Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Brumby]

Why am I reminded of that episode where Bart pranks Homer with a can of beer taken straight off a paint mixer...?

Because that's how your brain works.

Having said that, I'm feeling a bit insecure by knowing that..... 

[Brumby]

Ah yes ... the orange plasma displays.  I remember when I first saw one of those....

I was working at a bank in the 80s and came across one which had a huge screen (for that era) with four logical 3270 (IBM terminal) screens on it.  SO big and less than 6" thick!

[mnementh]

Why am I reminded of that episode where Bart pranks Homer with a can of beer taken straight off a paint mixer...?

Because that's how your brain works.   Having said that, I'm feeling a bit insecure by knowing that..... 

Thett only proves ye have a whit of sense aboot ye. 

mnem

[beanflying]

Some interesting toys here USA https://www.ebay.com/usr/outdoorexpo including yet another test leadless 740B 

[cyclin_al]

Well damnit.....

Lady Cop was supposed to come visit tomorrow. Not gonna happen. 4 teachers in her school patrol area just tested positive. The school has been closed and Jo Ann was sent home. Status undetermined at the moment but most likely she will have to quarantine for 14 days and get tested. But what's real stupid is tomorrow she has to report for duty. What's the sense in that? Anyway, she'll report for duty tomorrow and then talk to command about being put out on special medical like she was in March of last year when the first shutdown was put in place.

This fucking sucks.   

I know, I really do hope that she does not have it, fingers crossed for you both on that front. You what really pisses me of is that bastards out there, who believe that this whole Covid thing is a hoax and therefore refuse to wear a mask or stay at home. 

Awww, jeez med; like you two haven't already had enuf misery this season. That sucks out loud.    Best wishes that she tests negative and gets to come "self-isolate" with you for a month or two. 


This morning we were awakened by our phones going off with an Emergency Broadcast notifying us that we are again in Stage 1 lockdown... sortof.

"Stay home, save lives, don't go out unless it is absolutely necessary. If you can work from home, you must do so; it's the law."

Of course, we wouldn't have this "emergency" if fearless leaders had stood up to the merchants' cabal and kept Stage 2 in place during the Christmas shopping season... the only difference here is the level of common sense of the average public is a few notches higher on the food chain. But only a few.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-addresses-confusion-about-new-stay-at-home-rules-these-are-the-answers-to-your-top-questions-1.5264068

Still better than the "hide your head in the sand"-ism still going on south of us; I was talking with bd just after the imbecile insurrection, and he said:

...Been watching the US go to shit with the popcorn out. You got out just in time  . Hopefully not too much crazy goes over the border in your direction and if it does it freezes to death. 

I couldn't put it more succinctly myself.

mnem
 

I have said the same thing about Christmas shopping over COVID sense, just in my own words.

Yes, I also got the same Emergency Broadcast for Ontario.  However, I life in Quebec, not in Ontario.  And yes, my number is a Quebec number. 
I did not get the Emergency Broadcast for Quebec in previous days; my phone technology is somehow not compatible with the Quebec system. 

[0culus]

This morning we were awakened by our phones going off with an Emergency Broadcast notifying us that we are again in Stage 1 lockdown... sortof.

"Stay home, save lives, don't go out unless it is absolutely necessary. If you can work from home, you must do so; it's the law."

Of course, we wouldn't have this "emergency" if fearless leaders had stood up to the merchants' cabal and kept Stage 2 in place during the Christmas shopping season... the only difference here is the level of common sense of the average public is a few notches higher on the food chain. But only a few.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-addresses-confusion-about-new-stay-at-home-rules-these-are-the-answers-to-your-top-questions-1.5264068

You Might Be In Canada If...

...This makes the scroll on your evening news:  MANITOBA RCMP INTERNAL INVESTIGATIONS TAKES OVER CASE INVOLVING REPORTS THAT AN OFFICER INTENTIONALLY HIT A DOG.

Anywhere in the US, that would read "...AN OFFICER INTENTIONALLY HIT A CHILD."

Saw that in a video posted in the link above discussing the perils facing our front-line healthcare workers right now... Just an indicator of the difference in the level of fooked-oop-ness between here and where we just escaped from.

mnem
*the lighter side of the Dark Side*

When are you finally going to get a clue that bullshit like this does nothing but incite discord and disagreement? Us poor slobs south of the border all get how you feel about the land you left. You don't need to toss it in our faces everyday. And you always jump to the extreme to make sure you can justify your choices.

I wish to hell you would keep your political views to yourself but I know I'm talking to a brick wall. 

+1

Good God...I take a break and I come back and we're STILL doing this. That's it. I'm out, permanently. This hobby is my refuge from all the bullshit in the daily world, and then I have to come here and read the frequent and OFF TOPIC anti-US screeds primarily from an individual who don't even live here anymore, backed up by the usual suspects from across the pond. Yeah, we get it, you don't like the US. Well, a lot of us live here and we disagree with you and I'll wager I'm not the only one tired of essentially being insulted every other post in a thread ostensibly about test equipment for the trouble when I was really just here to discuss electronics and test equipment.

Enjoy the echo chamber, I'm going to go have fun in my lab.

[URI]

This morning we were awakened by our phones going off with an Emergency Broadcast notifying us that we are again in Stage 1 lockdown... sortof.

"Stay home, save lives, don't go out unless it is absolutely necessary. If you can work from home, you must do so; it's the law."

Of course, we wouldn't have this "emergency" if fearless leaders had stood up to the merchants' cabal and kept Stage 2 in place during the Christmas shopping season... the only difference here is the level of common sense of the average public is a few notches higher on the food chain. But only a few.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-addresses-confusion-about-new-stay-at-home-rules-these-are-the-answers-to-your-top-questions-1.5264068

You Might Be In Canada If...

...This makes the scroll on your evening news:  MANITOBA RCMP INTERNAL INVESTIGATIONS TAKES OVER CASE INVOLVING REPORTS THAT AN OFFICER INTENTIONALLY HIT A DOG.

Anywhere in the US, that would read "...AN OFFICER INTENTIONALLY HIT A CHILD."

Saw that in a video posted in the link above discussing the perils facing our front-line healthcare workers right now... Just an indicator of the difference in the level of fooked-oop-ness between here and where we just escaped from.

mnem
*the lighter side of the Dark Side*

When are you finally going to get a clue that bullshit like this does nothing but incite discord and disagreement? Us poor slobs south of the border all get how you feel about the land you left. You don't need to toss it in our faces everyday. And you always jump to the extreme to make sure you can justify your choices.

I wish to hell you would keep your political views to yourself but I know I'm talking to a brick wall. 

+1

Good God...I take a break and I come back and we're STILL doing this. That's it. I'm out, permanently. This hobby is my refuge from all the bullshit in the daily world, and then I have to come here and read the frequent and OFF TOPIC anti-US screeds primarily from an individual who don't even live here anymore, backed up by the usual suspects from across the pond. Yeah, we get it, you don't like the US. Well, a lot of us live here and we disagree with you and I'll wager I'm not the only one tired of essentially being insulted every other post in a thread ostensibly about test equipment for the trouble when I was really just here to discuss electronics and test equipment.

Enjoy the echo chamber, I'm going to go have fun in my lab.

+1

Sad but I see your point, clearly.

Wish the thread would return to significantly more than 50% TEA chat.
IMHO it has turned the other way around into a general chat with intermittent TEA postings.   
On the other hand: The thread is easier to catch up with scrolling through the non TEA related postings to catch the few interesting TEA postings... 

[beanflying]

+1

Good God...I take a break and I come back and we're STILL doing this. That's it. I'm out, permanently. This hobby is my refuge from all the bullshit in the daily world, and then I have to come here and read the frequent and OFF TOPIC anti-US screeds primarily from an individual who don't even live here anymore, backed up by the usual suspects from across the pond. Yeah, we get it, you don't like the US. Well, a lot of us live here and we disagree with you and I'll wager I'm not the only one tired of essentially being insulted every other post in a thread ostensibly about test equipment for the trouble when I was really just here to discuss electronics and test equipment.

Enjoy the echo chamber, I'm going to go have fun in my lab.

Given your now ONLY recent comments in this thread, until you are ready to grow up and understand that occasionally we drift into real world social issues it is to bad you think your critique on some of us will be missed!

Far from YOU being the one insulted YOU are the one insulting and bitching about members in a personal attack on their posts!

[tautech]

I recently purchased a broken Datron 4700 calibrator... it hasn’t arrived yet.... I keep checking the tracking, even though I need to pay tax on it at customs first...

It's turned up and he's teasing his subscribers as to what's in the box:

[BravoV]

To among TEA regulars, just suggestion, why don't we all treat this thread an exception, put a self restraint and also pro-actively remind others on no politic nor personal attack discussion, if any, just post/express/vent it out at other discussion thread, please ... pretty please.

[McBryce]

EDIT: Those dot matrix displays are truly drool-worthy. The only thing that could be better, would be a nixie dot matrix display...    

      

We had that back in the 80s... 70s... 

mnem
*agitating-ily*

ED: Forgot PLATO

The T3200 was my first work laptop. We had AutoCAD (9 I think) running on it. We were given "permission" by the company to crack AutoCAD when we had spare time, because we kept breaking the dongles when we forgot they were hanging off the back.

McBryce.

[med6753]

Lighten up, "You know you're in Canada when" stories are a cliche (like two guys in a fender bender completing to see who can apologise the most profusely). If you don't like Mnem's drawing a parallel with his home country, ignore it. Drawing attention to it actually gives it more impact, not less.

I get fed up with your "chip on your shoulder" references to Tea and harbours, and to engineers, but I either ignore them or give as good back, I don't whinge about it.

I swore I wasn't going to respond to this but it's been bugging me all night so I'm speaking my peace and then I'm done with this crap.

"Ignore it". I wish I could. Trust me, I've looked for a user ignore function but the blog doesn't have one. But the problem is I enjoy mnem's overall knowledge of technical items as much as I abhor when he gets on his soapbox and goes on and on with his tirades. And if you ask nicely, or sometimes not so nicely, to knock it off you get indignation and a response that I'll basically say what I want. And if you don't like it there's the door. It all is self centered, self serving, and egotistical. Sounds very much like the person he hates the most with the first name of Donald. 

And I'll be sure to tell the Lady Cop that someone in a forum that I'm a member of feels she may have a tendency to want to hit children plus this individual has a warped philosophy as to why she became a cop. I'm sure she'll appreciate that.   

I have a chip on my shoulder? No, you have a thin skin. Anytime I banter about tea, harbors, engineers it's almost always accompanied with a  and a  . Maybe that doesn't carry across the pond. Means I tease, kid, bust balls, fooling around. But I promise I won't do it again. 

OK, said my peace. And if there's anything left of this TEA thread that I usually enjoy visiting each day I'd like to move on.     

[Robert763]

Well I'm not sure if a gorilla was responsible for the burnt resistors being lower than 100kΩ, as I discovered the very first batch of HP 5325A's (prefix 820) came with a 82Ω resistor for R3, but this counter is a later 844 prefix and the input amplifier boards have no space for the capacitor C20 that is in parallel with the 100kΩ. I wouldn't normally do this but I decided to modify both boards to match the 844 prefix manual, i.e. how it should have left the factory.
 

First I had to strip all the components from the burnt areas & clean the carbonised remains away, some Araldite was needed to fill in where one board was damaged.


The components were all tested, one Zener diode had failed, testing the remaining ones I have decided a 3.3V Zener matches the spec of the rest of them (approx 3.8V at 10mA), one of those has been temporarily fitted & I have ordered a couple of the original 3.83V part as they weren't too expensive (part no. 1902-3059).

I replaced a couple of the resistors that had faded markings, fitted the 100kΩ for R3 and a 1000pF capacitor on the rear of the boards, I also added a link on the back to properly repair a damaged track that previously had a bit of IC leg bodged on.
Both boards tested OK on all attenuator settings, guess I'm lucky the protection circuit did it's job & didn't EOL the dual FET. 


David

The later counters with similar input circuits e.g. 5328A used two resistors in series and a capacitor. One resistor around 100R and the other around 1M with a capacitor about 500pF across the high value resistor. Presumably the bigger capacitor gives better low frequency response and the small resistor limits the charging current if you put a fast DC step on the input.

[Robert763]

Whoa, not sure, if I'm wanting such a beast. 

A Guildline Standard Cell Enclosure with four! Weston-cells in it!



I've putted it on my watchlist, because I'm curious for how much it will go.

Unfortunatly it's unlikely that the cells are any good. If unsaturated (most likely) they are too old, being close to EOL voltage  (1.0183V) 40 years ago according to the cal sheet. If saturated cells they will not withstand normal shipping and have probably already been damaged by mis-handling.
The unit is also a significant hazardous waste item. Containing both mercury and cadmium, proper disposal would not be cheap. 

[capt bullshot]

Tomorrow will be chicken / peppers in sweet caramelized chili sauce on rice day.
and another day off. Killing overtime.
End of Jan my new boss will tawk to my new boss boss about 3 things:
- giving me sufficient leeway and time to work on my fpga endeavors on company time
- broadening my sphere of influence and letting me arrange my stuff the way that I want it
- getting my old unix guru colleague on board permanently.
- they will also discuss ordering a new notebook for me. TP P15 or so.

fingers crossed.

Good luck with that!

[BU508A]

Whoa, not sure, if I'm wanting such a beast. 

A Guildline Standard Cell Enclosure with four! Weston-cells in it!



I've putted it on my watchlist, because I'm curious for how much it will go.

Unfortunatly it's unlikely that the cells are any good. If unsaturated (most likely) they are too old, being close to EOL voltage  (1.0183V) 40 years ago according to the cal sheet. If saturated cells they will not withstand normal shipping and have probably already been damaged by mis-handling.
The unit is also a significant hazardous waste item. Containing both mercury and cadmium, proper disposal would not be cheap.

The seller is saying, that they are saturated: "Darin sind 4 Stück gesättigte Weston-Zellen [...]"

If I'd buy that thing, I for sure would pick it up personally in Hannover, even though this would mean a 700km (one way) trip for me.

[Robert763]

EDIT: Those dot matrix displays are truly drool-worthy. The only thing that could be better, would be a nixie dot matrix display...    

      

We had that back in the 80s... 70s... 

mnem
*agitating-ily*

ED: Forgot PLATO

The T3200 was my first work laptop. We had AutoCAD (9 I think) running on it. We were given "permission" by the company to crack AutoCAD when we had spare time, because we kept breaking the dongles when we forgot they were hanging off the back.

McBryce.

The later electroluminescent (EL) displays by Planar and Finlux are even nicer. HP used them for a while. Very expensive though. I just had Ramco break a 10.9" one on a fuel test set
They were also used in the Concorde cabin MACH display. I know this because I made them.
I still have a T3200. In a previos job they were used as part of a data link on an aircraft. Some data needed pre-processing and it was a bit slow. The boss, who thought he knew about such things decided that they should fit 80287 co-processors (quite expensive back then). I asked if the 3rd party software supported a  co-processor but was ignored, It didn't nd adding the 80287 made no dfference.
A local finance company also used them and when the changed u employees were offered the old ones and some were put in local  newspaper ads. I bought one as an investment and sure enough one on an aircraft failed and the copan had not got a spare. I sold that T3200 for £1000, five times what I paid  . It would have cost 10 times as much in documentation and testing to change to a different model.

[tautech]

They were also used in the Concorde cabin MACH display. I know this because I made them.

Very cool. 

That's just the sort of stuff why I hang out here.
More stories please. 

[Robert763]

The cabin display was basically made out of test equipment parts. Two Planar displays, a PC/104 controller and a PC/104 data bus interface card. The cockpit had a control panel to turn it off or provide preset displays. The controller tapped into data from the Air Data  Computer. The display had quite a bit of hystereis and integration so it was not constantly flickering between two values. 

[Zucca]

for the US tonys here

[Saskia]

submitted another RMA request for that dead SSD.
Tried to submit an RMA for the Asus dead 2070 but got stopped when their support website wanted me to check a nonexistent check box. Phoned in, got an email address, sent RMA request by mail.

[psykok]

Whoa, not sure, if I'm wanting such a beast. 

A Guildline Standard Cell Enclosure with four! Weston-cells in it!



I've putted it on my watchlist, because I'm curious for how much it will go.

 
I wonder how they will legally ship it, given that it will contain liquid mercury (and cadmium) and doesn't like being inverted or shaken:



 https://entertaininghacks.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/a-weston-standard-cell-an-introduction-to-voltnuttery/

Indeed I experimented  that last summer. I ordered a Weston Cell from US and it arrived dead ... to much checking

[DC1MC]

submitted another RMA request for that dead SSD.
Tried to submit an RMA for the Asus dead 2070 but got stopped when their support website wanted me to check a nonexistent check box. Phoned in, got an email address, sent RMA request by mail.

There are no limits on  anti-pattern designs on support, RMA and contact pages on many manufacturers, I sometimes got amazed of the incredible evil creativity, is there some kind of anti-repair, anti-customer  course teached nowadays in universities 

[Specmaster]

Update on the 1906 meter, the estimated delivery date I was given was Wednesday 20th and that it would be delivered by Hermes, thats OK they have been good for me lately, but checking the tracking number shows its being Interlinked to the local courier and I have just received an email from DPD to say that it will be delivered to me on Monday 18th. All very impressive so far considering I only won it yesterday.

So does this mean that now there is some cooperation between couriers, Hermes - Interlink - DPD? If so then it makes sense, except there are more people and loopholes for it to fail, i.e., get lost or damaged 

Hopefully, seeing as the seller is  a company that should be used to shipping delicate items, it should be well packed, but we shall see. 

[Saskia]

Whoa, not sure, if I'm wanting such a beast. 

A Guildline Standard Cell Enclosure with four! Weston-cells in it!



I've putted it on my watchlist, because I'm curious for how much it will go.

 
I wonder how they will legally ship it, given that it will contain liquid mercury (and cadmium) and doesn't like being inverted or shaken:



 https://entertaininghacks.wordpress.com/2016/12/28/a-weston-standard-cell-an-introduction-to-voltnuttery/

Indeed I experimented  that last summer. I ordered a Weston Cell from US and it arrived dead ... to much checking

This looks like a concoction of binary explosives ready to go off.
@Mounty I am not gonna pick up that thing in Hannover for you. If you want that, you can drive yourself. No mercury and cadmium in my car ...