Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tggzzz]

Fuck my life does anyone know how to package stuff?!?!!

Yup. The scope I sent arrived fine. There was a hole in the outer box, but that's why it was two three-wall boxes plus foam to protect the knobs plus bubble wrap plus bouncy foam rubber

Heavy, not cheap!

[Cerebus]

Fuck my life does anyone know how to package stuff?!?!!

D755 arrived. That’s all the packaging you see there. It was floating in the box with 4 inches headroom. All the outer packaging was destroyed. We’re talking 10kg scope here.

It appears it may have survived unscathed as I can’t see any cosmetic damage at least. Time will tell. I’m not powering it up yet.

Today's arrival, that HP 6611C from Ian Johnston (IanJ on here). OK, I did stress the need for good packaging after what happened to the HP 66312A but I think Ian's just using me to unload his packing materials surplus. SWMBO was quite relieved when my protestations that all of the size and most of the weight was packaging (there was a lot of that lattice cut cardboard inside that really pushed the weight up). Needless to say, arrived in perfect nick.



With all these boxes in the corner of the living room the cat's dropping heavy hints that she needs a new fort building for her.

[mnementh]

   

New case. Rando Amazon driver. Pretty sure it survived a few rounds of Forklift Football in the warehouse before the carrier got it, tho.    Or maybe on its way to Amazon.ca from Eric in Walnut, CA June of last year, per the FBA label still on the box. 

Defect return started and new one ordered; will start building in this one and swap the damaged bits over when it gets here.

mnem
*drops back & punts*

[med6753]

New case. Rando Amazon driver. Pretty sure it survived a few rounds of Forklift Football in the warehouse before the carrier got it, tho.    Or maybe on its way to Amazon.ca from Eric in Walnut, CA June of last year, per the FBA label still on the box. 

Defect return started and new one ordered; will start building in this one and swap the damaged bits over when it gets here.

mnem
*drops back & punts*

Bitch, bitch, bitch.....that will buff out. 

[med6753]

Ever have one of those days were you say "screw it", I'm not doing anything. Yep, today. Was going to clean up the garage. Not happening. I even called in sick on my retirement. 

Just going to sit in front of the idiot box and eat bon-bons....if I had any. 

[kleiner Rainer]

some nice pictures from the "Dau-Alarm" homepage:

http://dau-alarm.de/g_pack.html

Sorry, comments only in german, but the pictures speak for themselves.

Greetings,

Rainer

[med6753]

That was painful to look at. 

[Specmaster]

That is a nice one that is!

Toellner TOE 8735-2
starting bid: 199.- Euro, currently zero bids.



https://www.ebay.com/itm/133680309577

And, as usual: NAWTS.

Oh yes, that beats my older 8735 hands down! Mine has only 0..15 V and the symmetric output is fixed at ±12 V.

Three days to go and still zero bids.
Chances are good ...

Don't be surprised to find that there will a feeding frenzy in the closing stages of the auction for that one.

[bd139]

Ok update on earlier disaster. Finally found 5 minutes to look at it and we have some fun fun fun ahead 

So first of all the Telequipment mains plug has disassembled itself, which is not uncommon. It was being replaced anyway. There's not a lot of room for a replacement one so I will likely stuff an IEC socket on a trailing lead hanging off the back of it. It'll look better than the 90 year old stripper at least 

Next thing I always check is the fuse and of course, there was a 13A fuse in the plug  . It was replaced with a 3A fuse and then plugged in and the scope fired up.

Not a lot happened until I'd piddled around with the controls of course and it mostly actually works. Identified issues so far:

1. The A timebase knob is a replacement one and needs replacing with something better because it slips. I will see if I can find an original somewhere.
2. Intensity is really badly set up. Need some recal on that. At lowest intensity it's pretty bright and you can see the flyback even though z blanking is mostly working
3. The B timebase knob has not disintegrated which is a miracle!
4. Both channels work and it triggers fine.

I'll take it to bits later and check the insides out. I'm expecting to have to refurb the power supply as it'll have shitty plessey capacitors in it at least.

So it's got a Tek 465 tube in it, it isn't made directly by Tek but a Tek subsidiary. Did I violate the no more Tek 4xx series scopes rule? Nope! 

[Specmaster]

Fuck my life does anyone know how to package stuff?!?!!

D755 arrived. That’s all the packaging you see there. It was floating in the box with 4 inches headroom. All the outer packaging was destroyed. We’re talking 10kg scope here.

It appears it may have survived unscathed as I can’t see any cosmetic damage at least. Time will tell. I’m not powering it up yet.

What fucking muppets some folk are, did they not think for a single second about at least packing something top and bottom to either remove or limit the amount of free space inside the box to try and prevent the scope from moving

The fact there appears to be no physical damage is a tribute to the sturdiness of the design in the first instance, teamed with good luck 

[AVGresponding]

Delivery news this week:

The death-ray machines arrived Monday. I feel I should buy some laser safety goggles before I start messing around with these...

Tuesday's delivery arrived on a pallet.     The shipping label said 45kg, but even including the weight of the pallet it wasn't more than 20kg. I think CDL just didn't have a box big enough. Anyway, the Peavey 112 Bandit Guitar amp arrived in good order. The RAM arrived the same day, so my PC is happily running 32GB in dual channel mode now, and I have an 8GB and a 4GB spare, probably for my Linux PC if I ever use it again.

Some LEGO Power Functions motors arrived Wednesday. I wish they wouldn't keep changing the damn connector format.   

Thursday UPS left a card, so I went on the site and signed for the delivery to be left in my "safe place" for the following day.

Today Friday, UPS left a card, so I went on the site and said AGAIN for them to leave it in a safe place, now Monday...     The ONE TEA related item ffs, a Heathkit capacitor tester for more than it's worth but less than they usually go for. Hopefully the magic eye tube isn't in kit form due to UPS bouncing it off my doorstep at least 3 times.   


Here's some picks for the back row popcorn crowd in here:

Some data books on unobtainium, obsolete semis you find in some vintage gear https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Four-Plessey-semiconducters-data-books-Rare/265072396869


The price does not seem unreasonable for four of these https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Tektronix-P6139A-oscilloscope-probes-4-off-500MHz-10X-used-and-without-caps/393166007339


A crapacitor tzzzter for the Canadianians https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Restored-Heathkit-Condenser-Checker/254885485971


An oddball DMM for the Americanos https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/R174433-Vintage-Sencore-DVM38-AC-DC-Digital-Bench-Multimeter/393168644506


An oddball handheld DMM for the Eurotrash, nice low ranges https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/MULTIMETRE-SCHLUMBERGER-BIP-8040/363291926200

[25 CPS]

All these packing and shipping pictures...maybe I need to repost what happened to those HP mugs back in the summer?

[AVGresponding]

All these packing and shipping pictures...maybe I need to repost what happened to those HP mugs back in the summer?

Please don't, it was upsetting enough the first time!

[Specmaster]

Fuck my life does anyone know how to package stuff?!?!!

Yup. The scope I sent arrived fine. There was a hole in the outer box, but that's why it was two three-wall boxes plus foam to protect the knobs plus bubble wrap plus bouncy foam rubber

Heavy, not cheap!

Just for the record, as a person who spent a few years as the factory maintenance engineer in a special packing company who made special shipping crates and cardboard boxes with dedicated foam packing inside them, that three wall cardboard boxes is called Tri-wall.

https://tri-wall.co.uk/

[IanJ]

Today's arrival, that HP 6611C from Ian Johnston (IanJ on here). OK, I did stress the need for good packaging after what happened to the HP 66312A but I think Ian's just using me to unload his packing materials surplus. SWMBO was quite relieved when my protestations that all of the size and most of the weight was packaging (there was a lot of that lattice cut cardboard inside that really pushed the weight up). Needless to say, arrived in perfect nick.

With all these boxes in the corner of the living room the cat's dropping heavy hints that she needs a new fort building for her.

Every shipment I make within the UK or rest of world I use double thinkness boxes, plenty packing material etc all of which doesn't add that much extra weight......and for UK stuff the extra size doesn't mean much more for the shipping cost......and having a UPS account means very good discount on advertised rates.
I can't understand why more sellers don't see this!

Ian.

[Cerebus]

Fuck my life does anyone know how to package stuff?!?!!

Yup. The scope I sent arrived fine. There was a hole in the outer box, but that's why it was two three-wall boxes plus foam to protect the knobs plus bubble wrap plus bouncy foam rubber

Heavy, not cheap!

Just for the record, as a person who spent a few years as the factory maintenance engineer in a special packing company who made special shipping crates and cardboard boxes with dedicated foam packing inside them, that three wall cardboard boxes is called Tri-wall.

https://tri-wall.co.uk/

That's a little misleading as the generic term is "triple wall", although everyone in the industry calls it  triwall board, it's only really "Tri-Wall" if it's made by Tri-Wall (who used to be American, now they're Chinese).

And, as I've said before, the toughest cardboard cases you'll find are triwall all-flaps-meet cases made for shipping Whiskey and the like - blag from from your local off-license.

Cerebus, BOFH, Reed Corrugated Cases Ltd., 1985-1988.

[1audio]

I have had this problem for many years. Now I don't need to gpo shopping to find "weird stuff", just go to my storage and see what I cursed myself with 20 years ago.
Two recently unearthed gems-
First an RG resonance bridge with no manufacturer visible. Its very well made and unlikely to be a one off but kind of strange. Works for small caps and inductors from 50 KHz ro 2 MHz. The connectors on the back for the generator and the detector are also odd. Has anyone seen anything similar ever?

Second, a Honeywell potentiometer. I can't find anything on these on the web. They were once part of any serious cal lab but any info on them today seems lost. I would like at least some leads on instructions so I better understand how it would be used.

[med6753]

So it's got a Tek 465 tube in it, it isn't made directly by Tek but a Tek subsidiary. Did I violate the no more Tek 4xx series scopes rule? Nope! 

The CRT is what makes the signal visible. The circuitry is designed to make the image look it's best. 465 CRT in it? It's a clone 4XX series. You are therefore guilty. Nice try. 

[Cerebus]

Gratuitous post of the Fenella Fielding "Do mind if I smoke", prompted by the mention of "Carry on Screaming" on the TV that's on in the background:

[AVGresponding]

Oh, the apprentices had an eating battle today. Spoiler: the skinny guy won.



The food in question was flatcakes, in the case of the loser, he had a bacon egg sausage tomato and hash brown, the winner (or wiener, can't decide) is the technically-still-an-apprentice and he had a breakfast flatcake, which has bacon egg sausage tomato hash brown beans spam mushrooms.

Neither of them was particularly keen to do much exercise work afterwards...   

[psykok]

Today was pickup day.
I was going to get one and I finally got two 8568B   

[psykok]

Unloading the car was kind of fun
At the end I had a TE Tower

[Specmaster]

Fuck my life does anyone know how to package stuff?!?!!

Yup. The scope I sent arrived fine. There was a hole in the outer box, but that's why it was two three-wall boxes plus foam to protect the knobs plus bubble wrap plus bouncy foam rubber

Heavy, not cheap!

Just for the record, as a person who spent a few years as the factory maintenance engineer in a special packing company who made special shipping crates and cardboard boxes with dedicated foam packing inside them, that three wall cardboard boxes is called Tri-wall.

https://tri-wall.co.uk/

That's a little misleading as the generic term is "triple wall", although everyone in the industry calls it  triwall board, it's only really "Tri-Wall" if it's made by Tri-Wall (who used to be American, now they're Chinese).

And, as I've said before, the toughest cardboard cases you'll find are triwall all-flaps-meet cases made for shipping Whiskey and the like - blag from from your local off-license.

Cerebus, BOFH, Reed Corrugated Cases Ltd., 1985-1988.

Those were the type of cases we used to make where I worked. It was a sister company to Marconi Radar, Marconi Marine, Marconi and English Electric Valve company. The cases were used for shipping radar dishes (huge cardboard boxes inside huge wooden crates) right down to special cardboard boxes, fitted with specially cut and shaped foam etc, glued in place to protect TV broadcasting valves etc costing many thousands of £, some were the size of a small car, others were about 3 feet in length. We also had a dedicated cabinet shop that would fit out mobile broadcasting vans so it was very interesting work. But believe me the cardboard used was proper Tri-wall (yes that was the trade name of the cardboard and also the name of the company we would buy from) and it was about then about 15 mm thick and very difficult to work with. We had to build our own cardboard forming machine in order to get it to bend into nice 90 degree bends to form the box and flaps etc.

[Zucca]

You guys are crazy

[AVGresponding]

I have had this problem for many years. Now I don't need to gpo shopping to find "weird stuff", just go to my storage and see what I cursed myself with 20 years ago.
Two recently unearthed gems-
First an RG resonance bridge with no manufacturer visible. Its very well made and unlikely to be a one off but kind of strange. Works for small caps and inductors from 50 KHz ro 2 MHz. The connectors on the back for the generator and the detector are also odd. Has anyone seen anything similar ever?



Second, a Honeywell potentiometer. I can't find anything on these on the web. They were once part of any serious cal lab but any info on them today seems lost. I would like at least some leads on instructions so I better understand how it would be used.

Welcome to the nuthouse TEA thread!

Nice boat anchors.