Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[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.

Malware...? You mean like MacOS...? 

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

Nope, just what I said. I’ve heard on the grapevine sometimes these things could be preloaded with lots of phone home gotchas that give them a profile of you. Geez everyone always thinks you're knocking Apple because they are successful, geez miles away from the target on that, now I admit that I don't like their ethics   

[mnementh]

Actually, no... I was 100% referring to the unholy clusterfuck I fought my way through to get a legit copy of OSX on my MacPro.

The utterly pernicious layer after layer of BS required to simply get a OS installed on a machine that it was supposed to be made for, even using my my own legit AppleID & account, was positively demonic. All to prevent somebody from getting Apple services when they didn't buy the machine new. 

mnem
Unfuck Steve Jobs. No, I mean it; take away every last fuck that summitch ever had, even the awful ones.

[Cerebus]

Nope, just what I said. I’ve heard on the grapevine sometimes these things could be preloaded with lots of phone home gotchas that give them a profile of you. Geez everyone always thinks you're knocking Apple because they are successful, geez miles away from the target on that, now I admit that I don't like their ethics   

You've never taken a Mac out of the box have you? In all the time I've been using Macs (2005 on, so OS X 10.3 and forwards) the OS comes preloaded but not set up. There is no opportunity to preload anything onto them. Do so and the characteristic setup from fresh install wouldn't happen and you'd know that it had been tampered with. Try and tamper with the pre-loaded OS and MacOS itself will set off all sorts of alarms about code signatures, etc. etc.

Plus any Mac user worth their salt installs Little Snitch before they install anything else. Anything tries to phone home and this happens:

[vk6zgo]

Not seen anyone using a credit union for a while!

Seemed a better place to leave my cash where it might underwrite some social good rather than in the sticky mitts of some morally bankrupt financial institution. UK Credit Union accounts enjoy the same £80k statutory deposit protection as other bank accounts and they're modernising, so come with debit cards, online banking and all the usual frills nowadays.

I’m not sure I like the idea myself. Having worked extensively with smaller financial organisations I’m almost certainly sure I’m against using companies with less staff than a clearing bank’s QA team with the same risk profile for me. As much as I hate it, the bigger the bastard, the more holes they’ve already fixed.

FSCS will cover you up to £85k but if you’ve got a few thousand people with a hosed credit union, expect not to see anything for 2-3 years. It’s not very straightforward exercising your rights. Better to avoid it first.

Edit: on the last point, that's the old prevention is better than cure idiom and that always applies to everything involving more than about 50 quid I find 

Edit 2: worth reviewing collapse of Northern Rock as example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Rock  ... they were an actual bank with a higher profile than credit unions with 75 physical branches.

I disagree; the fundamental philosophy of bank vs credit unions makes a huge difference.

Banks like to take risks with your money in order to generate dividends for their shareholders. Credit unions do not, and like building societies, their only shareholders are the savers.

In Oz, the banking regulations were changed to make it easier for credit unions & building societies to become banks, or be taken over by one.
They almost trampled over each other in the rush to do so!

All in the best interests of depositors, of course--------nothing to do with "golden handshakes" for management!

[beanflying]

TEA for those prone to exploding stuff, Made in 'Stralia back when we used to do that .... eBay auction: #324136168628

[vk6zgo]

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...?)

Of course, if you want to go "big", you can do that with air cooling, too!

Just install the "mother of all" airconditioners, set your ambient to "Sub arctic", & away you go!
The downside is, the computer & you will have to be in separate rooms, unless you like dressing like an Inuit person.

[cyclin_al]

My back neighbor has been digging that hole for 3 days now. He digs for a while. Then stops. Then comes back and digs some more. I've never met him but I've been told he's a little weird. Luckily there's no underground utilities like gas, water, or electric which would certainly liven up his day. 

Is he trying to remove that tree stump?  There is a whole sub-genre of youtube videos on the topic of removing stumps... 
Be worried if he has a video camera setup. 

However, Saskia might have some horrified interest in that sub-genre to see how NOT to do things... 

[beanflying]

See a bag of Fertilliser near the diggings run like hell.  .

Not sure what the current local method is but Diesel, Phosphate fertilliser and a little bit of boom to start it was normal 30 years ago on farms.

[dl6lr]

So now I need to source a similar box to do the same and record programs to a hard drive, does anyone have any experience of these PVR's and could recommend one that does not cost the Earth and whole leg and an arm. Looking for one that will record at least 2 programs at the same time, while watching a third and is also capable of handing at least HD if not 4K?

Our ancient TV can just do that out of the box (kind of, it requires a "hard drive" to be connected via USB and I mounted a SATA-SSD in a USB enclosure), so maybe you could consult your manual. Otherwise I had good experience with a dreambox settop box as a successor of my rooted DBox-2 (which is sometimes still in use to record DVB-S audio streams. They too can record on a USB drive and on a network share, and I think even the smallest one for about €100 can do that, but you have to modify the OS, the PVR functionality is not included by default.

[bd139]

Nope, just what I said. I’ve heard on the grapevine sometimes these things could be preloaded with lots of phone home gotchas that give them a profile of you. Geez everyone always thinks you're knocking Apple because they are successful, geez miles away from the target on that, now I admit that I don't like their ethics   

You've never taken a Mac out of the box have you? In all the time I've been using Macs (2005 on, so OS X 10.3 and forwards) the OS comes preloaded but not set up. There is no opportunity to preload anything onto them. Do so and the characteristic setup from fresh install wouldn't happen and you'd know that it had been tampered with. Try and tamper with the pre-loaded OS and MacOS itself will set off all sorts of alarms about code signatures, etc. etc.

Plus any Mac user worth their salt installs Little Snitch before they install anything else. Anything tries to phone home and this happens:

Yep this. macOS has a completely verified and signed software chain from box to desktop. There is no vendor shite preload stage like on PCs either. You turn it on, click through a few set up stages including credential creation and then you have a vanilla machine ready to roll. In fact they killed off the entire side load and injection possibility with macOS with the “full system image replacement” on the M1’s as well. The OS is not actually writeable!

I don’t actually use little snitch myself on a Mac. I mostly use them in stock config with very little added software so it’s just another thing eating ram.

[Saskia]

Also have a macbook somewhere. Think it's running Windows 7...

[Robert763]

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

No one seems to have noticed that the OP said "These pics are some stuff in his shed. There is more in his workshop". Or maybe they did and went straight round without telling anyone. I'd like to see the workshop.

[bd139]

Looks like it's end of days for the £1 selling promotion on ebay. Been replaced with:



https://pages.ebay.co.uk/promos/10028x27/

So if I sell something for 500GBP, the fees are £12. That's worse than the £1 but still better than the original £59

If anyone still gets a £1 offer, please post it.

[Robert763]

Seems they are tyring to tempt sellers into "Managed Payments" I've had some messages asking me to set it up, including that offer, and the implication that I won't be able to sell if I don't. Inerestingly there is nothing yet absoultly saying you must use it so I'm going to hang on without as long as possible. It's possibe that legally they can force it's ue in the UK so are trying obtuse messages and bribery.

[bd139]

Nah that’s bollocks. They can. It’s their platform. Your choice is to not take part. They’re just trying to boil the frogs (curmudgeons) slowly.

Managed payments is fine so far. Just partition it with another bank account. Job done. No PayPal fees is a bonus.

Edit: I suspect the issue is the £1 final value fees often doesn’t cover their processing fees with Adyen which is why there’s now a min 30p fee plus percentage. The seller was paying that processing fee with PayPal before so eBay are footing it now.

I don’t have a problem. I don’t do auctions so the buyer pays my fee every time.

[Peter_O]

See a bag of Fertilliser near the diggings run like hell.  .

Not sure what the current local method is but Diesel, Phosphate fertilliser and a little bit of boom to start it was normal 30 years ago on farms.

Yep. Grandpa used to blow them up and collect the scattered logs for the oven.

[Specmaster]

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...?)

Of course, if you want to go "big", you can do that with air cooling, too!

Just install the "mother of all" airconditioners, set your ambient to "Sub arctic", & away you go!
The downside is, the computer & you will have to be in separate rooms, unless you like dressing like an Inuit person.

Yeah, I think Linus (I know someone did it) placed a MB in a freezer and froze it and then you can seriously overclock the CPU and make it into a mini super computer, "No Wackers", as long as you can keep it cold enough.

[Specmaster]

Nah that’s bollocks. They can. It’s their platform. Your choice is to not take part. They’re just trying to boil the frogs (curmudgeons) slowly.

Managed payments is fine so far. Just partition it with another bank account. Job done. No PayPal fees is a bonus.

Edit: I suspect the issue is the £1 final value fees often doesn’t cover their processing fees with Adyen which is why there’s now a min 30p fee plus percentage. The seller was paying that processing fee with PayPal before so eBay are footing it now.

I don’t have a problem. I don’t do auctions so the buyer pays my fee every time.

Thats a valid point, BIN is the way to go because you can build in the cost of selling into the price and if you leave shit on there long enough, someone will buy it. Infact I think the 80% off offer could be beneficial because you don't have actually sell it within a set time period, only listing date is taken into account.

[AVGresponding]

To be really pedantic, ALL of them are ultimately air cooled.  The only question is whether the heat goes from the CPU directly through a piece of metal to reach that air, or if it hitches a ride on some liquid along the way between two pieces of metal, one at each end of its journey.   

-Pat

Thank you, and I did say that air is used in both system as the final means of cooling, but one of them actually dumps the warm air back in the case and then relies on another fan to pull that air out of the case, which is way less efficient than having a rad mounted at the very edge of the case and then blow cool air through the rad to so the warm air is then dumped outside of the case.

And the few hundred Watts dumped from the generally Air cooled GPU goes where?

Well all the air cooled GPU's I've seen (I'm assuming that you're referring to those with cooling fans rather than passive ones), all suck cool air from inside the case and blow that air passed the GPU and other chips in ductwork straight to the exhaust grill, which normally uses the expansion port either above or below the bracket the ports are located on, and the air dumped once again outside the case.

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.

Holy perfboards Batman! How many fans?!?

I really need to borrow that sound level meter...

I have 1 (one) fan for the LQ, 80mm so it bolts straight to the rad, which bolts straight to the back of the case, and in a vertical orientation, as it is the worst idea ever to run tube-axial fans horizontally; it fuckerises the bearings.

The 1060 GFX card has its own integrated heatsink and fan, mounted horizontally unfortunately, though I could get a horizontal case I suppose to remedy that. The PSU also has a fan, and also horizontal, to my great annoyance.

A horizontal case will be a serious consideration when I build my next PC.

[beanflying]

snippity

Holy perfboards Batman! How many fans?!?

I really need to borrow that sound level meter...

I have 1 (one) fan for the LQ, 80mm so it bolts straight to the rad, which bolts straight to the back of the case, and in a vertical orientation, as it is the worst idea ever to run tube-axial fans horizontally; it fuckerises the bearings.

The 1060 GFX card has its own integrated heatsink and fan, mounted horizontally unfortunately, though I could get a horizontal case I suppose to remedy that. The PSU also has a fan, and also horizontal, to my great annoyance.

A horizontal case will be a serious consideration when I build my next PC.

Coolermaster Case has three as standard, two big silent ones in front and a rear exhaust. Two on the 5700XT GPU and one on the CPU and none on the MB as it is a 450 not a 570. My 6632B's fan is way louder than the entire PC right under it 

[AVGresponding]

I can relate to that, I now have quite a few items of vintage TE that would benefit from modern fans.

[beanflying]

I can relate to that, I now have quite a few items of vintage TE that would benefit from modern fans.

I should do what I have done to some other gear and drop an appropriate thermal switch on the fan. Doubt it would even turn on much with the 50C switch.

edit just nabbed a link eBay auction: #323376375858 $0.60 USD for mainly silence is a win 

[AVGresponding]

Some fleabay picks.


Not yet horrifically expensive:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/254953140813




Still unsold after multiple relistings. He/she really needs to find a cardboard box to ship it in...
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/224437407606




Maybe worth a look if you're states-side:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/333978263656




If you like your scopes basic:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303978903239

[AVGresponding]

LMAO that Digimess bench PSU sold within minutes of me posting it here.

OK, confess, which of you was it?   

[med6753]

Some fleabay picks.

If you like your scopes basic:
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/303978903239

Heath IO-4540. Brings back memories. Built exact model in the 1970's. Not a bad scope. Single trace, 5MHz B/W, triggered sweep. But it did have an annoying flaw. All plastic case. And only a partial shield on the gun of the CRT. No trace rotation. Every time you moved the scope the trace would be tilted either due to the Earth's magnetic field or other nearby equipment with a power transformer. To straighten the trace you would have to physically rotate the CRT until it was moved and then rinse and repeat.   

If you look in Heath Catalogs from that time and the scope is powered up you can see the baseline trace tilted.