Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[capt bullshot]

Yesterday, I had a pleasant visit by DC1MC who schlepped his Anritsu Signal Generator to my workbench for a TEA repair day.

Set up some instruments to diagnose that beast, first issue found was too low a signal output level below 40MHz.



After some debugging, the culprit was found and removed from the board:




It's a balanced diode ring mixer that lost most of its output. By some lucky coincidency, I had a spare Mini-Circuits mixer around, not an exactly fit for the PCB layout, but does the job well.



Second, the sig gen had random output levels over all frequencies when switching the mechanical attenuator. Same problem as this one: http://wunderkis.de/mg3633a/repair1.html So quite an easy fix, but somehow labour intensive.

Third issue, after some digging looked quite similar to this fault: http://wunderkis.de/mg3633a/repair2.html Indeed, it's been the very same capacitor that had to be replaced.

So finally, everything put together and assembled, it's a happy signal generator again:

[tggzzz]

thanks, no. Hubby is currently complaining that he cannot bid on the axe collection he is eyeing as we are out of space.

Any special types...throwing, double bit, racing ?

all kinds of, preference would most likely be battle axes, sacrificial axes, just about anything that can be used to ruin someone's day.

He's such a romantic, at one time he went to pick up his viking style fighting axe and gifted me with a sacrificial axe (for when I have the need to sacrifice a goat to Odin).

Think yourself lucky to have the option. While having an axe  without good reason was illegal in public since 1959, recent UK law makes this kind of weapon illegal to have even in your own home. An axe is a bladed article and the is no good reason to have a fighting or sacrificial axe.  No swords (unless pre 1959 and traditional construction) or "zombie" knives either.

At times I really do wonder what the world is coming to. 
Sharp cutting tools are all around us and where I sit now in my garage I see last century cutting tools that I have hoarded and collected all my life. 3 wood axes, a shipwrights lip adze (farmers preferred grubbing tool), knives, chisels and all manner of things that could cause harm in the hands of some deranged nitwit however these are all tools and just tools to the practical man.
FFS a baseball bat is just as dangerous. 

The police advice is that you shouldn't keep a baseball bat to protect yourself at home, but it is fine to keep a very large and heavy torch. One implies premeditation, the other implies defending with whatever is at hand.

It is loonie when one rationally considers the options. Such laws might conceivably make it more difficult for someone that is stupid or temporarily irrational to do harm. They do make it easier to prosecute, hopefully in valid cases and not invalid cases. Our police aren't too bad in that respect, but they are fallible humans.

I have no intention of surrendering my billhook, which is a delightful tool to use in the garden. I've been using it on tree branches since I was ~8yo.

[ch_scr]

Thanks to a certain member (Hello BU508A    ) I've gotten drawn a bit deeper into the voltnut rabbit hole.
Made 3 copys of the Geller labs SVR with in- & output filtering added. One is already at a weekend stay with my colleague, see last two pictures. For what little is on these pcb, performance is quite amazing. The K2612A has quite the warmup drift, manual is not joking around when telling you to wait 2h. 

[wkb]

thanks, no. Hubby is currently complaining that he cannot bid on the axe collection he is eyeing as we are out of space.

Any special types...throwing, double bit, racing ?

all kinds of, preference would most likely be battle axes, sacrificial axes, just about anything that can be used to ruin someone's day.

He's such a romantic, at one time he went to pick up his viking style fighting axe and gifted me with a sacrificial axe (for when I have the need to sacrifice a goat to Odin).

Think yourself lucky to have the option. While having an axe  without good reason was illegal in public since 1959, recent UK law makes this kind of weapon illegal to have even in your own home. An axe is a bladed article and the is no good reason to have a fighting or sacrificial axe.  No swords (unless pre 1959 and traditional construction) or "zombie" knives either.

 

They are outlawing a lot of stuff over here, too.
As if you could not use a Halligan tool to achieve a similar result as with an axe ...

Or a €2 potatoe peeler.  All nonsense this..

[Specmaster]

The police advice is that you shouldn't keep a baseball bat to protect yourself at home, but it is fine to keep a very large and heavy torch. One implies premeditation, the other implies defending with whatever is at hand.

It is loonie when one rationally considers the options. Such laws might conceivably make it more difficult for someone that is stupid or temporarily irrational to do harm. They do make it easier to prosecute, hopefully in valid cases and not invalid cases. Our police aren't too bad in that respect, but they are fallible humans.

I have no intention of surrendering my billhook, which is a delightful tool to use in the garden. I've been using it on tree branches since I was ~8yo.

This is where the law is really an ASS.

You could keep a baseball bat at home if you play baseball as it part of your kit, you can have a large and heavy torch at home for use in emergency, such as a power cut. What if someone breaks into your home and attacks you and the first thing that comes to hand happens to be A/ base bat, B/ big heavy torch, or C/ a knife, are you going to  A/ hit a ball at the attacker, B/ Shine a light in the attackers eyes or C/ peel a vegetable and throw the peelings at the attacker    

[tautech]

The police advice is that you shouldn't keep a baseball bat to protect yourself at home, but it is fine to keep a very large and heavy torch. One implies premeditation, the other implies defending with whatever is at hand.

It is loonie when one rationally considers the options. Such laws might conceivably make it more difficult for someone that is stupid or temporarily irrational to do harm. They do make it easier to prosecute, hopefully in valid cases and not invalid cases. Our police aren't too bad in that respect, but they are fallible humans.

I have no intention of surrendering my billhook, which is a delightful tool to use in the garden. I've been using it on tree branches since I was ~8yo.

This is where the law is really an ASS.

You could keep a baseball bat at home if you play baseball as it part of your kit, you can have a large and heavy torch at home for use in emergency, such as a power cut. What if someone breaks into your home and attacks you and the first thing that comes to hand happens to be A/ base bat, B/ big heavy torch, or C/ a knife, are you going to  A/ hit a ball at the attacker, B/ Shine a light in the attackers eyes or C/ peel a vegetable and throw the peelings at the attacker    

2 words: Magna Carta
You step into my castle and I will defend it and all others inside it !

There will be 2 shots, one into the ceiling and the other into......
Prove which shot was first as the warning shot. 

[tggzzz]

The police advice is that you shouldn't keep a baseball bat to protect yourself at home, but it is fine to keep a very large and heavy torch. One implies premeditation, the other implies defending with whatever is at hand.

It is loonie when one rationally considers the options. Such laws might conceivably make it more difficult for someone that is stupid or temporarily irrational to do harm. They do make it easier to prosecute, hopefully in valid cases and not invalid cases. Our police aren't too bad in that respect, but they are fallible humans.

I have no intention of surrendering my billhook, which is a delightful tool to use in the garden. I've been using it on tree branches since I was ~8yo.

This is where the law is really an ASS.

The issue is premeditated possession and/or use of an offensive weapon or tool. It is easy to dismiss premeditation if a household item is used. If you have other ways of disproving premeditation, that's fine.

You could keep a baseball bat at home if you play baseball as it part of your kit, you can have a large and heavy torch at home for use in emergency, such as a power cut.

I know someone who sometimes carries a samurai sword in his car. He is careful to carry documents showing his membership of an appropriate martial arts club, in case he is stopped by police.

[xrunner]

Well, that was quite the rabbit hole. Added to the POI for future reference.

Thanks.

I was explaining what I was doing with this Agilent spectrum analyzer to a couple of ham friends yesterday. They couldn't believe I was going to all this trouble. I told them this wasn't even the end. I'm going to upgrade the memory and I'll have to take it apart and solder in two more memory chips that are tiny and have a lot of wee pins, and format them which will render the whole thing inoperative, and then install the newest firmware. All that scares the Hell out of most of them.

One of them said "Aren't you in danger of having the thing stop working? Why take the risk!". I asked him, "As I recall didn't you used to ride motorcycles for fun?" He shut up. 

[DC1MC]

Yesterday, I had a pleasant visit by DC1MC who schlepped his Anritsu Signal Generator to my workbench for a TEA repair day.

Set up some instruments to diagnose that beast, first issue found was too low a signal output level below 40MHz.



After some debugging, the culprit was found and removed from the board:




It's a balanced diode ring mixer that lost most of its output. By some lucky coincidency, I had a spare Mini-Circuits mixer around, not an exactly fit for the PCB layout, but does the job well.



Second, the sig gen had random output levels over all frequencies when switching the mechanical attenuator. Same problem as this one: http://wunderkis.de/mg3633a/repair1.html So quite an easy fix, but somehow labour intensive.

Third issue, after some digging looked quite similar to this fault: http://wunderkis.de/mg3633a/repair2.html Indeed, it's been the very same capacitor that had to be replaced.

So finally, everything put together and assembled, it's a happy signal generator again:

This little sparse description does not really do justice to the trouble shooting skills and inventive solutions of our CaptB, I vote to promote him to Major Anritsu  .
Once again, thank you so much  !!!

Cheers,
DC1MC

[tautech]

One of them said "Aren't you in danger of having the thing stop working? Why take the risk!". I asked him, "As I recall didn't you used to ride motorcycles for fun?" He shut up. 

Here they're known as TK's......Temporary Kiwis !
Just a week ago a chap on a Ducati failed to take the 90^o corner 200m from home and piled into the neighbors hedge. If they weren't substantial trees some 6-8" in diameter he may have survived.

Place crawled with cops while they measured it all up and had the road closed for 3 hrs.

[xrunner]

One of them said "Aren't you in danger of having the thing stop working? Why take the risk!". I asked him, "As I recall didn't you used to ride motorcycles for fun?" He shut up. 

Here they're known as TK's......Temporary Kiwis !
Just a week ago a chap on a Ducati failed to take the 90^o corner 200m from home and piled into the neighbors hedge. If they weren't substantial trees some 6-8" in diameter he may have survived.

Place crawled with cops while they measured it all up and had the road closed for 3 hrs.

It's funny what scares one person doesn't bother another, and vice versa. 

[Robert763]

Just remember the law is only enforced when you are caught. Apart from that it’s a vague concept no one gives a flying fuck about. I own an axe, several knives and the deadliest biological weapon of all: small children.

Edit: to be clear I actually carry what you’d consider to be illegal most outdoor trips I do: a simple frost mora knife. It’s absolutely fine. Just stick it in your bag. If you’ve got a machete in your pocket outside a tube station it might attract some attention however! Be sensible. Play the grey man. Don’t draw attention to yourself and don’t look suspicious as fuck.

While I agree with what you say, are you aware of the latest law, the offensive weapons act?
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/17/contents/enacted
This makes a lot of weapons that were previously OK to own and have on private property illegal uder any circumstances.
Proper tools are OK but modern (post 1959) "collectable" and "decoratative" items like "samurai swords" are not. The reason for the law seems to be that it was too hard to prove that the real bad actors did not have them as collectables so now that reason has been removed for everyone. Trouble is that there is no defence and a lot of people are not aware of the new law. All it takes is a nosey neighbour or a policeman knocking your door about something else seeing and reporting an item for you to have a criminal record for a serious offence.
Low probability but very high consequences.

Edit, Just to be clear the new law does not need any action, intent, bad behaviour or being in public. Just having the item in  cuboard in your home is an offence that could get you locked up.

[tggzzz]

Just remember the law is only enforced when you are caught. Apart from that it’s a vague concept no one gives a flying fuck about. I own an axe, several knives and the deadliest biological weapon of all: small children.

Edit: to be clear I actually carry what you’d consider to be illegal most outdoor trips I do: a simple frost mora knife. It’s absolutely fine. Just stick it in your bag. If you’ve got a machete in your pocket outside a tube station it might attract some attention however! Be sensible. Play the grey man. Don’t draw attention to yourself and don’t look suspicious as fuck.

While I agree with what you say, are you aware of the latest law, the offensive weapons act?
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/17/contents/enacted
This makes a lot of weapons that were previously OK to own and have on private property illegal uder any circumstances.
Proper tools are OK but modern (post 1959) "collectable" and "decoratative" items like "samurai swords" are not. The reason for the law seems to be that it was too hard to prove that the real bad actors did not have them as collectables so now that reason has been removed for everyone. Trouble is that there is no defence and a lot of people are not aware of the new law. All it takes is a nosey neighbour or a policeman knocking your door about something else seeing and reporting an item for you to have a criminal record for a serious offence.
Low probbility but very high consequences.

I don't disagree.

This government is enacting quite a lot of unpleasant legislation in a wide range of areas. I won't mention details because that would rapidly descend into a political discussion.

[Specmaster]

Just remember the law is only enforced when you are caught. Apart from that it’s a vague concept no one gives a flying fuck about. I own an axe, several knives and the deadliest biological weapon of all: small children.

Edit: to be clear I actually carry what you’d consider to be illegal most outdoor trips I do: a simple frost mora knife. It’s absolutely fine. Just stick it in your bag. If you’ve got a machete in your pocket outside a tube station it might attract some attention however! Be sensible. Play the grey man. Don’t draw attention to yourself and don’t look suspicious as fuck.

While I agree with what you say, are you aware of the latest law, the offensive weapons act?
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/17/contents/enacted
This makes a lot of weapons that were previously OK to own and have on private property illegal uder any circumstances.
Proper tools are OK but modern (post 1959) "collectable" and "decoratative" items like "samurai swords" are not. The reason for the law seems to be that it was too hard to prove that the real bad actors did not have them as collectables so now that reason has been removed for everyone. Trouble is that there is no defence and a lot of people are not aware of the new law. All it takes is a nosey neighbour or a policeman knocking your door about something else seeing and reporting an item for you to have a criminal record for a serious offence.
Low probbility but very high consequences.

If they want to remove these weapons from circulation then surely the honourable and sensible thing to would be to make this new law public knowledge and publicize it well so that would encourage people having them to hand them in without any recriminations attached.

[med6753]

This little sparse description does not really do justice to the trouble shooting skills and inventive solutions of our CaptB, I vote to promote him to Major Anritsu  .
Once again, thank you so much  !!!

Cheers,
DC1MC

Gee, maybe if I send him this PITA 547 he can fix that too? 

On 2nd thought...I have not yet begun to fight. 

[artag]

If they want to remove these weapons from circulation then surely the honourable and sensible thing to would be to make this new law public knowledge and publicize it well so that would encourage people having them to hand them in without any recriminations attached.

I started reading that reference with the intention of seeing what offensive tools I own, but got stuck on the first section, which is about corrosive substances. I've got several of those, too, mostly with the intention of removing unwanted copper.

I know why that's there - it was the result of a spate of acid attacks a few years ago. Haven't heard of a lot more so presumably it either effectively controlled them, or more likely they went out of fashion with the groups carrying them out.

But, as often the case with technical laws, they're unreadable whilst also being full of holes and overreach. They go into great detail about when you can & can't sell or handle 'corrosive substances' (basically with the intent of keeping them away from under-18s) without ever explaining, as far as I can see, what a 'corrosive substance' is.

It's possible (though not stated) that they mean substances that legislation demands are marked with a hazmat 'corrosive' symbol. But in my mind, some common corrosive substances would be vinegar and seawater.  So a child at a public beach with a bucket of seawater is an offender ..

[med6753]

If they want to remove these weapons from circulation then surely the honourable and sensible thing to would be to make this new law public knowledge and publicize it well so that would encourage people having them to hand them in without any recriminations attached.

I wish I had some TEA content to off set this OT which has the potential for rapidly going into the sewer within an hour or two. 

But I will throw in my quick commentary concerning stupid laws. NYS recently passed a law limiting gun clips to something like 9 or 10 rounds maximum. Guess how many legal and legit gun owners turned in their +20 round clips? I have a Marlin 60 .22LR which has a tube magazine which can hold 14 rounds. I guess in the eyes of the state it now makes it illegal. Am I gonna turn it in? Guess again.

So be prepared for the onslaught and in the meantime I'm gonna go find something to do.   

[Robert763]

If it's a fixed tube it's not a clip. Not fast to re-load either.
I've mentiond before I was in Northern Ireland for a while. At the time you needed a licence for an air rifle. A friend applied for a licence for a .177 target rifle but it was refused as he was not a member of a target club. The cop who came around to tell him had a coup of tea and during coversation said, is that your field with the sheep on it? Yes.  A little later later a comment was made that protecting livestock was a "good reason" to have a small calibre rifle. My friend subsequently got a Bruno .22LR semi-auto rifle styled on an M1 

[beanflying]

That was the one of the fake arguments put up by some in Oz for fully Autos for stock One of the things little Johnny Howard got right.

Anyway enough of that BS and time for something non TEA and totally Harmless a device for painting my eggs and or balls

Some Laser cutting and playing with stepper and printer leftovers https://www.eevblog.com/forum/3d-printing/bring-out-your-dead-101-things-to-do-with-old-3d-printers-and-parts/msg3564746/#msg3564746

Wild Saturday night spent making a spring and tapping some holes over a few slow Gin's life is ok if a little boring.

[BU508A]

A mattock handle is better!

This one?



 

[Robert763]

Back to TEA. I finished the test circuit for the HDSP0860 (amber 4x7) display clock and it works fine. Using 74HCT390s which are decmal rather than binary saves a bit of decoding so just 3 74HCT390s and a 74HCT08 for decode.  I'll probably add a quad EXOR for injecting pulses for time setting. One thing is thet the HDSP display run pretty hot. So I've ordered some 0.5mm silicone thermal transfer material and will run a alloy strip behind the displays as a heatsink.
Off to cut a rectangular hole in the 2mm thick front panel.   

[mnementh]

Well, that was quite the rabbit hole. Added to the POI for future reference.

Thanks.

I was explaining what I was doing with this Agilent spectrum analyzer to a couple of ham friends yesterday. They couldn't believe I was going to all this trouble. I told them this wasn't even the end. I'm going to upgrade the memory and I'll have to take it apart and solder in two more memory chips that are tiny and have a lot of wee pins, and format them which will render the whole thing inoperative, and then install the newest firmware. All that scares the Hell out of most of them.

One of them said "Aren't you in danger of having the thing stop working? Why take the risk!". I asked him, "As I recall didn't you used to ride motorcycles for fun?" He shut up. 

+1000 internets! 

I know that equation viscerally; I've been on both sides of the operator at one time or another. 

mnem

[factory]

That's annoying here as well as I was looking forward to the next installment of "med's tales of 547 woe" 

Have no fear, I'm going to work on it tomorrow anyway without that tube. Look to the West for smoke signals tomorrow. 

Here's one for you, oh mighty recapper, a job lot of NoS RIFAs. If you're not, I'm tempted, and then I can mail them to bd139 for Experiments.

He might be disappointed as those are not RIFA-madness, the "PHE" are either metallized polyester or polypropylene depending on the number, the electrolytics are usually good too (but I wouldn't go buying lot of old stock myself unless very cheap).

David

[BU508A]

Thanks to a certain member (Hello BU508A    ) I've gotten drawn a bit deeper into the voltnut rabbit hole.
Made 3 copys of the Geller labs SVR with in- & output filtering added. One is already at a weekend stay with my colleague, see last two pictures. For what little is on these pcb, performance is quite amazing. The K2612A has quite the warmup drift, manual is not joking around when telling you to wait 2h. 

You are very welcome. 
Do you have a graph of this warm-up drift? Just curious ...

Btw, if someone is interested in a copy of the website of the Geller Labs (the inventor of the SVR 10V reference), drop me a PM and I'll send you a link where to download.
I've made a copy of his website in 2016 and stored it here locally as a .tar.gz file (size: 519956054 Bytes).

Edit:
Here you can find some of the content of the Geller Labs as well:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/metrology/geller-labs-site-finally-gone-contents-capture/

[Cerebus]

Mmmm, shielding porn. I prefer them when they've obviously been milled out of a solid lump of metal but still ... drool.