Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Cerebus]

A green one.

Next!

[bd139]

So we descended upon a certain London club which is one of those places that if you know about it, you know what’s coming up.

Could you possibly be describing the Slimelight?

Yes. Alas it has apparently gone up hill since those days

Interesting the place is TE related as the old Kingshill power supplies were manufactured in the building.

[med6753]

Anybody want a cheap nixie tube LC meter ? the seller just sent me an offer at 17.50$

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Systron-Donner-9400-Meter/274527728404?hash=item3feb20b314:g:-0sAAOSwy2NfgQqG

About 50 miles from me but I don't want it. Pat (Cubdriver) might be interested.

[battlecoder]

Anybody want a cheap nixie tube LC meter ? the seller just sent me an offer at 17.50$

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Systron-Donner-9400-Meter/274527728404?hash=item3feb20b314:g:-0sAAOSwy2NfgQqG

See, this is the kind of thing that kills me. Devices that are cheap on ebay, but I can't really purchase because shipping to my country is like ridiculously expensive (e.g: For this listing it seems to be $81.43 USD) 

[bd139]

Same. US international shipping is nasty.

[0culus]

Thanks to a referral from a forum member who used to be local to me, I went out on a TEA expedition today and came back with two new toys...well, really a toy and a living museum piece that is large and extremely heavy. Pics later! 

[Cerebus]

So we descended upon a certain London club which is one of those places that if you know about it, you know what’s coming up.

Could you possibly be describing the Slimelight?

Yes. Alas it has apparently gone up hill since those days

Interesting the place is TE related as the old Kingshill power supplies were manufactured in the building.

Apparently they've since installed adequate security to defend from the pink haired lasses. Found this:



Check behind the entrance.

[bd139]

Ahh yeah that’s Steve’s tank. Just because 

Typical bad night out. https://youtu.be/OSyAQvqIMkY

Warning may contain dicks.

[med6753]

Ahh yeah that’s Steve’s tank. Just because 

Typical bad night out. https://youtu.be/OSyAQvqIMkY

Warning may contain dicks.

What the fuck. 

[bd139]

Yeah. That 

Getting fed up some people on eBay. £500 buyer collects, somewhere near Thurso. Interesting item but worth £5 

Oh and one for the time nuts. They managed to get zeptosecond measurements https://www.goethe-university-frankfurt.de/93203693/Zeptoseconds__New_world_record_in_short_time_measurement?locale=en

[Cerebus]

Ahh yeah that’s Steve’s tank. Just because 

Typical bad night out. https://youtu.be/OSyAQvqIMkY

Warning may contain dicks.

That looks, and sounds, like Throbing Gristle taking afternoon tea with the vicar.

Yeah, I'm quite well informed on the Slimelight. Never actually been there personally, but I've loads of friends who were habitués of there and have seen the photos. Not really a nightclub person me, more smoky late night "dive bar" - to which end I've probably drunk in every dubious basement, attic or backstreet bar in London, straight, gay, legal, likely-to-be-raided-any-minute, the lot.

[bd139]

Your approach was probably more interesting to be fair. Most of the best things around that club happened when I woke up somewhere random at about 11 am the next morning 

[nixiefreqq]

Getting a garage to work on anything seems to be difficult at the moment, I gave up trying to find one that would collect my stranded Berlingo from the work carpark, after a short gearbox linkage snapped, thankfully an ex-mechanic at work managed to get it going with a part taken from a scrap Partner van.

This afternoon after work I went over to pick up the HP universal counter, AVO digital multimeter & Airmec frequency meter I had won earlier this week, on the way back one of the van wheel bearings has failed again (noisy) , always the same side, must be the third one now. 

Anyway here is the TE, the HP doesn't count, the AVO only displays zeros, can't check the Airmec as I don't have the correct power lead handy (audiophool grade one).


And the less said about the power lead on the HP the better, now cut off & thrown in the bin. 



David

ahhhhhh.    you always remember your first.


my first piece of nixie gear was a 5325b.   still have one somewhere down in the fortress of solitude.  (might be an A)

if you want it to count you have to spray those feckin' push button switches with contact cleaner and then exercise them vigorously.  same for the internal/external slide switch in the back.

repeat again in two weeks.  and again in two weeks. and again in two weeks.........forever.

but it was still my proudest possession until 5245 mania struck.

[Specmaster]

@BD139
Here we go then, finally got around to some more testing, connected a 1K load, set volts to max and current to max, 32.1V @ 33mA. Voltage on wiper of VR7 (trimmer across 0.1 ) is -5.24mV and voltage on wiper of VR5 -99mV. Reduce current pot till it goes into CC mode and VR7 = -4.9mV and volts on VR5 = -12.6mV Current is 31mA and output volts is 30.2V`

Same again but with 100 load gives Max output volts 11.5V and max current of 116mA VR7 wiper is -9.8mV and wiper of VR5 is -12.1mV. Reducing current control VR5 until display shows clipping or CC mode gives the following results, Max output volts is 6.2V and Max current is 63mA, wiper of VR7 is -6.5mV and wiper of VR5 is -14.1mV

In case it was IC7 (Quad OP Amp) pissing about I again replaced it with another new one and the results did not change.

Maybe I'm losing the plot here, but it's not making any sense to me, could it be the multiplexer screwing this up?

All voltage readings were taken with external meters and the same with the current. It is also worth noting here that the internal current meter agrees 100% with the external one and the internal voltage display agrees 98% on the output reading.

Because I could get what I think was full control of the voltage with the course and fine controls, I never lifted any legs of components in the voltage control section in order to check the values out of circuit, is it possible that there is something in that section misbehaving? 

[bd139]

Ok that's weird indeed as those are about right. It does look like something is pulling voltages around.

Can you check the voltages on pins 2 and 3 of IC7 using the same process. Pin 2 should be the measured current and Pin 3 should be the desired current. I suspect this is going to be an issue with C18, C19 or the MUX pulling them down via IPHI. I would go ahead and replace them if you haven't already and the 4052.

Think cheapest 1 off qty of 4052 is bitsbox: https://www.bitsbox.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=140_157&products_id=1104

[Specmaster]

Fleabay £1 selling fees again.

Not for me yet. I reckon they’re interlacing it every two weeks for different groups.

Have you checked on the eBay site itself? I never got the email but logging into eBay, it was there on the opening screen for me.

[bd139]

Have you checked on the eBay site itself? I never got the email but logging into eBay, it was there on the opening screen for me.

Nope nothing.

[Kosmic]

Look like the first batch of TinySa was a bit hit and miss 

[Specmaster]

Ok that's weird indeed as those are about right. It does look like something is pulling voltages around.

Can you check the voltages on pins 2 and 3 of IC7 using the same process. Pin 2 should be the measured current and Pin 3 should be the desired current. I suspect this is going to be an issue with C18, C19 or the MUX pulling them down via IPHI. I would go ahead and replace them if you haven't already and the 4052.

Think cheapest 1 off qty of 4052 is bitsbox: https://www.bitsbox.co.uk/index.php?main_page=product_info&cPath=140_157&products_id=1104

Thanks for this, all the caps have been already replaced, that was the first job I did and I even relented and replaced the 2 x 1000uF 63V caps on the driver board, so all polarised caps are new ones, just to be sure that they weren't duff, I'll pull C18 and C19 and replace again and for what its worth, I may as well go ahead and order a couple of the 4052's and some 16 pin sockets. For the small extra cost, I don't know why they don't fit IC sockets as standard anyway                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                      

[bd139]

IC sockets reduce the design life considerably unless they're decent quality turned pin ones. And those are expensive.

[Specmaster]

Oh, never thought that would be the case. I'll do those checks in the morning now, time for bed. Just noticed Kosmic is having issues with his tinySA, perhaps I'd better to retain my larger signal generators for the time being, I was thinking of flipping them on the bay of evil to finance the cost of the tinySA, I have 2 RF generators and an audio one that I was going flip. The TTi TG120 20MHz function generator is also a pretty good audio generator and I'm keeping that. 

[bd139]

Yeah apparently there are ones with defective attenuators.

Mine is tested good.

I'm still in the market for a proper SA with better minimum RBW but I think I'm just going to build one. The NanoVNA fulfils all the TG requirements to build one.

[Kosmic]

Oh, never thought that would be the case. I'll do those checks in the morning now, time for bed. Just noticed Kosmic is having issues with his tinySA, perhaps I'd better to retain my larger signal generators for the time being, I was thinking of flipping them on the bay of evil to finance the cost of the tinySA, I have 2 RF generators and an audio one that I was going flip. The TTi TG120 20MHz function generator is also a pretty good audio generator and I'm keeping that. 

It's not me on the video. I don't have a TinySa yet 

Found this guy on youtube when I was looking for videos about the TinyVNA.

[mnementh]

Your approach was probably more interesting to be fair. Most of the best things around that club happened when I woke up somewhere random at about 11 am the next morning 

If you don't know whose underwear you're in when you wake up, it was a good night. 

mnem
*poot*

[mnementh]

Oh, never thought that would be the case. I'll do those checks in the morning now, time for bed. Just noticed Kosmic is having issues with his tinySA, perhaps I'd better to retain my larger signal generators for the time being, I was thinking of flipping them on the bay of evil to finance the cost of the tinySA, I have 2 RF generators and an audio one that I was going flip. The TTi TG120 20MHz function generator is also a pretty good audio generator and I'm keeping that. 

It's not me on the video. I don't have a TinySa yet 

Found this guy on youtube when I was looking for videos about the TinyVNA.

that's because what you were looking for is a NanoVNA. Or a MiniVNA. 

mnem