Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

Did they publish the standard deviation of the literacy rates in America though? 

Edit: just realised this is the second stab at America I've had this morning on here 

[Specmaster]

Hmmm, well maybe if they had actually bothered to stick with the tea and drink it rather than chucking it into the harbour the US literacy rates would have been much higher 

[Cerebus]

Did they publish the standard deviation of the literacy rates in America though? 

Edit: just realised this is the second stab at America I've had this morning on here 

Now, remember what your mum told you. The fat wheezy kid may be easy to pick on, but that doesn't make it OK. 

I'm not having a poke at America here, I'm genuinely shocked and surprised. It may well be my rôle as an Englishman, probably my patriotic duty, to take the piss out of America and every other English speaking peoples at every opportunity possible but that's just good natured mockery among cousins not anything more sinister. This is genuine "How on Earth can that be true?" shock at how bad it's got.

[med6753]

All this talk of tyres is tyring. 

[Cerebus]

Hmmm, well maybe if they had actually bothered to stick with the tea and drink it rather than chucking it into the harbour the US literacy rates would have been much higher 

An ex-professional writer writes: Strong coffee, booze and tobacco are the traditional props of the professional writing classes, so I don't think we can put it down to lack of tea. 

[Cerebus]

All this talk of tyres is tyring. 

Have a lie down (or is that a lye down). Oh, you already are! 

[nixiefreqq]

yeah.  it has gotten so bad that most of what we see on tv these days are brits PRETENDING to be mericans.

 to quote mrs carberry ......"coming over here taking our jobs and our women, and acting like they own the fecking place!"

(the only time it went the other way was that guy in mary poppins.  did he fool anyone?)

[med6753]

Oh and an American literacy rate of 88% doesn't surprise me in the least. We've got some dumb motherfuckers out there as reflected by our recent election results. 

[mnementh]

Some news from the Voltech PM3300:

I've found the culprits

#1 is that (high grade 1000uF/16V) electrolytic capacitor used to AC couple a half bridge MOSFET stage to drive all the small transformers used to supply the input modules. I found it getting warm and tested its series resistance to about 600mOhm at 40kHz, quite a bit too high. Replaced that one, but the fluctuations weren't gone and isolated supply voltages were somewhat better, but still far from good.



#2 is this pin of the power supply connector. It's the +12V supply line, carrying 1.5 ... 2.0A. Note the slight discoloration of the connector housing, and the pin itself lost most of its plating when I removed it from the housing. There's been about 0.5V ... 1V drop across this contact. After an intermediate fix, the supply voltages with OK with little to no margin, and the fluctuations are gone.

         

The better fix for this (crap) kind of connector would be to cut it off and solder the wires directly to the pins - maybe I'll apply this later.

Here's a view of the main circuit board (the onboard battery is still good, reading 3.6V quite as new):
Right now, I've connected 10V DC and 1A DC sources to watch the stability. The meter is specified to 0.1% (from reading) accuracy @DC (0.05% AC). Judging from the first results, these specs look quite optimistic. From my own experience I know it's quite brave to specify this kind of wide band power meter developed in the 1990s to this accuracy.

1000x this... Fukkin' insulation displacement connectors are a blight on humanity; barely sufferable for small signals and an abomination in any application where actual current-loading is present.

KILL IT!!! KILL IT WITH FIRE!!!

mnem

[GreyWoolfe]

I'm not even going to attempt to catch up with the latest goings on here. This is the first time in over 24 hours that I've been able to sit in a chair comfortably and type. I've never had back problems and I now have extreme sympathy for those who do. You are literally bed ridden and that's the only time you can achieve some comfort. But I'm finally coming out of it with just an occasional muscle spasm to remind me that I ain't a kid no more. I've had absolutely no appetite and haven't eaten since yesterday but I am keeping myself hydrated with just plain water.

So...where does that leave things? My first priority is that I have to do something about that damn tire. The spike is right at the edge of the thread and I'm not sure it can be safely patched. I'm thinking of just ordering a new tire and be done with it. If they can patch the old one I'll keep it as spare. As far as the item in the CR-V? In my current condition no way can I risk jackassing it up here. I'm thinking of calling my son to come help me but I hate to do that since he's a busy boy with 3 kids, wife, and a very busy job. We'll see. Figure something out.

Anyway, I feel like I've come back from the dead.     

Lucky you to not have issues until now.  In my 20's when I was a salesman for Nabisco, I bent down to pick up an empty box and ended out on workman's comp for 6 weeks.  That's when I found out that my hips were canted up and down over an inch and a half off center and I had 2 displaced vertebra in my lower back, probably from birth.  Now, thanks to Mrs. GreyWoolfe's apothecary, when I hurt my back, she gives me 4 acetaminophen and a Flexeril, rinse and repeat as needed.  Thankfully, I don't jack up my back very often.  For the last 10 years or so, the injury of choice seems to involve my ribs.  Every year older I get, it's taking longer to heal.  I know inside at 64, I should start to take things at least a little easier and be more circumspect, but I hate having to admit that I am getting too old to be doing some of the things I do.  That and having a very high pain tolerance means I am probably not going to learn my lesson any time soon.  It's hard to teach an old Woolfe new tricks.

[SilverSolder]

[...]  at 64, I should start to take things at least a little easier and be more circumspect [...]

You have to live each day as if you are going to live 1,000 years, (while knowing you're not), and not take the end in advance...

[bsodmike]

Hey all, am I crazy to consider spending over £4,000 on a 53230A -KEYSIGHT TECHNOLOGIES - Frequency Counter, 10Hz to 350MHz, 12 Digits, 14 mVrms, 53200A Series (https://export.farnell.com/keysight-technologies/53230a/universal-counter-350mhz-12digit/dp/1843579)??

It's going to be the first Frequency counter on my bench, and I'm looking at getting a few 10Mhz references... consider this my start into high-accuracy time-keeping fun. It's just downhill from here right?

[capt bullshot]

#2 is this pin of the power supply connector. It's the +12V supply line, carrying 1.5 ... 2.0A. Note the slight discoloration of the connector housing, and the pin itself lost most of its plating when I removed it from the housing. There's been about 0.5V ... 1V drop across this contact. After an intermediate fix, the supply voltages with OK with little to no margin, and the fluctuations are gone.



The better fix for this (crap) kind of connector would be to cut it off and solder the wires directly to the pins - maybe I'll apply this later.

1000x this... Fukkin' insulation displacement connectors are a blight on humanity; barely sufferable for small signals and an abomination in any application where actual current-loading is present.

Note: It's not the insulation displacemant part of the contact that failed but rather the contact itself. I've seen this kind of contact fail no matter how the wire was attached.

Of course, they're not suitable for small signals, you'd want proper gold flashed ones for small signals. The ones shown here are intended to use with some minimum current / voltage ratings (e.g. for power supplies), well above your typical small signal levels. Some minimum voltage / current is required to break oxide (or whatever) layers that form on their surface over time. Doesn't work out well all the time, as one could see here

[mnementh]

Good to hear from you again buddy, just you keep taking easy, its natures way of reminding you that are not the force to be reckoned with that you was when you were younger. The tire is beyond repair, at least as far British law goes it is and that is always the issue and major drawback about boat anchors. Its not just getting out the CRV but also moving it in general that needs to factored in.

Thanks. Feeling much better this morning but I'm going to take it easy and keep taking the ibuprofen for a while. As far as tire repair is concerned I'm not aware of any laws regulating it but standard practice is if the hole is within the thread area it can be repaired. But if it's near or on the sidewall forget it. This puncture is right at the edge so I think it's junk. I'm ordering a new tire today and should be here Monday. I'll bring that and the old one to my local garage and let them determine if it can be repaired. If it can be I'm going to have them unmount anyway and install the new one. I'll keep the repaired tire as a spare.

Over here we have a tyre company called National Tyres, and they do a scheme that costs a fraction of the total price of a tyre, approx 8% of the cost. So if a new tyre costs £100, for an extra £8, they will give you unlimited puncture repairs and lets say your tyre still has 80% of the original tread depth left, but because of where the puncture is located, near the side wall thus needing a new tyre, they will sell you a new tyre for just 20% of the true cost. But that does mean that you need to pay the £8 again to protect the new tyre. I have used that scheme a few times now, well worth it, plus of course they also have a website where you order your new tyre at lower cost, have it delivered to your local depot for fitting and still pay the £8 extra to give you the extra piece of mind. So in that fashion, you end up with a new tyre, plus the fitting and the protection for less than you would have paid if you went direct to your local depot and paid for the tyre and protection, there. It's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.

Yup... Stateside has Discount Tire... they offer "Certificates" which are a similar tire warranty program. Free air-ups done for you any time they're open (even for non-customers... upsell ka-ching!), "free" tire repairs, "free" replacement on any tire they cannot repair, but you do have to buy a new cert on the replacement. Worth every penny in Tejas; highway maintenance down there is a fukking abyss of institutionalized neglect, random garbage, demolition debris and motorist despair.

Up here in the GWN... we have Canadian Tire. No-name tires cost $1000/set. Everything is fuck-stick pro-rata shoved up your arse dry. You can buy road-hazard, and they try to sell it to you... at an additional 30-50% of sticker cost.

mnem
*kicks a moose in the balls, just on GP*

[mnementh]

Oh and an American literacy rate of 88% doesn't surprise me in the least. We've got some dumb motherfuckers out there as reflected by our recent election results. 

It was no accident; the evisceration of Public Education in the US was deliberate and premeditated.

Last generation was smart enough to laugh Trump off the stage the first time he tried to buy the presidency... a couple decades later, see what hoppened't.

Why do you think I'm trying to get my kids the fuck away from the stupidity?

mnem
 

[Kosmic]

Good to hear from you again buddy, just you keep taking easy, its natures way of reminding you that are not the force to be reckoned with that you was when you were younger. The tire is beyond repair, at least as far British law goes it is and that is always the issue and major drawback about boat anchors. Its not just getting out the CRV but also moving it in general that needs to factored in.

Thanks. Feeling much better this morning but I'm going to take it easy and keep taking the ibuprofen for a while. As far as tire repair is concerned I'm not aware of any laws regulating it but standard practice is if the hole is within the thread area it can be repaired. But if it's near or on the sidewall forget it. This puncture is right at the edge so I think it's junk. I'm ordering a new tire today and should be here Monday. I'll bring that and the old one to my local garage and let them determine if it can be repaired. If it can be I'm going to have them unmount anyway and install the new one. I'll keep the repaired tire as a spare.

Over here we have a tyre company called National Tyres, and they do a scheme that costs a fraction of the total price of a tyre, approx 8% of the cost. So if a new tyre costs £100, for an extra £8, they will give you unlimited puncture repairs and lets say your tyre still has 80% of the original tread depth left, but because of where the puncture is located, near the side wall thus needing a new tyre, they will sell you a new tyre for just 20% of the true cost. But that does mean that you need to pay the £8 again to protect the new tyre. I have used that scheme a few times now, well worth it, plus of course they also have a website where you order your new tyre at lower cost, have it delivered to your local depot for fitting and still pay the £8 extra to give you the extra piece of mind. So in that fashion, you end up with a new tyre, plus the fitting and the protection for less than you would have paid if you went direct to your local depot and paid for the tyre and protection, there. It's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.

Up here in the GWN... we have Canadian Tire. No-name tires cost $1000/set. Everything is fuck-stick pro-rata shoved up your arse dry. You can buy road-hazard, and they try to sell it to you... at an additional 30-50% of sticker cost.

The name of the store is misleading. It's not necessarily the best place to buy tires. You can easily get brand tires at half that price elsewhere.

[mnementh]

#2 is this pin of the power supply connector. It's the +12V supply line, carrying 1.5 ... 2.0A. Note the slight discoloration of the connector housing, and the pin itself lost most of its plating when I removed it from the housing. There's been about 0.5V ... 1V drop across this contact. After an intermediate fix, the supply voltages with OK with little to no margin, and the fluctuations are gone.

   The better fix for this (crap) kind of connector would be to cut it off and solder the wires directly to the pins - maybe I'll apply this later.

1000x this... Fukkin' insulation displacement connectors are a blight on humanity; barely sufferable for small signals and an abomination in any application where actual current-loading is present.

Note: It's not the insulation displacement part of the contact that failed but rather the contact itself. I've seen this kind of contact fail no matter how the wire was attached.

Of course, they're not suitable for small signals, you'd want proper gold flashed ones for small signals. The ones shown here are intended to use with some minimum current / voltage ratings (e.g. for power supplies), well above your typical small signal levels. Some minimum voltage / current is required to break oxide (or whatever) layers that form on their surface over time. Doesn't work out well all the time, as one could see here

I've had this discussion many times with many folks who know better than I do, and in conjunction with my own experience, I believe it is a chicken/egg thing. Wherever the electrical contact first breaks down, it causes heat, which affects the entire terminal. Agreed, these single-wiper contacts are a horrible choice for anything carrying any current... but adding insulation displacement tech to the mix is, IMO, a crime that should be punishable by testicular percussion over long periods.

If you dismantle that terminal and strip the insulation off, I'll bet even odds you find the wire inside is either similarly heat-discolored, or blackened. And if not this one, the next one, or the next one after that. It is a fukkin' epidemic with these connectors. In all honesty, I don't believe it is a matter of if they will fail this way, but when.

Under any circumstances... I agree with your original surmise: Take no prisoners, cut & solder those bastards.

mnem
 

[Specmaster]

Good to hear from you again buddy, just you keep taking easy, its natures way of reminding you that are not the force to be reckoned with that you was when you were younger. The tire is beyond repair, at least as far British law goes it is and that is always the issue and major drawback about boat anchors. Its not just getting out the CRV but also moving it in general that needs to factored in.

Thanks. Feeling much better this morning but I'm going to take it easy and keep taking the ibuprofen for a while. As far as tire repair is concerned I'm not aware of any laws regulating it but standard practice is if the hole is within the thread area it can be repaired. But if it's near or on the sidewall forget it. This puncture is right at the edge so I think it's junk. I'm ordering a new tire today and should be here Monday. I'll bring that and the old one to my local garage and let them determine if it can be repaired. If it can be I'm going to have them unmount anyway and install the new one. I'll keep the repaired tire as a spare.

Over here we have a tyre company called National Tyres, and they do a scheme that costs a fraction of the total price of a tyre, approx 8% of the cost. So if a new tyre costs £100, for an extra £8, they will give you unlimited puncture repairs and lets say your tyre still has 80% of the original tread depth left, but because of where the puncture is located, near the side wall thus needing a new tyre, they will sell you a new tyre for just 20% of the true cost. But that does mean that you need to pay the £8 again to protect the new tyre. I have used that scheme a few times now, well worth it, plus of course they also have a website where you order your new tyre at lower cost, have it delivered to your local depot for fitting and still pay the £8 extra to give you the extra piece of mind. So in that fashion, you end up with a new tyre, plus the fitting and the protection for less than you would have paid if you went direct to your local depot and paid for the tyre and protection, there. It's a no-brainer as far as I'm concerned.

Yup... Stateside has Discount Tire... they offer "Certificates" which are a similar tire warranty program. Free air-ups done for you any time they're open (even for non-customers... upsell ka-ching!), "free" tire repairs, "free" replacement on any tire they cannot repair, but you do have to buy a new cert on the replacement. Worth every penny in Tejas; highway maintenance down there is a fukking abyss of institutionalized neglect, random garbage, demolition debris and motorist despair.

Up here in the GWN... we have Canadian Tire. No-name tires cost $1000/set. Everything is fuck-stick pro-rata shoved up your arse dry. You can buy road-hazard, and they try to sell it to you... at an additional 30-50% of sticker cost.

mnem
*kicks a moose in the balls, just on GP*

Arh, so it would seem then that the average Brit would be right at home with the roads in Texas then. I used to laugh at the state of the roads in Russia that you see in the videos on YT, but right now I think they have far better road than us Brits have got. Thats what years of cutbacks by many years of Conservative governments does for you. Hence why I now get my tyres from National Tyres, I have in the past destroyed way too many new tyres on huge potholes in the roads at my cost, now if the tyres have less than 2mm worn off their new depth, I think the tyre is replaced free. 

[Specmaster]

Heads up Brits, its another £1 listing fee weekend on eBay.

[Zucca]

To power my bench in USA I chose this CEE Plug:



No I do not want to resize it. It is such a well designed plug I can't stop to look at it. It arrived yesterday and in my hands it is even more sexy.

One day I will be the planet earth president and CEE Plugs will be mandatory everywhere.

Pornografic design, rock solid, antichinesium by definition.

I'm in love...

[McBryce]

All this talk of tyres is tyring. 

I always have to laugh when Americans try to "correct" English speakers on their spelling! Here's one for you:

On labour day I went over to my humourous neighbour to borrow his coloured tyre gauge.

 

McBryce.

[mnementh]

Fuck you...  Made me snort coffee all over wifey's new backlit keyboard... 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

To power my bench in USA I chose this CEE Plug:   

No I do not want to resize it. It is such a well designed plug I can't stop to look at it. It arrived yesterday and in my hands it is even more sexy.

One day I will be the planet earth president and CEE Plugs will be mandatory everywhere. Pornografic design, rock solid, antichinesium by definition. I'm in love...

Yeah, we have those over here on trucks for trailer lighting. Best use for 'em. *yawwwwnnn*

mnem
*agitating-ily*

[AVGresponding]

All this talk of tyres is tyring. 

I always have to laugh when Americans try to "correct" English speakers on their spelling! Here's one for you:

On labour day I went over to my humourous neighbour to borrow his coloured tyre guage.

 

McBryce.

gauge*

 

[mnementh]

Jeebus... poor med is gonna have a shit-fit conniption next time he pops in for a quick check and sees the scroll... 

is this...? IRC Chat or summat...? 

mnem
*trys to tear himself away and return to The Sleevening*