Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[factory]

My mind blanked the new stuff, can't see past the recycled bits.

Hot air gun and bang the board on the bench is a common technique 
Personally I don't like the seller. He seems to be breaking kit for precious metals and selling what he does not want. Prices are high and parts are often misrepresented. Typical of ebay his over-priced stuff often sells. He has listed HP 8922x cellphone test set modules as having  been removed from a 8920A. The modules are similar, but most are not identical and won't work properly in a 8920x
He may be De-milling some kit that he can't contractually sell complete but he has also bought TE items from RAMCO auctions and broken then. Unfortunatly a lot of kit sells for less than you can get for its component parts.

Unfortunately there are many seller that are only interested in parting stuff out.
Haven't got a hot air gun, still must have problems with parts with leads that are folded over.

David

[mnementh]

My Brain is hurting. Chinese made version of a fully open sourced project and the Muppets subbed in 100k 7 bit Digital Pots instead of the specced 50k 8 bit ones Wonder why my Smoothieboard isn't talking to the steppers

Midnight here so a double Scotch and Chocolate for the brain.....

mnem
*distraction-ily*

WTF is that supposed to be? A Hairy tooth? 

*bean grouses aboot Chinese dingles making stoopit substitutions that eff up a working design*

Here, lookit this cop writing a guy a ticket for being a complete ballsack!!!

mnem
*This edification provided by The Society for the Prevention of People Being Ballsacks In Public Places*

[mnementh]

My mind blanked the new stuff, can't see past the recycled bits...

Fair enuf. It's a slippery slope, I'll agree. I was just wishing for that kind of "fun-time" again; the closest I ever get now is stuff like stereos and occasional computers/bits from the thrift and schizz. The PC I'm on right now is a i5 HP I bought for $9.99 when we first got up here; added a random spinning rust and 2nd stick of ram and gave it to the boi for a schoolwork box. That kind of thing isn't really tinkery; it just feeds that the Best Form of Recycling is Re-Use hoarder's instinct. 

Back in the day, I'm sure things like that gyroscope wound up in the box simply because they needed to strip down to just metal so they could get "clean aluminum" prices for the enclosures & panels the bits came out of, and they felt they could get more by the pound in the grab box. The xenon strobes came in sections of mouse-bite panel broken down to 3x3 pieces so they'd fit in the box; obviously they never got produced as anything.

meh.

mnem

[mnementh]

My Brain is hurting. Chinese made version of a fully open sourced project and the Muppets subbed in 100k 7 bit Digital Pots instead of the specced 50k 8 bit ones Wonder why my Smoothieboard isn't talking to the steppers    Midnight here so a double Scotch and Chocolate for the brain.....

mnem
*distraction-ily*

Sub $3 worth for the two Digital Quad pots but I think a few kicks in the balls might be preferable to reworking the 20 pin TSOP packages by hand 

LOL... My intent was to provide a momentary amusing diversion from your misery, not to cast it in such sharp contrast. 

The parts are at least pin-compatible, I hope...? 

mnem
 

[bd139]

My mind blanked the new stuff, can't see past the recycled bits...

Fair enuf. It's a slippery slope, I'll agree. I was just wishing for that kind of "fun-time" again; the closest I ever get now is stuff like stereos and occasional computers/bits from the thrift and schizz. The PC I'm on right now is a i5 HP I bought for $9.99 when we first got up here; added a random spinning rust and 2nd stick of ram and gave it to the boi for a schoolwork box. That kind of thing isn't really tinkery; it just feeds that the Best Form of Recycling is Re-Use hoarder's instinct. 

Recycling PCs is fairly safe fun. Quite enjoy doing that. Perhaps I should have been a necromancer.

My current most successful patient is an old i5 Lenovo desktop i have been keeping spinning for my mother for 9 years now. One new power supply, an SSD and a CMOS battery and cleaning out once a year and sorted. Saying that I bet it drops dead now 

BTW working on the archive script for this thread again. The last outage worries me a bit. Rather than scraping directly it’s using chromedriver as some of the third party image hosts have a lot of trickery to stop me archiving the images with them 

Edit: mnem / AVGresponding ... your markup is giving me a headache 

[Robert763]

My mind blanked the new stuff, can't see past the recycled bits.

Hot air gun and bang the board on the bench is a common technique 
Personally I don't like the seller. He seems to be breaking kit for precious metals and selling what he does not want. Prices are high and parts are often misrepresented. Typical of ebay his over-priced stuff often sells. He has listed HP 8922x cellphone test set modules as having  been removed from a 8920A. The modules are similar, but most are not identical and won't work properly in a 8920x
He may be De-milling some kit that he can't contractually sell complete but he has also bought TE items from RAMCO auctions and broken then. Unfortunatly a lot of kit sells for less than you can get for its component parts.

Unfortunately there are many seller that are only interested in parting stuff out.
Haven't got a hot air gun, still must have problems with parts with leads that are folded over.

David

Belt sander , hot air gun, bang on bench 
To be fair the leaded resistors do appear t have been literally pulled. One end bent other end nearly straight. A hook helps with this. You can get one designed for this but I find automatic knitting machine "needles"  work really well. They have a small, very strong hook, solder does not stick to them and the side arm alllows for easy pulling. New ones cost about a £1 each but you can 20 or so on ebay for about £5

[Robert763]

Got a chance o look at the FRK Rubidium. Cleaned off the external decaying foam. I find lifting as uch as possible and then using methanol and an "acid brush" works best. If you press or rub the foam it just makes a sticky mess.
Replaced the fuse and am pretty much back to square 1. The lamp housing does not seem to be getting up to temperature. Have to sort out the insulation before messing with it. Lamp is lit OK
More interestingly, putting the thermocouple probe near to the lamp cavity (it is at 24V hence earlier fuse blowing inciden) causes the digital thermometer to turn off  Presumably RF because if I touch th TC sheath and chassis it is OK.
Looking at the circuit (below) there are two decoupling capacitors on the housing. These are C12 and C14, both 6800pF 100V MLCCs. So ther should not bethat much RF in there. I'm not taking the back plate off to check then until I've sourced some insulation. This is because it's a fair bit of dissasembly and I don't want it sitting around in bits waiting. 
Annoyingly, a couple of months ago a neighbour was having an extension done and the were some Kingspan off-cuts in the skip. I was going to pick some up but had no immediate need for is so didn't bother.....

EDIT Forgot circuit

[ch_scr]

Got a chance o look at the FRK Rubidium. Cleaned off the external decaying foam. I find lifting as uch as possible and then using methanol and an "acid brush" works best. If you press or rub the foam it just makes a sticky mess.
Replaced the fuse and am pretty much back to square 1. The lamp housing does not seem to be getting up to temperature. Have to sort out the insulation before messing with it. Lamp is lit OK
More interestingly, putting the thermocouple probe near to the lamp cavity (it is at 24V hence earlier fuse blowing inciden) causes the digital thermometer to turn off  Presumably RF because if I touch th TC sheath and chassis it is OK.
Looking at the circuit (below) there are two decoupling capacitors on the housing. These are C12 and C14, both 6800pF 100V MLCCs. So ther should not bethat much RF in there. I'm not taking the back plate off to check then until I've sourced some insulation. This is because it's a fair bit of dissasembly and I don't want it sitting around in bits waiting. 
Annoyingly, a couple of months ago a neighbour was having an extension done and the were some Kingspan off-cuts in the skip. I was going to pick some up but had no immediate need for is so didn't bother.....

Look for "Aerogel insulation mat" on EPay, that stuff should be nicely insulating but will not decay under high temperatures. Quite ugly to handle though, so if the insulation is exposed: not recommended.

[bd139]

This is a test post for TEA archive script. Please ignore 



Markup 1 bold

Markup 2 Italic

test quote

[mnementh]

My mind blanked the new stuff, can't see past the recycled bits...

Fair enuf. It's a slippery slope, I'll agree. I was just wishing for that kind of "fun-time" again; the closest I ever get now is stuff like stereos and occasional computers/bits from the thrift and schizz. The PC I'm on right now is a i5 HP I bought for $9.99 when we first got up here; added a random spinning rust and 2nd stick of ram and gave it to the boi for a schoolwork box. That kind of thing isn't really tinkery; it just feeds that the Best Form of Recycling is Re-Use hoarder's instinct. 

Recycling PCs is fairly safe fun. Quite enjoy doing that. Perhaps I should have been a necromancer.

My current most successful patient is an old i5 Lenovo desktop i have been keeping spinning for my mother for 9 years now. One new power supply, an SSD and a CMOS battery and cleaning out once a year and sorted. Saying that I bet it drops dead now 

BTW working on the archive script for this thread again. The last outage worries me a bit. Rather than scraping directly it’s using chromedriver as some of the third party image hosts have a lot of trickery to stop me archiving the images with them 

Edit: mnem / AVGresponding ... your markup is giving me a headache 

It's getting a lot harder anymore to buy anything reasonable except off-lease fleet-model laptops. These aren't always the greatest deal already since they launch of out the gate with ~2 years less usable life because they're produced using technology that's a generation or two behind current at the time of manufacture. But even before COVID, I was constantly beating my head against people trying to get real money from 6-8, even 10-year-old PC hardware, or newer production of stuff that is 10-year-old tech. 

You mean like this? };=)~~~~<

mnem
bwahahaha!

[bd139]

Die! 

On PC front it’s similarly inane here. If you lurk you can get some decent stuff for not much money. BNIB T495 for £550 is a winner when T470 are going £449 used

[McBryce]

For the Racal Dana / Nixie friends among us. This has been hanging around on ebay for a few days: https://www.ebay.de/itm/Racal-Dana-Digital-Multimeter-4-5-Stellen-Nixierohren/194045188505

McBryce.

[mnementh]

Die! 

On PC front it’s similarly inane here. If you lurk you can get some decent stuff for not much money. BNIB T495 for £550 is a winner when T470 are going £449 used

Yeah, you got lucky on that one... can't count on that kindof luck when you need a new machine.

So what do you think of NVidia/ARM/Grace...? Think it's the "game-changer" for the datacenter that they're promising, or do you think they're just trying to bring their consumer-grade level of transdimensional bullshit to industrial/corporate/cloud services where the real money aggregators now live...?

mnem
 

[Cerebus]

It's possible those collet knobs might be from the Elma Classic collet knob range;
https://www.elma.com/-/media/products/products-files/knob_classic-collet_datasheet_e.pdf

David

Or Sifam. I think there might even be some degree of interchangeability between the two ranges given how similar they look.

[bd139]

Die! 

On PC front it’s similarly inane here. If you lurk you can get some decent stuff for not much money. BNIB T495 for £550 is a winner when T470 are going £449 used

Yeah, you got lucky on that one... can't count on that kindof luck when you need a new machine.

So what do you think of NVidia/ARM/Grace...? Think it's the "game-changer" for infrastructure they're promising, or do you think they're just trying to bring their consumer-grade level of transdimensional bullshit to industrial/corporate/cloud services where the real money aggregators now live...?

mnem
 

Not luck. Lurk. I know a few sellers who have large stocks of them and are trying not to saturate the market. The first part of any such thing is look at the sold items, then look for stuff you want to pay for and then ask the seller if they have any more.

As for NVidia/ARM etc. Bwuhahahahahaha not a chance. Firstly no one likes or trusts NVidia. The big ARM boxes cost real money, more than the Xeons due to the lower volume and the TDP is pretty damn high as well. The only thing you gain is better core scalability at the moment which is not something you should be relying on for scalability at the application level. Current savings work out around 10% on ARM nodes but that's quickly killed off by running two parallel toolchains and the pipeline side of things.  Then there's the differences between each platform as the ARM ecosystem is not standardised at all.

Key thing is you don't want to single source your entire infrastructure. As much as it's shit, x86-64 has two reliable vendors, standardised platform, decent supply chain (intel at least), proven track record and parity with the toolchain and development nodes.

Even if I'd rather work on ARM, it doesn't make sense anywhere other than mobile, embedded and entirely controlled desktops (apple will do fine on it)

[Robert763]

Got a chance o look at the FRK Rubidium. Cleaned off the external decaying foam. I find lifting as uch as possible and then using methanol and an "acid brush" works best. If you press or rub the foam it just makes a sticky mess.
Replaced the fuse and am pretty much back to square 1. The lamp housing does not seem to be getting up to temperature. Have to sort out the insulation before messing with it. Lamp is lit OK
More interestingly, putting the thermocouple probe near to the lamp cavity (it is at 24V hence earlier fuse blowing inciden) causes the digital thermometer to turn off  Presumably RF because if I touch th TC sheath and chassis it is OK.
Looking at the circuit (below) there are two decoupling capacitors on the housing. These are C12 and C14, both 6800pF 100V MLCCs. So ther should not bethat much RF in there. I'm not taking the back plate off to check then until I've sourced some insulation. This is because it's a fair bit of dissasembly and I don't want it sitting around in bits waiting. 
Annoyingly, a couple of months ago a neighbour was having an extension done and the were some Kingspan off-cuts in the skip. I was going to pick some up but had no immediate need for is so didn't bother.....

Look for "Aerogel insulation mat" on EPay, that stuff should be nicely insulating but will not decay under high temperatures. Quite ugly to handle though, so if the insulation is exposed: not recommended.

.

Been looking at that. Most of it just seems to be standard silica insulation, not real aerogel. I'm tempted to use either isocyanate type foam (Kingspan) wrapped in kapton tape or silicone foam. Just don't want to buy a full sheet of either

[ch_scr]

Got a chance o look at the FRK Rubidium. Cleaned off the external decaying foam. I find lifting as uch as possible and then using methanol and an "acid brush" works best. If you press or rub the foam it just makes a sticky mess.
Replaced the fuse and am pretty much back to square 1. The lamp housing does not seem to be getting up to temperature. Have to sort out the insulation before messing with it. Lamp is lit OK
More interestingly, putting the thermocouple probe near to the lamp cavity (it is at 24V hence earlier fuse blowing inciden) causes the digital thermometer to turn off  Presumably RF because if I touch th TC sheath and chassis it is OK.
Looking at the circuit (below) there are two decoupling capacitors on the housing. These are C12 and C14, both 6800pF 100V MLCCs. So ther should not bethat much RF in there. I'm not taking the back plate off to check then until I've sourced some insulation. This is because it's a fair bit of dissasembly and I don't want it sitting around in bits waiting. 
Annoyingly, a couple of months ago a neighbour was having an extension done and the were some Kingspan off-cuts in the skip. I was going to pick some up but had no immediate need for is so didn't bother.....

Look for "Aerogel insulation mat" on EPay, that stuff should be nicely insulating but will not decay under high temperatures. Quite ugly to handle though, so if the insulation is exposed: not recommended.

.

Been looking at that. Most of it just seems to be standard silica insulation, not real aerogel. I'm tempted to use either isocyanate type foam (Kingspan) wrapped in kapton tape or silicone foam. Just don't want to buy a full sheet of either

Your are partially right. It is silica insulation infused with tiny "crumbs" of the aerogel. Which make it ugly to work with, because some crumble out. It leaves a kind of "water-resistant" residue/dust on the surface you worked with it and your hands if you are not wearing gloves. Feeling on the hands is similar to applying "tent-proof", if you know what I mean.

[mnementh]

Die! 

On PC front it’s similarly inane here. If you lurk you can get some decent stuff for not much money. BNIB T495 for £550 is a winner when T470 are going £449 used

Yeah, you got lucky on that one... can't count on that kindof luck when you need a new machine.

So what do you think of NVidia/ARM/Grace...? Think it's the "game-changer" for infrastructure they're promising, or do you think they're just trying to bring their consumer-grade level of transdimensional bullshit to industrial/corporate/cloud services where the real money aggregators now live...?

mnem
 

Not luck. Lurk. I know a few sellers who have large stocks of them and are trying not to saturate the market. The first part of any such thing is look at the sold items, then look for stuff you want to pay for and then ask the seller if they have any more.

As for NVidia/ARM etc. Bwuhahahahahaha not a chance. Firstly no one likes or trusts NVidia. The big ARM boxes cost real money, more than the Xeons due to the lower volume and the TDP is pretty damn high as well. The only thing you gain is better core scalability at the moment which is not something you should be relying on for scalability at the application level. Current savings work out around 10% on ARM nodes but that's quickly killed off by running two parallel toolchains and the pipeline side of things.  Then there's the differences between each platform as the ARM ecosystem is not standardised at all.

Key thing is you don't want to single source your entire infrastructure. As much as it's shit, x86-64 has two reliable vendors, standardised platform, decent supply chain (intel at least), proven track record and parity with the toolchain and development nodes.

Even if I'd rather work on ARM, it doesn't make sense anywhere other than mobile, embedded and entirely controlled desktops (apple will do fine on it)

Yeah, I figure fApple's angle is they did the math and decided that going ARM will save them x dollars in the long run, and it's enough for them to be willing to eat the up-front cost right now. End of discussion.

In their market, there is value in completely changing your hardware base periodically; it goes hand in hand with the Exclusive Club angle which is their stock in trade as the faithful just eat that shit right up, plus it makes planned obsolescence much easier to paint a pretty face on for those who are not Of The Body .

As for lurking... yeah, I did a lot of that back in the day when people didn't automatically assume you were some kind of con artist for PMing someone that way on the platform... and I haven't really cultivated any platforms other than fleaBay since Amazon started making it so easy to find a deal I can live with on almost anything. I suppose I should start looking now that local brick & mortars are so desperate for business any way they can get it... 

mnem
"But da-a-a-a-d... I don'n wanna go shopping..."

[factory]

It's possible those collet knobs might be from the Elma Classic collet knob range;
https://www.elma.com/-/media/products/products-files/knob_classic-collet_datasheet_e.pdf

David

Or Sifam. I think there might even be some degree of interchangeability between the two ranges given how similar they look.

Had a look through their website, can't see anything similar unless they have discontinued them.
The Elma catalog I linked does show some similar to what is already fitted to Vince's counter.

David

[mansaxel]

Yeah, I figure fApple's angle is they did the math and decided that going ARM will save them x dollars in the long run, and it's enough for them to be willing to eat the up-front cost right now. End of discussion.

In their market, there is value in completely changing your hardware base periodically; it goes hand in hand with the Exclusive Club angle which is their stock in trade as the faithful just eat that shit right up, plus it makes planned obsolescence much easier to paint a pretty face on for those who are not Of The Body .

The sleekness and insane battery time attainable with no perceptible hit in performance (au contraire!) for most workloads is probably as tempting.

Note that Apple have swapped processors around a lot. The swap from PowerPC to x86 was probably more painful, but they're reaping that now.  Which means they can calculate on a less painful transition, what with Microsoft never getting close to daring that.

You don't have to suspect anything more than that, and while I'm no catholic, I find some medieval philosophy attractive, for instance the works of William of Occam.

[mansaxel]

It's possible those collet knobs might be from the Elma Classic collet knob range;
https://www.elma.com/-/media/products/products-files/knob_classic-collet_datasheet_e.pdf

David

Or Sifam. I think there might even be some degree of interchangeability between the two ranges given how similar they look.

Had a look through their website, can't see anything similar unless they have discontinued them.
The Elma catalog I linked does show some similar to what is already fitted to Vince's counter.

David

Elma is nice. My Studer mixer is all Elma, and I've recently been able to fix a few flaws by getting new, identical, knobs and caps for it.

A small teaser from the mixer-fixer posting I'm preparing is attached.

[factory]

They are nice, we had one product that used them at work, with a very compact rotary switch & knob from Elma, only trouble is they often got broken off, I seem to remember we had great difficulty in getting the replacement figure dials to go with them (now discontinued & dropped from the current catalog, attached is an old catalog I downloaded a few years ago).

David

[URI]

Speaking of desoldering, I have bench-news regarding soldering.   

A while ago I acquired a JBC HD-2B soldering station with T470A handle, some tips and original JBC stand for a half-decent price (270€) -given the corona-driven somewhat higher price level.

The station was delivered last week and today I had the time to modify it to accept C470 cartridges (JBC-tips, 48V) as well as C245 cartridges (24V). Nice thing is that the T470 handle accepts both types of cartridges.
After a little bodging and adding a 2pole DPDT switch I now have a manually switchable HD-2B soldering station I can use all types of C470 and C245 cartridges for soldering jobs demanding high and higher power/heat*. 

New topic: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/modification-of-the-jbc-hd-2b-soldering-station-to-work-with-24v-and-48v-tips/

HD-2B heating a C245 cartridge:


HD-2B heating a C470 cartridge:


I put the switch on the back right above the power inlet:


The modification I made:


edit: There's a third connection involved with the 12V supply, that i didn't show: It might be a NTC sharing one connection with the 12V supply. Didn't modify.

edit²: *-compared to my T12 KSGER OLED-soldering stations with self-assembled alternative power supply.
The T12s have become my daily driver and have pushed out my Wellers completely.

[Saskia]

Question: Tek Scopemeter THS 720A

any good ? Fair price ? Seller is asking 270€

[URI]

Question: Tek Scopemeter THS 720A

any good ? Fair price ? Seller is asking 270€

I wouldn't go for it.
Ok, personal experience involved:
The battery is a weak spot. Is the charger/power supply included?

I had to work with those at work and didn't like it.
The interface is just not what you want from a smoothly functioning oscilloscope.
Ok, it's a TEK, but there are newer tablet style ones (not TEK, Chinese stuff) with a decent touch interface with extra rotary knobs which I prefer very much.