Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Zucca]

menm will 3Dprint you some... 

[Specmaster]

Well I for one have nothing at all from Sony, but my boys all have PlayStations. I never knew about the Sony root kit scandal 

[mnementh]

on other notes:   this is for our tea coffee dwagon:   
Source: https://paradoxshirt.com/product/dragon-and-coffee-touch-my-coffee-and-i-will-drink-it-from-your-skull-shirt/

I approve. An interesting variant on the old "Yes I am a real Viking; if you touch my mead I will drink it from your skull." gag. 

Now if it were only available from a Canadian vendor on Amazon... 

mnem

[Specmaster]

Well the HP 66312A turned up here today.

Bummer: despite what ought to have been reasonable packaging by the seller, Parcelfarce managed to smash the shrouds on the terminals.



I've given it a brief functional checkout and the basics all work. In doing so I discovered an interesting feature, the fan speed is directly proportional to the measured output current (or perhaps power). It doesn't change after a thermal lag, it changes immediately the measured output current changes. Neat.

By the way, this is the heaviest 40W PSU I've ever encountered. In fact, I'd go for it being the heaviest PSU in terms of kg/W that I've ever encountered - excluding PSUs that only put out a 100 mW or so, where they're hitting the limits of how small/light you can practically make something that plugs into the mains.

Edit: Just calculated from the specifications: 4.54 W/kg.

Clearly that was not adequate packaging after all, I've managed to sent items with exposed binding posts and controls, BNC's etc like PSU's and scopes without getting any damage done at all. I have always used Hermes, Yodel or DPD for deliveries of such large and heavy parcels.

[McBryce]

Well I for one have nothing at all from Sony, but my boys all have PlayStations. I never knew about the Sony root kit scandal 

I still have an original Sony Walkman and Discman, but they're the last Sonys I bought. One of Sony's worst ideas was to insist on creating their own memory card form factor, when there were already MMC, CF, SD etc.

McBryce.

[bd139]

Well the HP 66312A turned up here today.

Bummer: despite what ought to have been reasonable packaging by the seller, Parcelfarce managed to smash the shrouds on the terminals.



I've given it a brief functional checkout and the basics all work. In doing so I discovered an interesting feature, the fan speed is directly proportional to the measured output current (or perhaps power). It doesn't change after a thermal lag, it changes immediately the measured output current changes. Neat.

By the way, this is the heaviest 40W PSU I've ever encountered. In fact, I'd go for it being the heaviest PSU in terms of kg/W that I've ever encountered - excluding PSUs that only put out a 100 mW or so, where they're hitting the limits of how small/light you can practically make something that plugs into the mains.

Edit: Just calculated from the specifications: 4.54 W/kg.

Keysight still sell those binding posts fortunately. £6 a go is the bad news.

[Ice-Tea]

Oh. OOooohHH! Huzaaaaahhh! 

Guessing some of you remember the depressing tale of How I Got My First Negative Review! I scraped my knees begging him, then I opened a request for review. Not a single reply.

Now all of a sudden the negative feedback is GONE!! Not sure what happened. Did he never reply to the "official" request for review and did ebay default to removing the review? Not sure, but OH BOY I'm happy!

[Specmaster]

You got a result there then 

[bd139]

Consumer side is a shit show these days. Total one trick pony. They’re still stuck in pre 2010 thinking culture ie before the rise of the smartphone. The last Sony product I bought was a W880i phone. Typically it was what Sony always did by then: crappy user interface designed to look nice but having major software, electrical and mechanical flaws. Same story across their phone, television, car radio and hifi lines by then.

If I survey across people I know these days, their entire product line is a bit of a dead end. People don’t own hifi stacks any more, half the people I know don’t have cars and most of them seem to watch stuff on their phones and tablets. And none of them own anything Sony.

RIP but they’re dead to me on the consumer side of things. Apple replaced them.

Edit: actually it has got to the point the TV hasn’t been on here for two weeks now. It’s not even plugged in after I rewired everything. It may go. I’ve got a Sony 26EX320 I’m trying to get rid of too which hasn’t been turned on for months.

I wonder if they were the architects of their own demise. Like Mnem I used to be a bit of a Sony fanboy, I've bought a lot of Sony kit over the years (commercial and professional). They were always at the top of the "take a look" list when I wanted something new and more often than not it was Sony I bought in the end. Then came the root kit scandal when I vowed that I'd never buy Sony again and I haven't bought anything Sony since, not even second hand.

I suspect that I, and my fellow techonerds, made up a significant proportion of Sony's customer base; I certainly used to see a lot of Sony product in fellow geek's houses. If that market segment, or a significant chunk of it worldwide, went away I'd expect it to hurt Sony. Sony were always a bit pricier, and you needed a reason to buy Sony - geeks had it, the general consumer population less so. So if my reaction to the root kit scandal was echoed elsewhere in that market segment then it probably hurt Sony badly. Less sales, less money for R&D, more pressure to find production economies, lower quality product with weaker design to sell.

About right. They just produced shit though on that side of things.

Another one of my problems with Sony is neatly described in this picture:



Yes I did that with a chair leg I enjoyed every fucking second of it. This was a brand new fairly ordinary early i5 desktop AIO (fake iMac) with niceish touch screen running windows 8.1 which I paid the going rate for at the time. That's where the nicety ended. Literally exactly to the minute the 1 year Sony warranty was up, it started being an absolute shitbag. Firstly it'd hang left, right and centre. A reinstallation solved that but I had to eviserate the Sony native software from it in the process because their own deployment stuff blue screened it. Then the DVD writer failed. Contacting Sony resulted in me being sent to their approved UK third party repairer who wanted to charge me £100 deposit (!) for pick up in case there wasn't something wrong with it. Decided I'd just lump it as I was using USB sticks mostly by then. About a month after that, it started turning off randomly right in the middle of doing stuff. It was being used as a terminal for a lot of worky stuff at the time so I was getting seriously pissed off. This turned out to be the power supply brick. The machine was proudly "assembled by Sony" but the power supply brick was made in some Chinese backwater. I replaced with a slightly less crap one from some Chinese backwater after being told again that if I wanted a warranty repair under CCA 2015 that I'd have to pay a £100 deposit in case there was nothing wrong. I discovered around then it is actually illegal. I'd also have to ship the entire thing back to them and the turnaround time was 8 weeks with no guarantees. so up again. This was solved. It was working fine. Then a couple of months later I was sitting there working on something in Visual Studio and black screen. It turned off again. Power supply checked out fine. Entire device was dead as a dodo. I again contacted Sony who sent me to the same repairer again who said £100 or fuck off. So I raised a chargeback with HSBC credit card with the collateral and they sided with me (in only 2 weeks) and refunded the entire amount and told me to dispose of it. So I did as the picture illustrates.

And that's why I don't buy Sony.

Edit: got to add one thing. The Japanese cannot do software. I don't know if it's a cultural thing or not but while we're a complete shit show, they really manage to take it to expert levels. The Sony deployment stuff for their own drivers didn't recognise the hardware, wasn't available for download in the UK for some reason, exploded when I did find a hooky copy of it somewhere. It installed drivers that were ancient and incorrect. Then it installed Sony's media experience pack which basically was screen-sucking toolbars designed by someone who clearly had been licking a toad (probably the same folks who design their car stereos, the occasional weird fashion outfit at a fashion show or concept cars that don't make it off paper). Not only that, none of it actually even worked.

[Cerebus]

Clearly that was not adequate packaging after all, I've managed to sent items with exposed binding posts and controls, BNC's etc like PSU's and scopes without getting any damage done at all. I have always used Hermes, Yodel or DPD for deliveries of such large and heavy parcels.

Yeah, what I said was "ought to have been" but the seller didn't comprehend was the lengths to which the Parcelfarce gorillas will go to destroy things. It had at least 2 inches of bubblewrap protecting it (I just measured roughly 30 feet of large bubble wrap in toto). The way it was packed I reckon it would have survived anything apart from the side of the box where the faceplate was being directly dropped onto a concrete floor, from height, repeatedly. So what did the Parcelfarce gorillas do? Sometimes I think they must x-ray things to find the most efficient way of destroying them.

[bd139]

Oh. OOooohHH! Huzaaaaahhh! 

Guessing some of you remember the depressing tale of How I Got My First Negative Review! I scraped my knees begging him, then I opened a request for review. Not a single reply.

Now all of a sudden the negative feedback is GONE!! Not sure what happened. Did he never reply to the "official" request for review and did ebay default to removing the review? Not sure, but OH BOY I'm happy!

Nice! That's a good outcome.

 Wish they'd do that for me, although it appears not to have affected sales here at all.

[Cerebus]

Well the HP 66312A turned up here today.

Bummer: despite what ought to have been reasonable packaging by the seller, Parcelfarce managed to smash the shrouds on the terminals.



I've given it a brief functional checkout and the basics all work. In doing so I discovered an interesting feature, the fan speed is directly proportional to the measured output current (or perhaps power). It doesn't change after a thermal lag, it changes immediately the measured output current changes. Neat.

By the way, this is the heaviest 40W PSU I've ever encountered. In fact, I'd go for it being the heaviest PSU in terms of kg/W that I've ever encountered - excluding PSUs that only put out a 100 mW or so, where they're hitting the limits of how small/light you can practically make something that plugs into the mains.

Edit: Just calculated from the specifications: 4.54 W/kg.

Keysight still sell those binding posts fortunately. £6 a go is the bad news.

Well, I had already looked up the specific part number 1510-0091, and the Keysight website has those down as £51.02 each. So,
question 1: are we talking about the exact same part,
question 2: has the price rocketed for some reason,
question 3: I've never actually worked out how to buy parts from Keysight - the website lists online sales as "US only", how does one go about ordering parts in the UK?

[Cerebus]

Oh. OOooohHH! Huzaaaaahhh! 

Guessing some of you remember the depressing tale of How I Got My First Negative Review! I scraped my knees begging him, then I opened a request for review. Not a single reply.

Now all of a sudden the negative feedback is GONE!! Not sure what happened. Did he never reply to the "official" request for review and did ebay default to removing the review? Not sure, but OH BOY I'm happy!

Nobody, but nobody, can be as happy as Kevin when he's dancing (or found an unexpected banana). 

[bd139]

Keysight still sell those binding posts fortunately. £6 a go is the bad news.

Well, I had already looked up the specific part number 1510-0091, and the Keysight website has those down as £51.02 each. So,
question 1: are we talking about the exact same part,
question 2: has the price rocketed for some reason,
question 3: I've never actually worked out how to buy parts from Keysight - the website lists online sales as "US only", how does one go about ordering parts in the UK?

Oh ok those aren't the basic ones. They are the super duper binding posts. That's about it then - 51 quid a go it is.

As for buying them, if you phone Keysight UK on 0800 0260637 and ask to place a spare part order, sorted. They will ask for the part numbers and quantities and your details etc (may ask for it via email). Then they will tell you a worrying thing which is basically someone random from Spain will call you and take payment details within the next 48 hours via credit card. If you're lucky then they will actually call (they forgot once). Then about two weeks later you'll get an envelope delivered with the parts in it. No minimum order. If you're even luckier then they'll forget to charge you VAT too 

Brexit may be fucking with this process though so YMMV. All their spares are shipped from Spain you see

Edit: actually they aren't the super duper ones. They have gone up in price!!!! Check on TME - they sell some that look exactly the same for a lot less.

edit 2: fucks sake. They don't sell them now https://www.tme.eu/en/details/bs-244mn-b/4mm-banana-sockets/

edit 3: try keysight fap (tee hee):

E3631-20011 - red post
E3631-20012 - black post

Think they are same part - need to check that carefully though. They're about £24 for a pair of them which is less painful.

[mnementh]

Yes so do I. It’s why I refuse to buy another android handset. Got screwed by HTC and Motorola. Also why it’s universally banned for BYOD and company provided handsets at the last three places I’ve worked now. People keep telling me it’s improving but they haven’t really. Even Google’s offerings aren’t good.

Selling an iPhone 6s I’ve had since 2015 at the moment. Latest iOS and updates. Still supported on iOS 14 but will be stopped on iOS 15 at EOY but will be patched until end of 2022. Why can’t everyone do that

Edit: to be honest my principle complaint is about this stuff turning into corporate ewaste almost immediately because the vendor doesn’t see it as profitable to maintain a device on the software and hardware front. I’d rather invest in a company that does consider longevity both in software and hardware and ewaste and recycling and doesn’t force the end user to accept security risks if they want to retain a device for a reasonable amount of time.

The flip side of that is my approach: Buy a $200 android pwn and replace it every couple years. Only real annoyance is the ~10-month window of availability for accessories like cases & screen protectors. 

My G90 pro has received 3 updates since I bought it 3 months ago; the first to android10. Prior experience tells me this vendor will update for ~18 months as this is their flagship model bought right at release.

For the difference in price on a 6inch handset, that is an acceptable tradeoff; especially considering how nasty a phone gets in a tinkerer/fixer/mechanic's pocket. It's nice getting that "new smartPwn feel/smell" a little more often. Also nice not having to de-gunge the thing 6 times before it's someone else's problem. 

mnem
*punt*

[mnementh]

you mean something like this?   

 

If that thing has HotSpot and good reception... I could probably totes be happy using that and a iPud or even my Lenovo M10 Android tablet. Wouldn't be a massive shift in lifestyle at all.

Aside from SMS, I am SO over having a useless little screen smartPwn in my pocket; that's why mine keeps getting bigger and bigger. Maybe it's time to admit to myself that if it's not worth the hassle of reaching for a tablet, it can fukkin' damn well wait.

mnem
 

[Cubdriver]

on other notes:

this is for our tea coffee dwagon:



Source: https://paradoxshirt.com/product/dragon-and-coffee-touch-my-coffee-and-i-will-drink-it-from-your-skull-shirt/

Poor font choice on that 'C', IMO - I stared at that in puzzlement for a few moments trying to figure it out as I was reading the first word as touGh, and couldn't figure out WTF toughing someone's coffee meant.

-Pat

[Cerebus]

Keysight still sell those binding posts fortunately. £6 a go is the bad news.

Well, I had already looked up the specific part number 1510-0091, and the Keysight website has those down as £51.02 each. So,
question 1: are we talking about the exact same part,
question 2: has the price rocketed for some reason,
question 3: I've never actually worked out how to buy parts from Keysight - the website lists online sales as "US only", how does one go about ordering parts in the UK?

Oh ok those aren't the basic ones. They are the super duper binding posts. That's about it then - 51 quid a go it is.

As for buying them, if you phone Keysight UK on 0800 0260637 and ask to place a spare part order, sorted. They will ask for the part numbers and quantities and your details etc (may ask for it via email). Then they will tell you a worrying thing which is basically someone random from Spain will call you and take payment details within the next 48 hours via credit card. If you're lucky then they will actually call (they forgot once). Then about two weeks later you'll get an envelope delivered with the parts in it. No minimum order. If you're even luckier then they'll forget to charge you VAT too 

Brexit may be fucking with this process though so YMMV. All their spares are shipped from Spain you see

Edit: actually they aren't the super duper ones. They have gone up in price!!!! Check on TME - they sell some that look exactly the same for a lot less.

edit 2: fucks sake. They don't sell them now https://www.tme.eu/en/details/bs-244mn-b/4mm-banana-sockets/

edit 3: try keysight fap (tee hee):

E3631-20011 - red post
E3631-20012 - black post

Think they are same part - need to check that carefully though. They're about £24 for a pair of them which is less painful.

Ta.

I knew about the TME ones, and the fact that they'd gone away as I had them on the putative BOM for one of my own design/build PSUs (Which I still haven't finalised the design(s) for as I keep changing my mind about things).

I'll take a critical look at the 3631 binding posts to see if they'll fit. Thank fuck that Keysight post photos with a scale for parts like that. First look suggests that the 66312 part has a keying flat on the mounting thread, the 3631 has a complete round thread - possibly within bodging range with a grinding wheel if necessary. The 66312A ones have a captive 'spinny bit' so I can't just take the knobs off the others and put them on the otherwise good existing posts. Bah!

[mnementh]

menm will 3Dprint you some... 

Well the HP 66312A turned up here today.

Bummer: despite what ought to have been reasonable packaging by the seller, Parcelfarce managed to smash the shrouds on the terminals.      

I've given it a brief functional checkout and the basics all work. In doing so I discovered an interesting feature, the fan speed is directly proportional to the measured output current (or perhaps power). It doesn't change after a thermal lag, it changes immediately the measured output current changes. Neat.

By the way, this is the heaviest 40W PSU I've ever encountered. In fact, I'd go for it being the heaviest PSU in terms of kg/W that I've ever encountered - excluding PSUs that only put out a 100 mW or so, where they're hitting the limits of how small/light you can practically make something that plugs into the mains.

Edit: Just calculated from the specifications: 4.54 W/kg.

LOL... I could too print something up, pretty quickly. And it would be a lot less assache than tearing that thing down to replace the whole terminal, which I think is necessary on these right? From the photo it looks like the 4mm socket tube is swaged over to keep the nut from being able to be twisted off the terminal.

   Yeah, output-wattage-controlled fans seems to be a thing now... even my little Cheap Chinese CC/CV PSU does it.    For sure the opposite end of the spectrum weight/watt wise tho; I've pulled a constant 88 watts out of this little 800 gram toy.  

Yes, I know it's a completely different class of machine; more reference standard than PSU. It just made me giggle when you described it in terms of enheavyment.

mnem
*Juicy... slightly.*

[Cubdriver]

Consumer side is a shit show these days. Total one trick pony. They’re still stuck in pre 2010 thinking culture ie before the rise of the smartphone. The last Sony product I bought was a W880i phone. Typically it was what Sony always did by then: crappy user interface designed to look nice but having major software, electrical and mechanical flaws. Same story across their phone, television, car radio and hifi lines by then.

If I survey across people I know these days, their entire product line is a bit of a dead end. People don’t own hifi stacks any more, half the people I know don’t have cars and most of them seem to watch stuff on their phones and tablets. And none of them own anything Sony.

RIP but they’re dead to me on the consumer side of things. Apple replaced them.

Edit: actually it has got to the point the TV hasn’t been on here for two weeks now. It’s not even plugged in after I rewired everything. It may go. I’ve got a Sony 26EX320 I’m trying to get rid of too which hasn’t been turned on for months.

I've got some of their older gear in my stereo stack (STR D2020 receiver from 1991-ish, cassette and mini disc decks, CD changer from the late 80s), but the most recent thing I've gotten from them is the mini disc deck and that was in the late 90s.  I'm happy with what I have in that regard, and have no clue what they have out at present.  Also had Sony CRT TVs in the 80s-90s, and they always performed well, too; never needed service.  Sounds like they've gone downhill, same as many other formerly good brands.  Sad.

-Pat

[mnementh]

Clearly that was not adequate packaging after all, I've managed to sent items with exposed binding posts and controls, BNC's etc like PSU's and scopes without getting any damage done at all. I have always used Hermes, Yodel or DPD for deliveries of such large and heavy parcels.

Yeah, what I said was "ought to have been" but the seller didn't comprehend was the lengths to which the Parcelfarce gorillas will go to destroy things. It had at least 2 inches of bubblewrap protecting it (I just measured roughly 30 feet of large bubble wrap in toto). The way it was packed I reckon it would have survived anything apart from the side of the box where the faceplate was being directly dropped onto a concrete floor, from height, repeatedly. So what did the Parcelfarce gorillas do? Sometimes I think they must x-ray things to find the most efficient way of destroying them.

      

Double-wall carton with Foam-in-place packing = Thermonuclear protection. Yes it adds $8-12 to shipping costs for a typical boat anchor. But it ensures you get the busted-ass piece of TE you PAID FOR, not the crumbled remains thereof. 

Agreed, nothing can stop a truly disgruntled Parcel Primate from destroying or simply losing your new toy... but IMO, this is the standard to which all recycled TE vendors and even those semi-frequent TE flippers (lookin' atchoo, bd) should be held, or feet held to the fire.

You can mostly duplicate this at home with large shopping or garbage bags and Great Stuff foam insulation; I did so for a  Holley Carburetor I sold on fleaBay years ago that was going to Baja.

mnem
*slightly recursive*

[Cerebus]

menm will 3Dprint you some... 

Well the HP 66312A turned up here today.

Bummer: despite what ought to have been reasonable packaging by the seller, Parcelfarce managed to smash the shrouds on the terminals.      

I've given it a brief functional checkout and the basics all work. In doing so I discovered an interesting feature, the fan speed is directly proportional to the measured output current (or perhaps power). It doesn't change after a thermal lag, it changes immediately the measured output current changes. Neat.

By the way, this is the heaviest 40W PSU I've ever encountered. In fact, I'd go for it being the heaviest PSU in terms of kg/W that I've ever encountered - excluding PSUs that only put out a 100 mW or so, where they're hitting the limits of how small/light you can practically make something that plugs into the mains.

Edit: Just calculated from the specifications: 4.54 W/kg.

LOL... I could too print something up, pretty quickly. And it would be a lot less assache than tearing that thing down to replace the whole terminal, which I think is necessary on these right? From the photo it looks like the 4mm socket tube is swaged over to keep the nut from being able to be twisted off the terminal.

Exactly the latter. Anyway, if I want it to have a hipster vibe I don't have to go as far as 3D printing, just squeeze a little Sugru onto the retained 'nut' and it's good.  In all seriousness I might go down that route for a pro tem solution, which if I do probably means it'll still be there in ten years time.

   Yeah, output-wattage-controlled fans seems to be a thing now... even my little Cheap Chinese CC/CV PSU does it.    For sure the opposite end of the spectrum weight/watt wise tho; I've pulled a constant 88 watts out of this little 800 gram toy.  

Yes, I know it's a completely different class of machine; more reference standard than PSU. It just made me giggle when you described it in terms of enheavyment.

Not reference but measurement. The giveaway is that some of the sibling supplies are designated "communications" test supplies; it's all about the fast current measurements so that it can act in place of a battery for mobiles and the like that jump around in power demand.

The current measurement is interesting in itself. The low bandwidth current measurement is taken in the bog standard method of measuring voltage across a current sense resistor, said signal is also used as feed back for regulation. The high bandwidth current measurement path is a current transformer in series with the output capacitor (the whole across the output, obviously). So there's quite a bit of awkward fast arithmetic involved in combining the current pull from the supply with the current charge/drain on the output capacitor to get the composite measured figure. Not an obvious choice on the surface, and if I'd come up with the same scheme I'd have wanted to do quite a lot of proving that it could adequately get an accurate output current reading once all the fiddling with number had been done.

[Robert763]

Well the HP 66312A turned up here today.

Bummer: despite what ought to have been reasonable packaging by the seller, Parcelfarce managed to smash the shrouds on the terminals.



I've given it a brief functional checkout and the basics all work. In doing so I discovered an interesting feature, the fan speed is directly proportional to the measured output current (or perhaps power). It doesn't change after a thermal lag, it changes immediately the measured output current changes. Neat.

By the way, this is the heaviest 40W PSU I've ever encountered. In fact, I'd go for it being the heaviest PSU in terms of kg/W that I've ever encountered - excluding PSUs that only put out a 100 mW or so, where they're hitting the limits of how small/light you can practically make something that plugs into the mains.

Edit: Just calculated from the specifications: 4.54 W/kg.

I should have  couple of those. Send me a picture of the rear (there are a couple of different types) and I'll check

EDIT I found the manual they are 1510-0091 I have some used @Cerebus PM me your address if you would like a couple.

[mnementh]

   Yes I did that with a chair leg; I enjoyed every fucking second of it...

That would not be the first AIO I had to adjust with the ol' Thumb-Detecting NutFucker m'self... 

I'm sure we probably had this conversation when it happened, but please tell me you gutted it for the usual CPU, RAM, spinning rust etc...? That wasted screen does make me cringe tho... especially with how cheap universal LVDS controllers are nowadays. SONY didn't cheap out on their LCDs like Toshiba did... 

mnem
I want to open a restaurant where they serve you what you deserve, not what you order.

[bd139]

Nope left all the entrails in it. I went full rage infected monkey at it. No regrets.

It then was placed in a large bin for two years to collect rainwater to make Sony soup. Didn't taste very nice.