Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

All hybrids and electrics are classed as autos so eventually the basic test will be auto only with a special for manuals / commercials. I took my test long enough ago I can drive minibuses (>8 seats) and commercials up to 7.5T etc. That stopped a while ago.  A modern basic licence won't cover you to drive a S3 LWB Station Waggon (12 seats, you can drive one in the bus lanes in Cambridge ) or Ambulance bodied 101" FC (>3.5T).

Yep, I took my test in 1966 so I can also drive a minibus or trucks upto 7.5 tons but strangely, very few hire companies will now allow me to hire anything in these classes due to my age  I'm far from a doddering old git who is likely to be going the wrong on a bleeding motorway you flipping wan*ers 

[mnementh]

For those that don't know, a portal axle has a pinion and gear wheel in the hub. Advantages are high ground clearance, lightweight (high speed, low torque) driveshfts and differentials and high wheel torque. Disadvantages are high unsprung weight, high center of gravity, mechanical complication, high mechanical losses, high maintence costs. Great for off-road, no great for high speeds. or fuel consumption.

Back around the Star Wars era, DARPA (IIRC) had a terrain-climbing personnel carrier with 3 wheels in a triangle at each hub. I can't for the life of me remember WTF the correct term for that is, but those hubs were fukkin' heavy.



I suspect these take the cake for unsprung weight nowadays, tho... and look at how long the offset is on those hubs.

mnem
*fondly remembering my 6x4 Chevy van*

[mnementh]

Oh great another eBay fucknugget.

So buys a motherboard off me for £10 off the price, I ship it UPS 24 which is better then the specified 2 days dispatch followed by “packlink generic 2-3 days”. UPS has taken one extra day so far and he’s opened a case against me because he couldn’t build a PC with his son this weekend. Boo fucking hoo. You’re getting a second hand motherboard via economy delivery which I upgraded FOC from a private seller and are complaining. Cunt.

fleabay need to add a filter so you can exclude entitled millennials from buying your stuff.

If you have children you can have such interaction with ("because he couldn’t build a PC with his son this weekend") you're probably not millenial. What Ebay might need is a "stupid filter" but that would probably be bad for business. People not understanding things as they're seen by others are simply too common, ageistic labels aside. The "me first, consider others never" modus operandi has existed for ages. And it's not going away.

Fortunately, opening a case adds 3 days to the whole process. As long as you actually shipped in that 48-hour window, if it does arrive in that time, he's not allowed to post negative feedback. eBay is especially a dick to buyers aboot that right now with COVID delays in shipping service being a fucking plague on commerce.

He's fooked. He didn't pay for next day, he doesn't get to expect you to foot the bill for it.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

So I fall back to sleep and wake up about 2 hours later and here she is, sitting in the chair doing her knitting and watching Law and Order - UK. I don't get this fascination with British TV. 

Trust me it can get a whole lot worse. My Ex Red Headed Pom developed a horrible addiction to Aussie trash soaps prior to arriving from Lincoln. 1 1/2 hours 5 nights a week of dribble with religious like fervor as Australia was supposed to be just like that IRL. Failed to heed the warning bells in my brain way to long

Oh I hear you. My Puerto Rican ex used to watch those Spanish "novellas" or soap operas and I couldn't understand a word of it. But it did have a lot of damn fine looking babes running around acting stupid. 

*cough*bunny-boilers*cough*

mnem
 

[bd139]

Oh great another eBay fucknugget.

So buys a motherboard off me for £10 off the price, I ship it UPS 24 which is better then the specified 2 days dispatch followed by “packlink generic 2-3 days”. UPS has taken one extra day so far and he’s opened a case against me because he couldn’t build a PC with his son this weekend. Boo fucking hoo. You’re getting a second hand motherboard via economy delivery which I upgraded FOC from a private seller and are complaining. Cunt.

fleabay need to add a filter so you can exclude entitled millennials from buying your stuff.

If you have children you can have such interaction with ("because he couldn’t build a PC with his son this weekend") you're probably not millenial. What Ebay might need is a "stupid filter" but that would probably be bad for business. People not understanding things as they're seen by others are simply too common, ageistic labels aside. The "me first, consider others never" modus operandi has existed for ages. And it's not going away.

Fortunately, opening a case adds 3 days to the whole process. As long as you actually shipped in that 48-hour window, if it does arrive in that time, he's not allowed to post negative feedback. eBay is especially a dick to buyers aboot that right now with COVID delays in shipping service being a fucking plague on commerce.

He's fooked. He didn't pay for next day, he doesn't get to expect you to foot the bill for it.

mnem
 

Bwuhahahaha hope it does work that way.

I get the feeling he's a fucktard anyway which scares me sending PC bits to because they say "it doesn't work" and you get a board back with mangled CPU socket or knocked off components  .

[mnementh]

            

And here's some of the weird-ass shit I stumbled across while I was trying to find a pic of that DARPA triaxial hub/wheel.


mnem

[Hydron]

Stumbled into this thread due to the MS8911 discussion (I am currently suffering from a bout of Test Equipment Acquisition Syndrome) and had a couple of questions:
- Do those sent from the "perpetual last item" seller come with more than one set of tips like mnementh's did? The forked tips seem like they'd be a pain for some things.
- Any update on use in-circuit on the 0.1Vrms setting? My DE-5000 spits out a bit too much juice for doing that.

On another topic that may be of interest, be careful with UK ebay and VAT right now - even if it says "20% VAT included" on the page, this seems to only apply to the "buy it now" price rather than any offer the seller has made (insane given it's a fixed price), and you get stung with 20% more than expected on checkout.
Ebay refused to do anything other than tell me to ask the seller to cancel the sale which is a complete dick move on their part - not my fault or the sellers that they cocked up the VAT changes and the site is misleading (sure maybe it's in the fine print somewhere, but a clear "VAT included in price" message was there in the postage & payment section).

[mnementh]

Nope... both sets of tips are the forked ones. I have a spare set of pointy probes from the tweezers that came with my ESR02 component tester; those appear will fit just fine if I file a slot in one of the screw holes.

I think once you try them, you'll find the forked probes are no trouble at all; I've been using mine for months now, and they're one of my primary diag tools now. They stay out on my bench, like my 189. I have not even bothered to fit the pointy probes.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Fortunately, opening a case adds 3 days to the whole process. As long as you actually shipped in that 48-hour window, if it does arrive in that time, he's not allowed to post negative feedback. eBay is especially a dick to buyers aboot that right now with COVID delays in shipping service being a fucking plague on commerce.

He's fooked. He didn't pay for next day, he doesn't get to expect you to foot the bill for it.

mnem
 

Bwuhahahaha hope it does work that way.

I get the feeling he's a fucktard anyway which scares me sending PC bits to because they say "it doesn't work" and you get a board back with mangled CPU socket or knocked off components  .

Sadly, the fucktard quotient is something we all have to deal with nowadays; a byproduct of the deliberate evisceration of public schools by greedy people who find the entire notion of public school offensive.

The decrease in common sense is exponential with every generation of uneducated/undereducated youth; the most important thing they teach you (if they're doing their job) is how to learn for yourself.

mnem
I know... I know... preaching to the choir.

[Ice-Tea]

eBay is really strange regarding the UK atm. For shipping, you have "UK", "UK + EU" and "Europe and UK". Which is nuts, because now I can't select an option to ship to the entire EU *without* including the UK (which is *not* in the EU).

Which means I select EU + UK, knowing that DPD will charge me a bit more but I don't have to pay VAT on the sale so that's fine for me. The buyer, however, gets slapped with import duties (VAT, mostly) and fees. But there should be a EU option and UK option, seperately. Horrible for me, horrible for the cusomer like it is now.

[Specmaster]

@mnementh What batteries did you use in that calculator kit? Amazon says CR2030, they are like rocking horse sh1t. I wonder if it should read CR2032?

[mnementh]

Mine is full of dollar-store CR2032s. They fit just fine. 



But you'll need CR2450s for the MS8911.

mnem
*klikkitty*

[Cerebus]

I've always Fancied a 101" FC Radio Body
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Rover_101_Forward_Control#/media/File:Land_Rover_101_Forward_Control.jpg
There is a very Dilapidated GS in the village, beyond what I'd attempt, but even so the owner won't sell it so it's rotting away.

About 20 years ago, when I still used to regularly go hillwalking in the kind of places a Landie would be a good idea, I gave some very serious consideration to getting a 101 FC, either radio body (comparatively rare), or ambulance body (comparatively common) to use as an ersatz camper van.

How about this one?

Exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, including the mountains and the blonde accessory pack. Not sure that I'd want two jerry cans of fuel as a crumple zone however.

That's the ambulance body, which comes with a bit of welcome extra headroom and plenty of windows in the back. The radio body was shorter but had a side door which seems a little more practical than the ambulance body (which only had big wide double doors at the back) if you're getting in and out in crappy weather - which in British hillwalking or climbing country means most of the time. But, the ambulance body came with stretchers and bearers already in place, so you had ready made bunk beds if you only wanted to do the minimum conversion work on it. So, swings and roundabouts,

[mnementh]

   https://www.amazon.com/Seeeduino-Smallest-Microcontroller-Interfaces-Compatible/dp/B087D2VSBL/

Okay, now that's freaky. I found the screws I needed in black for cheap... so I started looking for ATSAMD21G18 boards (Like the Adafruit Adafruit Metro M0) from the CircuitPython "Already Supported" list that were actually in stock up here so I could get started with CircuitPython. Got a Ardu MKR Zero on the way, but these were on the same page.

So out of curiosity I dropped a 3-pack of 'em in my cart. Looks like pretty much a ATTiny85 thumbnail board, only with ARM 32-bit power; and even if I can't get the Python interpreter image to work on it (I know I'd have to add some form of storage for the Python scripts), can always fall back on the Ardu IDE to make some use of them; maybe do Father & Son Time or summat.

mnem
 

Nice toy those boards. Let us know if it works out as I’m after some small microcontrollers that I don’t have to argue with C any more with. Done too many years of that now. I’m fucking done 
On ARM, yesterday was actually the 32nd anniversary of my ARM based desktop computer ownership. I blew my entire inheritance from someone on an Acorn Archimedes. This machine lasted until around 1995 when it was replaced with a RiscPC. Then I left the market for Windows NT in 1997 with a Compaq Professional Workstation 5000. Sad times.

But here I sit now again 32 years later and my main desktop machine is an ARM again, I’m writing this on an ARM phone and discussing ARM microcontrollers. What a ride.

Edit: also a British product that wasn’t shit 

LOL... Yeah, but the money people were.

      

https://www.banggood.com/GY-SAMD21-SAMD21-PCB-Board-Mini-Sensor-Module-Pro-Mini-sized-IDE-ATSAMD21G18-32-bit-ARM-Cortex-M0-FZ3482-Geekcreit-for-Arduino-products-that-work-with-official-Arduino-boards-p-1638942.html

Bang-em-good has a cheap SAMD21 board pretty much the same form factor as the Adafruit Feather or Ardu Nano; I only passed on it because it didn't come with a SDCard onboard like the Ardu MKR Zero. Trying to figure out which of the add-on boards use the same controller IC as the precompiled/supported CircuitPython images made my brain hurt. Oh duh... it's SPI bus. Only gotcha would be wrong device select. 'Course, if you're compiling your own code (or if you have any Kung-Fu at all*) not a problem.  

mnem
    *Still very much applies here.

    https://www.adafruit.com/product/4600   

Oh, looks like this is what the Seeed Xiao was copying... do you have a AdaFruit vendor over there that's reasonably cheap? $6 for the Board, $1.25 for a 225Q16CT MB SPI ROM chip.

Plug&Pray with all their I₂C Bus QT-series I/O.   https://www.adafruit.com/category/620   I know there's a 4MB chip (the 25Q32CT) that's a drop-in sub for this too; I've done it on some of my FC boards to add datalogging. Got mine coming. 

mnem
 

[Robert763]

eBay is really strange regarding the UK atm. For shipping, you have "UK", "UK + EU" and "Europe and UK". Which is nuts, because now I can't select an option to ship to the entire EU *without* including the UK (which is *not* in the EU).

Which means I select EU + UK, knowing that DPD will charge me a bit more but I don't have to pay VAT on the sale so that's fine for me. The buyer, however, gets slapped with import duties (VAT, mostly) and fees. But there should be a EU option and UK option, seperately. Horrible for me, horrible for the cusomer like it is now.

This is an interesting one. EU VAT registered sellers should not b charging VAT on sales to the UK but somhow I think a lot will not be deducting it from their selling price.

[Specmaster]

Amazon have let me down again with another late delivery 

[mnementh]

 

mnem
grr.

[bd139]

   https://www.amazon.com/Seeeduino-Smallest-Microcontroller-Interfaces-Compatible/dp/B087D2VSBL/

Okay, now that's freaky. I found the screws I needed in black for cheap... so I started looking for ATSAMD21G18 boards (Like the Adafruit Adafruit Metro M0) from the CircuitPython "Already Supported" list that were actually in stock up here so I could get started with CircuitPython. Got a Ardu MKR Zero on the way, but these were on the same page.

So out of curiosity I dropped a 3-pack of 'em in my cart. Looks like pretty much a ATTiny85 thumbnail board, only with ARM 32-bit power; and even if I can't get the Python interpreter image to work on it (I know I'd have to add some form of storage for the Python scripts), can always fall back on the Ardu IDE to make some use of them; maybe do Father & Son Time or summat.

mnem
 

Nice toy those boards. Let us know if it works out as I’m after some small microcontrollers that I don’t have to argue with C any more with. Done too many years of that now. I’m fucking done 
On ARM, yesterday was actually the 32nd anniversary of my ARM based desktop computer ownership. I blew my entire inheritance from someone on an Acorn Archimedes. This machine lasted until around 1995 when it was replaced with a RiscPC. Then I left the market for Windows NT in 1997 with a Compaq Professional Workstation 5000. Sad times.

But here I sit now again 32 years later and my main desktop machine is an ARM again, I’m writing this on an ARM phone and discussing ARM microcontrollers. What a ride.

Edit: also a British product that wasn’t shit 

LOL... Yeah, but the money people were.

      

https://www.banggood.com/GY-SAMD21-SAMD21-PCB-Board-Mini-Sensor-Module-Pro-Mini-sized-IDE-ATSAMD21G18-32-bit-ARM-Cortex-M0-FZ3482-Geekcreit-for-Arduino-products-that-work-with-official-Arduino-boards-p-1638942.html

Bang-em-good has a cheap SAMD21 board pretty much the same form factor as the Adafruit Feather or Ardu Nano; I only passed on it because it didn't come with a SDCard onboard like the Ardu MKR Zero. Trying to figure out which of the add-on boards use the same controller IC as the precompiled/supported CircuitPython images made my brain hurt. Oh duh... it's SPI bus. Only gotcha would be wrong device select. 'Course, if you're compiling your own code (or if you have any Kung-Fu at all*) not a problem.  

mnem
    *Still very much applies here.

    https://www.adafruit.com/product/4600   

Oh, looks like this is what the Seeed Xiao was copying... do you have a AdaFruit vendor over there that's reasonably cheap? $6 for the Board, $1.25 for a 2MB SPI ROM chip.

Plug&Pray with all their I₂C Bus QT-series I/O.   https://www.adafruit.com/category/620   I know there's a 4MB chip that's a drop-in sub for this too; I've done it on some of my FC boards to add datalogging. Got mine coming. 

mnem
 

Interesting. Don’t think adafruit and cheap come in the same sentence  . To be honest I avoid the fuck out of their stuff as a whole. It’s a veneer of cutesy marketing over the ex MIT media lab shite pump usually.

Started looking at basic Cortex M3 devices now  . Moar Powah! 

[Robert763]

I've always Fancied a 101" FC Radio Body
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_Rover_101_Forward_Control#/media/File:Land_Rover_101_Forward_Control.jpg
There is a very Dilapidated GS in the village, beyond what I'd attempt, but even so the owner won't sell it so it's rotting away.

About 20 years ago, when I still used to regularly go hillwalking in the kind of places a Landie would be a good idea, I gave some very serious consideration to getting a 101 FC, either radio body (comparatively rare), or ambulance body (comparatively common) to use as an ersatz camper van.

How about this one?

Exactly the kind of thing I was talking about, including the mountains and the blonde accessory pack. Not sure that I'd want two jerry cans of fuel as a crumple zone however.

That's the ambulance body, which comes with a bit of welcome extra headroom and plenty of windows in the back. The radio body was shorter but had a side door which seems a little more practical than the ambulance body (which only had big wide double doors at the back) if you're getting in and out in crappy weather - which in British hillwalking or climbing country means most of the time. But, the ambulance body came with stretchers and bearers already in place, so you had ready made bunk beds if you only wanted to do the minimum conversion work on it. So, swings and roundabouts,

The Ambulance conversions, By Marshalls here in Cambridge, were very heavy. The ones on the 109" landies are even worse. The cans on the front of the pictured 101 are black so might be water.

Richard Noble, of LSR fame, decided on a little trans-saharan Land Rover adventure. This was before the LSR expolits. Being Richard he didn't want to pay much so advertised for co-adventurers to share the cost. So the trip had 6 including Richard, 3 males & 3 females. The trip was mentioned in one of the early books about Thrust 1/2 which I had read. I asked him one day how many vehicles they took. I was expecting something like two LWBs or ideally two SWB and one LWB. Nope, they had ONE SWB SIII  It wasn't even a station wagon. He put a bench seat (from an old Wolsley IIRC)  as a second row. Three people on that and three in the front. All the kit etc behind the second seat or on the roof. He ended up marrying one of the passengers.

[Robert763]

Apparently MIT graduate can't do what I was doing at 4 years old.
 

[Ice-Tea]

eBay is really strange regarding the UK atm. For shipping, you have "UK", "UK + EU" and "Europe and UK". Which is nuts, because now I can't select an option to ship to the entire EU *without* including the UK (which is *not* in the EU).

Which means I select EU + UK, knowing that DPD will charge me a bit more but I don't have to pay VAT on the sale so that's fine for me. The buyer, however, gets slapped with import duties (VAT, mostly) and fees. But there should be a EU option and UK option, seperately. Horrible for me, horrible for the cusomer like it is now.

This is an interesting one. EU VAT registered sellers should not b charging VAT on sales to the UK but somhow I think a lot will not be deducting it from their selling price.

Well, to sales outside the EU (to the US, per example), I sometimes keep the same list price and shipping price (with the VAT included). Shipping is a lot more expensive, the VAT amount makes up for that. For the UK, it's a bit different as it seems shipping prices are higher but not to the tune of US logistic costs. So, in theory, I could discount for shipments to the UK (not to worry, your own goverment will charge VAT upon entry) *but* exports outside the EU are *never* as trouble free as they are inside. I estimate that about 1/3 export in the end result in me spending half an hour calling various folks to get the show back on the road again (for Russia: 100%). Not to mention the occasional packages that shows up on my doorstep again after drifting around in logistics limbo for two weeks, that has to be checked, repackaged, and shipped again...

So, if I deduct the VAT completely or even if I deduct the VAT and charge more for the shipping it will likely end up being an expensive shitshow.

Oh, well...

[SilverSolder]

[...] He ended up marrying one of the passengers.

A possible side effect of confined space? 

[McBryce]

Apparently MIT graduate can't do what I was doing at 4 years old.
 

That's scary! And highly embarrassing for MIT.

McBryce.

[bd139]

Apparently MIT graduate can't do what I was doing at 4 years old.
 

Yeah that’s about right. It’s any university. So I did electrical engineering and we’re doing final year labs. Half the year only passed because they were associated with projects that were run by competent folk. In fact when doing team selection the tutors assigned no hopers to every team so that the average was good enough. I nearly cried when one of the guys on our team wired up a plug for the power supply, stuck live into earth and proceeded to zap himself and blow the bench RCD. Lucky fucker - they’d only just put them in. That was his only contribution to the project other than tea which was horrible. He got a 2:2.

[nixiefreqq]

two weeks before the final in a digital design course we had an exchange student raise his hand and say "i do not understand this thing about one and zero".

in a physics course he insisted that there was no such thing as gravity because if he hung two goats from the ceiling they would not swing together and stick.

later heard he returned to his country of origin and was running the electrical grid.  apparently he was a son of the king.

its good to be the king.