Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Zucca]

One for Zucca and Med ...

Thanks

[med6753]

The Great American Race became the Great American Demolition Derby. 

 

[tggzzz]

Here's 10MHz Square wave from Heath IG-4244 Scope Calibrator. Excellent response.  It's now on the torture rack for extensive burn-in.

Bugger that! Use the 485's calout with a 50ohm load. 1ns or bust should be your motto

OK, to spoil our remote enjoyment, you won't get quite that with a scope probe and 1Mohm.

[med6753]

Here's 10MHz Square wave from Heath IG-4244 Scope Calibrator. Excellent response.  It's now on the torture rack for extensive burn-in.

Bugger that! Use the 485's calout with a 50ohm load. 1ns or bust should be your motto

OK, to spoil our remote enjoyment, you won't get quite that with a scope probe and 1Mohm.

Go back to look closely. Channel 1 is set to 50 ohm.

[bd139]

The Great American Race became the Great American Demolition Derby. 

How can you fuck up going around in a circle?

[med6753]

How can you fuck up going around in a circle?

That's not a short track. 2.5 mile super speedway. Nearly 200 MPH, drafting, close up racing. One little bump and all hell breaks loose. 

[tggzzz]

Here's 10MHz Square wave from Heath IG-4244 Scope Calibrator. Excellent response.  It's now on the torture rack for extensive burn-in.

Bugger that! Use the 485's calout with a 50ohm load. 1ns or bust should be your motto

OK, to spoil our remote enjoyment, you won't get quite that with a scope probe and 1Mohm.

Go back to look closely. Channel 1 is set to 50 ohm.

That doesn't alter the points, and is irrelevant to your 1Mohm input attenuator being fiddly to adjust.

[BU508A]

If you are interested in tinkering (electronics and more), one can find here quite a lot of inspiration.      

Example:


Please note his rancid soldering iron and his soldering skills ... 

[psykok]

The beast is already sitting in the workshop



I have opened a dedicated topic:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/fluke-760a-meter-calibrator-repair/msg3466132/#msg3466132

[bd139]

If you are interested in tinkering (electronics and more), one can find here quite a lot of inspiration.      

Example:


Please note his rancid soldering iron and his soldering skills ... 

Was that a Metcal as well?!?

[bd139]

Didn’t know that! Very handy. I know you can annotate screenshots with the iPad/pencil - that’s super handy.

Just won some TE  . Back on the wagon  .

So it’s a Racal 9917 counter. This is the same as the old 9915’s I had but doesn’t have the notoriously incendiary battery option. Also it comes with option 04A which is a 9442 crystal oven   

Good to see your back to acquiring TEA, that looks a nice one, I meant to bid on another older Racal yesterday, but I was to busy sorting out paperwork & crap & forgot about it. The worst thing was I found an unopened letter from last year where I should have stayed off work in July with the shielding. 
Had quite a bad headache after dealing with all that, now I've got another as the exhaust has fell off* my van (I wondered why it sounded better last week when I went the docs).

*OK I took it off as it wasn't attached at all, completely failed around a weld, can't blame Citroen for this one, I think I've found the problem (circled). It's 3 years overdue a timing belt change & the MOT service is due in March so it's going to eat into this & next months TEA budget. 

David

Have to laugh at the made in England thing. Yes that's probably exactly it 

On Racal things, I'm only going for 1970s and later LED based stuff so I'm not going to be treading on the nixie freaks. Perhaps if a half decent Heathkit IB-1100 turns up I may go for that but that's about it. Only because I have the entire functional structure of one of them embedded in my mind.

Dead simple and quite nice counters!

[Cerebus]

How can you fuck up going around in a circle?

That's not a short track. 2.5 mile super speedway. Nearly 200 MPH, drafting, close up racing. One little bump and all hell breaks loose.

Let's face it, people only watch NASCAR for the crashes. Round and round and round on a banked oval for 500 miles, no real braking, no real corners, no real accelerating. If you can watch it and get excited even a little bit you should never, ever, watch cricket, you might have a heart attack from overstimulation!

Daytona:



Le Mans:



Both ~200 mph circuits, Le Mans 8.5 miles with 38 turns, Daytona 2.5 miles with, well no turns really. NASCAR 500 mile race, Le Mans 3000 miles plus. Frankly they're both rather boring, but at least Le Mans actually tests the car's endurance and the driver's skill.

[bd139]

Exactly. I used to play the PC game "indy 500" many years ago and the most exciting bit about the game was hammering it round up to top whack then driving into the wall at the end of the pit lane. It made a satisfying death sound out of my sound blaster.

You can experience the glory here: https://www.retrogames.cz/play_646-DOS.php?language=EN

[Cerebus]

If you are interested in tinkering (electronics and more), one can find here quite a lot of inspiration.      

Example:


Please note his rancid soldering iron and his soldering skills ... 

Was that a Metcal as well?!?

No.

[mnementh]

@Brumby, Ouch, that doesn't sound like fun, get well soon and the fuck out of hospital and get back to your awaiting new toys which hopefully will be there for you.

In the meantime, you can always fantasize about some lovely nurses looking after you.

Agreed....get better quick. I've never heard of that condition before. I had to look it up. Sounds painful. 

Sooner or later you will probably get it. All it takes is a miniscule prick with the wrong bacteria there. I had it from a near invisible thorn, and after an operation on my knee. I knew what was happening, so had it treated pronto.

One nasty is that if you have had it once, apparently you are more prone to having it in the future. Luckily I haven't.

Anyway, best wishes brumby.

Have a closer look at his legs:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/msg2882870/#msg2882870

Uhhh.... yeah; I'm not a good example, as that's the result of decades of just "bulling through the pain" and not taking care of myself at all. A lot of scarring on one foot/leg due to a chemical burn incident in my 30s, compounded by congenital blood circulation issues (grand-dad had similar problems from middle-age onwards) resulting in stasis dermatitis and now pre-diabetic edema due to morbid obesity.

It's hard getting back on the horse when every step hurts, and even standing still brings its own, different kind of pain. Not an excuse, but it is the reason.

That said... get well soon, my friend.

mnem
*sigh*

[mnementh]

One for Zucca and Med ...

Oh dear; That's as bad as going to war without the French... 

mnem
*punt*

[Cerebus]

Exactly. I used to play the PC game "indy 500" many years ago and the most exciting bit about the game was hammering it round up to top whack then driving into the wall at the end of the pit lane. It made a satisfying death sound out of my sound blaster.

You can experience the glory here: https://www.retrogames.cz/play_646-DOS.php?language=EN

For any Brit who wants to get a feel for the ferocity of the curves at Daytona, take a trip south of the Dartford Crossing on the M25. 

[bd139]

Also worth trying: Hitting the ring road around Bluewater and trying to maintain 50mph in a front wheel drive Citroen 

[mnementh]

Saskia -

https://www.amazon.ca/NVIDIA-Jetson-Developer-Computer-Development/dp/B07SHF9V4J/ref=pd_lutyp_rtpb_1_6/140-9024410-5026447

I stumbled across this while looking for Ardu sensors, and the advert seems to make it out as a pretty capable, if very small scale, AI dev platform supporting a lot of the stuff you were talking aboot in your project. Is there any portion of what you're doing that could be broken down into small enough chunks that it could do anything for you?

My thought was perhaps, since it's directly compatible with a lot of the core AI processing, something like a smarter user-end interface that preprocesses the user's requests into something the heavy iron could resolve quicker, thereby making for lower bandwidth needs for the same result...?

mnem
 

Hi Mnem,

tbh I also looked into that and cannot really use it. For training purposes it is far too small (I currently have 4 Tesla P100 with 16 GB each), for deployment a multi Core CPU is currently sufficient for what we are doing. The UI is small enough to actually fit in your browser, and our front end web servers are certainly powerful enough do deal with all that traffic thrown at them.

For small scale deployment of appliances I am looking into the Ultra96 board
https://de.farnell.com/avnet/aes-ultra96-v2-g/sbc-arm-cortex-a53-cortex-r5/dp/3050481?st=zynq%20ultrascale

as it runs with the Vitis environment and does pack remarkable oompf for the bucks.

Okay, so you are thinking in terms of appliances already then; the Jetson platform just isn't powerful enough. Gotcha. Is that for use as a preprocessor on the client's local network, or for more generic Kiosk-type UI...?

mnem
 

[mnementh]

If you are interested in tinkering (electronics and more), one can find here quite a lot of inspiration.      

Example:


Please note his rancid soldering iron and his soldering skills ... 

I think we just found the "stupid ages" predecessor of the Probulator...

mnem
 

[mnementh]

The Great American Race became the Great American Demolition Derby.     

Ayup. That and this is the whole fukkin' race. Time to get lunch and a toddy fer muh body.

mnem
*vroooom*

[Robert763]

Didn’t know that! Very handy. I know you can annotate screenshots with the iPad/pencil - that’s super handy.

Just won some TE  . Back on the wagon  .

So it’s a Racal 9917 counter. This is the same as the old 9915’s I had but doesn’t have the notoriously incendiary battery option. Also it comes with option 04A which is a 9442 crystal oven   

Good to see your back to acquiring TEA, that looks a nice one, I meant to bid on another older Racal yesterday, but I was to busy sorting out paperwork & crap & forgot about it. The worst thing was I found an unopened letter from last year where I should have stayed off work in July with the shielding. 
Had quite a bad headache after dealing with all that, now I've got another as the exhaust has fell off* my van (I wondered why it sounded better last week when I went the docs).

*OK I took it off as it wasn't attached at all, completely failed around a weld, can't blame Citroen for this one, I think I've found the problem (circled). It's 3 years overdue a timing belt change & the MOT service is due in March so it's going to eat into this & next months TEA budget. 

David

One these will fix it
https://www.holtsauto.com/holts/products/easy-fit-bandage/
NOT

[AVGresponding]

The Gossen Metrahit arrived from CDL today and I had to put it straight into emergency surgery, after a quick test to confirm it does work as claimed.

You can see how bad it is here; that's inside the case...


The battery compartment contains the smoking gun:


It's quite a buildup:


I've scrubbed it all under the tap with an old toothbrush, it's currently undergoing a slow blow dry. Time for some food, as I've just got home from work.

I will add updated pics later.

[mnementh]

The Gossen Metrahit arrived from CDL today and I had to put it straight into emergency surgery, after a quick test to confirm it does work as claimed.

You can see how bad it is here; that's inside the case...      The battery compartment contains the smoking gun:      It's quite a buildup:   

I've scrubbed it all under the tap with an old toothbrush, it's currently undergoing a slow blow dry. Time for some food, as I've just got home from work. I will add updated pics later.

Izzat a fractured cap I see between the battery contacts in the foreground...?

mnem

[bd139]

Yellow tant? Looks ok. The solder fillet isn’t good but there’s usually a rectangular loop on the end of the big ones which is what the hole is by the looks.

Also fuck batteries. Bastard all of them!