Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[BU508A]

Wow old school low volume construction bits Last time I wire wrapped anything might be close to 40 years ago 

Staggered down the backyard to put some Iron on the Lemon tree no luck finding Possums with it yet but there is a Yellow Brick Road back to the shack it seems. Crude depth of field test but working well.

Beware of the Witch of the West! 

[Zucca]

Planning my moving

Please report to your management that a professional relocation company should know why and when an antistatic wrap need to be used.
There are a lot of YouTube video of that topic,  but I can give you and your company an overview in 30min for free. Just contact me in June 2021 after I settle down in my new home.

Meanwhile I invested 54 Euro of my hard work money in antistatic wrap to save me and your company from the process of 10000 USD value or more in insurance claims regarding my equipment (oh yes, you will find a lot of " High value" stickers in my stuff).

Taking the right choice always feels nice.

I will now report my story on the EEVBlog Forum, which is the biggest forum regarding electronic test equipment, as a head's up for people who could be in the same situation in the future.

Yes I am a little irritated, let them know what you think in the comments below...

[BU508A]

I grew up in Epsom, where they used to take thoroughbreds from stables to be exercised, past my school along public roads. They weren't stable animals. More than once I've seen them jump 6ft sideways, presumably being spooked by a fallen leaf.

Another neighbor is a breaker and when getting them bullet leaf proof rides with a 1m stick with a plastic shopping bag tied to it constantly waving and shaking it at the edge of the nags vision....then swaps to the other side and so on. When he's finished with them they are literally bullet proof but never for the ones I'd use ! 

A farm down the street and around the corner has retired police horses of international acclaim.  Those are bullet proof and gorgeous animals.
At the other end of the street; stay far away .... it appears all the horses are unbroken and the owner is worse than the horses...

Reportedly the only thing that will "spook" a police horse is lifting its tail and inserting something.

[beanflying]

I found an inappropriate Police Academy GIF and decided to be good 

So my 500Meg probed arrived today and was hiding in the mail box so playtime tomorrow. In unrelated news Aliexpress seems to know way more about what 50+ year old Single blokes want and need than they even know themselves.

[BU508A]

I found an inappropriate Police Academy GIF and decided to be good 

So my 500Meg probed arrived today and was hiding in the mail box so playtime tomorrow. In unrelated news Aliexpress seems to know way more about what 50+ year old Single blokes want and need than they even know themselves.

"The suggestions has been presented to you because of your browsing history." 

[mnementh]

There certainly are some nice nags and many years ago we had a cracker called Rika a white gelding that at some time in his youth must have done dressage as I remember a mate brought his squeeze at the time out to ride him. I never had seen a horse do tricks like that ! 

He was given to us by a neighbor when they sold and moved away on the understanding their adult kids could come and ride him should they want to and as pop had horses in his youth he rode him some doing stock work which the nag really loved and in some ways after he twigged what stock work was all about he was as good as a dog to have on musters. After we got him he was loaned all around the district to various families for their first pony and they all rode him to primary school where there was a horse paddock to keep him until it was home time.
To have 2 or 3 kids on his back was normal and delivered them to and from school for gawd knows how many kids and over many years.
District demographics changed and there was no longer any kiddies and school duties so he came back to the farm in his twilight years to hang out near our house with the cattle when we renamed him Snoopy due to his inquisitiveness.
He was a gentle soul and always came for a chat and slice of bread and our infant daughter got quite fond of him and at ~2 could hang onto his mane and take her for a slow walk but one day distracted she slid off his broad fat back and hit the deck only for him to freeze mid step and turn his head to see where he could safely place his hoof without hurting her.......you don't often witness such intelligence from an animal and that vision I will take to my grave.
Sadly not long after he came to the gate by the house and foundered and I had to put him down....he knew his time was up. Best we could calculate he was ~38 so had a marvelous innings.

We had a Quarterhorse/Welsh Pony mare who was similarly kind and gentle. I was barely a toddler when my grandmother brought her from the other farm and she pretty much adopted me as one of her own; I had a pony for a auntie when I was growing up. Our 2nd pasture there was approximately 30 acres of woods and a pond surrounding the house, so it was normal to eat breakfast on the porch with the critters in the front yard. She was 32 when she too brought herself to the cow barn and foundered. Grandfather was kind enough to do the deed for me; one of the few moments of genuine understanding we shared before he passed.

mnem
*sigh*

[mnementh]

How broken is eBay? - and I'm limiting this to the programming side of it.......   Just got a "reminder" to pay for my $61 auction win.  FFS, it's already been ripped out of my transaction history!

But, out of curiosity, I clicked on the link to "Complete Purchase" and I was promptly told it wasn't available in the quantity specified (which was 1, BTW).  No shit Sherlock.    

And tomorrow, over your morning coffee, you will again find the same reminder blinking in the corner of your screen. 

mnem
The 0th Law of Thermodynamics: The perversity of The Universe tends to the maximum.

[bd139]

Woohoo SSD in my corp Dell just died already. First I get a failed Linux VM, then VSCode won’t open. Next thing I know it’s pissing disk errors into the event log.

Turns out Dell are shipping shitty Kioxia ones in them. If you’ve never had the experience these have the heritage of Toshiba and OCZ ie don’t go near them with a stick. They were so good that OCZ no longer exist.

Dell are probably one of the worst manufacturers of computers I’ve had to deal with recently. Lowest grade parts, shitty engineering and even shittier testing 

[mnementh]

The package..... My NEWPORT LABORATORIES Counter Timer Model 700 has arrived!
(SNIP)
I was curious about the proto board near the front, so I removed 3 screws and carefully flipped it over.  Yes, that is wire-wrap!

Whuf! Now THAT is some hardcore MacGyverfyin'!

Figure a previous owner converted from VFD or Panaplex? Styling feels a bit newish for nixie... maybe...

I do hope the OCXO survived its rough ride... would be a bit of a PITA to source/refit/recal another I'll wager.

mnem
 

[Robert763]

Wow old school low volume construction bits Last time I wire wrapped anything might be close to 40 years ago 

Staggered down the backyard to put some Iron on the Lemon tree no luck finding Possums with it yet but there is a Yellow Brick Road back to the shack it seems. Crude depth of field test but working well.

Nice.
What does the thermal image look like without the visible overlay?

[mnementh]

Woohoo SSD in my corp Dell just died already. First I get a failed Linux VM, then VSCode won’t open. Next thing I know it’s pissing disk errors into the event log. Turns out Dell are shipping shitty Kioxia ones in them. If you’ve never had the experience these have the heritage of Toshiba and OCZ ie don’t go near them with a stick. They were so good that OCZ no longer exist.

Dell are probably one of the worst manufacturers of computers I’ve had to deal with recently. Lowest grade parts, shitty engineering and even shittier testing 

It took my wife 2 3 years to kill the OEM spinning rust drive in her used/off corporate lease Lenovo. Just sayin'. 

mnem
 

[bd139]

Yeah shows you how shit this Dell is

Haven’t seen a spinning rust disk for ages in a laptop. Is anyone still shipping them?

[mnementh]

Hi again folks,

   

I was able to score an HP3577A, it looked really well in the pictures (see below) but when it arrived (from the US to Switzerland) it had a crack on the bottom right corner of the front panel bezel. The crack can't be seen when the instruments is laying on the bench, but the front panel has deformed a little bit in the corner. The rear panel bezel also has a small hit. Functionality wise, it passes all self-confidence tests and I plan to tear it apart to the last piece for rectifiying the front panel, recaping electrolytics, fan replacement, changing the EPROMs to EEPROMs, etc.

Now guys, I want to take advantage of you knowledge, so some questions follow:

Looking at the service manual, I was able to find the replacement parts for the front and rear bezels in ebay, but those are for the HP3577B. Please, can someone confirm that these are equivalent? In the service manual these parts appear with different codes for the 3577A (front: 5020-8807, rear: 5020-8808) and 3577B (front: 5021-8407, rear: 5021-5808)

Also, does somebody know if Keysight is still selling parts for this instruments? it seems that this frame/chassis is used in many other HP/Agilent instruments. I would prefer to buy it from them than from ebay.

Are the bezels made of steel or aluminum? Maybe I can repair the crack on the front bezel with one of this metal-epoxy glues sold as "cold welding".

I also plan to install the front handles, since the thing weights 28 kg (62 lbs) and I want to be able to move it a little bit more easily. Would any 5U front handle from HP/Agilent work? The one the service manual specifies (5062-3991) look very familiar to the new versions. Are they compatible? (Attachment Link) (Attachment Link) (Attachment Link)

Any advice you may have is welcome!

Welcome back to the nuttery...

I'd guess cubdriver is gonna be your best bet for knowledge on this bit of vintage Bill & Dave iron; but he's been pretty deep in down the rabbit-hole for a while now, actually getting after his repair queue.

mnem

[Saskia]

received an old Atari 800xl and the corresponding 1050 disk drive yesterday.

Beautifully packed. Need to check if it works.

This thing has 40 years on its back. Inlecroyable ...

[mnementh]

Yeah shows you how shit this Dell is Haven’t seen a spinning rust disk for ages in a laptop. Is anyone still shipping them?

Dunno... she says it's awesome again with the new EVO 870 SSD. 

OEM was HGST 7200RPM/SATA3 drive dated May 2014... so probably the last of their red-hot fleet machines with spinning rust.

Wow... that means she's actually had the thing for a little over 3 years now; how times flies when a machine doesn't give you a lick of trouble.

mnem
 

[Cerebus]

There certainly are some nice nags and many years ago we had a cracker called Rika a white gelding that at some time in his youth must have done dressage as I remember a mate brought his squeeze at the time out to ride him. I never had seen a horse do tricks like that ! 

He was given to us by a neighbor when they sold and moved away on the understanding their adult kids could come and ride him should they want to and as pop had horses in his youth he rode him some doing stock work which the nag really loved and in some ways after he twigged what stock work was all about he was as good as a dog to have on musters. After we got him he was loaned all around the district to various families for their first pony and they all rode him to primary school where there was a horse paddock to keep him until it was home time.
To have 2 or 3 kids on his back was normal and delivered them to and from school for gawd knows how many kids and over many years.
District demographics changed and there was no longer any kiddies and school duties so he came back to the farm in his twilight years to hang out near our house with the cattle when we renamed him Snoopy due to his inquisitiveness.
He was a gentle soul and always came for a chat and slice of bread and our infant daughter got quite fond of him and at ~2 could hang onto his mane and take her for a slow walk but one day distracted she slid off his broad fat back and hit the deck only for him to freeze mid step and turn his head to see where he could safely place his hoof without hurting her.......you don't often witness such intelligence from an animal and that vision I will take to my grave.
Sadly not long after he came to the gate by the house and foundered and I had to put him down....he knew his time was up. Best we could calculate he was ~38 so had a marvelous innings.

Sounds like a great horse, almost everything that almost every horse I've ever met hasn't been.

But you do have me wondering. All this paddock at the primary school and stuff - sounds like a Kiwi Amish settlement. You got a funny beard and keep your women modest, barefoot, chained to the butter churn and pregnant? 

[mnementh]

Planning my moving

Please report to your management that a professional relocation company should know why and when an antistatic wrap need to be used.
There are a lot of YouTube video of that topic,  but I can give you and your company an overview in 30min for free. Just contact me in June 2021 after I settle down in my new home.

Meanwhile I invested 54 Euro of my hard work money in antistatic wrap to save me and your company from the process of 10000 USD value or more in insurance claims regarding my equipment (oh yes, you will find a lot of " High value" stickers in my stuff).

Taking the right choice always feels nice.

I will now report my story on the EEVBlog Forum, which is the biggest forum regarding electronic test equipment, as a head's up for people who could be in the same situation in the future.

Yes I am a little irritated, let them know what you think in the comments below...

I think we need some jumper cables on nutsacks to provide suitable emphasis on your point. Anybody wanna help out with drafting up a BOM and Procedural Analysis...? 

mnem
I have the Static Klingon battle commander's number in my Contacts... gimme a sec...

[Specmaster]

Meanwhile, I have been busy working restoring a Bang & Olufsen Beosound Century music centre that I came across on a recycling site recently. I started a thread in the repair section and a link to it is below. It caught my eye as being something that might be possible to flip once repaired on eBay and the proceeds used to fund more TEA acquisitions. It was in a right old sorry state when I first saw it, looked like it been stored in some old barn somewhere, covered in a deep coat of dust and grime everywhere, all over the tape and CD mechanisms. I even wondered if I might be better off taking it straight to the local tip, but the challenge was just too great, and so I set about bringing it back to life.

I should have taken some early photos of it, but I really struggled to get it in a suitable location in my small workshop/lab where I could get some decent shots of it, SWMBO would have done a fit if I took anywhere else because of the state it was in.

I was told that it used to sound really lovely, and it was an expensive bit of kit when new. The owners of it went out and left their teenagers with it and when they returned it was sounding like one of the first ever cheap pocket transistor radios of the 60's era, all treble and nothing else. I cleaned it up and downloaded a service manual for and discovered that it had class G amplifiers and active speakers. That made me fear the worst, that the bass amplifiers would be shot requiring some expensive unobtainable chips etc.

This was further re-enforced when I removed the speaker grills, first the left one revealed a woofer with the cone completely ripped apart and then the right one looked OK. I suspected a blown chip or shorted caps letting DC through to the speakers. I powered it and checked the voltage reaching the woofers (what a horrible sound that was) and discovered that there was only AC reaching the woofers but zero sound from. Voice coils were O/C, so I connected a pair of speakers from another old music centre, and it all worked. Checked the radio, CD and tape decks for functionality and was very pleasantly surprised to discover that literally everything was working, including the recording option of the tape deck.

The service manual gave me no idea as to the impedance of the woofers, but it gives me the frequency response of the speakers, 75 - 20,000Hz. I started looking for replacement drivers and found one on eBay for £50 2nd hand  Long story short, I chose a pair of 8 ohm woofers from CRC that only cost £26.39 delivered and after a bit of fluffing around salvaging gaskets from old drivers, installed them back in the set and powered up, wonderful rich sounds were once again coming from it. Ripping apart one of the old drives, I was able to confirm that indeed the 8 ohm replacements were indeed the correct value after all.

Photos of the speakers and the final completed item can be seen here https://www.eevblog.com/forum/repair/bang-olufsen-beosound-century-music-centre/new/?topicseen#new

So hopefully in the end it should repay my £26.39 many times over when it comes to flipping on the bay of evil, where there are many of these on offer currently in the £250 to £600 brackets, many without the table stand and active FM antenna which this one has, and just the table stands are actually selling for £100 new,  , speaker grills for £65 a pair  , might I be better off stripping it for parts and selling those I wonder? Either way I should get a handsome return on my investment I'm thinking 

[Cerebus]

The only way I like horses is this one:
http://www.windisch-wurst.at/leberkaese/60-pferde-leberkaese

I am sorry, but horses have too much strength and too little brain.
Never felt comfy around them, never will.
ymmv of course.

"Oh Daddy, can I have a horse, puleeeeaaase....?"

"Yes"

"Really, really, when?"

"Sunday afternoon".... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sauerbraten


McBryce.

First time that I went out to dinner in Germany with some colleagues from Frankfurt (from IPF Net/Gigabell for those who remember them) back in the 90s I ordered Sauerbraten, much to the incredulity of Christian "Gott sei Dank: ich bin a Frank" Jachmann. He just couldn't believe an Englishman was going to order something so quintessentially German. I think he expected me to order Wiener schnitzel like every other Englishman he'd met before.

Don't get me wrong, I like a good Wiener schnitzel, crispy and dripping with butter, but there's a lot more to traditional German food than Weiner schnitzel! I make a point on my winter trips to Germany to make sure that I make one trip to the most traditional eatery I can find, usually the local Brauhaus, with as much company as I can muster, and try and get everybody as fat as a Bavarian Banker.

I'm hungry now...

[Specmaster]

Woohoo SSD in my corp Dell just died already. First I get a failed Linux VM, then VSCode won’t open. Next thing I know it’s pissing disk errors into the event log.

Turns out Dell are shipping shitty Kioxia ones in them. If you’ve never had the experience these have the heritage of Toshiba and OCZ ie don’t go near them with a stick. They were so good that OCZ no longer exist.

Dell are probably one of the worst manufacturers of computers I’ve had to deal with recently. Lowest grade parts, shitty engineering and even shittier testing 

Agree with everything about Dell and OCZ. My first ever solid state drive was a OCZ one from Maplin, purely on price as they were mega expensive back then, it lasted about a week over its warranty period before it keeled over and threw its legs up in the air, piece of shit. 

[Kosmic]

Looking at the service manual, I was able to find the replacement parts for the front and rear bezels in ebay, but those are for the HP3577B. Please, can someone confirm that these are equivalent? In the service manual these parts appear with different codes for the 3577A (front: 5020-8807, rear: 5020-8808) and 3577B (front: 5021-8407, rear: 5021-5808)

If the part number is different they would probably not fit on your 3577A. Normally if the part number is different, the part itself is also different.

Also, does somebody know if Keysight is still selling parts for this instruments? it seems that this frame/chassis is used in many other HP/Agilent instruments. I would prefer to buy it from them than from ebay.

Keysight is selling parts but the HP3577A is really old. I would be surprise if they still have parts for this instrument. You could contact them but ebay is probably your best bet.

[Cerebus]

Woohoo SSD in my corp Dell just died already. First I get a failed Linux VM, then VSCode won’t open. Next thing I know it’s pissing disk errors into the event log.

Turns out Dell are shipping shitty Kioxia ones in them. If you’ve never had the experience these have the heritage of Toshiba and OCZ ie don’t go near them with a stick. They were so good that OCZ no longer exist.

Dell are probably one of the worst manufacturers of computers I’ve had to deal with recently. Lowest grade parts, shitty engineering and even shittier testing 

It  looks like there was a typo in that name with that first 'i', it was obviously meant to be an 'l', as in 'cloaca'. 

[psykok]

BTW this is my top impulse buy ever, not TEA or yeah sort off:

Mine wasn't an impulse buy (thought long and hard about it, and had to borrow my friend's Jeep to get it at the time - it wasn't going to fit in the Miata), but I'm very happy with it.  Very accurate, and a pleasure to use.  Have used it to cut aluminum (with the proper blade) on a few occasions, too.  Buy once, cry once.


Crack for woodworkers

-Pat

that is my next big buy on my list.
I'm still not sure if I'm going for the FEstool or the Bosh GDM12

[Zucca]

Hey psy,

Here my addictions:

-Metcal
-Festool
-Knipex
-Bernstein
-(recently) Hager
-Keysight
-TTi

those companies could sell me dog shit I would buy it.

Yes Bosch blue is sexy too but when I see the green Festool I go out of control

[BU508A]

that is my next big buy on my list.
I'm still not sure if I'm going for the FEstool or the Bosh GDM12

I'd probably go for the Bosch GDM12 GCM 12 GDL. Mainly for the glide system it uses.
Pask Makes has a nice video about the arrival of his GCM 12 GDL: