product when distilling the stuff.

So while the level of alcohol is way higher in those refreshing beverages, the allergy potential is a lot lower.

Still, my alcoholic beverages make it past the best before date easily.

Last checkup:
Doc:
do you drink any alcohol ?
umm, one bottle of bourbon and one bottle of Baileys.
a day ?
nope, per year.

[mansaxel]

try Störtebeker beer (out of Stralsund). It is said to be of very high quality.
I am no suitable judge in that matter as the doc said that I am not allowed to drink beer, wine, champagne.
He did ok rum, vodka, tequila, wiski, tho.

Störtebeker makes a reasonable non-alcoholic one. Haven't tried their ordinary one.

[capt bullshot]

Remember me playing with that K238 from Ice-Tea (especially the spare analog board):

Still somewhat short on time, I checked the spare analog board that Ice-Tea supplied. It's output was stuck at +/- 2V or +/-  15V (depending on range and polarity setting). Some systematic bug hunting lead to a stuck output on this LT1057 OpAmp. Since I don't have the exact replacement readily available, I tried a jelly bean TL072. This was a partial success, the 1.5V range worked then, but was about 10% off. More hunting found an open circuit within the feedback path. Fixing this (with that ugly bodge wire you might notice) made all ranges work again. Yes, the TL072 isn't soldered, I just stuffed it into the PCB with slightly bent pins to make it easier to replace with the correct one, for now it's just a bodge for testing.

Today, I've received this



So I'm expecting a working spare board soon ...

[URI]

There's no bad German beer in general.   
If in doubt it is always just and only the last beer that's bad..      

Hier. Geht aufs Haus.



 

Do you work in a brewery then?

No. I don't like beer at all. "Geht aufs Haus" means simply: "Here, have one for free."

Arh, Google translates that to "Here. It is for free." hence my question. Good as google is, a slight variation can have a massive difference in the true meaning.

The google translation is correct in a more general sense. In this case it is just meant for this single bottle, because it is very unlikely, that URI want to have another one.      

Right you are...       

[Specmaster]

try Störtebeker beer (out of Stralsund). It is said to be of very high quality.
I am no suitable judge in that matter as the doc said that I am not allowed to drink beer, wine, champagne.
He did ok rum, vodka, tequila, wiski, tho.

Now thats really odd, I've never heard of anyone being banned from beer or wine but OK'd to get stuck into the really bad stuff that can screw you up for your not careful, or are you just joking with us?

And now to show off the translation service from Google 

Nun, das ist wirklich seltsam. Ich habe noch nie von jemandem gehört, dem Bier oder Wein verboten wurde, aber es wäre in Ordnung, in den wirklich schlechten Dingen stecken zu bleiben, die Sie für Ihre Unachtsamkeit vermasseln können, oder scherzen Sie nur mit uns?

very easy explanation.
Having a houseboat full of allergies I cannot stand anything that has an elevated level of histamins.

With Rum, Vodka, ... those are not coming over to the end product when distilling the stuff.

So while the level of alcohol is way higher in those refreshing beverages, the allergy potential is a lot lower.

Still, my alcoholic beverages make it past the best before date easily.

Last checkup:
Doc:
do you drink any alcohol ?
umm, one bottle of bourbon and one bottle of Baileys.
a day ?
nope, per year.

My last checkup went like this,

Doc - Drink much alcohol?

Me - Umm, about 12 pints and a bottle of Scotch.

Doc - A day!

Me - 12 pints a year, usually 1 pint a week when I'm on TEA discord, and a bottle of Scotch in 20years. (Father in Law got me a bottle when he went overseas in his job, sadly he passed away 20years ago and I've just finished the bottle) fact.

So neither of us drink much alcohol at all then 

[Cerebus]

There's no bad German beer in general.   
If in doubt it is always just and only the last beer that's bad..      

Hier. Geht aufs Haus.



 

Do you work in a brewery then?

No. I don't like beer at all. "Geht aufs Haus" means simply: "Here, have one for free."

Arh, Google translates that to "Here. It is for free." hence my question. Good as google is, a slight variation can have a massive difference in the true meaning.

A rather weak translation to English as the idiom is almost identical to the English one and ought to be translated as "Here, [this is] on the house".

I stress English because I don't know if the idiom carries over to all other English speaking countries, I've never had an Amerikaner barman offer me a free drink, or a Kanadier for that matter, but the Kiwis and Aussies have come good. 

[Cerebus]

try Störtebeker beer (out of Stralsund). It is said to be of very high quality.
I am no suitable judge in that matter as the doc said that I am not allowed to drink beer, wine, champagne.
He did ok rum, vodka, tequila, wiski, tho.

Störtebeker makes a reasonable non-alcoholic one. Haven't tried their ordinary one.

The best non-alcoholic German beer I've had was a low alcohol Erdinger Weißbier. Perhaps wheat beers lend themselves better to making non-alcoholic beers than barley ones.

[mnementh]

[Snip oodles of OT (in the TEA thread, this is nigh blasphemous ) blathering about what cheap test gear costs vs capability]

...What can the old compact Teks do that a modern el-cheapo scope cannot ?

How about actually giving you an accurate representation of a waveform at anywhere near the upper limits of the advertised spec...?   That would really be nice.

How about actually meet spec, when most of this old gear actually exceeds spec by a considerable margin?

How about... survive well into the next decade? Most of our old gear will do so, and much of it will outlive the new stuff, even AFTER surviving 20-30 years before your new gear was even made.

Oh... and how about... being able to be repaired without literal rocket surgery...? You complain you couldn't desolder/resolder an edge-soldered sub-board; that's flupping "stone axes and flint knives" easy to fix compared to modern i-Device "BIC Lighter use it up & throw it away" construction where you need a hot-air rework workstation with cost in the tens of thousands that has processor-controlled IR preheat, IR camera and a microscope built in... just to replace a single IC.

The point being... you simply cannot compare what's needed for a modern production workbench to what we tinker with. For us, the journey is as important... even more important... than the destination. We learn so much about the art of electronics engineering and design by taking this stuff apart and putting it back together again... in many cases, it's almost like being taught by the great masters personally. You simply cannot put a price tag on THAT kind of education.

And if you never take that journey, you don't learn ANY of the things (good and bad) that we've learned along the way. That is doing yourself a grave disservice, actually.

That said... I've spoken with you before in other threads; I know you know better. So I'm going to throw down a gauntlet:

Please make a list of 10 ways our favored old test gear is better than the new stuff.

I'll start you out:

1) It was designed by actual engineers who know what engineers need, not an intern pulling specs literally out of his/her arse.
2) Documentation. Not only complete user manuals, but technical documentation and even detailed principles of operation.
3)...

Then make a similar list for the new el-cheapo stuff:

1) You can buy new for cheap.
2) The specs are far higher for the dollar.
3)...


Cheers!

mnem

[Wolfgang]

There's no bad German beer in general.   
If in doubt it is always just and only the last beer that's bad..      

Hier. Geht aufs Haus.



 

Camel pee this one. Disproves the theory that there is no lousy german beer.