Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Vince]

NOS still in box Fluke 8060A  on UK ebay £195 www.ebay.co.uk/itm/265111004557?

Wow, they became that expensive ?! 

OK it's NOS with the box, I get it but... got mine in like new condition 4 years ago for 50 Euros (40 pounds ?). OK I don't have the box and manuals... so what....
I don(t have the DC adapter either, but neither does this NOS one it seems ?

Love mine. I couldn't believe the specs when I read them, such an accurate meter at such an early time in DMM development, was stunned.
Definitely an excellent acquisition for 50 Euros, as well as being a nice piece of history.

200 pounds sounds like a lot for an old polystyrene box and a manual ?
I don't know.... I guess I am just not the target audience for this sort of market... 

[Specmaster]

Anyone looking for a good bench meter might like to look at this, although I'm not so sure of the price, seems a bit high to me.

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/402776299756

It's about £200 overpriced, mine, in near perfect condition, was less than £70 shipped. Hells bells, I paid less for the Keithley 2000, and that is a massively superior meter.


EDIT: Had a closer look at the pics, mine is in way better condition.

Yes, however, TTi prices have been creeping of late, especially post Brexit and the last 5 sold on the bay of evil went for £285, £83, £123, £200 and my one I got for £71. I've noticed that a lot of TE gear in the UK, particularly British made TE moving upwards in price. Like yours, mine is also near on perfect condition and is one of my all-time favourite bench meters 

Seems way overpriced to me, considering a working 3478A can be had for ~100 quid almost any day; less if you can be patient and shop carefully.    Shameful, actually; for some reason the 3478A just gets no respect.

mnem
 

The problem with the 3478A is that although it is a very capable meter, it is somewhat limited in its ranges and most certainly cannot do many of the things that my 4503, 1905A or the 1906 can do and of course it has that unlit LCD V lovely and sexy red LEDs and it also has the limiting 300VDC range.

[Vince]

Is this enough fine control of wattage...? They make these for putting lots of cheap LED floodlights in the garage; I've used one with appliance bulbs to fine-adjust max current on my dim-bulb tester. Costs $10-15 on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bulb+splitter+7+in+1

Interesting ! 

However no it still does not cut it. It makes it more practical to adapt the wattage to the DUT, but still is an on/off safety device. I was talking about fine control as far as ramping up the voltage slowly. A dim bulb tester is no help for this, no matter how fancy one makes it.

[beanflying]

FIRST post Fire 

[xrunner]

#2

[beanflying]

TEA Discord has been getting a workout and even had more dribble than 'normally' happens here https://discord.gg/euCvZjxU

[med6753]

Here, at last. Now I can go to bed and sleep soundly. 

[mnementh]

*flaps down as lightly as a old fat dwagon can*   Mhmmmm....It's good to be back.



mnem
Be it ever so crumbled... there's no place like home...

[mnementh]

Is this enough fine control of wattage...? They make these for putting lots of cheap LED floodlights in the garage; I've used one with appliance bulbs to fine-adjust max current on my dim-bulb tester. Costs $10-15 on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/s?k=bulb+splitter+7+in+1

Interesting ! 

However no it still does not cut it. It makes it more practical to adapt the wattage to the DUT, but still is an on/off safety device. I was talking about fine control as far as ramping up the voltage slowly. A dim bulb tester is no help for this, no matter how fancy one makes it.

Yeah, I'd still want one of these inline with a variac, myself. A lot of the time you'll find that once things start turning on in a SMPS, especially the older designs, that's when a short appears. The scariac doesn't stop the magic smoke from coming out then, but rather encourages the switcher transistor to try and sink more current to make up for the lower voltage.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

A'aight you maniacs... play nice while I toddle off to sleep. med, please don't spray the neverending Taco Truck blue again... last time we had to throw away a whole morning's worth of Bacon, Egg & Cheese tacos...

mnem
*knocks self unconscious with a server mallet*

[Cubdriver]

Just as when the microwave oven craps out and makes you acutely and painfully aware of how you rely on it, you don't realize how frequently you pop in here to take a quick look until popping in here no longer works.  Good to see that the forum has returned - that was a long couple of days.

-Pat

[BU508A]

The new recruit is a leftie too !

I do everything left, except wrist watch on the right arm but that's normal for a leftie.
I gave up on wrist watches 25 years ago anyway, at the end of highschool. They just get in the way. Useless too. If they were indispensable then in 25 years I guess I would have suffered from it by now... but I never did.

The only thing I do with the right hand is operate my scopes... because yes, they clearly were designed by righties : the control panel is always on the RIGHT side of the CRT ! How stupid is that... so using my left hand is cumbersome at best, and at any rate useless since my arm would obfuscate the screen so I would not see what I am doing as I am turning knobs ! Pfff.... bloody righties...

Luckily the old tube Tek scopes have the CRT at the top !    But still... there are some controls on the right side of the CRT anyway...

Most HP 180 series also had the CRT above the controls, as does my old Yokogawa storage scope.



David

Incoming DL1200A here by next week. 
Will do then a teardown of it.

@Pat:
To quote bd139: "Always have an exit plan." In this case: discord.

Meanwhile on my bench:


 

[McBryce]

Definitely worked out better than doing spreadsheets. 

You can see your neighbors; they're too fucking close. 

mnem
current mood: dickwise

I suppose Canadians aren't used being able to see their neighbours, even if they and their neighbours are standing on the roof of their houses.   McBryce.

P.s. AND STOP MAKING ME WANT TO BUY A CASIO EDIFICE!!

LOL... I've been this way since long before I ran away to Canuckistan... I inherited that attitude from my grandparents. 

mnem

Eevblog down... nothing to repair... Yeah, I went and bought a Casio Edifice. 

McBryce.

[Robert763]

What was I saying about using "the cloud" for everthing last week....

[Ice-Tea]

Was considering keeping the Time Electronics DC calibrator I had on eBay for myself. So, off course it finally sold.

Does any of you lot have something to confess? 

[McBryce]

What was I saying about using "the cloud" for everthing last week....

And "the cloud" is immune to fires in the server building?

McBryce.

[capt bullshot]

What was I saying about using "the cloud" for everthing last week....

And "the cloud" is immune to fires in the server building?

McBryce.

As clouds usually consist of condensed water, you'd better fear the water damage

[BU508A]

Was considering keeping the Time Electronics DC calibrator I had on eBay for myself. So, off course it finally sold.

Does any of you lot have something to confess? 

I'm having a Fluke 3330B and two Fluke 732A, all uncalibrated.
Missed that Yokogawa DC calibrator the other day on ebay (it went for 470 EUR)

[tautech]

Does any of you lot have something to confess?

Only the box full of 100-600 MHz 10x autosense scope probes ordered last week have arrived.

Time to pull out the SA and sweep them all to see if they're any good. 

[tggzzz]

Just as when the microwave oven craps out and makes you acutely and painfully aware of how you rely on it, you don't realize how frequently you pop in here to take a quick look until popping in here no longer works.  Good to see that the forum has returned - that was a long couple of days.

The worrying thing is that I still didn't manage to do the chores I've been putting off. I just used a little imagination

[tggzzz]

Working hp1725a 275MHz scope in Maidstone UK, £85. I'd be tempted, but it is too far to trog for something I really don't need.
https://www.gumtree.com/p/hobbies-collectibles/hp-oscilloscope/1401753458

[med6753]

This is what I was doing during the outage....

Type 321A burn-in status. One anomaly. It takes upwards of a half hour or more for the vertical to stabilize after power up. But once stabilized it's pretty much solid and the DC balance has minimal shift. I think the 7586 Nuvistor in the pre-amp is the culprit. I have spares so I'm going to change it. But I'll have to check the vertical gain, compensation, and DC balance all over again but it's no big deal.   

The Type 547. Studied the manual and there is one terminal strip to check all the PSU outputs for voltage, ripple, and typical resistance to ground. Perfect. Not so fast. That terminal strip is on the underside of the scope. (See pix). No way can I attempt to move that scope on it's side at this time. And there's absolutely no way I will attempt to power it up unless I can at least perform the resistance checks. As it is applying power to a unit with unknown power status is way out of my comfort zone. Preference would be total PSU re-cap first. So this project is on hold for now.

Mouser order. Ordered parts Tuesday. Initially was going to ship Wednesday. Got an e-mail that said due to warehouse load and Covid precautions the order would ship today (Thursday). I have no problem with 2 day turnaround but it presents a problem. UPS doesn't deliver on Saturday. So I'll get the order on Monday. This is the 2nd time I paid $7.99 for UPS two day and didn't get the service I paid for. Not Mouser's fault. FedEx and worthless USPS deliver on Saturday. Why not UPS?

The parts in that order are a BOM for the PSU re-cap of the Type 422, Once that's complete I can perform final calibration/compensation and that project will be complete.     

Also, notifications that there are new posts to this thread isn't working.

[beanflying]

What was I saying about using "the cloud" for everthing last week....

  In theory ALL of the internet can be considered 'cloud' unless it is intranet in the same building.

Co-location of backup servers and suspect location of Generator sets within the building in a server farm run on a shoestring with WATER as a fire suppression mechanism are matters for another topic.

[Specmaster]

What was I saying about using "the cloud" for everthing last week....

To coin a phrase, 1000x this.

Robert, you beat me to this statement, but the cloud is not our friend at all, never ever put anything on the cloud that you wouldn't want to get into the public domain.

[beanflying]

What was I saying about using "the cloud" for everthing last week....

To coin a phrase, 1000x this.

Robert, you beat me to this statement, but the cloud is not our friend at all, never ever put anything on the cloud that you wouldn't want to get into the public domain.

Not the place for anti Cloud  there is already a rant thread for that crap elsewhere!