Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tonyalbus]

In the boat anchor section.... a HP 8616A,  1,8GHz-4,5 GHz ..why   Why not 

Commin' my way

Congratulations, but if you keep acquiring things at this rate, your attic will become your basement 

Thanks!
It's indeed a chalence to get all the stuff upstairs...and still be able to move my *ss .. i sold already some more general stuff that i fixed and am not using, but did take space, it had to go.
not sure what to use it for.. it seemded interesting these high frequncies.. now a new problem... i have a gap between the Marconi 1Ghz.. and this 1.8
well i can play a bit with the WBSG-1 .. to fill that gap but is only does a fixed 0db output.

[bd139]

I don't think that's the case here. I didn't realize that it WAS on battery until I got a warning that I had approx 10 minutes left until it would shut down. Never did that before. And like I said....unplugging and replugging restored it and now it's charging the battery.

All the BMS systems and power supplies in (half decent) laptops are designed to fail safe. I assume one of the conditions that it thought might be a problem was encountered.

[Robert763]

Yeh, probably brown-out protection to stop it trying to repeatedly re-start or run excessive current through the switch.

[Zucca]

or asymmetric SOC in the battery pack cells

[tggzzz]

Dang. Weird night so far. 02:45 here.  I managed to get my elderly neighbour’s door kicked down by the police. TV full whack and living room light on at 1:30AM which is very unusual and didn’t answer the door to me. So I call her daughter (as requested) and the police. So they get a ladder and she’s sitting in her chair not moving or responding to them shining torch on her. Took them ten minutes to get though the door by ramming in shaking the entire building to bits. And she finally wakes up literally when they’re standing in the living room with a paramedic  . Locksmith out sorting the door at the moment.

Can’t sleep now. Looking at test gear on eBay 

Edit: just found out she’s 96 and she hates my guts now . Her daughter said this is the fifth time they thought she was dead though so it’s not my fault.

I suggest you let her daughter know about these: https://keysafe.co.uk/products/key-safes/c500-keysafe.html They are regarded as being as secure as front doors and hence are no extra risk. They cost the same as one locksmiths visit

I have one on my 99.5yo mother's house, which allows helpers in. I have one on my house, for the rare occasions when I go out without my keys.

[Specmaster]

Yes, that's a good idea, I had a similar one fitted so that my Mum's carer's could get access to her without me having to be there all the time to let them in.

[bd139]

She has got a key safe which was discovered this morning. No one knew about it (i certainly didn't) and the police did not see it or even check for one as it's on the back of the building and well hidden . I have got her carer's details and phone number now who has access details and 24/7 availability. She came round this morning to say thank you for caring enough to get someone to check and apologise for being a "bit of a moo" last night in her own words.

[Specmaster]

Oh good, so now perhaps she might consider using her hearing aid instead of turning the TV to max 

[Brumby]

OK, everyone step away from the keyboards so I can catch up. 

Suck it up princess.  We all have to deal with that.

Oh but I am a princess. 

So there. 

I have no answer to that.

[bd139]

Oh good, so now perhaps she might consider using her hearing aid instead of turning the TV to max 

Yeah well we'll see about that. Some people never learn. 

The worst bit is for most of the night I felt like the asshole for getting her door kicked in 

[BU508A]

OK, everyone step away from the keyboards so I can catch up. 

Suck it up princess.  We all have to deal with that.

Oh but I am a princess. 

So there. 

I have no answer to that.

Sometimes there is only this answer:

[Specmaster]

Oh good, so now perhaps she might consider using her hearing aid instead of turning the TV to max 

Yeah well we'll see about that. Some people never learn. 

The worst bit is for most of the night I felt like the asshole for getting her door kicked in 

On the other hand, you've felt great if she was in trouble and your action saved her. It can be at times a difficult thing to know when to intervene and when not to, but at the end of the day, you did the right thing.

[nixiefreqq]

Oh good, so now perhaps she might consider using her hearing aid instead of turning the TV to max 

Yeah well we'll see about that. Some people never learn. 

The worst bit is for most of the night I felt like the asshole for getting her door kicked in 

"let no good deed go unpunished"

[shakalnokturn]

Oh good, so now perhaps she might consider using her hearing aid instead of turning the TV to max 

Yeah well we'll see about that. Some people never learn. 

The worst bit is for most of the night I felt like the asshole for getting her door kicked in 

On the other hand, you've felt great if she was in trouble and your action saved her. It can be at times a difficult thing to know when to intervene and when not to, but at the end of the day, you did the right thing.

Until you find out a member of the police crew had the flu.

[shakalnokturn]

A small box of electrical TE just arrived here.

[bd139]

Until you find out a member of the police crew had the flu.

Hahaha I admire your cynicism 

[GreyWoolfe]

No pics today, but I made a fairly major change in the lab. Got a Husky 46" mobile workbench at Home Despot...I finally have real tool storage for the lab, including a sweet full width drawer that is perfect for holding unwieldy RF things like trombone lines. And a sturdy surface to stack some heavy HP gear till I can work out racks. 

[edit] this is also why I skipped discord today; I decided not to stop working on this rearrangement!

The Lady asked me today what I wanted for Christmas. My current toolbox is overflowing and so heavy I can hardly lift it.

Bingo. 

This is the second Husky thing I've gotten and I'm impressed with the build quality. It's not as good as the most expensive stuff you could buy I'm sure, but it strikes a good balance for not breaking the bank. Husky is definitely a damn sight better than the shite they are putting the "Craftsman" name on nowadays. IMO. 

I have 2 Husky toolboxes.  A 61" in the garage that was a gift from Mrs. GreyWoolfe and a 26" in my office.  I, too, am impressed with the build quality.  She gave me basically a $1,500 budget because she wanted to buy me a Milwaukee that I didn't really like.  Saved enough money that I was able to upgrade my 8 gallon compressor to a Husky 30 gallon and still have money for bits and bobs for the compressor.  The tool chests are solidly made. I don't know how they would last in a shop environment, but here they will last long past I will have passed.  The one in the garage is red and the office one is black.  My only nit to pick is the "positive close" drawers.  I have to manually ease the drawers closed or the hand tools slide after a couple of closings.  I had looked at Husky, Craftsman, Milwaukee and harbor freight and the 61" best suited my needs.  I now wish I would have gotten the 72".  Going from an old Craftsman 26" and having stuff all over the garage, I thought I would have plenty of space to grow.  Thanks to some garage sales, the damn thing is pretty full now.

[GreyWoolfe]

K... still think I'd prefer the bun toasted dark with ham & Swiss. But not in front of anyone doing the Lent thing. 

mnem
 

The bun is way too sweet for that. It's not a roll, it's a sweet bun. Now, parts of Northern America have no meaningful way to distinguish between those; both bagels and muffins are definitely on the sweet side from my perspective and most North Americans have only heard of truly dark bread as  something one might find in strange places in Pennsylvania or Brooklyn.  Or in MRE's from Germany (Dosenbrot, typically).   But you gotta believe me on this: ham and "cheese" (only the posh have actually seen proper cheese in the US. I base this on having to go to a Whole Foods to find Gruyère in Vegas. They had whole grain bagels too. Made for a week of nice breakfasts.) on that bun is a no-go.

I don't find bagels sweet at all, at least the ones I buy.  Mrs GreyWoolfe and I love the brown bread in a can.  I also love pumpernickel bread, toasted with ham and swiss, or other cold cuts and cheese and mayonnaise, just my personal preference.  Butter and cream cheese on toasted pumpernickel is good.  In fact, I am going to make that for breakfast right now.

Edit: or neufchatel cheese instead of cream cheese.  Oh, and iced coffee as it is still too damned hot in Flori-DUH for hot coffee.

[Specmaster]

Nobody on this side of the discussion is as you say acting high and mighty, hence why I said in my last post before you posted this one and I quote "Accidents will always happen, you cannot prevent them, only take steps to minimise them. But why minimise one form of an accident to replace it with another possible accident that could have far more damaging results"

That doesn't appear to be happening. A functioning adult can be expected to correctly place a toaster, as was required with a longer lead. In your case you got some deformation and discolouration of temperature sensitive plastics. No harm done, even if the placement of the toaster may not have been ideal.

Just for the record, the total length of the lead from the toaster rear is only 350mm to top of the 13A plug top. After allowing for the lead to be at an angle and allowing for the plug to inserted in the socket, it then pulls the toaster much closer to the wall cabinets, while it might not be actually underneath, it is certainly close enough to affect the plastic and therefore a fire hazard. The plastic has actually receded away from the door and has drooped downwards away from the door so I suggest it was only a matter of time before it ignited.

So not only the lead fitted was just too short but the materials chosen by the kitchen designers / makers was also at fault so it does show just how easily these fires can be caused by normal everyday things that we all take for granted. 

[shakalnokturn]

The plastic has actually receded away from the door and has drooped downwards away from the door so I suggest it was only a matter of time before it ignited.

We had a similar situation in the last rent: The plastic coating on the fitted kitchen doors next to the oven had shrunken away and unstuck from the wood particle.
I wouldn't say it was close to igniting but left unattended in the wrong circumstances who knows...There was plenty of fuel available between the particle furniture and the booze  stash two cupboards away.

Always store a large plastic bottle full of water in the cupboard above your toaster, it makes crap designs self-extinguishing. 

[mnementh]

Interesting. The laptop is on battery power even though it's plugged in. Had momentary power dip last night. About 2 or 3 seconds in duration. Apparently the supply didn't come back up. I unplugged it, plugged it back in and now it came up. Now what would cause the SMS supply to not restart?

My HP Elitebook will do that, it seems to wait until the battery reaches certain voltage before it cuts back in.

I don't think that's the case here. I didn't realize that it WAS on battery until I got a warning that I had approx 10 minutes left until it would shut down. Never did that before. And like I said....unplugging and replugging restored it and now it's charging the battery.

It's perfectly normal behavior in modern wide-supply-voltage SMPS. If AC power fluctuates cycling on/off/on/off for a second or two, or the AC browns out, the POST times out and it goes into shutdown due to no "power good" signal from the supervisor IC. OCP can also kick in thinking there's excessive load just from the load of trying to charge its own filter caps combined with the loading of the device. When it's in that POST mode from the AC voltage just coming up, it doesn't know the difference between low input voltage and excessive load; all it knows is too much current being drawn through the switching transistors as they struggle to make up the difference. Whether that's a fault in design or actually a safety feature is a matter of opinion.

One of my regular clients used to use dinosaur-era NUCs in lockboxes all over their campus for infrastructure management; those things used a 12V/8A power brick that would do this whenever there was a storm. The original design used "automatic ring-rebooters"; a power strip that you could plug a phone line into and it would power-cycle the outlets after a certain number of rings at that number. Eventually those were replaced with small UPSes as the cost of all those phone lines became ridiculous.

mnem

[mnementh]

OK, everyone step away from the keyboards so I can catch up. 

Suck it up princess.  We all have to deal with that.

Oh but I am a princess.     So there. 

I have no answer to that.

Sometimes there is only this answer:   

SNURRRRRCH! 

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/?action=dlattach;attach=1110592;image

Here ya go med... all distilled into a perfect little forum-friendly icon for you to use as a avatar or just for punctuation.

mnem
I didn't do that. 

[mnementh]

Oh good, so now perhaps she might consider using her hearing aid instead of turning the TV to max 

Yeah well we'll see about that. Some people never learn. 

The worst bit is for most of the night I felt like the asshole for getting her door kicked in 

On the other hand, you've felt great if she was in trouble and your action saved her. It can be at times a difficult thing to know when to intervene and when not to, but at the end of the day, you did the right thing.

Until you find out a member of the police crew had the flu.

Hahaha I admire your cynicism 

The Warrior and the Stallion:  a Marilyn Whirlwind Story (Northern Exposure)

My uncle once told me about a warrior who had a fine stallion.  Everyone said how lucky
he was to have such a horse.

"Maybe..." he said.

One day the stallion ran off.  The people said the warrior was unlucky.

"Maybe..." he said.

The next day the stallion returned, leading a string of fine ponies.

The people said it was very lucky.

"Maybe..." the warrior said.

Later, the warrior's son was thrown from one of the ponies and broke
his leg.  The people said it was unlucky.

"Maybe..." the warrior said.

The next week, the chief lead a war party against another tribe.  Many
young men were killed.  But, because of his broken leg, the warrior's
son was left behind, and so was spared.

mnem
"Life is what happens while you're busy making other plans." ~ John Lennon

"Death, too." ~ mom

[Specmaster]

Blessings come in a variety of formats.

[jxjbsd]

he Warrior and the Stallion:  a Marilyn Whirlwind Story (Northern Exposure)

My uncle once told me about a warrior who had a fine stallion.  Everyone said how lucky
he was to have such a horse.

"Maybe..." he said.

One day the stallion ran off.  The people said the warrior was unlucky.

"Maybe..." he said.

The next day the stallion returned, leading a string of fine ponies.

The people said it was very lucky.

"Maybe..." the warrior said.

Later, the warrior's son was thrown from one of the ponies and broke
his leg.  The people said it was unlucky.

"Maybe..." the warrior said.

The next week, the chief lead a war party against another tribe.  Many
young men were killed.  But, because of his broken leg, the warrior's
son was left behind, and so was spared.

Isn't this a Chinese story? At least his name in China is "The old man at the border lost a horse"