Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tggzzz]

my car tyre inflator basically consists of a mains powered compressor that is run off 2 large boat (or car) batteries hooked up to a Meanwell true sine wave 1kW inverter. That may seem like overkill, but actually works.

I'm not very good at regular maintenance on the car. I'll often check such things while in a car park waiting for someone else to get their backside out of the shop/house and into the car.

[Specmaster]

@bd139, I took your advice re eBay account and opened another bank account specifically for eBay payments to go in otherwise it will remain empty to prevent chargebacks, thanks for the tip 

Won't eBay just close your account or some other drastic thing, if you prevent chargebacks?

Probably. This is about partitioning their opinion about what is a fair and just transaction away from your main bank account. This is exactly how most e-commerce companies run as well. The merchant “sink account” usually has a float amount in it and the rest is transferred out.

I’ve got to say though that there have been no issues so far. I can’t complain. I’ve sold some high value items and dealt with a high value return and it has been well timed and fair. They are not attempting to rip off customers.

Also update on packlink. They have paid out within their terms and conditions so far a total of £185. Tips for sellers:

1. Photograph the box open with item packed in it.
2. Photograph the outside of the box with label stuck to it.
3. Keep them religiously for 3 months.
4. Can’t lose 

Hmm, 2 further tips.
5. Keep photos of the packed item, with address label and a ruler showing the actual dimensions, in case they later claim extra money, claiming parcels exceeded the maximum size for the price point.
6. If possible, also keep a photo of the packed item on scales so the weight can be seen, same reason as above.

[tautech]

Must post a pic of a one day  sand blaster project using a Ingersoll Rand 3 cyl 2stage 150cfm monster scored for a reasonable price some years back. Came with 30hp 3ph motor that alone is worth more than I paid for the whole setup.
Need to turn up an adapter so to drive it with a tractor with 1000rpm PTO to get full blast capability from it.
Got the sand tank and most of the close in piping and taps so only need some proper HD sand blasting hose so only requires stitching it all together and we'll be good to go. Black sand beach nearby for a never ending free source of blasting medium. 
Another never never job not yet got roundtoit. 

[Specmaster]

Today's ramblings and misfortunes....

According to the latest tracking the 6BY8 tube is still stuck at the Kearny, NJ distribution center with no delivery date. Ya think I might get it before Christmas? 

Replacement tubular/coupling caps for the Type 547 PSU are in the hands of FedEx with an expected delivery of Friday.

Discovered that the Type 547 PSU does NOT sequence up the same as the Type 535A PSU even though they are the same basic design. Both the +100V and -150V reference are held off at essentially 0 volts until the time delay kicks in. The Type 535A brings the +100V up to +70V and then the time delay kicks in. So that smoking gun was a flaming fart. 

What I'm basically left with is despite a good power off DC resistance to ground there has to be some sort of short that only appears when power is applied. What could that possibly be? I have a thought. The +100V goes all over the scope and provides series string filament voltages to the tubes, including the plug-in. There MIGHT be a tube that has a filament to cathode short that only shows itself when the tube heats up. So today I'm going to concentrate on isolating sections of the +100V, apply power, and see what happens. This is going to be no easy feat because as stated the +100V goes all over.

Good possibility that procedure is going to involve magic smoke.       

Hmm, would it not be easier to just pull out odd tube and see what happens, that would remove the cathode to heater short if your theory is correct?

[Specmaster]

my car tyre inflator basically consists of a mains powered compressor that is run off 2 large boat (or car) batteries hooked up to a Meanwell true sine wave 1kW inverter. That may seem like overkill, but actually works.

My car tyre inflator is called ATLAS COPCO and runs on 400V AC three-phase. For when I'm away from the garage, I've got a smartphone app that allows me to call assistane (AA / ADAC style but not tied to a membership) regardless of which car I'm driving and regardless where in Europe I am. But for a flat tire I don't. I swap it, since I've got a spare and tools in the car. And I check the pressure on the spare regularly.

My tyre inflator is just a good common sense one, one that I keep in its protective pouch in the boot, and it also doubles as a powerful torch. When required it simply clips onto the car battery terminals and has 2 switches, 1 for the compressor and the other for the torch, I believe in the KISS principle 

[Vince]

[547 woes] What could that possibly be? I have a thought.
[..] There MIGHT be a tube that has a filament to cathode short that only shows itself when the tube heats up

Interesting !

The +100V goes all over the scope and provides series string filament voltages to the tubes, including the plug-in. .

Looked at the heater wiring diagram and PSU schematics. Unless I am misguided, it looks like it's not at all like that ??
All filaments are in parallel not series, and they are supplied via various 6,3V AC windings, each powering some subset of the tubes. Not powered via that +100V.

So today I'm going to concentrate on isolating sections of the +100V, apply power, and see what happens. This is going to be no easy feat because as stated the +100V goes all over.

However I do see that some of the tubes have their filament elevated to a higher voltage. It's clearly noted both on the PSU diagram and the heater wiring diagram.. and if that's your problem then it should be quick to figure out because there are only a very FEW tubes that are concerned :

1) V707 and V737 whose filament is tied to the +350V rail. These tubes are to be found in the PSU. They are pass tubes for a couple rails as you can see.
V707 (a 6080 ;-) handles the +225V rail, and V737 ( a 6CW5 ) handles the +350V rail.

2) V584 and V574. Maybe more interesting. Those have their filament raised to the +100V rail. Both 6DJ8.  They are complementary and form the two halves of the horizontal amplifier. A failed horizontal amp would cause the immobile dot symptoms that you witness on your scope, it sure did on my 502A with the same symptoms...

So that's only 4 tubes and 2 places to look at in the scope.

I would therefore start with the most likely suspects, V584/574 in the horizontal amplifier....

Good possibility that procedure is going to involve magic smoke.     

Might be time to cobble some current limiting apparatus to protect those old Teks while debugging them ! 
I know I will. Have 20 of them to restore and already two of them have produced some kind of fireworks or other, when I powered them for the first time. Did not happen immediately, but after a few seconds. Still... I would rather avoid that from now on... don't want to blow precious transformers or beefy pass tubes, or waste time and money chasing and replacing burnt components that could have been kept alive, had I been a bit more considerate...

Anyway, good luck and keep us posted, it's nice having a thin slice of TEA on here every now and then, so thanks for that.   

[xrunner]

Agilent E4411B Firmware Upgrade

OK let's review this mess.

Trying to install the firmware for an Agilent E4411B that does not have the memory expansion. Current old version was A.05.01 (Sep 2000). The latest firmware that can be installed without the memory expansion was A.07.06 (Nov 2001). With the memory expansion I can install A.14.06.

I created the floppy set using my PC exactly as instructed by Agilent's directions (see attachment). I did a clean format for each disk. It did nothing because the 1st floppy that had the loading program (ESALOADR) was not being read by the E4411B.

After several more attempts I realized I had to go down the rabbit hole. What was wrong? Was the USB floppy bad? Was Windoze 10 making bad copies to the floppy? What phase is the Moon in? I copied some small files to the floppy and it performed flawlessly reading and writing. The files could also be copied onto the C: of the SA and renamed (more on that issue ...).

Doing more research on this I ran across this thread from Keysight -

Keysight help thread

What? Format the disks on the SA and it fixes the issue?  I reformatted the disks on the SA but still had to get the files on them at the PC. So I did all that and it still wouldn't load and run ESALOADR !

What I wanted to try next was to keep all the file actions in the "ecosystem" of the SA. To do that, I had to get the ESALOADR onto the SA drive C: (so as to have the SA copy it onto the floppy). When I tried to copy that file - nothing happened. I find out that the SA file menu choices do not operate at all with files that do not have an extension. It simply ignores them! OK, so back to the PC. I took the disk back and added an extension to the file name like this (so it would recognize it) -

ESALOADR.TXT

After that, the SA copied the file to a TEMP Dir I made on it's C: drive. So I had ESALOADR.TXT loaded onto the system. However, it won't do squat that way. Has to be on a floppy disk. Next I re-formatted the floppy on the SA, and copied the file back to the floppy. Now to re-name the file ... oh nope ... it won't re-name a file to anything that doesn't have an extension. In order to do that I'd have to go back out of the SA system. I didn't want to do that, so I thought, why not try it as-is and see what happens? Well I'll be damned if it didn't start loading/running ESALOADR.TXT!

So it seems, for some reason, writing ESALOADR to the floppy from the PC, even if the floppy is formatted on the SA, doesn't sit well. I do not know why. I have not found any other reference to this exact solution on the internet. I ordered the flash chips and memory stick and I plan to do the memory upgrade and get this beast all the way up to A.14.06 firmware. I'm putting that first floppy disk with ESALOADR.TXT in a safe place too!

[Robert763]

@mnem 2" always make a difference. Trust me, I can tell ...
 

Fwiw, I think those Arcade1ups are not bad at all. Good screen, lot less danger of spontaneous combustion, easier to move around and don't take up as much space. My elevator action upright is still sitting in the garage because there is just no way to bring it up into the 3rd floor. Those Arcade1ups I can move without help.
Pinballs are a nightmare to move, fullsize arcades are hell.

My first full time job (and 2nd part time in electronics) was repairing arcade machines in the late 70's. Specifically the electronic ones but if nothing else was going on or it wass a difficult fault I'd end up doing electromechanicals. Even going out with a field engineer for the day to fix one machine. That was interesting in Northern Ireland at the time, we had machines in all sorts of places so in a day you could be in pubs and clubs of every political persuasion plus police and army sites.
TE was limited. 0MHz digital counter Yaesu YC-305 which was great for the original PONG which was mostly SN7474 flip-flops so just go looking for the one that did not divide by two. A 20 MHz Philip's 'scope and a Solartron 7040 DMM with LED calculator bubble display.  In addition to the usual AVO 8 and Megger of course. Worked on Intel 4004, 4040 Motorola 6800 and other CPUs with little more than a 'scope and circuuit diagram. Getting a Dataman Softy II (E)PROM programmer was a great leap forward.
Getting a pinball machine up stairs is nothing compared to a full size snooker table with a proper slate bed 

[Ice-Tea]

listed under Test Measurment.... What is scary is the 58 sold  $0.60 stamp, envelope and time for $1 in sales.

eBay auction: #384141978729

For... Uh... Decoration use? Well, at least they are honnest..

[Cerebus]

my car tyre inflator basically consists of a mains powered compressor that is run off 2 large boat (or car) batteries hooked up to a Meanwell true sine wave 1kW inverter. That may seem like overkill, but actually works.

My car tyre inflator is called ATLAS COPCO and runs on 400V AC three-phase. For when I'm away from the garage, I've got a smartphone app that allows me to call assistane (AA / ADAC style but not tied to a membership) regardless of which car I'm driving and regardless where in Europe I am. But for a flat tire I don't. I swap it, since I've got a spare and tools in the car. And I check the pressure on the spare regularly.

My tyre inflator is just a good common sense one, one that I keep in its protective pouch in the boot, and it also doubles as a powerful torch. When required it simply clips onto the car battery terminals and has 2 switches, 1 for the compressor and the other for the torch, I believe in the KISS principle 

KISS would be to do what I do, use a foot pump. One wonders if all this boasting about the size of one's compressor isn't some kind of compensatory displacement activity.

[Specmaster]

Off Topic but interesting I think, especially for you guys in the GWN and a possible thing to go and visit if thats the sort of thing that floats your boat (pun intended) 

[Specmaster]

@Cerebus, a foot pump is what I would have had if I was not offered this electric one at an excellent price. It would have been bad manners to have refused the offer, £19 for a twin cylinder 65L per minute pump is not to be sneezed at 

[beanflying]

my car tyre inflator basically consists of a mains powered compressor that is run off 2 large boat (or car) batteries hooked up to a Meanwell true sine wave 1kW inverter. That may seem like overkill, but actually works.

My car tyre inflator is called ATLAS COPCO and runs on 400V AC three-phase. For when I'm away from the garage, I've got a smartphone app that allows me to call assistane (AA / ADAC style but not tied to a membership) regardless of which car I'm driving and regardless where in Europe I am. But for a flat tire I don't. I swap it, since I've got a spare and tools in the car. And I check the pressure on the spare regularly.

My tyre inflator is just a good common sense one, one that I keep in its protective pouch in the boot, and it also doubles as a powerful torch. When required it simply clips onto the car battery terminals and has 2 switches, 1 for the compressor and the other for the torch, I believe in the KISS principle 

KISS would be to do what I do, use a foot pump. One wonders if all this boasting about the size of one's compressor isn't some kind of compensatory displacement activity.

Now I am back to having a sand capable vehicle again I have a good one on the shopping list. Re inflating 4 large tires from 8-10 PSI to road pressure by foot is a workout I don't need I do have a cheapy direct drive compressor as well at home but doing shed things which does all I need at this stage.

[beanflying]

TEA Question 

100-120VDC at 3A variable with current limiting. Anything old or used I should look at or do I buy a slightly dodgy 120V 3A switchmode off Aliexpress? Duty is Foam Cutting hot wire so some noise isn't an issue but I would also prefer not to get a kick out of life from using it.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001133803791.html?spm=a2g0s.8937460.0.0.1e482e0eFnuCWM

[Ice-Tea]

Got a TCR300S9 but shipping it you would be about as expensive as buying a plane ticket and taking it along as lugage.

[0culus]

snip

The +100V goes all over the scope and provides series string filament voltages to the tubes, including the plug-in. .

Looked at the heater wiring diagram and PSU schematics. Unless I am misguided, it looks like it's not at all like that ??
All filaments are in parallel not series, and they are supplied via various 6,3V AC windings, each powering some subset of the tubes. Not powered via that +100V.

snip

It will probably depend on the plug in (some 1 series have no tubes, or only a couple of nuvistors), but powering the plug in tubes by series DC is a pretty common trick Tek used on the 500 series to reduce noise in the front end and possibly other strategic places.

[1Ghz]

EEVBlog effect? It's all gone!

eBay auction: #224448555445

[med6753]

snip

The +100V goes all over the scope and provides series string filament voltages to the tubes, including the plug-in. .

Looked at the heater wiring diagram and PSU schematics. Unless I am misguided, it looks like it's not at all like that ??
All filaments are in parallel not series, and they are supplied via various 6,3V AC windings, each powering some subset of the tubes. Not powered via that +100V.

snip

It will probably depend on the plug in (some 1 series have no tubes, or only a couple of nuvistors), but powering the plug in tubes by series DC is a pretty common trick Tek used on the 500 series to reduce noise in the front end and possibly other strategic places.

Correct. Look at the Heater Wiring Diagram. V91 and V1003 are connected in series right across the +100V bus which in turn goes directly to the plug-in connector. And yes, there are other tubes which the heaters are elevated to +100V because of a great potential difference between the heater and the cathode. Those will definitely be checked.

[25 CPS]

Back in the day, in Oz, lawnmowers used a "recoil start", consisting of a large spring which you wound up with a folding handle on top of the "starter".
Once it was fully wound up, the handle would be folded & struck, releasing the spring, rotating the crankshaft, & starting the engine.

This worked well, & was all but ubiquitous on mowers & the like.
Like all things that work, for some unknown reason they replaced them with something that doesn't---------#%^*!?€¥#!!! "cord starts!"

I hate 'em! --------You heave like mad on the cord, the motor coughs, so you have to wait  for the cord to return into the spool, & try it again.

Next time, the thing starts for a second, then dies.

Try again several times----no joy, the damn thing has flooded.
At this point, the cord no longer returns all the way, & a piece about the length of your forearm stays flopping around outside forever, looking for a mechanism to get caught up in.

By now, if like me, you are an elderly gentleman (nice word for "Old Fart"), you are sweating, your arm feels like its about to fall off, so you say "Stuff it!", have a cuppa, lie down, & go on eevblog to whinge.

I mowed the lawn yesterday.  It needed it, the weather was beautiful, and the timing was perfect since I put the bags of yard waste out last night to be collected this morning.  Anyhow, the lawnmower has a cord start.  I pulled the ripcord, it started, I cut the grass.

What about hiring a teenager to mow the lawn?  Have you thought about trying to hire a teenager to cut your grass?  You could offer them $1.50 to do it.  A dollar fifty.  That's a lot of money for cutting the grass.  They'd better be grateful to be the beneficiary of such magnanimous generosity as to be paid a dollar fifty to wrangle with the ripcord and cut the grass once that mower's started up.  Kids these days don't know how good they've got it, $1.50 piecework to mow the lawn, that's practically showering the local teenager with money.  In consideration of such outrageous largesse, especially in light of such utopian working conditions - the lawnmower has a ripcord, there's no risk of fingers or hands getting mauled spinning the flywheel by hand to get it started, perhaps it would be wise to accompany that $1.50 with some friendly advice not to spend it all in one place.

So after I finished mowing the lawn and put the three yard waste bags of clippings out to be collected, there was no cuppa, there was no lie down, there was no whinging here.  I got in the shower and cleaned myself up, put on a fresh set of clothes, got in the car, put all four windows down, stopped for a coffee and got cash in excess of $1.50 out of the bank machine, enjoyed a beautiful spring evening drive and picked up a General Radio impedance bridge last night.

[mnementh]

@bd139, I took your advice re eBay account and opened another bank account specifically for eBay payments to go in otherwise it will remain empty to prevent chargebacks, thanks for the tip 

Won't eBay just close your account or some other drastic thing, if you prevent chargebacks?

No, how can they do that when there is no stipulation that you have to keep a certain amount of funds in your bank account? Ebay are intending to breakaway from PayPal who used to act as arbitrators in the event of a buyer making a false claim against the seller. We don't yet know just how eBay will react in a situation like that, who will they favour? At least PayPal was neutral and if it was unclear, they would refund the buyer and allow the seller to keep the money they received in the first place.

Have they actually said they will do charge-backs at all?

Yes they have. If you don’t handle an INR or INAD case then they just refund the buyer. They pay the buyer first and then the merchant recovers the money from you. If you do handle either of those and offer a refund then the merchant recovers it. You can delay this until the item is returned and checked out.

The case I am protecting myself from is if the buyer is making a fraudulent claim or has returned a different item as I can’t win with the default eBay policy and I would have evidence which supports my case. My option is always on the table to burn the eBay account and say “see you in court”. So far, eBay haven’t won a case against private seller debt collection in the UK I understand from some research.

I don’t need eBay to survive although it’d be nice. As I always say: always have an exit plan.

Yup. This has always been how I deal with all things e-commerce. Use a mule account with a bank different from your primary (right of set-off can fuck you big time), don't allow any more exposure in that account than you're prepared to write off if something goes to shit. Yes, transferring money before a big purchase can be a PITA... but it's always less of a PITA than trying to claw money back from a CC company.

In the end, that is what fleaBay is trying to be with this move, just as when they bought into PayPal... both your merchant services provider and your banker. The conflict of interest there should be obvious to a 6-year-old.

mnem

[Cerebus]

TEA Question 

100-120VDC at 3A variable with current limiting. Anything old or used I should look at or do I buy a slightly dodgy 120V 3A switchmode off Aliexpress? Duty is Foam Cutting hot wire so some noise isn't an issue but I would also prefer not to get a kick out of life from using it.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001133803791.html?spm=a2g0s.8937460.0.0.1e482e0eFnuCWM

If you really need 300W for foam cutting, and who's to say you don't, I would have thought that you've be better off with less voltage and more current. I personally wouldn't want to be playing about with an exposed resistance wire that had 100+ VDC across the ends of it. Plus it's much easier to find respectable high current low voltage SMPSs from the likes of Meanwell that it is to find a 300W odd PSU in the 3A or so region.

[mnementh]

Stabil fuel treatment was my hero yesterday too; mower started first pull and ran smooth as glass all afternoon. I hope for similar with the 2-strokes later in the week when I do the edging and blow the porch off.

As for electric start... I've had it on garden tractors and snowblowers ever since growing up in the salt belt; would never give it up on those things. I think a spinner dome on the engine for a rubber cup on a cordless drill would be a grand idea on those small motors tho... like we use on model airplanes. But that kind of generic solution doesn't give the MFR parts turnover/upsale opportunities.

mnem

Back in the day, in Oz, lawnmowers used a "recoil start", consisting of a large spring which you wound up with a folding handle on top of the "starter".
Once it was fully wound up, the handle would be folded & struck, releasing the spring, rotating the crankshaft, & starting the engine.

This worked well, & was all but ubiquitous on mowers & the like.
Like all things that work, for some unknown reason they replaced them with something that doesn't---------#%^*!?€¥#!!! "cord starts!"

I hate 'em! --------You heave like mad on the cord, the motor coughs, so you have to wait  for the cord to return into the spool, & try it again.

Next time, the thing starts for a second, then dies.

Try again several times----no joy, the damn thing has flooded.
At this point, the cord no longer returns all the way, & a piece about the length of your forearm stays flopping around outside forever, looking for a mechanism to get caught up in.

By now, if like me, you are an elderly gentleman (nice word for "Old Fart"), you are sweating, your arm feels like its about to fall off, so you say "Stuff it!", have a cuppa, lie down, & go on eevblog to whinge.

Oh, those were not without their foibles and drawbacks as well. Chief among them being that in order to work, the big coil-spring needs to be kept clean and dry, and if you oil it, it collects dust & grime and fouls up in no time; ceasing to uncoil as it should and turning "lazy".

If you live in the snow belt, storage in a damp outdoors location meant that every spring, there was a chance the spring had rusted and seized up in the off-season; and I can tell you from personal experience... unleashing one of those bastards and rewinding it again after you clean it is an exercise in personal laceration peril and aching hands unless you have the special tool they make for doing it.

In all honesty, I'd rather deal with electric-start... and in fact did keep one of those 120VAC Briggs starters on the shelf for when I needed to work on a recalcitrant engine; two bolts and it was on there and ready, and most of the motors I dealt with had the ring-gear on the flywheel. Except it always seemed to be a fucking Tecumseh that was fucking with my head when I thought to use it.

mnem
 

[tonyalbus]

Thanks to BangUgood for sending me a free sample of the comprehensive RF tester.
2 out of 2 not working, but i am sure that is just bad luck and these just slipped true quality control 
it is a real pity... if they check better what they send and how they send.. packaging.. it would be a nice device...



i so wanted to show you a nice compareison aside the Marconi..
guess the stars were not aligned

[mnementh]

Oh, yeah... I know the real ones are a heavy bitch... I replaced a few CRTS back in the day. The real dicksore were the jumbo Mortal Kombat with the 25" CRT... and there was a multi-game table with a 25" screen (or was it 27"?) and 1/2" glass/Lexan top that weighed like 2 of the original Pac-Man tables. Backache central.

Also many memories of a misspent youth feeding quartebrs into such beasts; plus Centipede, Moon Patrol & Tempest at Caruso's Pizza.   

mnem
*knocks self unconscious with a Asteroids mallet*

We were so poor that our kids could only afford to play "Single Dragon!"

*groaaaannnnnnn*

mnem
*volley of soggy ol' boots inbound*

[mnementh]

Today's ramblings and misfortunes....

According to the latest tracking the 6BY8 tube is still stuck at the Kearny, NJ distribution center with no delivery date. Ya think I might get it before Christmas? 

Replacement tubular/coupling caps for the Type 547 PSU are in the hands of FedEx with an expected delivery of Friday.

Discovered that the Type 547 PSU does NOT sequence up the same as the Type 535A PSU even though they are the same basic design. Both the +100V and -150V reference are held off at essentially 0 volts until the time delay kicks in. The Type 535A brings the +100V up to +70V and then the time delay kicks in. So that smoking gun was a flaming fart. 

What I'm basically left with is despite a good power off DC resistance to ground there has to be some sort of short that only appears when power is applied. What could that possibly be? I have a thought. The +100V goes all over the scope and provides series string filament voltages to the tubes, including the plug-in. There MIGHT be a tube that has a filament to cathode short that only shows itself when the tube heats up. So today I'm going to concentrate on isolating sections of the +100V, apply power, and see what happens. This is going to be no easy feat because as stated the +100V goes all over.

Good possibility that procedure is going to involve magic smoke.     

As long as it doesn't produce a smoking med; I hear those smell like asphalt. 

mnem