Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Fuck... I just noticed that one of the dimming zones on my 32" monitor is flickering right now... like I'm not miserable enough already... 

mnem
*toddles off to rummage and see if I bought an extended warranty*

[mnementh]

I think I have become addicted to test equipment. It started out small, just a handheld multimeter here and there but now I have a Rigol and I am considering binocular microscopes and bench multimeters, signal generators, higher frequency probes and other costly stuff.

I am planning a lab redesign to reduce EM interference on the testing side of the lab.

I don't know where this will end. I see a lot of capacitors in my future.

MAXIM 9: Capacitors are Murphy's footsoldiers. 

mnem
 

[Kosmic]

Got lucky on ebay. I snipped 3 substitution boxes for 20$   


The IET RCS-502 are really nice. They combine resistance (0.1%) and capacitance (1%) decades. The CDE CDB-3 is a lot older and only has only capacitance. Its also less accurate at 3%.

When received the CDB-3 was a bit inconsistent. I decided to open it up to clean the switches. The internal construction is somehow rustic with the piece of wood glued in the middle 


Also I never seen those capacitors before. Look like they are in ceramic. If radiomuseum.org is accurate, they were selling for 16.35 in 1965 (https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/cornel_dub_decade_capacitor_cdb3.html) In pretty good shape for it's age.

They look a lot like the paper/oil capacitors that often leak or fail in the "Shango066" radio or TV resurrection videos, hopefully I'm wrong and yours are a bit newer. 


I rescued a CDT 'tant' version a while ago. 

AS for the 2 RCS-502 they are working fine excepted 1 resistor on the second decade. Decided to open it up to investigate and found this:



  Luckily those resistors are readily available on digikey.

Oooh, nice stripy tants. 

David

Ouch it's oil-paper then. Capacitance is fine. I will check ESR later today.

[bd139]

Fuck... I just noticed that one of the dimming zones on my 32" monitor is flickering right now... like I'm not miserable enough already... 

mnem
*toddles off to rummage and see if I bought an extended warranty*

Ah shit. That's horrid

[bd139]

@mnem: Re your PSU and radio usage .... Just think of the smoke a ham could get to come out of a radio by getting red and black mixed up with one of them 

[shakalnokturn]

Ok HM605 is dealt with. New bridge rectifier installed at lunch and it’s burning in for a bit. Trace is a lot sharper and if you turn the brightness up now it doesn’t drop out any more.

Edit: quite surprised at this. Now the amplitude is gone because, quite frankly it's being hammered here but it's still triggering fine!



Signal source:



Not bad for a 60MHz crate!

Got my "yellow/red" HM605 seen to about the same time BD139 was working on his:
X-Pos. nylon coupling thingy cracked, 68V & 140V slightly off, amplitude slightly off, timebase badly off.

Moved on to one of the two HM205-3's that need sorting:
Var. timebase nylon coupling thingy cracked (they always are), component tester fuse.
Here also a little frontend and timebase readjustment were needed, supply voltages were OK.
On these the digital memory has few adjustments (overall vertical position and an individual vertical position for each channel, which IMHO doesn't make much sense) so once the sweep length is set the analogue timebase must be set to match the digital timing.
After adjusting all the frontends and timebase I went on to try and get the switching between analog/digital seamless but that wouldn't fit, digital was slightly low in amplitude despite +12V being spot-on and here being a VR2401 "Y-Gain (DIG) / YF-Gain mit Eprom" that one would expect to be there for that purpose but isn't as it affects both analog and digital gains. (As per schematic... Must have been during Oktoberfest.)
Probing at the ADC's with trace just out of the graticule the MC10319 wasn't showing any Over-Range so I decided the digital amplitude adjustment would go on the ADC's Vref, which in turn makes the overall digital vertical position more useful as getting decent overlap requires a few iterations.

[URI]

I think I have become addicted to test equipment. It started out small, just a handheld multimeter here and there but now I have a Rigol and I am considering binocular microscopes and bench multimeters, signal generators, higher frequency probes and other costly stuff.

I am planning a lab redesign to reduce EM interference on the testing side of the lab.

I don't know where this will end. I see a lot of capacitors in my future.

Welcome here!   

Here we can help you feeling comfortable with your addiction..      

[Cerebus]

Is this going to be the limo for your daughters wedding? So it is being hired or have you purchased an end of leasing life Merc?

Yes, and it's a near brand-new hire car.

Mercedes just dropped off my purchase list, at least any post Y2K ones anyway.

A good friend and colleague picked up a new Merc on contract hire last year. Once he'd got it he described the first few weeks as "Getting my new computer-on-wheels commissioned".

[Cerebus]

It is a mixed bag. However another fuming great big turd just landed. Sent my eldest off to the shops to grab the remaining bits and she comes back with extra kitchen roll, sausages, flora and bread. So I’m sitting there wondering how the fuck she came to that.

Well turns out Microsoft todo had a sync error and this was left over conflicted items from the other day which didn’t get ticked off when she was offline. Uninstalling it ffs. Total fucking nightmare

The cloud has brought a race to the bottom both on cost and technology quality.

Oh. As I was reading though, before I got to the bit where it was Microsoft's fault, I was assuming a daughter thought process like this:

Product	Reason
Extra kitchen roll	Dad's a messy bastard
Sausages	Dad sent me shopping ergo I must be here to buy sausages
Bread	Toast!
Flora	Mmmmm, toast...

[Specmaster]

Gah, been right through the voltage control section lifting legs for measurement purposes and in some cases removing altogether, like caps etc and still no smoking gun has been found, it all checks out OK. I think I may have found one or two slightly dodgy joints, can't be sure that I didn't cause them in the process of lifting a leg up, anyway, will start the process of resoldering and I think I'll use the desoldering gun to suck out the solder at both ends of parts in that area and reflow them again with fresh solder and retest and will report a little later, I'm off to grab a bite and a cup of TEA 

Oh and yeah, check for any broken tracks 

[SilverSolder]

I think I have become addicted to test equipment. It started out small, just a handheld multimeter here and there but now I have a Rigol and I am considering binocular microscopes and bench multimeters, signal generators, higher frequency probes and other costly stuff.

I am planning a lab redesign to reduce EM interference on the testing side of the lab.

I don't know where this will end. I see a lot of capacitors in my future.

Sadly, there is no known cure! 

[bd139]

Gah, been right through the voltage control section lifting legs for measurement purposes and in some cases removing altogether, like caps etc and still no smoking gun has been found, it all checks out OK. I think I may have found one or two slightly dodgy joints, can't be sure that I didn't cause them in the process of lifting a leg up, anyway, will start the process of resoldering and I think I'll use the desoldering gun to suck out the solder at both ends of parts in that area and reflow them again with fresh solder and retest and will report a little later, I'm off to grab a bite and a cup of TEA 

Oh and yeah, check for any broken tracks 

Not a bad thing redoing the joints. I had a couple of Thandar things which were cracked joints.

[AVGresponding]

I accidentally bought that Beckman counter I was watching, as it went down to $30, shipping is still a killer on it though. 

What kind of display is this?

Until it arrives your guess is as good as mine, I couldn't find any info on it last time I posted about it when it was $50, I did find another (older?) version with neon number readout bulbs here; http://crasno.ca/articles/Beckman6148A.htm

David

Looks like a blue version of a panaplex to me, surely some sort of vfd at any rate?

[Kosmic]

Got lucky on ebay. I snipped 3 substitution boxes for 20$   


The IET RCS-502 are really nice. They combine resistance (0.1%) and capacitance (1%) decades. The CDE CDB-3 is a lot older and only has only capacitance. Its also less accurate at 3%.

When received the CDB-3 was a bit inconsistent. I decided to open it up to clean the switches. The internal construction is somehow rustic with the piece of wood glued in the middle 


Also I never seen those capacitors before. Look like they are in ceramic. If radiomuseum.org is accurate, they were selling for 16.35 in 1965 (https://www.radiomuseum.org/r/cornel_dub_decade_capacitor_cdb3.html) In pretty good shape for it's age.

They look a lot like the paper/oil capacitors that often leak or fail in the "Shango066" radio or TV resurrection videos, hopefully I'm wrong and yours are a bit newer. 


I rescued a CDT 'tant' version a while ago. 

AS for the 2 RCS-502 they are working fine excepted 1 resistor on the second decade. Decided to open it up to investigate and found this:



  Luckily those resistors are readily available on digikey.

Oooh, nice stripy tants. 

David

Ouch it's oil-paper then. Capacitance is fine. I will check ESR later today.

Dissipation factor and ESR are good. They all seem to be healthy. Maybe I should try to charge them with 500VDC or 120VAC ? 

[Specmaster]

Gah, been right through the voltage control section lifting legs for measurement purposes and in some cases removing altogether, like caps etc and still no smoking gun has been found, it all checks out OK. I think I may have found one or two slightly dodgy joints, can't be sure that I didn't cause them in the process of lifting a leg up, anyway, will start the process of resoldering and I think I'll use the desoldering gun to suck out the solder at both ends of parts in that area and reflow them again with fresh solder and retest and will report a little later, I'm off to grab a bite and a cup of TEA 

Oh and yeah, check for any broken tracks 

Not a bad thing redoing the joints. I had a couple of Thandar things which were cracked joints.

True, but the sad thing is that I already did this a couple of days ago but I'm finding that some holes are so tight that little or no solder penetrates to the other side of the board and I''ve noticed that on some items I removed for testing that there were signs of contamination or corrosion just beginning on some legs. I may have to flood the board with flux to assist in treating this and then resolder and maybe a quick dip in my ultrasonic cleaner (I think it will fit), if not a wash down with 70% IPA.

[med6753]

This place looks like someone tossed a hand grenade and shut the door.  I've got bench 2 all pulled out. Cleaning all the dust/dirt and prepping the walls for paint. Also re-doing the mains power distribution under bench 2. If I get on Discord at all later today it will probably be nothing more than a quick check -in.

An example of the chaos occupying the bedroom. 

 

If I think this is a mess bench 1 will be a nightmare. 

[tggzzz]

Well turns out Microsoft todo had a sync error and this was left over conflicted items from the other day which didn’t get ticked off when she was offline. Uninstalling it ffs. Total fucking nightmare

The cloud has brought a race to the bottom both on cost and technology quality.

I've never trusted a "sync" operation unless it shows me what it is going to do and then asks me if that is right.

Blame iTunes for the fear of (accidentally or otherwise) deleting something here meaning that it is also accidentally deleted there.

And, of course, blame people for writing use cases and unit tests that show how something works. Doubly so for a distributed system.

And, of course, blame people for believing salesbodies convenient spiels.

[xrunner]

This place looks like someone tossed a hand grenade and shut the door.  I've got bench 2 all pulled out. Cleaning all the dust/dirt and prepping the walls for paint. Also re-doing the mains power distribution under bench 2. If I get on Discord at all later today it will probably be nothing more than a quick check -in.

You have a self-levitating plant! 

[Specmaster]

Is it just me or is anyone else noticing that the forum seems to be running slow today? I trust it's not about to go belly up for a while 

[med6753]

This place looks like someone tossed a hand grenade and shut the door.  I've got bench 2 all pulled out. Cleaning all the dust/dirt and prepping the walls for paint. Also re-doing the mains power distribution under bench 2. If I get on Discord at all later today it will probably be nothing more than a quick check -in.

You have a self-levitating plant! 

Amazing, isn't it? Just like Avatar. 

[med6753]

Is it just me or is anyone else noticing that the forum seems to be running slow today? I trust it's not about to go belly up for a while 

Nope, fine here.

[bd139]

Random review: Amazon grocery deliveries are a shit show.

Missing 7 items from manifest and half destroyed. They have refunded the entire order of £68 and let me keep the stuff without question though. This ain’t Morrisons fault. Last mile delivery dude is the worst.

Now cleaning up milk and mess. 

Ok well this got even more of a shit show. I got an email for a refund of £1.43 and immediately went into "karen mode" and called them up. Apparently their integration with Morrisons is a complete shit show and every individual item has to be clicked through and refunded independently. The first dude who I dealt with probably couldn't be bothered with that and just gave up. So I made the second fucker on there sit there for 20 minutes and do the whole lot over the phone. At the end of it, I asked to be compensated for my time having to deal with this and everything else. So I ended up with £68 and 6 months' free prime in the end.

I have decided that Amazon is an apology-driven business: do the minimum thing hoping it'll work then apologise a lot when it fucks up and pay out retainers. This is what happened with some AWS issues I had so I suggest that it is actually fully intentional that they operate in that way. That is quite frankly not how I want my future to be run so I'm going to start voting with my feet I think.

I await Amazon healthcare where you get free Prime for 12 months when they forget your nan's medication and she drops dead because it's statistically profitable enough.

[Cerebus]

Is it just me or is anyone else noticing that the forum seems to be running slow today? I trust it's not about to go belly up for a while 

Yes, but in my case I was putting it down to an update of Xcode running in the background - nearly 12Gb download FFS.

[Cerebus]

I have decided that Amazon is an apology-driven business: do the minimum thing hoping it'll work then apologise a lot when it fucks up and pay out retainers. This is what happened with some AWS issues I had so I suggest that it is actually fully intentional that they operate in that way. That is quite frankly not how I want my future to be run so I'm going to start voting with my feet I think.

Exactly this. Amazon just pushed out "CloudWatch Synthetics Recorder" and convenient failed to offer anything like enough credit to the "Headless Recorder" project, that it is basically a fork of. On being called out on this Amazon go:

Via Twitter, Asay expressed concern about the handling of the CloudWatch extension launch and said he would look into it. And in a comment posted to Hacker News, he sounded similarly contrite.

"AWS uses a lot of open source, and we contribute a lot, both in terms of code (first-party projects like Firecracker and Bottlerocket, but also third-party projects like Redis, GraphQL, Open Telemetry, etc.), testing, credits, foundation support, and more," he said.

"But open source is ultimately about people and communities, and I personally feel we could have done more to acknowledge the great work Tim and his co-maintainers have done, and try to support their Headless Recorder work. We're talking with Tim now about this."

Almost a non-apology, front loaded with that "AWS uses a lot of open source, and we contribute a lot,..."

[mnementh]

@mnem: Re your PSU and radio usage .... Just think of the smoke a ham could get to come out of a radio by getting red and black mixed up with one of them 

I've done spot-welding using this... battery tabs and a few folded metal shapes. 

mnem
*~tzzzzt~*