Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[25 CPS]

We find out Doug Ford's placing orders?

But it is advertised as a teaching tool.

Ok class, The teacher is teaching you a lesson today on a real live patient; the patient is none other than D. Ford.... 
[/quote]

Absolutely.  The only way to learn is to get experience and the only way to get experience is to get experience, and that means using real live patients.  It's the medical equivalent of a "live fire exercise" in the military.

[25 CPS]

There are some smaller pieces of test gear that use them, too - Data Precision put them in some at best rowboat anchor meters - the 3500, for instance.


I have a calculator floating around here somewhere that has them, too.  They're a cool stepping stone between the stacked digits of the nixie and the planar seven segment LED, but as far as spares go they do make nixie tubes look plentiful.

-Pat

Yes, it's amazing how plentiful nixie tubes are compared to panaplex and numitron displays.  Both of those had an incredibly short period of existence before 7 segment and other arrangements of LEDs and LCDs replaced everything.

On an unrelated note, is that a Dynaco ST-70 in the background to the left of the scope and meter?

[Cubdriver]

There are some smaller pieces of test gear that use them, too - Data Precision put them in some at best rowboat anchor meters - the 3500, for instance.


I have a calculator floating around here somewhere that has them, too.  They're a cool stepping stone between the stacked digits of the nixie and the planar seven segment LED, but as far as spares go they do make nixie tubes look plentiful.

-Pat

Yes, it's amazing how plentiful nixie tubes are compared to panaplex and numitron displays.  Both of those had an incredibly short period of existence before 7 segment and other arrangements of LEDs and LCDs replaced everything.

On an unrelated note, is that a Dynaco ST-70 in the background to the left of the scope and meter?

Good eye - it's a kit built ST-70 clone - the VTA ST-70.  Built it in 2014, and it was my first attempt at powder coating (did the transformer end bells).  Love it - it's a great amplifier.





-Pat

[mansaxel]

Not sure, if this is an April-fools-day joke:

https://sverigesradio.se/artikel/mangder-av-fordon-star-stilla-efter-omfattande-alkolashaveri

@Mansaxel: can you tell us something about this?

Not much more than what is written in the article; it is about one of several brands of breathalyzer interlocks for cars, common in buses, taxis and public works vehicles. Also a few drunk-drivers have been able to keep their license if they install them.

Starting April 1 this year, they -- for some reason, malicious or incompetent -- cease working. Setting the clock back 10 years "solves" the problem.

 

[SilverSolder]

[...]

Yes, it's amazing how plentiful nixie tubes are compared to panaplex and numitron displays.  Both of those had an incredibly short period of existence before 7 segment and other arrangements of LEDs and LCDs replaced everything.

[...]

I have a couple of these units, which seem to use Panaplex displays (the only units in that series that does, as far as I know):

[factory]

Yes, it's amazing how plentiful nixie tubes are compared to panaplex and numitron displays.  Both of those had an incredibly short period of existence before 7 segment and other arrangements of LEDs and LCDs replaced everything.

On an unrelated note, is that a Dynaco ST-70 in the background to the left of the scope and meter?

Numitrons had a longer existence due to being used in petrol pumps, the requirement for spares to service those still in use has probably eaten through most of the old stocks. And as I mentioned recently, there is still one garage locally running pumps with Numitrons.
The later electromechanical vane type displays also seem to have also become much less common, another local place still had some last year but they had been ripped out earlier this year, no doubt to be replaced with more LCD crap, last one I used could really benefit from more readings per second or a large hammer put through it.

Most of the Numitron & vane displays on ePay.uk seem to be pulls from old pumps, often at silly prices too.

Here are some circuits from Gilbarco Highline I pumps, these were dumped around the back of a smaller petrol station which had replaced them with newer second hand pumps with the vane displays. My brother bought some stuff from them and I asked about the boards & they were OK with me taking them away.






David

[tautech]

Good eye - it's a kit built ST-70 clone - the VTA ST-70.  Built it in 2014, and it was my first attempt at powder coating (did the transformer end bells).  Love it - it's a great amplifier.





-Pat

Nice job Pat.
Valves...I guess 5Z4, EL34 and 12AX7 

[bd139]

Joy another ebay buyer pain in the arse to deal with.

At this point I think I'm done with selling anything on ebay. Anyone want about 10kg of lego? 

[Robert763]

There are some smaller pieces of test gear that use them, too - Data Precision put them in some at best rowboat anchor meters - the 3500, for instance.


I have a calculator floating around here somewhere that has them, too.  They're a cool stepping stone between the stacked digits of the nixie and the planar seven segment LED, but as far as spares go they do make nixie tubes look plentiful.

-Pat

Yes, it's amazing how plentiful nixie tubes are compared to panaplex and numitron displays.  Both of those had an incredibly short period of existence before 7 segment and other arrangements of LEDs and LCDs replaced everything.

On an unrelated note, is that a Dynaco ST-70 in the background to the left of the scope and meter?

The biggest market by far for the Panaplex type 7 segment neon displays was Pintables in early to mid 80's They tend to be multidigit multiplexed rather than the typical 1 or 2 digit modules seen in TE

[Cubdriver]

Good eye - it's a kit built ST-70 clone - the VTA ST-70.  Built it in 2014, and it was my first attempt at powder coating (did the transformer end bells).  Love it - it's a great amplifier.





-Pat

Nice job Pat.
Valves...I guess 5Z4, EL34 and 12AX7 

Thanks!  I was pleasantly surprised at how well the powder coating turned out.  Re the tubes - close - thankfully it uses 12AU7s in the preamp, so not insanely $$$, EL34s for the outputs and I'm using a Russian 5u3C (pretty much equivalent to a 5U4G) for the rectifier - the zig-zag filament looks good and I got some of them cheap a few years back on the bay.  The rectifier likely limits the output power a bit as it's supposed to us a 5AR4 and the 5U4/5u3C has a higher series resistance and passes less current, but it still sounds plenty good to me.



-Pat

[tautech]

 
Yeah I knew it wasn't a 5Z4 as the one I played with in my teens didn't have that zig zag filament.
Need to dig out the specs on 5U3C..........

[Robert763]

The Cisco switch powersupply bits arrived today. A RPS2300 rack with 750W PSU and a 1150W PSU from another seller.
Both are clearly unused.
The RPS2300 hs a lot in it, a FPGA and  24 MOSFET for starters 16 MOSFETs are 260A 30V logic level IRL3713s the other 8 are BUZ**** (can't read in situ)  presumably higher voltage for the 52V supply. It works and even better the 12V and 52V outputs are isolated from each other and chassis so I can use both as positive.
So bothe the 750W and 1150W modules work in the rack but the output LED goes to fault and output off when removed from the rack, as expected. The big question is how many of the 16 pin connections are needed to turn the thing on. A visual inspection and a few quick resistance measurements give no obvious clues. The control connector is a 4x4 0.1" matrix so I made up some 5 way single row extensions and tried them with the 750W module to see what rows were needed for basic operation, That quickly got it down to two rows nd a bit more work got it down to 2 pins - looking good as lone as they are not serial comms! Tracing and inspection showed a resistor between th two pin with a sot transistor also connected. Tried just a resistor between the pins and the C3K-PWR- 750WAC PSU module works outside the rack and can be turned on an off 
The C3K-PWR-1150WAC is a hit more of a concern as while the 750W starts right away in the rack, the 1150 has a delay before it comes on and seems to interact with the fan more. I was conserned the it needed the seril comms I kmnow these units have. So I tried it with just the resistor and get a red LED - for about 5 seconds then the fan s run at low speed and it powers up  Loaded it up a bit and all looks good.
So I'm pretty happy 1850W of 12V / 52V PSU plus a bunch of parts for £40 delivered.
Decided to leave it for now as it's getting late and the last thing I want is to make a slip and blow something up.

[BU508A]

The ECC83S / 12AX7 can be purchased newly from JJ Electronic for around EUR 10.- per piece.

https://www.tube-town.net/ttstore/jj-12ax7-ecc83s.html?language=en



I've bought there two 5751 for a tube amplifier repair. 
Not this one, but one of his brothers:


What a heavy beast! 
4x KT88 beam power tubes per channel!

The 5751 can be seen in the right window. It is the most left tube there.

[Vince]

Thanks for the warm welcome people. One the one hand I feel sad because Tautech was right and I indeed suffer from a disease, but on the other hand I now know there are other people with the same problem, so and we can comfort each other. So... all in all I think I am glad I came here 

That's one high traffic thread BTW ! Poste only 24 hours ago an dmy message is already lost far behind... will need to disable e-mail notification for this thread : I will just leave a tab open permanently, and just refresh it in the evening when I get back from work, to retrieve the posts of the day...assuming there WILL be some, many, for sure...

@MED : look like a 535 with blue CRT ?!  Blue is not common... mostly saw it on 555 and 556, but that's about it... OK, my special purpose 502A has a blue CRT but no color filter, so it's only once I had managed to get it going, that I saw the trace was blue.... kinda like it I must say.

Your 503 is cute too, same feature set as my 502A, just lesser performing, but quite cute !  I almost managed to get hold of one a year ago, but when I asked the seller to take pictures of the inside, to see the state of it inside, and if all the tubes were still there... the only response I got was " Sorry I dumped the thing, you were right the tubes were missing".  To which I replied uh... I would still have bought it without the tubes you moron !!  Get back to the dump yard and take it back before it's too late ! Will buy it from you.. though much cheaper of course... but he never replied.

Anyway, here is a Tektronix 5112/D12 with a 5CT1N curve tracer, 5A22N diff. amplifier and 5B12N time base for you.
For those who never came across this product line from Tek: The Tektronix 5000 low-bandwidth series (2 MHz max.) was very popular among scientist back in the 70s and 80s. Many of the units I have collected over the years had an inventory sticker from a university or science lab on it.

Yeah I love my little 5000 scope. Well I don't like them (cosmetically) in their vertical/portable form factor, which is unfortunately 99,9999% of them... but 4 years ago when I came across one in rack mount version, it was love at first sight, bought it ! Was reasonably priced at 80 Euros fully working with 2 x4 channel amps, so 8 channels total !  It's a 5111A with the storage tube, to boost. So I though it was a fair price, so bought it. Was right in retrospect, as 4 years later, I have seen only one other ad for a rack mount 5000, and thz guy wanted 250 Euros for it ! And it came with no particularly interesting plug-ins either ! Ripoff ...

While doing some TLC to mine (all the ceramic trimmer in the CRT and storage board, were disintegrating...), I noticed the mechanical design... split in two independente sections. The vertical form factor therefore I guess, is basically teh same unit as the rack mount... with just the two halves stacked on top of each other rather than laying side by side. So that's good : that means that I can now just buy vertical ones, which are cheap and available, to get parts for my super rare rack mount version 

Your curve tracer plug-in, I am jealous of ! I can't afford an old Tek curve tracer. The 5000 series, especially mine with its storage tube, would be ideal for that, as it uses (?) the same nice extra large CRT than the curve tracers. Low B/W but who cares for an XY application.
But.... unfortunately the curve tracer plugin is super mega rare it seems, and super expensive : found only one 4 years ago. Guy wanted 750 Euros for it ! 3 years later still not sold, so he finally lowered the priii , no, he actually INCREASED the price, to a wooing 1,000 Euros ! A GRAND !!!  Even a pristine fully restored 576 curve tracer doesn't cost as much, I think ! Using a plug-in would make sense only if I could find for 100 Euros tops, preferably in working order, as if anything is wrong with the fancy rotary switches, it's most likely not repairable, not economically so at least ?!

Anyway. my poor 5111A is in dire need of attention ! Was working fine when I got it,, but I had to put it in storage for a year in a non-climate controlled box, and move it twice in my car, while my new house was being built. When I finally put my lab together 6 month ago, in the house, I tried all my scopes to see how they were doing. The more modern Teks from the 8à's and '90s are just fine, but the 5111A from the '70s has now developed all sorts of problems, it's very very sick indeed. For sure I need to spend many hours and pull a few hair, to get it going again. Definitely a good candidate for a thread in the repair section...

And, of course, there is TekWiki, which is just a great resource. https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/Introduction_to_the_5000-Series_Oscilloscopes

Yeah, been lurking on that site for a few years now, it's my Tek bible... the companion of the "Tekscopes" mailing list where all the knowledgeable grey beards often helped me out with my old Tek scopes...

[AVGresponding]

Joy another ebay buyer pain in the arse to deal with.

At this point I think I'm done with selling anything on ebay. Anyone want about 10kg of lego? 

If only you knew someone that likes to buy components by the kilo...   

[bd139]

If only you knew someone that likes to buy components by the kilo...   

 . There's a fair bit to go. Last few lots I got through.... https://imgur.com/a/RLuKwwX

[BU508A]

Thanks for the warm welcome people. One the one hand I feel sad because Tautech was right and I indeed suffer from a disease, but on the other hand I now know there are other people with the same problem, so and we can comfort each other. So... all in all I think I am glad I came here 
[...]

Welcome to our warm, comfortable and nice rabbit hole. 
And from now on, you know, that you can checkout any time you like but you can't never leave? 

As for the Tek-scopes: occasionly, Martin from the German site "Wellenkino" (wave cinema) is showing up here from time to time.
I can imagine, that you and him are having something in common ... 

Starting picture from his website:


Again, welcome to the TEA-house, have a seat, some cookies and a drink.
Enjoy!

  

[Cerebus]

Absolutely.  The only way to learn is to get experience and the only way to get experience is to get experience, and that means using real live patients.  It's the medical equivalent of a "live fire exercise" in the military.

There's an old saying among surgeons here about learning to do any particular operation: "Watch one, do one, teach one.".

[bd139]

You forgot the intermediate stages of fucking one up.

On that matter I keep getting sent picture of things being dissected by my eldest at the moment. Last week was a picture titled “lung” 

[mnementh]

Speaking of which... 

Of course, there are no quick, easy answers; it has power where it's supposed to, so not just a bad connector somewhere. Now comes the long scour of the intardnet looking for any technical reference... 

mnem
*tzzzzzt*

[Brumby]

If you want to put an image inline, you need to wrap it with img tags like so:

[img height=120]https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/?action=dlattach;attach=1206980;image[/img]

Correct

.... (the space after the first bracket is the only reason SMF doesn't process that line as a inline image).

Space.... what space?    There are other ways 

[beanflying]

If you want to put an image inline, you need to wrap it with img tags like so:

[img height=120]https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/?action=dlattach;attach=1206980;image[/img]

Correct

.... (the space after the first bracket is the only reason SMF doesn't process that line as a inline image).

There are other ways 

The issue is that Dave/GNIF haven't fixed or updated the code on the plugin they did have working for inline attachments. They upgraded the core and didn't upgrade/fix  the mod. Inline attachments is not part of the SMF core.

[mnementh]

If you want to put an image inline, you need to wrap it with img tags like so:

[img height=120]https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/?action=dlattach;attach=1206980;image[/img]

Correct

.... (the space after the first bracket is the only reason SMF doesn't process that line as a inline image).

Space.... what space?    There are other ways 

Yebbutt I'm lazy and my balls ache.

I didn't say that was the only way...  only that the extra whitespace was the only thing stopping SMF from processing the $tring that I used as a inline image.

mnem

[mnementh]

A positive note:

Today my RMA X570 Aorus Pro/WiFi mainboard finally shows as received. Here's hoping. 

mnem
*toddles off to ded*

[cyclin_al]

Joy another ebay buyer pain in the arse to deal with.

At this point I think I'm done with selling anything on ebay. Anyone want about 10kg of lego? 

Hmmmmm, how much for shipping across the pond?  In all seriousness, the shipping is probably too much to be practical.
I still play with the stuff.  I have an excuse as father-son time with a kid who loves his lego.