Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

   Technically, it's called TE. I'd just call it ugly.

It's a "lab power supply" that a colleague at work toasted, and asked me for a repair. So I said: "Yes, I'll have a look at it, most probably the power transistors will be shorted". I should have known better and said no, as this one is typical for the more recent stuff we have @work. The older stuff is better, but still works ...

That looks just like the one our local TE scrounge-hole tried to sell me for $150 with one dead channel and smelling like roasted butt when we powered it up. Yes, that was the last item I tried to buy from him.

mnem
"Oh, if it's tested good, then it'll cost more..."

[Cerebus]

Technically, it's called TE. I'd just call it ugly.

Seconded. Ye Gods! I produced work (on Veroboard no less) when I was 14 that I might find embarrassing today, but it was still 10x neater and more reliable looking than that dog's breakfast.

[mnementh]

One for Bean.... Going after some of his nocturnal marsupial cousins this year:   

About a compact lithium battery for this....sick of lugging around 7AH SLA's.   Any tips on what not to get Bean or memn ?   Thinking ~20AH rated  from here:
https://www.aliexpress.com/wholesale?catId=0&initiative_id=SB_20210329233434&origin=y&SearchText=12v+li+battery

That is entirely too small a mass of aluminum for 30W worth of LED. You'll regret it.

     https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32804419844.html

In all honesty, I recommend one of the 12 LED SpaceRay/SkyRay/MantaRay/FukkaChikkenRay flashlights like this one that use 4 18650s.

Search string 12T6 cree xml flashlight should return lots of hits for you to choose from; output will be listed as anything from 8000 Lumen to 30000. What is important is that it is listed as 12 T6 XML LEDs like this one, and that you get the stubby one which uses 4 18650s in parallel. If you get the kit with batteries & charger, just chuck the batteries and replace them with recycled laptop cells; the ones that come with are literally 50-70% empty cells with shit capacity.

But still, overall a great value as long as you get the light delivered for US$25-35. Shop carefully and you'll find a vendor with lots of sales and lots of positive feedback; these things seem to come available and sell out in waves, but the good ones quickly get identified and spread by word of mouth in the CandlePower forums.

Cheers,

mnem
*lit AF*

[Cerebus]

Just stuck my head out of the window and realised that it's 23ºC outside here today. Gosh!

[med6753]

Type 321A Fixed!



The culprit. 2N2207 with a tin whisker short.



Q183 on the schematic.



I'm going to let it cook for a few hours then I can proceed with calibration/compensation. This Type 321A has a design feature that I don't like but I understand why Tek did it. Whenever plugged into the mains the battery charge circuit is always active. No way to completely shut down the PSU unless unplugged. Even the scale illum stays on. And there's no easy way to isolate the battery circuit from the rest of the PSU so it could be disabled. That would kill the +10V ref that kicks in the balance of the PSU when turned on. Oh well. 

[mnementh]

I'm sure I've seen Phillips, JIS and slot head too on older HP TEA, maybe due to them being produced in different places all over the world.

Could be. I'm a ham and I do know that many of the radios have JIS screws (another one that looks like Phillips). Only one other ham actually knew that. There is a very small "dot" on the top of the screw that indicates JIS. But ... of course they all use Phillips to take out the screws, and couldn't care less about getting the correct screwdriver LOL. 

Most hams probably use flat blades on those screws as well 

You're assuming there was no butter knife nearby?   McBryce.

Joo got me, McB. Snorted coffee all over the GhostBSD disk I just burned! 

mnem
*toddles off to the sink to wash... things...*

[Cerebus]

[Wolfgang]

This is the famous "Whisker doodle" I suppose ?

[Specmaster]

So I call this Urology group yesterday to get an appointment for checkout and hopeful removal of the catheter. The EARLIEST I can get in there is April 9th.  No fucking way am I wearing this damn thing an additional 2 weeks. My discharge papers state a week to 2 weeks max. I've had it in since last Wednesday. I tried to explain this to the unfeeling reception but got no where. Then I asked if they get a cancellation can they call and reschedule me. Curt response was "we don't have that policy". Bitach!    So...starting Thursday I'm calling them everyday to see if a cancel happened and I can get in earlier. And once I get this cat out I'm going to find this man hater and stab her with the catheter needle. 

Anyway.....today's TE. Switching gears. Going to replace that transistor in the Type 321A and see if the sweep finally works.   

Make a pest of yourself on the phone, or get the lady cop on her arse. You have to pay for your medical treatment, don't you, I suspect that might be why they don't operate that way with cancellations so they can still charge the poor person who cancelled 

[bd139]

Looking interesting. The stinking big OCXO gives it away  .

As I say, just mucking about at the moment. When I started i didn't know if I was laying out a breakout/dev board for the STM32F411 like the filename suggests, or a n F411 + FPGA dev board, or doing a dry run on what it obviously became. I've got a couple of very nice Trimble Resolution-T GPS timing boards, one of which is the PPS source for my NTP server and the other which I've earmarked for a GPSDO. They have a "difficult to find a mating part for" hard-metric header on and I thought the discipline of adding a footprint for a daughter board seemed like a useful learning tool - so the GPSDO route was taken.

I do have to say one thing about kicad and that is most of the problems you are seeing are endemic to the Mac version of it. There’s something about Qt and Cocoa which is just entirely fuckity wherever has been portrd. But I’m using 5.1.9, on windows, and it’s absolutely fine. I’m doing all the EDA stuff on windows due to the “principle of least buggery”.

Except they use wxWidgets, so Qt can't take the blame for that one. I found the same UI problems in earlier versions of KiCad on both Linux and Windows before there was a Mac version. There's just a wild lack of consistency some of which which screams "For god's sake refactor this thing so that the same actions use the same bit of code" and the other half of the scream is "... and learn something about how people use things - a five to ten key press workaround is not the same as doing something right in the first place".

Edit: I’ve looked at some of the UBlox modules recently and I reckon they are hand solderable as well. That brings the BOM cost and board size of such things down considerably. And yes I have the same thing planned

The Resolution-T (see below) limits how small I can spin this so I thought I might as well go for the whole 100mm x 100mm and get my money's worth. 



BD139 for scale.

Gah i thought it was Qt. Which is stupid really as I'm fairly familiar with wxPython so I should have noticed the particular brand of cranky.

Now I have the details I'm liking this project  . I shall look out for updates, lest it be consigned to the same pile I have of "half finished things I did in KiCad" while sitting in management meetings

I'm still collecting parts for my attempt. It might end up for fortuitous to just buy Leo Bodnar's magic little box to do it in the end. But less interesting. Also interested in usage of STM32 for this. I have a couple of STM32 boards lying around and have managed to get a basic FreeRTOS and STM32 HAL stack up on them so far which would lend itself to that sort of faff nicely

[bd139]

I'm sure I've seen Phillips, JIS and slot head too on older HP TEA, maybe due to them being produced in different places all over the world.

Could be. I'm a ham and I do know that many of the radios have JIS screws (another one that looks like Phillips). Only one other ham actually knew that. There is a very small "dot" on the top of the screw that indicates JIS. But ... of course they all use Phillips to take out the screws, and couldn't care less about getting the correct screwdriver LOL. 

Most hams probably use flat blades on those screws as well 

You're assuming there was no butter knife nearby?

McBryce.

They stuck that in the socket to get the fork out already.

[Cerebus]

This is the famous "Whisker doodle" I suppose ?

Last Post.

[RtBNL]

Proper JIS are hard to find and expensive if you do. I came across a Japanese"Dollar Store" type shop in the UAE of all places a couple of years ago and they had some. Most were indeterminate or philips but the were some JIS. I bought the entire stock (only about 6 of various sizes).
The best "cross head" screwdriver I have is the removable bit in my Leatherman Wave Ti. It seems to fit ANY #1 or#2 size cross head screw.

I bought a JIS No. 1 / 2 / 3 set, by Vessel (which is a quality brand), from a UK motor cycle dealer a year or so ago, before Brexit, so shipping fees and time were OK. Not exactly cheap, but Vessel never is. I have a bunch of japanese radios, Icom and Yaesu, and they're substantially easier to open with the right gear.

The JIS screws are also very common on Japanse motorbikes. I see them often in older Japanese audio equipment like Marantz, Luxman and recently a older JVC.

I have a set of Vessel screwdrivers, I bought them at this Dutch store. https://www.autogereedschap.com/c-2076631/jis-japanse-schroevendraaiers/ The cheapest set is around €30,00 I’m pretty shure that if you sent them a message they will ship it abroad. They also have JIS bits, those can be used in any 1/4” bit driver.

[med6753]

Sorry, but just a dumb Yank here who never learned to read music so have no clue as to what this means. 

[BU508A]

 




 

[PA0PBZ]

Sorry, but just a dumb Yank here who never learned to read music so have no clue as to what this means. 

Right click -> find image -> Last Post.  Took all of .3 seconds

[AVGresponding]

Imagine how much magic smoke one of these contains!


https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Enersys-Hawker-24V-150A-Battery-Charger-For-Foklift/353436409374

15 minutes left if you like your TE deliveries on pallets...



The variac I ordered on Sunday arrived today! Pics to follow.

[Specmaster]

Sorry, but just a dumb Yank here who never learned to read music so have no clue as to what this means. 

Right click -> find image -> Last Post.  Took all of .3 seconds

Well thats really useful, I do a right click and I don't have that option appear on my PC which is running Windozw 10.

[bd139]

HT being a dick on the D755. Where did I see this problem before? 

[mansaxel]

I have a set of Vessel screwdrivers, I bought them at this Dutch store. https://www.autogereedschap.com/c-2076631/jis-japanse-schroevendraaiers/ The cheapest set is around €30,00 I’m pretty shure that if you sent them a message they will ship it abroad. They also have JIS bits, those can be used in any 1/4” bit driver.

Yes, exactly those. I really like them.

[mnementh]

   ...Heartened by this, I popped the disc out ( I finally know what the Mac weenies in Dominion chat meant when they chanted "Six over, three down!!!" from time to time... that's the number of holes under the optical drive to find the right spot to poke the eject button...  ) and slid drive sled #1 into its slot.

Hall-leh-fukkin'-lu-jeh!!! Signs of life!!! I see a rotten apple on the screen! I let it run for aboot a minute, but progress was quite slow, and I was afraid to let it go any longer until I'd properly serviced the heat-sink, etc. as it was just on there with 4 screws.

We'll see how that service goes... I have a .iso for Mint with Cinnamon and Xfce DE, as well as GhostBSD with MATE DE. If the Mac boot disk or the GT8800 don't wanna play nice, I have them on standby.

mnem
 

Congratulation, you've done a dam(pun intended) good job; now you have a good Mac video card, which I would recommend to use it only when needed. And for future references: the reflowing can be re-done a few times, if needed

Yeah, I'm studying the airflow through this thing right now; I have a couple ideas for ensuring it gets nice cold outside air in hopes of preventing future relapse. If this thing does wind up as my *NIX workstation, it may very well be on a high duty cycle, as I am old and pretty slow anymore. 

Impressive.   Next time I get an IT related problem I’m going to solve it with a flame thrower too. 

or the famous 50 grams ...

Well... when the only tool you have is a dragon... 

Now, now Saskia... you know how ceefour gives me heartburn.  

Wow, that is very, very brave - congratulations to your repair! I am not sure I'd ever go that far with my heatgunny :-)   Cheers,   THDplusN_bad

Well, this kind of tinkery is exactly what I bought the cheap hot-air rework station for; I'm glad to be able to put it to proper use.  The one I used on the bottom for preheat... that was bought for like CAD$12 off Amazon specifically for heat-shrink tubing and light incendiary work. Together, they seemed to work quite well in this application. 

Thanks for the feedback everyone. 

The boot partition is completely borked; I let it try to boot for over 30 minutes, then ~10 seconds after the progress bar went away, it just shut itself down. I was able to get it to boot from the recovery/utility partition tho last night... spent aboot 30 minutes poking around until I had to go to bed ~2am as I kept falling asleep on the KB. I figured it was better to take it up again after a decent night's sleep in my own bed rather than wake up again with a wrenched back and my face looking like a Belgian waffle.

It appears from the Utilities applet this machine does in fact support FIRMWARE RAID; but only RAID 0 & RAID 1. I'm guessing they saved RAID 5 for those willing to pony up for a hardware RAID Controller.  While there are enough drives here to do a mirrored RAID 0, I'm already annoyed by the failed boot disk, so will probably just use the individual drives for different OSes as the winds of tinkery carry me. If I get really annoyed with the speed of the spinning rust, I can always just put some cheap SSDs in there. Would also decrease the heat suffered by that GPU considerably.

*sigh*

And to add insult to injury... just as there appeared to be some progress with the MacPro itself, the 30in Cinema Display just kakked, after working perfectly for 3 days on various other PCs.  No smoke, not even a whimper; just refused to turn on or show any signs of life this morning.

mnem
Fuck you, Murphy.

[med6753]

Sorry, but just a dumb Yank here who never learned to read music so have no clue as to what this means. 

Right click -> find image -> Last Post.  Took all of .3 seconds

Well thats really useful, I do a right click and I don't have that option appear on my PC which is running Windozw 10.

I don't either. 

[mnementh]

Oklay you MacHeadzzz...

Currently trying to figure out how to do a clean install of El Capitan on one of the "extra" drives... I have the DMG file, and I've wiped/formatted as journaled the target drive. Now, if I copy the DMG file to a exFAT USB from my PC, I should be able to launch the Utilities applet from the original boot drive, then direct it to the desired .dmg image and let rip, right?

Right now unfuckerizing a 32GB USB drive after memTEST... jeebus it takes forever to zero out one that big. 

mnem
&drops back & punts*

[med6753]

HT being a dick on the D755. Where did I see this problem before? 

Duh.....at least one of the 400 series. 

453, 454, 465, 475? Take your pick. 

[bd139]

Oh and the last two D83 as well 

At least there's no HT on the new scopes. Window shopping Keysight at the moment but not sure I can pull the trigger on 100MHz jobby at that price