Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tautech]

Missed all the fun about liquid cooling while sleeping.   

Amateurs the lot of ya ! 
This is how our IT Admin gnif does it: 

[Cerebus]

LOL... I don't believe actual remorse is possible for that species. Occasional guilt, at the moment of being caught, yes... which usually turns into an immediate "You didn't see that" and stalking off in disdain unless you're already after them with a broom or water bottle... 

To get the proper depth for any candy color, it has to be one or more clear color coats over a metallic base coat. No other way. You can really deepen the "feel" by laying down a couple coats of clear-clear before the colored clear... then a couple coats after... then...   *droool*  after umpteen untouched coats, it's the last one that gets the paw-mark or clump of fur.

mnem
WhuWeTalkinAboot...?

FTFY

[mnementh]

A very cordial "Fuck you." to you as well, C. 

mnem
No, I've never spent hours plucking bugs out of a paint job with tweezers... no, no, no...

[mnementh]

   I still like butterflies...

mnem
...and that's why dual 120x240mm AiO coolers FTW.

So we shall just call you the water dragon then https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_water_dragon   Level of $ spent to cool the GPU out of interest?

It is no coincidence that the graphic I chose to make my custom CPU Cooler badge is in fact a water dragon.

   https://www.gigabyte.com/ca/Graphics-Card/GV-N208SAORUS-W-8GC#kf

As for the liquid cooled GPU... at the time, they were the only 2080 Super left on the market, except for gougers selling air-cooled RTX 2080s and 2080 Supers (even the flupping Founder's Edition!) for $100 more. Models with a proper triple-fan cooler were $200 more.

I was really tired of waiting for Big Navi... I wanted to run my new Odyssey+ goggles at native res and frequency. So my wife enabled me and plonked down the CAD$1100/US$840 for my Aorus Waterforce RTX2080 Super for Father's Day.

Absolutely zero regrets!

mnem
 

[bd139]

According to Murphy, a cheap 3080 will suddenly appear on the market tomorrow 

I just won a bottom end M1 MacBook Air in a dev marketing bullshit prize draw. First thing I’ve ever won in my entire life I think. Now the question is eBay it or play with it then eBay it 

[Cubdriver]

LOL... I don't believe actual remorse is possible for that species. Occasional guilt, at the moment of being caught, yes... which usually turns into an immediate "You didn't see that" and stalking off in disdain unless you're already after them with a broom or water bottle... 

To get the proper depth for any candy color, it has to be one or more clear color coats over a metallic base coat. No other way. You can really deepen the "feel" by laying down a couple coats of clear-clear before the colored clear... then a couple coats after... then...   *droool*  after umpteen untouched coats, it's the last one that gets the paw-mark or clump of fur.

mnem
WhuWeTalkinAboot...?

FTFY

In this case it would be singed fur or crusts of paw pad bits embedded since this is powder coating that gets cured in a 400* F (~205* C) oven.  My bet is they'd only do that once.

-Pat

[mnementh]

Missed all the fun about liquid cooling while sleeping.   

Amateurs the lot of ya !  This is how our IT Admin gnif does it:     

Yeah, Linus did a "whole-room of editing PCs with shared water-cooling" project a few years back... the whole shebang; huge radiator out the window, quick-disconnects, sweated copper tubing, etc... turned into a epic 7-part project that makes mansaxel's "CPU cooling via swimming pool" project seem downright plebian.   

I cringed for days watching that. 

mnem

(holy fucking asscrackers... was that really 7 years ago already...?)

[mnementh]

According to Murphy, a cheap 3080 will suddenly appear on the market tomorrow 

I just won a bottom end M1 MacBook Air in a dev marketing bullshit prize draw. First thing I’ve ever won in my entire life I think. Now the question is eBay it or play with it then eBay it 

Still no regrets. No amount of money saved on a RTX 3080 today is gonna replace the last year and a half of actually playing with my VR goggles. 

mnem
 

[bd139]

Yeah can't beat that. I've run out of stuff to play. Also time to play it in. On that matter I'm out of the TE loop for a bit. I've got a metric ton of excrement to shovel for the next 3-6 months at work and I'm going to have to prioritise other stuff over it .

[Specmaster]

Really 'straight to the exhaust grill'? In the fairly common case of a Tower the GPU (the dominant power emitter/consumer in a gaming/work rig) the only reason that heat goes out at all is because of airflow from inlet fans and these days likely an extra fan at the rear.

If there is no fan at the rear grill the heat from the GPU will take the path of least resistance and go straight into the fans (area of least case pressure) of your likely top mounted Radiator decreasing cooling efficiency unless the case is positively pressurized from the front fans. Even then some of that heat and airflow will likely go into the Radiator.

To much rear fan and you are back into losing one of the so called benefits of water cooling in lower noise and also the reduction in internal case pressure will reduce airflow across the AIO or the fans will need to spin harder to maintain temperature. So it is anairflow juggle.

In the other fairly common case of a front mounted AIO the air from it does not go straight to the outside either and relies heavily on airflow to keep the box cool so in this instance the heated air does not dump straight out at all. So you can not make a general claim about heat (CPU) going straight from the case when you have water cooling it is case and mounting specific.

And none of this is KISS it is additional airflow complexity and more $ spent for a marginal perceived gain.

Well all the cases I have ever owned and seen have all had the AIO at the rear, why on earth would you want the video leads etc coming out of the front. That might be a consideration in some server rooms / commercial environment, but here we were, or at least I am, talking about the average home user pc  where the wires are always kept out of sight when ever possible.

I'm also not talking about marginal perceived gains, I know what my temps and noise levels were and what they are now, and before I went liquid cooling, on really hot days when I was working from home, not only was I getting all hot and bothered sitting at my desk trying get quotes, specification notes and schematics drawn up on the PC, the poor PC also used to suffer as the room reached 30C+ sometimes and the PC used to throttle back.  Once I decided to go down the liquid route, the PC could breathe again and I was the one left struggling with the heat.

Yes liquid cooling does add a layer of complexity, just as it does vehicle engines, but it also does a bloody good job of wicking the heat really quickly from where you don't want it, at the CPU or in some cases, the GPU  and in the engine, the cylinder linings etc and help the longevity of the critical parts.

[25 CPS]

Yeah, I had great plans for playing around and scratch building tube stuff - got tube amp design/building books by Morgan Jones and Bruce Rozenblitt, and more recently Igor Popovich's books...  But along the way foolishly bought that damned 5245L, and years later here we are...   

Hell, I have a pair of VTA's M125 kits partially built and sitting on the shelf, with two quads of KT-120s waiting to come to life.  Wanted to powder coat the chassis before assembly, and needed a bigger curing oven.  Finally got the oven, but in the meantime Lab Cat had knocked one of the previously powder coated transformers off the top rack shelf (where I foolishly thought it was safe, being heavy AND in the middle of the shelf), denting BOTH end bells which means I need to strip and redo it, and I just haven't gotten to it.  Some one of these years...

Board assembly time lapse:
https://photos.smugmug.com/Electronics/M-125s/i-LP53BtP/1/9a0a50e6/L/M-125%20driver%20boards-L.jpg







Powder coat curing video:
https://photos.smugmug.com/Electronics/M-125s/i-3CF8fDG/0/6a70bc49/L/MVI_8157-L.jpg

As for the next TEA hit on the page, yeah, the HP 3585 seems a likely candidate.  That won't be from me, though - don't have one of those.   
(And at the rate this thread is progressing, it will be posted very soon!!)

-Pat

Wow, that's impressive powder coating!  It's a shame the cat got to that one though.  Maybe it's worth leaving that transformer as-is since it's a bit of character and has a great story to go with it?

I've been wanting to scratch build some tube equipment since I was in college.  I've been kicking a couple ideas around for an EL34 power amplifier since I was in college but it was rejected for the final year technical project after someone got a walloping from a guitar amplifier they'd built a few years earlier for their project and the college decided no more vacuum tube projects after that.  I need to see what Hammond Manufacturing has on offer.  And I still want to get one of those reissue Dynaco ST-70 or ST-35 kits.

It won't be me either for page 3585.  I don't have one either.  I have yet to come across one at what I consider a reasonable price.  The places I've seen those for sale so far are surplus equipment companies charging top dollar and that machine looks like it's held its value well.  I've got another machine that duplicates its functionality but if the chance to pick up a 3585 inexpensively comes up, I'll jump on it.

[Cerebus]

According to Murphy, a cheap 3080 will suddenly appear on the market tomorrow 

I just won a bottom end M1 MacBook Air in a dev marketing bullshit prize draw. First thing I’ve ever won in my entire life I think. Now the question is eBay it or play with it then eBay it 

Hmm, so not only do we sound very similar (Your capacitor exploding video passim) but within weeks we both win kit for the "first time in our life". Am I keeping a parallel household in Twickenham that I haven't told myself about? I wouldn't put it past me, I've always thought I sounded a bit shady.

[Cerebus]

LOL... I don't believe actual remorse is possible for that species. Occasional guilt, at the moment of being caught, yes... which usually turns into an immediate "You didn't see that" and stalking off in disdain unless you're already after them with a broom or water bottle... 

To get the proper depth for any candy color, it has to be one or more clear color coats over a metallic base coat. No other way. You can really deepen the "feel" by laying down a couple coats of clear-clear before the colored clear... then a couple coats after... then...   *droool*  after umpteen untouched coats, it's the last one that gets the paw-mark or clump of fur.

mnem
WhuWeTalkinAboot...?

FTFY

In this case it would be singed fur or crusts of paw pad bits embedded since this is powder coating that gets cured in a 400* F (~205* C) oven.  My bet is they'd only do that once.

-Pat

That's what you think, until you check your ebay history and find that you've unknowingly bought a doll's size set of oven gloves and an industrial quantity of tinned tuna...

[factory]

Urgent Member Re Education required  https://www.eevblog.com/forum/buysellwanted/test-equipment-for-sale/msg3559544/#msg3559544

and VK5RC drop the OP a message maybe 

See my passive/aggressive response.

LOL that was perfect! 

Sarky comment left. 

David

[bd139]

According to Murphy, a cheap 3080 will suddenly appear on the market tomorrow 

I just won a bottom end M1 MacBook Air in a dev marketing bullshit prize draw. First thing I’ve ever won in my entire life I think. Now the question is eBay it or play with it then eBay it 

Hmm, so not only do we sound very similar (Your capacitor exploding video passim) but within weeks we both win kit for the "first time in our life". Am I keeping a parallel household in Twickenham that I haven't told myself about? I wouldn't put it past me, I've always thought I sounded a bit shady.

Well not even slightly ironically this was actually entered because I was deflated from not winning anything in the Keysight giveaway for the Nth time running. I live in hope still.

Really I occasionally sign up to the usual dull online product marketing conferences for the potential bait, sit there through 3 hours of someone droning on about an insignificant product which wangjangles your flange while I'm working. It's like having the radio on. Occasionally a half decent product pops out which is useful.

I lie about this being the first thing I've won though. I've won some amazon vouchers, some car door speakers and a beer can squasher. But those weren't very interesting. I suspect though that this is just a case of "well we bought 50 of these for our staff and have 10 left so we can shift one out the door because it's cheap marketing bait". I'm not moaning!

But the cynic in me suspects this is all merely a glitch in the matrix and that one of us will be recycled in the next week to restore order.

Edit: I think it's already spoken for. My eldest has had her eye on one for months now to replace her T470. It may lurk in the cupboard until her birthday. Assuming it actually turns up that is.

[Specmaster]

If you go for a Humax or other similar box check if you can transfer recordings you want to keep over to a PC, I haven't bought a PVR for more than 10 years, the Topfield & a couple of Humax models were the only ones that had USB for doing this (bloody slow though), none of my current TV equipment is HD (neither are my eyes), can't be bothered updating any of it as I don't watch enough TV to justify it. 

There is a VM Tivo box from my Grandparents place in the shed awaiting scrapping, just don't have the right tools to open it, may have to resort to the more careful methods photonicinduction uses. 

David

That was one of the things in favour of the Humax that I used to use. They complied with the FreeView/broadcaster's requirements that you couldn't extract HR recordings to outside the box, but left a hole in one corner of the setup that allowed you to do exactly that which wasn't documented but was easy to find out how to do with the most trivial bit of Googling. In fact for the one I used to use there was a third party supported alternative firmware that kept all the standard features and added others, including hassle free export of HD content.

Yeh, I have been looking at the Humax systems but they do seem to be fairly expensive items these days compared to the first PVR I brought a while ago with Kodi already loaded on it, which I soon got fed up with having to keep searching around for new depositaries as the channels were not up for long before they got closed down again, and so I was forever chasing my butt around the system trying to  keep as many channels as I could.

[Specmaster]

According to Murphy, a cheap 3080 will suddenly appear on the market tomorrow 

I just won a bottom end M1 MacBook Air in a dev marketing bullshit prize draw. First thing I’ve ever won in my entire life I think. Now the question is eBay it or play with it then eBay it 

Hmm, so not only do we sound very similar (Your capacitor exploding video passim) but within weeks we both win kit for the "first time in our life". Am I keeping a parallel household in Twickenham that I haven't told myself about? I wouldn't put it past me, I've always thought I sounded a bit shady.

Well not even slightly ironically this was actually entered because I was deflated from not winning anything in the Keysight giveaway for the Nth time running. I live in hope still.

Really I occasionally sign up to the usual dull online product marketing conferences for the potential bait, sit there through 3 hours of someone droning on about an insignificant product which wangjangles your flange while I'm working. It's like having the radio on. Occasionally a half decent product pops out which is useful.

I lie about this being the first thing I've won though. I've won some amazon vouchers, some car door speakers and a beer can squasher. But those weren't very interesting. I suspect though that this is just a case of "well we bought 50 of these for our staff and have 10 left so we can shift one out the door because it's cheap marketing bait". I'm not moaning!

But the cynic in me suspects this is all merely a glitch in the matrix and that one of us will be recycled in the next week to restore order.

Edit: I think it's already spoken for. My eldest has had her eye on one for months now to replace her T470. It may lurk in the cupboard until her birthday. Assuming it actually turns up that is.

Yeah I'm not lucky in the winning stakes either. I did one time win a packet of cigs in a raffle and I don't smoke 

Good luck winning that M1 MacBook, don't forget to do a though sweep of it first for malware.

[Cubdriver]

Wow, that's impressive powder coating!  It's a shame the cat got to that one though.  Maybe it's worth leaving that transformer as-is since it's a bit of character and has a great story to go with it?

Thanks.  It's surprisingly easy to do, considering that is literally my second attempt at it.  (First time was a few years earlier when I did the end bells for the ST-70 clone)  While the temptation to leave it that way is strong, it'd be like the rock chip on your car that only you know is there.  It's not a show stopper, but you know it's there and it constantly nags you.

I've been wanting to scratch build some tube equipment since I was in college.  I've been kicking a couple ideas around for an EL34 power amplifier since I was in college but it was rejected for the final year technical project after someone got a walloping from a guitar amplifier they'd built a few years earlier for their project and the college decided no more vacuum tube projects after that.

And this is why we can't have nice things.     Dopeasses have to ruin it for everybody.   

I need to see what Hammond Manufacturing has on offer.  And I still want to get one of those reissue Dynaco ST-70 or ST-35 kits.

The VTA one that I built is quite nice, and I'm very happy with it.  I know I've posted pics before so I'll not further clutter the thread, but here is a link to the gallery with some photos taken during its construction.

https://pmanning.smugmug.com/Electronics/VTATube4hifi-ST-70-Amplifier

It won't be me either for page 3585.  I don't have one either.  I have yet to come across one at what I consider a reasonable price.  The places I've seen those for sale so far are surplus equipment companies charging top dollar and that machine looks like it's held its value well.  I've got another machine that duplicates its functionality but if the chance to pick up a 3585 inexpensively comes up, I'll jump on it.

Likewise.  Maybe some day if I stumble across one for cheap, but I'm not currently expending much if any effort looking.

-Pat

[mnementh]

LOL... I don't believe actual remorse is possible for that species. Occasional guilt, at the moment of being caught, yes... which usually turns into an immediate "You didn't see that" and stalking off in disdain unless you're already after them with a broom or water bottle... 

To get the proper depth for any candy color, it has to be one or more clear color coats over a metallic base coat. No other way. You can really deepen the "feel" by laying down a couple coats of clear-clear before the colored clear... then a couple coats after... then...   *droool*    after umpteen untouched coats, it's the last one that gets the paw-mark or clump of fur.

mnem
WhuWeTalkinAboot...?

FTFY

In this case it would be singed fur or crusts of paw pad bits embedded since this is powder coating that gets cured in a 400* F (~205* C) oven.  My bet is they'd only do that once.

-Pat

That's what you think, until you check your ebay history and find that you've unknowingly bought a doll's size set of oven gloves and an industrial quantity of tinned tuna...

Checking your own shopping history is a bad idea. Take a quick look at this last page from my Amazon History...



...it all seems innocuous enough.



But taken in conjunction with the preceding page, some questions might arise... 

mnem
and that's just the tip of the iceberg...

[mnementh]

According to Murphy, a cheap 3080 will suddenly appear on the market tomorrow 

I just won a bottom end M1 MacBook Air in a dev marketing bullshit prize draw. First thing I’ve ever won in my entire life I think. Now the question is eBay it or play with it then eBay it 

Hmm, so not only do we sound very similar (Your capacitor exploding video passim) but within weeks we both win kit for the "first time in our life". Am I keeping a parallel household in Twickenham that I haven't told myself about? I wouldn't put it past me, I've always thought I sounded a bit shady.

Well not even slightly ironically this was actually entered because I was deflated from not winning anything in the Keysight giveaway for the Nth time running. I live in hope still.

Really I occasionally sign up to the usual dull online product marketing conferences for the potential bait, sit there through 3 hours of someone droning on about an insignificant product which wangjangles your flange while I'm working. It's like having the radio on. Occasionally a half decent product pops out which is useful.

I lie about this being the first thing I've won though. I've won some amazon vouchers, some car door speakers and a beer can squasher. But those weren't very interesting. I suspect though that this is just a case of "well we bought 50 of these for our staff and have 10 left so we can shift one out the door because it's cheap marketing bait". I'm not moaning!

But the cynic in me suspects this is all merely a glitch in the matrix and that one of us will be recycled in the next week to restore order.

Edit: I think it's already spoken for. My eldest has had her eye on one for months now to replace her T470. It may lurk in the cupboard until her birthday. Assuming it actually turns up that is.

Yeah I'm not lucky in the winning stakes either. I did one time win a packet of cigs in a raffle and I don't smoke 

Good luck winning that M1 MacBook, don't forget to do a though sweep of it first for malware.

Malware...? You mean like MacOS...? 

mnem
*bah-dump-bummp...tsshhht!*

[mansaxel]

Yeah, Linus did a "whole-room of editing PCs with shared water-cooling" project a few years back... the whole shebang; huge radiator out the window, quick-disconnects, sweated copper tubing, etc... turned into a epic 7-part project that makes mansaxel's "CPU cooling via swimming pool" project seem downright plebian.   

Oh, my project is much more a traditional server room cooling. For starters, the computers are air cooled, unmodified rack mount machines. Then a 19" cabinet, closed up, wrong side of the tracks style, with walls and a sliding door. On the side of the cabinet a Rittal air/water cooler is fitted, the kind you will find on the machine cabinet of your multi-axis CNC machine, joined via flexible steel-braided hoses to a 3/4" steel pipe system with a Danfoss bronze circulation pump from a bog-standard domestic heating system. Under the raised flooring this gets converted into HDPE stiff direct burial hose, which takes it out through the floor and in under the house where the water/water heat exchanger is fitted. It goes after the pump and filter for the pool, so pressurised filtered water from the pool is run through, on to another exchanger that's against the geothermal pump, and then into the pool.

I fully expect this to not work very well, mostly because the pool water will be too hot. I test-ran the system last winter, and successfully extended the filtration season for the pool to Dec 27th or so. That worked wonderfully but with 5-6° C pool water, and the heat load in the room was partially dissipated as heating the room itself.  The efficiency problem I had initially was bad air flow in the cabinet, but I found a hack, and have since implemented a better variant.  Anyway, I expect to push a few BTU into the pool, and that in and of itself is good.

The real deal will be when I manage to get a heat exchanger against the geothermal loop. That will give me sub-10° C coolant all year, and direct reuse of the heat in making hot water and heating the house. If and when I do this, I'll also fit coolers for the top floor of the house, which gets uncomfortably hot all summer.

The present heat exchanger on the pool circuit will then be repurposed to circulate water from solar water panels, with a liberal sprinkling of sensors and stats collection, to manage circulation as well as possible.

[mansaxel]

I've been wanting to scratch build some tube equipment since I was in college.  I've been kicking a couple ideas around for an EL34 power amplifier since I was in college but it was rejected for the final year technical project after someone got a walloping from a guitar amplifier they'd built a few years earlier for their project and the college decided no more vacuum tube projects after that.  I need to see what Hammond Manufacturing has on offer.  And I still want to get one of those reissue Dynaco ST-70 or ST-35 kits.

I'm also gearing up for a valve build. Middle son has decided that next instrument on his list is electric guitar. So we're going to build a 15-25W head, and a 2x 12" speaker. Have been looking at various "stock schematics" and kits. Right now I'm leaning towards a very classic 2x ECC83 preamp, and a 2xEL84 / 2x 6v6 finals build, but with switching between input channels with relays (for rythm and lead sound) and a master volume. As much as I want a classic spring reverb (because kicking your amp makes Musique Concrète) I'm thinking that an effects loop probably makes more sense..

So much ideas and opinions to hesitate between....

[Cerebus]

Anyway, I expect to push a few BTU into the pool, and that in and of itself is good.

Sorry, post Brexit you're not allowed to use British Thermal Units - think what PostNord would charge you to import them if they'll even let them into the country. Best to stick to Swedish Cold Units (?SKE?) or good old Joules. 

[mnementh]

On the Bench Tonight...

   https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B083R54PSY/

Grilled burgers with my favorite onion/garlic/red bell pepper seasoning, swiss-oid cheese, bread & butter pickles and BBQ chips on the side. yummmmm! 2 meals and a snack worth of carbs there. 

Also, y'all may have noticed that little pattie press in my shopping list; I've been having a hard time making properly thin wide patties with these arthritic old hands for a while, so when I spotted this jobbie sporting all stainless steel construction and 5.25 inch/130mm diameter yield for only $16 Canadian Kopeks, I decided to see if it was worth the trouble of getting papers between the patties, etc.   

TL/DR: Categorically yes. Even with the time it took me to cut regular cooking parchment down to 5 inch squares, it took me less time to prep a package of burger, plus they're much more uniform than I can manage anymore. The difference, I think, is it's just a quick press with the palm of the hand, while doing them by hand I have to press and peel it off my hands two or three times to get it shaped properly.

 The shape molds a dimple into the burger that does just as advertised; it helps the center cook evenly, and when the burger shrinks up it doesn't turn into a ball.

And, almost as important as helping me make awesome burgers: Instead of aching knuckles and wrists, I can sit down and type immediately afterwards with no joint grief while I eat.

Enjoy!

mnem

[mnementh]

This one is for Pat.

mnem