Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

Bleugh 

TEA scraper running against thread for the first time. Still some bugs parsing stupid dates by the looks.

Good old thing can kick out some stats like top posting members:

Code: [Select]

select member.name, count(*)
from post
join member on post.member = member.id
group by member.name
order by count(*) desc
limit 10;
I spam too much 

DB looks to be around 150 megs of just data with no attachments or resources . I'm letting it run the whole thread and will debug the remaining broken bits.

[Saskia]

if it works and performs to your satisfaction, it's no PoS.

[factory]

Speaking of PoS, here is the progess so far with downloading the Philips PM6645 diagrams from Radiomusuem. 

Downloaded
2132951 Input AGC p1
2132953 Input AGC p2
2132955 Input AGC p3

2132956 Main Gate Trigger HF Decade p1
2132958 Main Gate Trigger HF Decade p2
2133262 Counting Indicating p1

2133263 Counting Indicating p2
2133264 Counting Indicating p3
2133265 Control Circuits p1

2133266 Control Circuits p2
2133267 Control Circuits p3
2133268 Timebase p1

2133269 Timebase p2
2133270 Wiring Indicator Unit & Sub Unit Cable
2133271 Power Supply p1

2133272 Power Supply p2
2133273 Wiring Loom

Not yet downloaded
2133685 Input Board Layout

2133686 Display Board Layout
2133687 Main Board Layout

Probably only really need the remaining timebase page and maybe the two power supply pages.

Will print them out (B/W only), delete email/names and rescan & upload here as one pdf.

David

[mnementh]

if it works and performs to your satisfaction, it's no PoS.

Which; the Vastar BBQ starter or poor bd's  "Death by Millimeters" TEA thread database...? 

mnem
"It's all fun & games until somebody loses an eye..."
"Then we get the fun of playing "Let's find the eyeball!"

[dl6lr]

Will print them out (B/W only), delete email/names and rescan & upload here as one pdf.

You will get email soon...

[factory]

Thank you, replied to your PM, no rush as I won't get to see the email till tomorrow.

David

[Neomys Sapiens]

@factory:
I think the remaining pages should not be left out. Then I suggest chucking it onto KO4BB.

[bd139]

Removed

[bsfeechannel]

Oh and, not to rub salt into a wound...well....maybe just a little. When I bought this variable temp soldering iron it was loudly criticized as the worst POS on the face of the earth and I would be sorry purchasing it. Well since my Hakko won't reach to bench 2 and I don't feel like moving it this alleged POS has been doing all the soldering duty on the Type 547. Including soldering on those super sensitive and fragile Tek terminal strips. It has performed perfectly and in fact does a better job on the terminal strips than the Hakko. And truth be told it did ALL the work on the Type 535A restoration last year. It has seen many hours with no issues.

So you can't always pass judgment on something just by it's looks/price. But way I see it even if it burns out tomorrow I got more than my money's worth out of it and wouldn't hesitate to buy another one as a backup to the Hakko.

Interesting suggestion for Dave to make a video about.

[cyclin_al]

After 40+ years of existence the families former and then my Tupperware Cereal container lid has FAILED.

Just call up your local Tupperware lady...  Tupperware have lifetime warranties. 

Show them your failed lid and they'll hand you a new one at no cost.  If they don't have one in stock, they'll get one for you in their next order.

Never give the Tupperware/Amway/7th day bikeriders ....etc a way in the door That and I cant afford the wait I have bits to cut and most likely NLA

We do not have the other two here, but we do have Tupperware.

There is tremendous value in keeping the Tupperware lady connected.  If an old Tupperware is discontinued, they will replace the whole item with a current version.
The particular benefit in our case is the Tupperware Lady is married to the owner of the local Farm Store/Hardware store.
If I need anything as a priority at any time of the day and at a good price to boot (ie. not the sticker price), I tell SWMBO exactly what I need and then the ladies make it happen.   

[Neomys Sapiens]

Fun with GPS devices at work again. After being totally baffled by the device going incommunicado on me, the story unravels as being BS in our SW and some BS in the device too. The HW is clear.

Otherwise good news: I finally managed to get my COVID-Inoculation scheduled. First shot due next thursday. Will receive Moderna.

And I managed to aquire the next five missing MIl Insertion/Removal tools. Still way to go here.

On the subject of morons at work: my company's IT people together with my new colleague managed finally to get the EDA software for which we have a license reinstalled. But the CAD monkeys which had been there before me did create a tangled web of undocumented scripts and libraries the SW declines to recognize. Except when it suddenly does, then all is set back to the status 5 years ago and you have to reinstall. Again begging my boss to hire some goons to pay them a visit.

[Neomys Sapiens]

If that's right I'm afraid BD old chap that you too are "more simian than man". 

Ook ook it is then 

On a positive note I managed to sit in bed and do some work on the tea archive script. Decided to scrap selenium as it's too slow and finicky so back to requests / Beautifulsoup. Have got it extracting raw posts already and injecting into SQLite as well as member data. On a positive note it should hammer through the whole job in a few minutes and is extensible as in it does upserts to the DB so subsequent runs will just update the database. Somewhat less prone to failure than the old version I wrote.

Also possibility of providing post stats across the entire thread with this 

Screenshot to prove it's not entirely vapourware

All respectable producers of vapourware have screenshots in their presentations.

[mnementh]

    

...gutted with extreme prejudice and hacked into a cell holder/test jig; just waiting on epoxy potting to cure before final assembly and putting ends on the wires.   

And done. I wasn't sure if it would work this way; I've had this thing over a decade and I never tried to do cell-by-cell IR on a single cell.

Yay, it does work! This means my little test jig actually measures with a proper 4-wire connection; as a result, the results are much more repeatable. Almost no variation no matter which slot or if I swap the wires between the channels.  That does mean that the 14ga main wires are a bit of overkill; but I won't have to worry aboot durability there.

mnem

[mnementh]

For those owning or considering the UNI-T UTG9x2E mini-arb for a portable or 2nd cheapie unit; there have been some interesting developments. User fremen67 reports he was able to ID the CPU, and dump the 24LC64 eeprom. He has posted the SCPI command table, and claims to have changed his UTG932E into a UTG962E as well.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/uni-t-utg932utg962-200msas-function-arbitrary-waveform-generator-220394/msg3561559/#msg3561559

This could very quickly become one of the most hackable budget instruments yet.

Cheers!

mnem
 

[mansaxel]

The 6237b saga has concluded.  Service engineer error.  When I disassembled the unit to swap out the RIFA for a Kemet  I managed to squeeze one of the wires from the power switch to chassis as I screwed the side panel back on.

        

When I first inserted the mains plug after this bodge, I shot the fuse. [insert wait for a 500mA fast 1 1/4" x 1/4" fuse] Then, second time around, I must have inserted the plug the other way, so the fuse held, but the 3-phase RCCB for the workshop and computer power said CLACK! and the UPS refused, again, to work. (another project on the pile, that. Perhaps should start with a more sensitive RCCB for the bench..) 

Finally, I did what I should have done from the start, and measured resistance to ground for the primary side circuit. Of course it was a dead short on one leg, but only with the mains switch on. Found it by staring at things, and realised what I'd done.  Disassembly, unsolder (yes, the Chinesium sucker gun still is amazeballs, especially considering the price.) and some clear heat shrink on the poor wire.

In the end, as soon as I'd fixed the short, and bolted things together, the supply does what -hp- / Harrison supplies do, works as designed. 

And, the repair queue decreased by one.

I also found that unless you engage the LPF, my TTi counter will over-guesstimate the "sine" output from my FeelTech function generator with 20%. Probably not the best sine in the world.


Edit: Since the FeelTech is old and ungrounded, it might be a ground offset issue.

[mnementh]

Ooohhh... that left a mark. But not near as bad as the ding in your pride, I'm sure.

Good on ya staying the course and figuring it oot... now get that UPS problem sorted so you can stop feeling the sword dangling over your neck. 

mnem
Damned excitable little electrons anyways... why couldn't one of them just send you a fucking memo instead of trying to burn the house down...?

[med6753]

Replaced all the burnt resistors in the +100VDC supply and still have no output. But at least the new resistors aren't getting hot. So needs more troubleshooting. Tomorrow's activity.

[mnementh]

"Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof." ~grand-momma

mnem
Everybody needs something to believe in; I believe I'm going to have a croissant & cream cheese.

[tautech]

Replaced all the burnt resistors in the +100VDC supply and still have no output. But at least the new resistors aren't getting hot. So needs more troubleshooting. Tomorrow's activity.

Oh goody I love a good mystery to solve.
Good luck Sherlock !

[bitseeker]

Urf had my covid jab yesterday finally after four weeks of finding a slot that worked. Feel like I’ve been run over by a bus this morning. Anyone else get that? Was AstraZeneca one.

I'm scheduled for next week.

Some peoples in my family had flu like symptoms after the jab. But was not AstraZeneca though.

I got my first dose of Pfizer. Sore shoulder for a couple of days and tired, but not feeling run over. Overall, wasn't bad.

[bitseeker]

Oh and, not to rub salt into a wound...well....maybe just a little. When I bought this variable temp soldering iron it was loudly criticized as the worst POS on the face of the earth and I would be sorry purchasing it. Well since my Hakko won't reach to bench 2 and I don't feel like moving it this alleged POS has been doing all the soldering duty on the Type 547. Including soldering on those super sensitive and fragile Tek terminal strips. It has performed perfectly and in fact does a better job on the terminal strips than the Hakko. And truth be told it did ALL the work on the Type 535A restoration last year. It has seen many hours with no issues.

So you can't always pass judgment on something just by it's looks/price. But way I see it even if it burns out tomorrow I got more than my money's worth out of it and wouldn't hesitate to buy another one as a backup to the Hakko.

Perhaps it should get repainted to match the machines it's taken such good care of.

[bitseeker]

On a positive note I managed to sit in bed and do some work on the tea archive script. Decided to scrap selenium as it's too slow and finicky so back to requests / Beautifulsoup. Have got it extracting raw posts already and injecting into SQLite as well as member data. On a positive note it should hammer through the whole job in a few minutes and is extensible as in it does upserts to the DB so subsequent runs will just update the database. Somewhat less prone to failure than the old version I wrote.

Also possibility of providing post stats across the entire thread with this 

Screenshot to prove it's not entirely vapourware

Cool! Meanwhile, I've been running wget once a day to keep up to date until your script takes over. Only takes about 5 minutes with 2-second pause between requests.

FINISHED --2021-05-07 04:40:07--
Total wall clock time: 4m 51s
Downloaded: 59 files, 10M in 2.9s (3.59 MB/s)

Are you saving images separately from the db?

[bitseeker]

That does mean that the 14ga main wires are a bit of overkill; but I won't have to worry aboot durability there.

Nuthin' wrong with a little overkill. TEApproved!

[bitseeker]

Bleugh 

TEA scraper running against thread for the first time. Still some bugs parsing stupid dates by the looks.

Good old thing can kick out some stats like top posting members:

Code: [Select]

select member.name, count(*)
from post
join member on post.member = member.id
group by member.name
order by count(*) desc
limit 10;
I spam too much 

DB looks to be around 150 megs of just data with no attachments or resources . I'm letting it run the whole thread and will debug the remaining broken bits.

Nifty. Looking forward to our new TEArchiver. By the way, post counts have been fixed.

[bd139]

On a positive note I managed to sit in bed and do some work on the tea archive script. Decided to scrap selenium as it's too slow and finicky so back to requests / Beautifulsoup. Have got it extracting raw posts already and injecting into SQLite as well as member data. On a positive note it should hammer through the whole job in a few minutes and is extensible as in it does upserts to the DB so subsequent runs will just update the database. Somewhat less prone to failure than the old version I wrote.

Also possibility of providing post stats across the entire thread with this 

Screenshot to prove it's not entirely vapourware

Cool! Meanwhile, I've been running wget once a day to keep up to date until your script takes over. Only takes about 5 minutes with 2-second pause between requests.

FINISHED --2021-05-07 04:40:07--
Total wall clock time: 4m 51s
Downloaded: 59 files, 10M in 2.9s (3.59 MB/s)

Are you saving images separately from the db?

This version is not handling images (yet). Images are turning out to be a bit of a nightmare. Basically there are three different classes of images we have:

1. Inline attachments to posts. These are fine. Apart from gifs which are broken.
2. Online embedded images. These are partially broken in the forum so are not fine.
3. External embedded images. These are a mix of joy and pain thanks to various anti-scraping measures in place.
4. Smileys/emoticons. These are fine.

The intent is to work through these and turn them all into blobs in sqlite which are linked to a post as “true attachments”. Once that’s done we have proper integrity of the dataset in one place.

From this a new static site can be generated with images etc which is fairly space and bandwidth efficient therefore can be popped on S3/cloudfront.

The rationale for doing it this way is it allows for the dataset to be incrementally updated say nightly with the last N posts just by upserting the new post data. This keeps the load off the EEVblog servers and keeps the processing cost down later.

Alas it’s always more complicated than it looks so there’s edge cases galore. The first one to deal with is the yesterday/today date stamps in the posts and quote bodies in the html that is scraped. Then there’s post-relative links inside the html that need to be rewritten 

I’d love to get it into an AWS lambda that runs overnight and just updates S3 incrementally eventually as this stuff tends to just run cheaply forever maintenance free. Will see where I get.

No more time today to work on it though as feeling fine so back to work, in this case wrestling Prometheus