Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

My little 485 project is turning into a major shit show. "Modular Construction" with a bunch of caveats. Big caveats. No pictures right now. I've decided I have aggravated myself enough for one day. Perhaps tomorrow.

Tek engineers were smart guys but sometimes I wonder. 

You know that time I said I’d never fix another 4xx. That’s how it started. 

To extrapolate further. Much like Perl being a write only programming language, some of the Tek 4xx machines are construct only  . Decided punching myself in the balls wasn’t a fun hobby.

Yep, been up in a tree on 465's numerous times so I knew I was in for. But supposedly the 485 has a more intelligent design....and in many respects it does...but I'm finding "gotchas" too.   

Could this be a "Gotcha" to many 

The gotchas that get me are the ones where you carefully locate the correct version of the service manual for the Tektronix part that you are attempting to un-buggerate and follow the instructions very carefully and then you find a solitary wire soldered at both ends which is completely undocumented and rats nested through the entire fecking chassis. This is usually soldered to a bridge of a diode and a resistor which is also completely undocumented. Occasionally when you open the chassis you find that the solitary "bastard wire" (its official designation from here on) it snags on the chassis and proceeds to pop off wherever the hell it went leading to much head scratching too.

Then again the only attempt I've seen to make a truly serviceable analogue scope goes to HP with the 1740A and they completely fucked that up too 

[Specmaster]

I have just been booked in for my Covid jab, this Friday...I wonder when my second one will be...might open a book on it 

I didn't know if it's the same where you are, but here they book the the second one when you are waiting for 15mins after the jab, mine is 11 weeks from the first on the same day & same time. Just don't keel over like the guy after me did (think he ended up in A&E).

David

Thanks, hopefully it will take something a bit stronger to get me to keel over, but I'll let you know on Friday 

[factory]

You’d be surprised the amount some of HP’s logic analysis tooling goes for. The big analysers are worth SFA for some reason though 

Hope you're right

Also: please select the appropriate option because I'm lost...

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/SFA

Yeah some of the handheld HP logic tools have been going for silly money such as the Current Tracer mentioned recently, I think the vintage computer & arcade machine repairs all want them, must be something modern that would do the same job for less money. 
I have noticed the HP logic clip I was using for the counter repair has a dead LED in it, once I realised this I had to keep turning it 180° for each test.  It would be nice to find some of the later probes as some HP counters have a BNC fitted for the 5V supply.

David

[Specmaster]

Bloody hell, Amazon don't hang around in the refund dept  do they  I only spoke to them yesterday about returning that duff resistor calculator kit, dispatched it this afternoon via Hermes using their pre-paid service and just now I got an email saying that my refund is complete even before the returns has been picked up from the drop-off shop, I'm suitably impressed.

[bd139]

You’d be surprised the amount some of HP’s logic analysis tooling goes for. The big analysers are worth SFA for some reason though 

Hope you're right

Also: please select the appropriate option because I'm lost...

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/SFA

Yeah some of the handheld HP logic tools have been going for silly money such as the Current Tracer mentioned recently, I think the vintage computer & arcade machine repairs all want them, must be something modern that would do the same job for less money. 
I have noticed the HP logic clip I was using for the counter repair has a dead LED in it, once I realised this I had to keep turning it 180° for each test.  It would be nice to find some of the later probes as some HP counters have a BNC fitted for the 5V supply.

David

The current tracer is definitely worth the money but logic probe not at all. I've got once somewhere, not an HP one, and I think I've used it about two times and immediately dug out a (digital) scope because it's easier and I'm lazy. It made sense as a cheap tool for debugging logic at the time but that was about it.

Logic clips looked interesting but I never used one.

Bloody hell, Amazon don't hang around in the refund dept  do they  I only spoke to them yesterday about returning that duff resistor calculator kit, dispatched it this afternoon via Hermes using their pre-paid service and just now I got an email saying that my refund is complete even before the returns has been picked up from the drop-off shop, I'm suitably impressed.

They're pretty good at that. I returned an Apple TV and they did the same. Had the refund confirmed literally 20 minutes after I dropped it off at the post office.

[Saskia]

got the RMA for that Adata exploded SSD
yay.

[SilverSolder]

You’d be surprised the amount some of HP’s logic analysis tooling goes for. The big analysers are worth SFA for some reason though 

Hope you're right

Also: please select the appropriate option because I'm lost...

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/SFA

Yeah some of the handheld HP logic tools have been going for silly money such as the Current Tracer mentioned recently, I think the vintage computer & arcade machine repairs all want them, must be something modern that would do the same job for less money. 
I have noticed the HP logic clip I was using for the counter repair has a dead LED in it, once I realised this I had to keep turning it 180° for each test.  It would be nice to find some of the later probes as some HP counters have a BNC fitted for the 5V supply.

David

How does that HP current tracer probe even work...  is it essentially a millivoltmeter of some kind?

[cyclin_al]

"Honey, where's my tape measure...?"

*mumble-mutter-mumble-grumble from upstairs*

"Okay... what aboot ANY of the dozens of tape measures we've bought since we moved here...?"[/color]

WTF
Did you not give her one of her very own to put in a place she can always find it ? 

Sharpen up mnem ! 

Nope, not at all... 

That is HIM asking HER where HIS measuring tape is...

mumble-mutter-mumble-grumble == it is in the last place you left it; so you just have to remember the last tinkering you did around the house; so go look after it yourself !

IME, asking SWMBO about the tape measure results in 15 minutes of punishment and then she tells me where it is to put an end to the frustrations.  That is way faster than me looking everywhere for 2 days only to discover it was right in front of me the whole time.   
Triple punishment if it is one of her measuring tapes.
The pink measuring tape is new in box, never opened, just to make sure I do not misplace it, and to spite me ... 

[mnementh]

My little 485 project is turning into a major shit show. "Modular Construction" with a bunch of caveats. Big caveats. No pictures right now. I've decided I have aggravated myself enough for one day. Perhaps tomorrow.

Tek engineers were smart guys but sometimes I wonder. 

You know that time I said I’d never fix another 4xx. That’s how it started. 

To extrapolate further. Much like Perl being a write only programming language, some of the Tek 4xx machines are construct only  . Decided punching myself in the balls wasn’t a fun hobby.

You should take up 3DP then. Oh, and FreeCAD. 

mnem
Technically, it's not punching yourself if you build a ball-punching machine... 

You mean fritz with FreeCAD and the self constructed machine for six weeks to make a mutant ball punching machine in black PLA that merely fluffs them a bit when I could have just bought a ball punching machine for 10% of the financial and time investment  

Whoa, whoa, whoa... lets not get ahead of yourself here... First you have to build the ball-punching machine, then install the umbilical ball-punching-machine software on your personal cuntfuser, and if you're lucky, after several days or weeks of orchestrated testicular trauma from your newly constructed ball-punching system, then you might actually get your ball-punching machine to produce something useful as a side-effect while it punches you in the balls. 

Nowhere in there did I ever suggest that you would actually get the ball-punching machine to make a ball punching machine... unless you've gone completely Law of TEA No 9, and feel a need to share the joy. 

mnem
I recommend you start by designing some balls for the ball-punching machine... so maybe it can punch its own instead of yours. 

[bd139]

You’d be surprised the amount some of HP’s logic analysis tooling goes for. The big analysers are worth SFA for some reason though 

Hope you're right

Also: please select the appropriate option because I'm lost...

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/SFA

Yeah some of the handheld HP logic tools have been going for silly money such as the Current Tracer mentioned recently, I think the vintage computer & arcade machine repairs all want them, must be something modern that would do the same job for less money. 
I have noticed the HP logic clip I was using for the counter repair has a dead LED in it, once I realised this I had to keep turning it 180° for each test.  It would be nice to find some of the later probes as some HP counters have a BNC fitted for the 5V supply.

David

How does that HP current tracer probe even work...  is it essentially a millivoltmeter of some kind?

See: http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1976-12.pdf

The sensor is inductive so it couples some of the magnetic field off the trace and picks that up. Think TTi sell a rather sexier hall effect based one now as well.

[bd139]

My little 485 project is turning into a major shit show. "Modular Construction" with a bunch of caveats. Big caveats. No pictures right now. I've decided I have aggravated myself enough for one day. Perhaps tomorrow.

Tek engineers were smart guys but sometimes I wonder. 

You know that time I said I’d never fix another 4xx. That’s how it started. 

To extrapolate further. Much like Perl being a write only programming language, some of the Tek 4xx machines are construct only  . Decided punching myself in the balls wasn’t a fun hobby.

You should take up 3DP then. Oh, and FreeCAD. 

mnem
Technically, it's not punching yourself if you build a ball-punching machine... 

You mean fritz with FreeCAD and the self constructed machine for six weeks to make a mutant ball punching machine in black PLA that merely fluffs them a bit when I could have just bought a ball punching machine for 10% of the financial and time investment  

Whoa, whoa, whoa... lets not get ahead of yourself here... First you have to build the ball-punching machine, then install the umbilical ball-punching-machine software on your personal cuntfuser, and if you're lucky, after several days or weeks of orchestrated testicular trauma from your newly constructed ball-punching system, then you might actually get your ball-punching machine to produce something useful as a side-effect while it punches you in the balls. 

Nowhere in there did I ever suggest that you would actually get the ball-punching machine to make a ball punching machine... unless you've gone completely Law of TEA No 9, and feel a need to share the joy. 

mnem
I recommend you start by designing some balls for the ball-punching machine... so maybe it can punch its own instead of yours. 

Hahahaha that's exactly it 

[factory]

https://www.ebay.de/itm/Philips-Digital-Multimeter-PM-2421-Pr%C3%BCfger%C3%A4t-mit-Nixie-R%C3%B6hren-Me%C3%9Fger%C3%A4t-defekt/303866737710

I don't need more Nixies, I don't need more Nixies... Ooo, it does nA.... I DON'T NEED MORE NIXIES!!!

Can I get some support here?

McBryce.

IMO, 55 € is a bit on the expensive side (IIRC, I paid around 35 € form my PM2421). But way better than the 99 € the last one was offered at. (And since it wasn't sold, it was relisted at 119 €, or do I confuse it with another item?)

This is a must have, of course! How many of your DMMs sport a 'nA' button? 

If it was around €55 in the UK it would have sold already, things with number readout bulbs are getting very expensive over here.


I've paid just over £50 each for three DVM's that were collection only (ePay auction), I suspect they would have been scrapped for the bulbs if I hadn't managed to win them. At least I didn't have to pay shipping on them as the bottom one is quite weighty.


David

[mnementh]

"Honey, where's my tape measure...?"

*mumble-mutter-mumble-grumble from upstairs*

"Okay... what aboot ANY of the dozens of tape measures we've bought since we moved here...?"[/color]

WTF
Did you not give her one of her very own to put in a place she can always find it ? 

Sharpen up mnem ! 

Nope, not at all... 

That is HIM asking HER where HIS measuring tape is...

mumble-mutter-mumble-grumble == it is in the last place you left it; so you just have to remember the last tinkering you did around the house; so go look after it yourself !

IME, asking SWMBO about the tape measure results in 15 minutes of punishment and then she tells me where it is to put an end to the frustrations.  That is way faster than me looking everywhere for 2 days only to discover it was right in front of me the whole time.   
Triple punishment if it is one of her measuring tapes.
The pink measuring tape is new in box, never opened, just to make sure I do not misplace it, and to spite me ... 

Yeah, yeah, yeah... I have no defense and I know it. Here's a little tale of just a few minutes ago...

In the middle of the tape-measure-requiring project, wifey reminds me of another project I need alcohol to clean up. So, I lump outside to the shed in just my houseclothes (which I immediately regret, as wind-chill is somewhere around -10 or so) and immediately plug in the AC umbilical so my little cube furnace kicks on. Get my alcohol out, and remember a few other things I needed to look for while I was out there... and a few other things...

Before I know it I've been out there in t-shirt & shorts for over half an hour (thank Ifni for that little furnace), having looked in every drawer, box & cupboard in there I have a little pile of things I need for current and future projects, but not ANY of the things I remembered I needed to look for. 

So I get back inside with my haul, and then I realize I didn't grab either of two different kinds of alcohol I'd dragged out of the cupboard to bring inside. 

Hop back out (still in my houseclothes, because fuck you, fat man) to the shed and grab one bottle and then the other... and guess what's sitting right there, next to where I put down the other bottle...?

Yup. My other tape measure. I stand there poleaxed for close to a minute, half in the shed and half in the freezing wind, just being pissed off at Murphy, et al.

But I damn straight made sure I had both bottles of alcohol and that fucking tape measure.

mnem
Or maybe it was my other other tape measure... who fucking cares.

[Specmaster]

Whoa, whoa, whoa... lets not get ahead of yourself here... First you have to build the ball-punching machine, then install the umbilical ball-punching-machine software on your personal cuntfuser, and if you're lucky, after several days or weeks of orchestrated testicular trauma from your newly constructed ball-punching system, then you might actually get your ball-punching machine to produce something useful as a side-effect while it punches you in the balls. 

Nowhere in there did I ever suggest that you would actually get the ball-punching machine to make a ball punching machine... unless you've gone completely Law of TEA No 9, and feel a need to share the joy. 

mnem
I recommend you start by designing some balls for the ball-punching machine... so maybe it can punch its own instead of yours. 

That made me chortle.

[factory]

You’d be surprised the amount some of HP’s logic analysis tooling goes for. The big analysers are worth SFA for some reason though 

Hope you're right

Also: please select the appropriate option because I'm lost...

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/SFA

Yeah some of the handheld HP logic tools have been going for silly money such as the Current Tracer mentioned recently, I think the vintage computer & arcade machine repairs all want them, must be something modern that would do the same job for less money. 
I have noticed the HP logic clip I was using for the counter repair has a dead LED in it, once I realised this I had to keep turning it 180° for each test.  It would be nice to find some of the later probes as some HP counters have a BNC fitted for the 5V supply.

David

The current tracer is definitely worth the money but logic probe not at all. I've got once somewhere, not an HP one, and I think I've used it about two times and immediately dug out a (digital) scope because it's easier and I'm lazy. It made sense as a cheap tool for debugging logic at the time but that was about it.

Logic clips looked interesting but I never used one.

The logic clips (548A) won't show anything useful on pins that have any high speed signals, definitely need a scope for those, but it is handy for counting circuits when used in conjunction with a pulser probe (so you can control the speed).
I have got the current tracer but haven't used it yet, I wouldn't be willing to pay the price they go for these days if I didn't have one though.

David

[mansaxel]

What do you use for PCB creation?

KiCAD. The only time I've actually produced a complete design, it was in KiCAD. (so you can't really call me a power user) I did initially play with some of the "free versions" of more expensive tools but they did not make me happy.

Also, since Windows gives me a itchy skin condition, KiCAD being available for OSX and Linux is a big plus.

I've come to use it as a generic wiring diagram tool too, not necessarily going all the way to routing a PCB.
Just to jot down an idea and organise it for perhaps a dead-bug build or similar.

[Specmaster]

You’d be surprised the amount some of HP’s logic analysis tooling goes for. The big analysers are worth SFA for some reason though 

Hope you're right

Also: please select the appropriate option because I'm lost...

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/SFA

Yeah some of the handheld HP logic tools have been going for silly money such as the Current Tracer mentioned recently, I think the vintage computer & arcade machine repairs all want them, must be something modern that would do the same job for less money. 
I have noticed the HP logic clip I was using for the counter repair has a dead LED in it, once I realised this I had to keep turning it 180° for each test.  It would be nice to find some of the later probes as some HP counters have a BNC fitted for the 5V supply.

David

How does that HP current tracer probe even work...  is it essentially a millivoltmeter of some kind?

See: http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1976-12.pdf

The sensor is inductive so it couples some of the magnetic field off the trace and picks that up. Think TTi sell a rather sexier hall effect based one now as well.

Indeed TTi do and Dave has one and here it is.

[tggzzz]

My little 485 project is turning into a major shit show. "Modular Construction" with a bunch of caveats. Big caveats. No pictures right now. I've decided I have aggravated myself enough for one day. Perhaps tomorrow.

Tek engineers were smart guys but sometimes I wonder. 

Have fun getting at the EHT section

They squeezed a lot into the cabinet - but nowhere near as much as HP in the 856x portable spectrum analyzers.

[tggzzz]

I have just been booked in for my Covid jab, this Friday...I wonder when my second one will be...might open a book on it 

I didn't know if it's the same where you are, but here they book the the second one when you are waiting for 15mins after the jab, mine is 11 weeks from the first on the same day & same time. Just don't keel over like the guy after me did (think he ended up in A&E).

My mother had the Astra Zenica jab at the local regional centre; they told us not to bother to wait. Did you have the Pfizer jab?

[factory]

Yes I had the Pfizer jab, it was at the hospital which may explain the wait, the guy that keeled over did so within a few minutes, if they had just let him go it could have been much worse with it being done upstairs.

David

[Ice-Tea]

You’d be surprised the amount some of HP’s logic analysis tooling goes for. The big analysers are worth SFA for some reason though 

Hope you're right

Also: please select the appropriate option because I'm lost...

https://acronyms.thefreedictionary.com/SFA

Yeah some of the handheld HP logic tools have been going for silly money such as the Current Tracer mentioned recently, I think the vintage computer & arcade machine repairs all want them, must be something modern that would do the same job for less money. 
I have noticed the HP logic clip I was using for the counter repair has a dead LED in it, once I realised this I had to keep turning it 180° for each test.  It would be nice to find some of the later probes as some HP counters have a BNC fitted for the 5V supply.

David

How does that HP current tracer probe even work...  is it essentially a millivoltmeter of some kind?

See: http://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/1976-12.pdf

The sensor is inductive so it couples some of the magnetic field off the trace and picks that up. Think TTi sell a rather sexier hall effect based one now as well.

Indeed TTi do and Dave has one and here it is.

Have one. Nice bit of kit, but truth be told I don't use it much..

[Ice-Tea]

My little 485 project is turning into a major shit show. "Modular Construction" with a bunch of caveats. Big caveats. No pictures right now. I've decided I have aggravated myself enough for one day. Perhaps tomorrow.

Tek engineers were smart guys but sometimes I wonder. 

Have fun getting at the EHT section

They squeezed a lot into the cabinet - but nowhere near as much as HP in the 856x portable spectrum analyzers.

Horrible to service, those..

[Cerebus]

My little 485 project is turning into a major shit show. "Modular Construction" with a bunch of caveats. Big caveats. No pictures right now. I've decided I have aggravated myself enough for one day. Perhaps tomorrow.

Tek engineers were smart guys but sometimes I wonder. 

You know that time I said I’d never fix another 4xx. That’s how it started. 

To extrapolate further. Much like Perl being a write only programming language, some of the Tek 4xx machines are construct only  . Decided punching myself in the balls wasn’t a fun hobby.

You should take up 3DP then. Oh, and FreeCAD. 

mnem
Technically, it's not punching yourself if you build a ball-punching machine... 

You mean fritz with FreeCAD and the self constructed machine for six weeks to make a mutant ball punching machine in black PLA that merely fluffs them a bit when I could have just bought a ball punching machine for 10% of the financial and time investment  

Or just asked one of these to do it for you.



Or not. Just standing quietly for ten minutes watching her would probably elicit the desired behaviour.

[med6753]

Decided to keep going on the 485 project and stop at a point that made better sense.

I discovered that Larry had a broken Time/Div switch. Specifically the pull that engages the delayed sweep. And it appeared that the defect was causing A and B sweep to be engaged at the same time. That could definitely be a contributing factor for trace intensity issues. So the switch had to come out.

In the pictures are the Time/Div switch (Center), the Sweep Timing board (Right), and the Horizontal board (Left). These boards were harvested out of Curly and they are known good boards. But why all those boards? Stand by, it gets complicated. In order to even see the Time/Div switch the Sweep Timing board must be removed. Then there is a bracket assembly holding the Time/Div switch that has to come off. Simple? No. The bracket is held in place with multiple screws. No problem. But then I discovered that on both sides of the bracket in the rear it was spot welded in place. Are you kidding?  I had to resort to drilling out the welds. Then the bracket came off with no issues.

But there's more. I now had access to the Time/Div switch but would not pull up. It has inaccessible screws at the bottom unless I pull the horizontal board. So that came out. Then I could finally remove the Time/Div switch. 

Now I have to repeat this entire process on Larry. Since I know these boards out of Curly are known good they will be going into place of Larry's old boards. I'll start on that mess tomorrow. 

[DC1MC]

newest idea of our local dictators: prohibit single family homes (currently in Hamburg, about to come in Berlin) under the pretense of ecological progress.

Freedom to choose your own home: gone. Human rights are suddenly labelled privileges in Germany.

For many it will be back to GDR economy including payments in goods and crypto. The deindustrialization of Germany is in full swing. So, the ailing British economy may indeed take over and collect the pieces, if the chinese leave some crumbs for you to pick up.

Holly crap, it's true, and goes like this already for a year 
Just some references here:
https://www.tellerreport.com/business/2021-01-26-%0A---single-family-houses--popular-but-soon-banned-in-germany--%0A--.HJfzgXtpJO.html

Sauce:
https://www.welt.de/finanzen/immobilien/plus225010571/Einfamilienhaeuser-Beliebt-aber-bald-in-Deutschland-verboten.html

Mannheim is next