Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[syau]

The Cossor CRM 544 IFF/Transponder test set was still in regular use until a couple of years ago.
I would not give you £150 for one though https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/324294862630

I missed those small unit (relative) made by IFR before the day of Mode-S. 1 portable can do ATC & DME.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/IFR-Aeroflex-ATC-600A-Portable-Transponder-DME-Ramp-Test-Set-/382221606479

[tggzzz]

Working through an Ear/hearing/nerve/tinnitus issue over the last couple of months but it has been on the improve in particular for the last few weeks.

Oh joy.

Not many people realise tinnitus can be lethal. Fortunately mine is ignorable, but I fear it worsening as the ear/brain decides to invent noises to fill in the gap.

Have they used a TDR yet? (to detect whether the middle ear is ossified or glued up)

I've had an MRI to check there isn't a growth around the acoustic nerve.

If my "good" ear gets much worse, I could decide to make my worse ear bionic

[beanflying]

Working through an Ear/hearing/nerve/tinnitus issue over the last couple of months but it has been on the improve in particular for the last few weeks.

Oh joy.

Not many people realise tinnitus can be lethal. Fortunately mine is ignorable, but I fear it worsening as the ear/brain decides to invent noises to fill in the gap.

Have they used a TDR yet? (to detect whether the middle ear is ossified or glued up)

I've had an MRI to check there isn't a growth around the acoustic nerve.

If my "good" ear gets much worse, I could decide to make my worse ear bionic

MRI next week just to make sure of whats inside or not.

[bd139]

Ironic thing about the MRI scanners is they are noisy bastards. Probably make it worse

Got the free MacBook Air. They didn't cheap out too much. It's a space grey one with 500gb SSD in it. Only 8Gb of RAM but that's not that much of an issue with a Mac. Might be a keeper yet. Will play with it for a few days at least.

I suppose I better go and say good things about their product now 

[Cerebus]

A week or two ago. I think he had a need to feel more generic. 

mnem
flurrp.

Yeah fell over a new version of the bd139 data sheet and decided to rip it off

It could do with a few flames photoshopping on to it

I'll dig a real one out at some point and get some fire and smoke going and see if I can capture it 

This is where you borrow my 200W HP 6002A and go down the rabbit hole of discovering exactly what constant current to set to get the longest and most visually satisfying sacrifice. conditions.

[Cerebus]

ok, 2 weeks forced break from work. physical checkup revealed that I got to get my blood sugar levels down fast and treat my skin issues. Doctor told me to change my diet to meat, poultry, fish plus veggies. No sugar, no alcohol, no croissants  , no rice, potatoes, noodles, ramen, what have you.

*sigh*

Oh dear, and there's me literally waiting for yesterday's croissants to cool down from a quick refresh in the oven when I read this.

[bd139]

This is where you borrow my 200W HP 6002A and go down the rabbit hole of discovering exactly what constant current to set to get the longest and most visually satisfying sacrifice. conditions.

I've got some super capacitors around I lifted from a hamfest for a couple of quid. They are in the multiple farad territory. I may fill one up and see if I can make a hole in a BD139. I think it'd be interesting to stick one across C-E and then ram half an amp in the base from a bench supply. Anything which exceeds the SOA by going outside the constraints of the log-log graph in the data sheet is the uncharted "interesting and fiery" territory 

[AVGresponding]

-grumble grumble-

Scored myself a nice linear turntable, and after a certain amount of fettling (new cartridge my arse, it was worn down to a nubbin, may post pics), involving belts and a cartridge, it's working, sort of. The sound output level seems very low, wondering if this model needs a pre-amp, or if there are further issues. I'm getting around 14mV out, sounds clean enough, but bass is low as well.

If anyone has any knowledge of the JVC L-E50 I'd appreciate any tips. Can't find a user manual, only a service manual, and that doesn't seems to cover the audio side, just the transports.

Just for extra fun, it's a drawer loader, so it's extra difficult to work on...   

Well... traced it out, and seems the circuit diagram in the sm is correct and I was not misreading it. The cartridge outputs directly to the RCA out, with only some (RIAA correction?) circuitry in addition.   

[Cerebus]

ok, 2 weeks forced break from work. physical checkup revealed that I got to get my blood sugar levels down fast and treat my skin issues. Doctor told me to change my diet to meat, poultry, fish plus veggies. No sugar, no alcohol, no croissants  , no rice, potatoes, noodles, ramen, what have you.

*sigh*

Welcome to my world of Type 2 diabetes and permanent change to your diet although we do cheat once in a while.

Never had skin issues though.

Edit.....coffee is ALWAYS on the menu. 

Yep coffee is the winning item for me as well.

Narrowly avoided diabetes over the last couple of years. It's possible to reverse it if you haven't gone over the line. I live a fairly heavily constrained diet now to avoid that and I've never felt better. In fact I am fitter, healthier and more productive than I've ever been thanks to dietary changes.

Yup. Exercise alone may be enough unless you have a particularly bad diet to start with. Too many doctors are too quick to say "You've got type II diabetes, take these pills" and give their patients a ridiculously hard to follow diet sheet* before trying to get their patients to modify their lifestyles. Result, a lot of sedentary middle aged people with controlled type II diabetes rather than a lot of active middle aged people without type II diabetes. For a lot of people the difference between the two is a few laps of walking around the park each day and taking a walk to the local shops rather than a drive.

*It doesn't help that so many medical dieticians have a deep Calvinist/Presbyterian streak that concludes that enjoyable food can't be good food and anything that might be fun must be bad for you. Heck, I still hear dieticians handing out advice about avoiding saturated fats that has been comprehensively debunked in the scientific literature for years.

[Cerebus]

Working through an Ear/hearing/nerve/tinnitus issue over the last couple of months but it has been on the improve in particular for the last few weeks.

Oh joy.

Not many people realise tinnitus can be lethal. Fortunately mine is ignorable, but I fear it worsening as the ear/brain decides to invent noises to fill in the gap.

Have they used a TDR yet? (to detect whether the middle ear is ossified or glued up)

I've had an MRI to check there isn't a growth around the acoustic nerve.

If my "good" ear gets much worse, I could decide to make my worse ear bionic

I've had vascular tinnitus my whole life. I didn't realise that I had it until my late twenties because it always having been there there was no change for me to detect and I just thought that everybody heard that way. It was only when I discovered that other people couldn't hear their pulse as a modulated narrow band of white noise that I discovered I had it. It's getting slightly worse with age (expected) but for the most part is annoying rather than debilitating. The most galling bit is that I can't sit and enjoy silence as well as I could when I was younger.

[mnementh]

That'd do the job 

So will these:

Need one of those for the €360/h side job ...

Don't let the size of tautech's pic fool you; no matter how hard you try, those pliers are not big enough to fit over your boss's head. Or your end-users', no matter how much of a pinhead they might be... 

mnem

[mnementh]

And overpriced, incomplete & threatened with a death sentence, Beckman EPUT.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/224443938276

"SHIPPING SHOWN IS FEDEX OR UPS GROUND TO THE LOWER 84 STATES."

A typo - or has something happened over there that I haven't heard about yet....?

Just another case of PTSD: Post Trump Stress Disorder

mnem
fuck you too, coffeepot.

[bd139]

Yup. Exercise alone may be enough unless you have a particularly bad diet to start with. Too many doctors are too quick to say "You've got type II diabetes, take these pills" and give their patients a ridiculously hard to follow diet sheet* before trying to get their patients to modify their lifestyles. Result, a lot of sedentary middle aged people with controlled type II diabetes rather than a lot of active middle aged people without type II diabetes. For a lot of people the difference between the two is a few laps of walking around the park each day and taking a walk to the local shops rather than a drive.

Yeah my ex wife is a fine example. She loudly bought a gym membership and some clothes and posts the odd thing on social media. Really she just crams metformin followed by something from Uber Eats. Also a practicer of the Japanese art of Tsundoku

<< insert picture of pacific island natives with coconuts for headphones >>

I'm not sure how you can run your entire life like this without actually changing or improving anything.

*It doesn't help that so many medical dieticians have a deep Calvinist/Presbyterian streak that concludes that enjoyable food can't be good food and anything that might be fun must be bad for you. Heck, I still hear dieticians handing out advice about avoiding saturated fats that has been comprehensively debunked in the scientific literature for years.

Exactly this.

[mnementh]

ok, 2 weeks forced break from work. physical checkup revealed that I got to get my blood sugar levels down fast and treat my skin issues. Doctor told me to change my diet to meat, poultry, fish plus veggies. No sugar, no alcohol, no croissants  , no rice, potatoes, noodles, ramen, what have you.

*sigh*

hyperinsulinism or diabetes or something even more sinister...?

Lo-Carb is still better in general compared to what is readily available for all but those who can afford to eat exclusively in fine restaurants, unfortunately.

EDIT: It is hard to eat healthy even cooking from scratch anymore; almost anything with dairy in it is full of carrageenan so they can "fix" the damage done by HT pasteurization. 

Processed meats are full of it as a preservative and thickener, and they've even started injecting it into supposedly "fresh" meats to ameliorate the "water-logged meat syndrome" from... all the water they're injecting into the meat. 

mnem
Welcome to breadetarian hell...

[mnementh]

ok, 2 weeks forced break from work. physical checkup revealed that I got to get my blood sugar levels down fast and treat my skin issues. Doctor told me to change my diet to meat, poultry, fish plus veggies. No sugar, no alcohol, no croissants  , no rice, potatoes, noodles, ramen, what have you.

*sigh*

No mention of dairy, chilis, or garlic, so there's ample room for delicious sauces to have with your roast/grilled/broiled/steamed... damn now I'm hungry, and I only just ate! Salmon with green beans, broccoli, and boiled p******s (small ones).

Sadly, no... most of the really yummy sauces are full of sugar and/or starch, which greatly restricts that joy...

mnem
my best advice: Develop your liking for eggs.

[Robert763]

That CRM533 is a pretty nice looking bit of kit. Never seen that one before.

It is pretty nice, but I guess not many will have survived due to the use of NITs (abbrevation from the Philips_DigitalInstrumentCourse_Part2.pdf I found during the week, I bought something featured in it earlier in the week).

Another Cossor signal generator from that old advert that I didn't see when searching a few weeks back, seems a lot of £££ for something with only two pictures. 
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284273960683


David

This is very application specfic AUDIO generator. No RF output. They are used with a VHF signal generator with accurate wideband AM modulation performance.  It has two functions Instrument Landing Systems (ILS) and VHF Omnidirectional Range (VOR). These are aicraft VHF navigation systems.
ILS is just 90Hz and 150Hz with accurate differential levels.
VOR is a 9960Hz signal FM modulated with 30Hz and a separate 30Hz with accurately adjustable phase to the 30Hz mondulating the 9960Hz . The older versions used a mechanical tone wheel with magnetic or optical pick-ups. The 30Hz pick-up was physically roatated around the wheel to change the phase.
Showing my age here

EDIT: It also does 400Hz, 1300Hz and 3000Hz spot frequencies for the 75MHz marker system
EDIT: They are built in HP System Cases (System I since System II came out)

The Cossor adverts date from 1967/69, not exactly sure when hp System II came out but I suspect it was later than the 1960's. It's the sort of thing covered in the hp journal but can't find the right search terms.

David

  They are The older HP cases, called System Case when first sold. When the newer "System II" came out some people called the old ones "System I".

[mnementh]

-grumble grumble-

Scored myself a nice linear turntable, and after a certain amount of fettling (new cartridge my arse, it was worn down to a nubbin, may post pics), involving belts and a cartridge, it's working, sort of. The sound output level seems very low, wondering if this model needs a pre-amp, or if there are further issues. I'm getting around 14mV out, sounds clean enough, but bass is low as well.

If anyone has any knowledge of the JVC L-E50 I'd appreciate any tips. Can't find a user manual, only a service manual, and that doesn't seems to cover the audio side, just the transports.

Just for extra fun, it's a drawer loader, so it's extra difficult to work on...   

~3-5mV at the pins is normal for most MM cartridges. What you're describing sounds like a TT with a defective preamp or ground fault/something shorted, or a LV (0.5-1.5mV) MC cartridge connected to a preamp made for MM cartridges.

For those playing along at home, figure your typical consumer AV line-level at -10dB or 200-500mV p-p.

The attached SM shows it using a AT plug-in MM cartridge, with a small, simple preamp/compensation board and a separate muting board. That is where I'd be looking; there may be a fault in either causing this. Also, be sure your cartridge is the same exact part; these TTs rely on the geometry of the original cartridge/stylus for proper operation.

EDIT: Woops; specs section states 2.5mV output, so you are definitely going to need a separate preamp for this one. Lack of bass response is most likely loading-related.

mnem
 

[AVGresponding]

-grumble grumble-

Scored myself a nice linear turntable, and after a certain amount of fettling (new cartridge my arse, it was worn down to a nubbin, may post pics), involving belts and a cartridge, it's working, sort of. The sound output level seems very low, wondering if this model needs a pre-amp, or if there are further issues. I'm getting around 14mV out, sounds clean enough, but bass is low as well.

If anyone has any knowledge of the JVC L-E50 I'd appreciate any tips. Can't find a user manual, only a service manual, and that doesn't seems to cover the audio side, just the transports.

Just for extra fun, it's a drawer loader, so it's extra difficult to work on...   

~5mV at the pins is normal for most MM cartridges. What you're describing sounds like a TT with a defective preamp or ground fault/something shorted, or a LV (0.5-1.5mV) MC cartridge connected to a preamp made for MM cartridges.

For those playing along at home, figure your typical consumer AV line-level at -10dB or 200-500mV p-p.

The attached SM shows it using a AT plug-in MM cartridge, with a small, simple preamp/compensation board and a separate muting board. That is where I'd be looking; there may be a fault in either causing this. Also, be sure your cartridge is the same exact part; these TTs rely on the geometry of the original cartridge/stylus for proper operation.

mnem
 

Turns out there aren't any faults*... I just needed to run it through an amp with a proper phono input. Swapped from my HK AVI 100 to my Wharfedale 3038 and all is well.

I already had a spare T4P cartridge, as my Realistic Lab 407 uses them too.

My only problem now is rearranging hifi components, which is easier said than done. The JVC is a midi, and it needs something on top of it to help prevent it tipping over when the drawer is open...   

The amp is a full width so can't sit on top. The GE is midi, though it's an AKAI so is slightly different in size, 20mm or so wider...   


*With the audio. Unless I am doing it wrong, the track selection controls are fugazi. Hmmm, must dig out that Marillion album...

[Cerebus]

*It doesn't help that so many medical dieticians have a deep Calvinist/Presbyterian streak that concludes that enjoyable food can't be good food and anything that might be fun must be bad for you. Heck, I still hear dieticians handing out advice about avoiding saturated fats that has been comprehensively debunked in the scientific literature for years.

Exactly this.

Add to that the 10 to 30 year cycle of "Major macronutrient X is bad for you" cargo cult professed by said dieticians and rapidly re-cycled by the Dummkopf members of the media like breakfast TV and the Daily Fascist Mail. They've been doing "fat" since the 1990s, "sugars and carbohydrates" are the current fad, and no doubt in 5-10 years they'll be on to "proteins". And don't get me started on "Gluten free", I've friends and former colleagues with pukka Coeliac Disease and it's horrible, it leads to a life of miserable restrictions on what they can and can't eat. (At least the "Gluten free" trend has brought them some better choices.) I too have a genuine food allergy, to tree nuts. Thankfully normally unpleasant rather than life-threatening.  Every time I encounter some bloody Karen who's "intolerant" to the foodstuff du jour I just want to slap the stupid out of them, the idiots who enable them and the marketeers who pander to them.

[mnementh]

Turns out there aren't any faults*... I just needed to run it through an amp with a proper phono input. Swapped from my HK AVI 100 to my Wharfedale 3038 and all is well.

I already had a spare T4P cartridge, as my Realistic Lab 407 uses them too.

My only problem now is rearranging hifi components, which is easier said than done. The JVC is a midi, and it needs something on top of it to help prevent it tipping over when the drawer is open...   

The amp is a full width so can't sit on top. The GE is midi, though it's an AKAI so is slightly different in size, 20mm or so wider...   

*With the audio. Unless I am doing it wrong, the track selection controls are fugazi. Hmmm, must dig out that Marillion album...

Yup; you posted just as I was adding a edit to my original post:

EDIT: Woops; specs section states 2.5mV output, so you are definitely going to need a separate preamp for this one. Lack of bass response is most likely loading-related.

Good that you have the correct cartridge; tho you probably only needed a replacement stylus. 

The track selection uses a light & sensor in the tonearm to detect the light reflected by the blank spaces between tracks. The lamp or the sensor may be dirty. Also, some LP/SLP pressings have very narrow spaces between the tracks that are just as hard for it to detect as they are for your eyes.

The SM I attached is fair-to-poor quality, but it does have both operating instructions and schematics:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/?action=dlattach;attach=1216062

My experience with similar units is that you usually want them directly on top of a cabinet or shelf; preferably something very solid (not a shelf supported by pegs, for example) and made of heavy wood or thick MDF. They can be quite sensitive to environmental resonance.

mnem
 

[bd139]

*It doesn't help that so many medical dieticians have a deep Calvinist/Presbyterian streak that concludes that enjoyable food can't be good food and anything that might be fun must be bad for you. Heck, I still hear dieticians handing out advice about avoiding saturated fats that has been comprehensively debunked in the scientific literature for years.

Exactly this.

Add to that the 10 to 30 year cycle of "Major macronutrient X is bad for you" cargo cult professed by said dieticians and rapidly re-cycled by the Dummkopf members of the media like breakfast TV and the Daily Fascist Mail. They've been doing "fat" since the 1990s, "sugars and carbohydrates" are the current fad, and no doubt in 5-10 years they'll be on to "proteins". And don't get me started on "Gluten free", I've friends and former colleagues with pukka Coeliac Disease and it's horrible, it leads to a life of miserable restrictions on what they can and can't eat. (At least the "Gluten free" trend has brought them some better choices.) I too have a genuine food allergy, to tree nuts. Thankfully normally unpleasant rather than life-threatening.  Every time I encounter some bloody Karen who's "intolerant" to the foodstuff du jour I just want to slap the stupid out of them, the idiots who enable them and the marketeers who pander to them.

Nailed it again.

For ref I'm one of the "minor intolerants". In this case lactose. Also that basically means not that I'm not going to die of anything but after eating a lactose stuffed meal I'm going to be really really unpleasant to be around until it has entirely passed through and out the other end 

Sometimes I don't give a fuck though and will neck a cream filled curry and sit in my own green cloud with pride

[mnementh]

Yeah, but there's a lot of actual garbage in the food chain you have to avoid too; see my earlier edited post:

EDIT: It is hard to eat healthy even cooking from scratch anymore; almost anything with dairy in it is full of carrageenan so they can "fix" the damage done by HT pasteurization. 

Processed meats are full of it as a preservative and thickener, and they've even started injecting it into supposedly "fresh" meats to ameliorate the "water-logged meat syndrome" from... all the water they're injecting into the meat. 

Yeah, yeah, carrageenan is another of those buzzwords right now... but it really is a problem, especially if you need to eat low-carb for reasons other than weight-loss. I know it is supposedly a natural ingredient... but it is not natural in the foodstuffs they put it in, and the reason is for nothing other than to maximize profit out of food that would have spoiled without it, or that they ruin with their pre-processing.

mnem
 

[Specmaster]

ok, 2 weeks forced break from work. physical checkup revealed that I got to get my blood sugar levels down fast and treat my skin issues. Doctor told me to change my diet to meat, poultry, fish plus veggies. No sugar, no alcohol, no croissants  , no rice, potatoes, noodles, ramen, what have you.

*sigh*

Best do as ordered, must be serious to give you 2 weeks to do it in, so get on with it and best of luck.

[Cerebus]

Yeah, but there's a lot of actual garbage in the food chain you have to avoid too; see my earlier edited post:

EDIT: It is hard to eat healthy even cooking from scratch anymore; almost anything with dairy in it is full of carrageenan so they can "fix" the damage done by HT pasteurization. 

Processed meats are full of it as a preservative and thickener, and they've even started injecting it into supposedly "fresh" meats to ameliorate the "water-logged meat syndrome" from... all the water they're injecting into the meat. 

Yeah, yeah, carrageenan is another of those buzzwords right now... but it really is a problem, especially if you need to eat low-carb for reasons other than weight-loss. I know it is supposedly a natural ingredient... but it is not natural in the foodstuffs they put it in, and the reason is for nothing other than to maximize profit out of food that would have spoiled without it, or that they ruin with their pre-processing.

mnem
 

Only in your bit of the world. A carton or tub of cream here will contain cow juice, nothing more. Ditto, no junk like that in processed ham.

These, pulled from the fridge, are ordinary supermarket products, not premium lines or anything like that.

Ham, smoked, thin sliced, ready to slap into a sammitch:



Cream. It doesn't have an ingredients panel because those are not required on foods where what the basic label says describes all that it contains, in this case, cow squeezins:

[Specmaster]

ok, 2 weeks forced break from work. physical checkup revealed that I got to get my blood sugar levels down fast and treat my skin issues. Doctor told me to change my diet to meat, poultry, fish plus veggies. No sugar, no alcohol, no croissants  , no rice, potatoes, noodles, ramen, what have you.

*sigh*

Starts polishing a bullet for our dear Saskia. 

yer too kind ...

Think he maybe anticipating a SK sale possibly on the horizon