Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mansaxel]

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 

Support and after-sales activities are seen as cost centers, not as brand image enhancers. Some 15 years ago, I was facing the same simple problem, twice, with different manufacturers in the telco space:

• How many amps does this device draw from the -48V DC plant? 
  

(I was at the time working at an academic data center and we had stuff from everywhere in our rooms, to facilitate internetworking in acacdemia. It was not unusual to have machines turn up that were paid for by a foreign grant, that required power and networking. So we seldomly had a relation to the vendor, which is important to the continued story.)

• Manufacturer 1, Cisco, was easy. Googling "[device name] installation manual" gave a link leading to the full HTML installation manual with everything down to connector part numbers at various distributors detailed. Took all of 2 minutes to figure out.
• Manufacturer 2, Tellabs, was impossible. Web site was cryptic and circular to navigate, full of abstract sales phrases and login boxes. There was a form one could fill in requesting documentation access. So I did that.
  
  And waited.
  
  Three months later, I got a curt e-mail stating "You are not a customer. You will have no access."
  

Now, which vendor do you think I'd like to recommend?

[BU508A]

@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 ...

For exactly the same reason I will not buy it. 

[BU508A]

Now, which vendor do you think I'd like to recommend?

Juniper.


 

[AVGresponding]

Well, for those that are interested in such things, I can now reveal the cost per kilogram of a second component type (if you remember a while back I bought 1kg of TO-3 transistors for £30).

Metalclad resistors, £5 per kilo. Here's 10 kilos of them...



They range in power rating from 5W to 150W, a few are in NIB, most are used, but a fair number are clearly just out of a parts bin. All the ones I have tested so far are good.



Also I gave those capacitors their own drawer:

[Robert763]

for the US tonys here

I see he has a pair of R&S CRTU-RU's at $300-$400. Those are a bargain. While they are cellphone testers, if you just run the base software (not windows) you get a 10MHz to 2.7GHz full feature spectrum analyser, 100kHz to 2.7GHz signal generator (AM/FM/PM/SSB modulation capable but you might have to change the software revision) and a RF power meter.
Free R&S software running on a external PC adds scalr network analyser functionality.
It's the same hardware as a no option CMU-200 (he has those too but 2-3 time as much) Most CRTU-RUs have a second RF generator and receiver but you would have to write code to control them.

[Specmaster]

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.

Hmm, I think you do protest a bit too much, as others will I'm sure point out that while you have been away, we have not had a lot of politics at all, but people do need to remember that we are all living through extremely difficult times like we have never experienced before. We can't take these conversations to friends or the pub which is what would normally be the case, most of the world is currently under lockdown conditions. We have all formed bonds on this forum and this thread in particular has helped many of us cope with the depressing conditions.

There are simply loads of discussions on here instance about various programming languages and issues surrounding the topic, this leaves me, and I'm sure I speak for many others here, cold, I have zero interest in the topic but do you hear any of us blowing hot and cold over it? No is the answer because we are grown up enough to understand that we all have different interests etc. You could do like we do, when we come across a topic not of interest, skip onto the next post and so on. This also helps when you're trying to catch up after an absence for any reason, so it can become a silver lining then.

Also, there are other factors at play, like the absence of any real activity in the marketplace for TEA items, by that I mean, there is a shortage of gear on the market on eBay etc, and what is there is so often way overpriced for what it is, so there is often little to discuss as a result.

Now, I'm not moaning at you at all, but what I am saying is that under these conditions that we need to chill a bit, and sit back and relax and decide what it is that we read and not read and be a little tolerant of each other. When the global situation improves, and we gain our freedoms again, able to acquire more items of TEA at sensible prices then as we get into the tear downs etc, normal service will be resumed once again and the talk move back to TEA, I'm positive of that.

[mnementh]

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.   

No, you're getting back on your zero-tolerance for politics schtick. And that is NOT acceptable. Get over yourself.

You completely misread my post; and you blame me for it. My point was not that I thought cops would intentionally hit a child; my point was that it wouldn't even make the scroll unless it was that bad, ya doof.

What, did you think I was lying when I said that sucked out loud, and I hoped she got to come "self-isolate" with you for a couple months?

When I related aboot my youth, growing up in "Mayberry, New York", and how Sheriff Morty was part of my extended family, you think that was a lie?

Damn it man... I have the greatest respect for the ones who get into to make a difference... it's the other kind that are wastes of skin. And sadly, they are becoming the norm, while the good guys are the exception. If you don't like that, then that's on you too.

The funny part... it is my personal opinion that we need more cops, not less. A LOT more. Enough so that they're part of our communities again; people we see and talk to and become familiar with and can grow some trust, not outsiders and strangers in uniform which we only ever see any particular officer once in our lives, and that to receive a traffic ticket.

But it is also my opinion that we also need to do a lot more aboot making the bad ones accountable, and we also need to do a lot more aboot actually identifying the Seal Team 6 wannabes before they get through Academy and keeping the ones who are in it just to carry a gun off the force. And we don't. We propagate the us vs them paradigm, to the point where it has become part of the firmament; embedded in the institution. Is it any wonder people who want to make a difference look into other lines of work?

I spent my time being a public servant... I joined the VFD for those very reasons. I still feel they're valid. But that experience also put me in direct contact with several of the surrounding PDs from larger municipalities, and I learned from fly-on-the-wall experience a lot of things aboot "The system" I really wish I didn't know. My experiences in Texas and Florida cast a much darker tone on that knowledge. "The System" is not only broken, it has become a perverse parody of "To protect and serve". And your lady cop friend knows it.

It's not our fault you and Oculus want this to be a politics-free zone. you want it to be something it is not. And I for one am tired of listening to you bitch us out for it when you are the ones with unreasonable expectations. You literally waste more space bitching aboot the random social commentary and occasional politics than it takes up. You repeatedly dredge it back up and create a whole "Thing" of it when it would have just been a random comment gone in the scroll.


Contrary to your belief, I do not hate the US. I spent my entire adult life fighting the good fight, battling the top-down corruption that has become life in the US in every way I knew how. I truly believed that somehow, someday, people would wake the eff up and actually start rolling up their sleeves and get to work fixing the damage that had been done. I love everything that America represents, and everything it was founded on.

I hate what the privileged few have turned it into, and at some point you have to realize America no longer is what it represents, but rather a hollow mockery thereof, and it's time to cut your losses.

For me, that point was seeing my kids growing up in the batshit-crazy. I'm not ashamed that in my old age, I felt it was more important to get them away from it.

I have no illusions that this is some fucking Utopia; I see the same kind of crazy starting to infect life up here as well. But they are at least 3 decades behind the US in that regard; and the people you meet in the street still think about other people like they matter, and they're still aghast when some public official does something horrible, and they still think it's nuts to have guns in schools. That's at least a start.

Cheers mate,

mnem
*unrepentant*

[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.

 
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 ...

The cell pictured looks like a "cheap" educational one. It has virtually no visible metallic content. The proper cells have a big slugs of amalgam in the bottom of the tubes. The solution am crystals are still poison though.

[BU508A]

Now, I'm not moaning at you at all, but what I am saying is that under these conditions that we need to chill a bit, and sit back and relax and decide what it is that we read and not read and be a little tolerant of each other. When the global situation improves, and we gain our freedoms again, able to acquire more items of TEA at sensible prices then as we get into the tear downs etc, normal service will be resumed once again and the talk move back to TEA, I'm positive of that.

I recommend biscuits and some TEA.   

[med6753]

*unrepentant*

Likewise. I stand by what I said.

[BU508A]

+++ Newsflash from Gravity Falls +++



+++ Newsflash from Gravity Falls +++

[med6753]

Just to put a complete on the Sansui amplifier project. Here's how it's set up and a pictorial of how it's configured.

The amplifier pre-dates availability of CD's so it has no CD input and surprisingly no AUX input. Only phono, tuner, tape 1 and tape 2. So an AV Link 3 way switch is used for the FM Tuner, CD Deck, and audio from the Media PC. The output of the switch goes to the Tuner input.

The BSR Equalizer is only used to direct line level signal from the Sansui amplifier to the Pioneer Receiver and the B&K scope. The EQ function is currently not connected and so far is unnecessary. This system sounds excellent with essentially flat response. Only a small amount of treble is used on the Sansui amp to compensate for my high frequency hearing loss.

The B&K scope is mainly for entertainment but it does have X/Y function so I can check system balance.

This is by no means a “pro” system but it sounds fine to me.   

[nixiefreqq]

Just to put a complete on the Sansui amplifier project. Here's how it's set up and a pictorial of how it's configured.

The amplifier pre-dates availability of CD's so it has no CD input and surprisingly no AUX input. Only phono, tuner, tape 1 and tape 2. So an AV Link 3 way switch is used for the FM Tuner, CD Deck, and audio from the Media PC. The output of the switch goes to the Tuner input.

The BSR Equalizer is only used to direct line level signal from the Sansui amplifier to the Pioneer Receiver and the B&K scope. The EQ function is currently not connected and so far is unnecessary. This system sounds excellent with essentially flat response. Only a small amount of treble is used on the Sansui amp to compensate for my high frequency hearing loss.

The B&K scope is mainly for entertainment but it does have X/Y function so I can check system balance.

This is by no means a “pro” system but it sounds fine to me.   

have always had zero interest in audio crap.

but that looks pretty good to me.

damn you!  (off to ebay)

[mnementh]

...Manufacturer 2, Tellabs, was impossible. Web site was cryptic and circular to navigate, full of abstract sales phrases and login boxes. There was a form one could fill in requesting documentation access. So I did that.   And waited.    Three months later, I got a curt e-mail stating "You are not a customer. You will have no access."

Now, which vendor do you think I'd like to recommend?

And I'm certain you made your recommendation long before you got that response... and so, Tellabs lost out on a potentially lucrative contract. And they deserved to. With such amazing customer support, you'd think they'd have died out long ago; why am I not surprised they're still alive and doing well in the Energy Corridor region of Texas...?

Social Darwinism at work, I suppose...

mnem
 

[med6753]

Just to put a complete on the Sansui amplifier project. Here's how it's set up and a pictorial of how it's configured.

The amplifier pre-dates availability of CD's so it has no CD input and surprisingly no AUX input. Only phono, tuner, tape 1 and tape 2. So an AV Link 3 way switch is used for the FM Tuner, CD Deck, and audio from the Media PC. The output of the switch goes to the Tuner input.

The BSR Equalizer is only used to direct line level signal from the Sansui amplifier to the Pioneer Receiver and the B&K scope. The EQ function is currently not connected and so far is unnecessary. This system sounds excellent with essentially flat response. Only a small amount of treble is used on the Sansui amp to compensate for my high frequency hearing loss.

The B&K scope is mainly for entertainment but it does have X/Y function so I can check system balance.

This is by no means a “pro” system but it sounds fine to me.   

have always had zero interest in audio crap.

but that looks pretty good to me.

damn you!  (off to ebay)

The Sansui amp, the BSR EQ, the Sherwood sub and the Pioneer receiver were all local CL purchases. The Technics tuner was Ebay. The two sets of Sony speakers were Amazon. Just a bunch of stuff thrown together. And you notice no hollow state. I refuse to pay the stupid prices for "warm" sound. My hearing is so borked anyway that I probably couldn't hear difference. 

[nixiefreqq]

awwwww shit.

damn you again.  (off to CL)

[tggzzz]

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 ...

The cell pictured looks like a "cheap" educational one. It has virtually no visible metallic content. The proper cells have a big slugs of amalgam in the bottom of the tubes. The solution am crystals are still poison though.

Well, I did pay £5 for a couple of cells from a 6th form college that was being sold off, but I don't think it was "educational". I can't remember, but I suspect the standard cells I used at school were the more robust portable cells.

It is a dual Muirhead D-402-B Standard Cell. It has a hole for a thermometer, and the datestamp is 19-1-1949! It has a yellow anchor and MEL stencilled on the side. The yellow anchor bears a resemblence to the Admiralty anchor, so perhaps it was a Marine Engineering Lab, or similar.

[factory]

Some vintage TE for those in the US, a lot of 3 Atec dual display counters;
https://www.ebay.com/itm/143918205641


David

Normally, I'd clean off stickers from second hand gear - but I might be tempted to leave this one as is.....



.... not that I could entertain getting them.  Shipping would be extortionate.


*Thinks*
It IS, however, very appealing to have something like that on my test bench....  I like the thought of even the uninitiated who may be mildly disinterested in all the gear being told I have some NASA test gear - and point to the sticker.  They won't have any idea of the age, but it'll get their attention!

I suspect the sticker is more valuable than what it's stuck to. 

We live in the age of fake news -  knock up some stickers in Photoshop and print your own! 

I think I've mentioned it before, I tend to keep older stickers as it's part of the history the TE, modern crap like PAT stickers go straight in the bin.

Also those Atec counters are probably the first I've seen with two displays, possibly they are two separate counters in one case, but I can't read what the inputs are on the back. 
Seems Atec had some of that special blue paint MED likes for the covers, transformer & big capacitors.


I wouldn't mind adding one to my collection but it won't be those three as they don't ship anywhere outside the US.

David

[mnementh]

You've got some decent brute force there between those two receivers and the sub; a proper DTS/THX decoder would make the soundstage come alive. Also would help stop beating up your sub with frequencies too high for it to handle; most of those speaker-level inputs are at best a 6dB/octave filter.

Also, you're making me miss my old forgotten Pioneer iron, dammit. 



mnem
*toddles off towards Kijiji to do some penance*

[Robert763]

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 ...

The cell pictured looks like a "cheap" educational one. It has virtually no visible metallic content. The proper cells have a big slugs of amalgam in the bottom of the tubes. The solution am crystals are still poison though.

Well, I did pay £5 for a couple of cells from a 6th form college that was being sold off, but I don't think it was "educational". I can't remember, but I suspect the standard cells I used at school were the more robust portable cells.

It is a dual Muirhead D-402-B Standard Cell. It has a hole for a thermometer, and the datestamp is 19-1-1949! It has a yellow anchor and MEL stencilled on the side. The yellow anchor bears a resemblence to the Admiralty anchor, so perhaps it was a Marine Engineering Lab, or similar.

I stand corrected.
Muirhead must have optimised the quantity of metal required.

[mansaxel]

Now, which vendor do you think I'd like to recommend?

Juniper.


 

Why, yes, they're good. Not as good, though, as they were before they started "growth by buying smaller companies" which is the death of everything that is beautiful with router vendors.

[mnementh]

Now you're beginning to sound like someone pitching a startup to investors. 

mnem
 

[bd139]

Juniper is what everyone who has been burned by all the other vendors seems to settle on. It's like the old F5 load balancers. Everyone starts being sold F5 until people realise what a shit show it is. This is followed by nginx after which they discover they need a commercial feature and it'll cost them a chunk of liver. Then everyone settles on haproxy and the world is good. Then some new CIO comes in and sells you AWS with some dubious commercial advantage coming from confusing opex and capex and the next thing you know you're terraforming up ALBs for 5 hours a day while Bezos harvests your bonus to make space dicks with.

(having a bad day  )

[mnementh]

Juniper is what everyone who has been burned by all the other vendors seems to settle on. It's like the old F5 load balancers. Everyone starts being sold F5 until people realise what a shit show it is. This is followed by nginx after which they discover they need a commercial feature and it'll cost them a chunk of liver. Then everyone settles on haproxy and the world is good. Then some new CIO comes in and sells you AWS with some dubious commercial advantage coming from confusing opex and capex and the next thing you know you're terraforming up ALBs for 5 hours a day while Bezos harvests your bonus to make space dicks with.

(having a bad day  )

Well, Ifni knows he has enough earthbound dicks in orbit... 

mnem
*counted 3 Amazon trucks going around in circles in my neighborhood yesterday*

[tonyalbus]

Juniper is what everyone who has been burned by all the other vendors seems to settle on. It's like the old F5 load balancers. Everyone starts being sold F5 until people realise what a shit show it is. This is followed by nginx after which they discover they need a commercial feature and it'll cost them a chunk of liver. Then everyone settles on haproxy and the world is good. Then some new CIO comes in and sells you AWS with some dubious commercial advantage coming from confusing opex and capex and the next thing you know you're terraforming up ALBs for 5 hours a day while Bezos harvests your bonus to make space dicks with.

(having a bad day  )

Okey we doing IT today? ..
Someone ever tried 'loadbalancer.org' LB's? i did... i must say.. very nice.
and on firewalls NetAsq or StormShield its called now... very, very good experiances also with support.
i was told even france coverment and banks use it... so they have there sh** together... you are sure of updates then... i would say...