Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

<snip>
Okay... I guess. It just seemed to me that if you had interest in any one piece of that very unusual assortment, it should've been worth more than 60 quid. I mean, just the accumulated meter movements on some of that gear are worth more than that, if you were of a mind to rape the gear for them.

OTOH... I get the "white elephant" aspect too. You may want to save some of it; but along with that comes a certain onus to treat even the stuff you're not interested with some level of respect and at least try to find it a good home. That's how I found myself with closets full of random gear and scopes that needed a new home.

mnem
 

Always of assuming that A/The meter movements were actually working and B/ that I had use for them, otherwise they just become white elephants in their own right that either I had to flip or horde and god knows, I have enough stuff already, I still have the best part of a garage full of bits and bobs from my Mums house thats been sitting there for 7 years to finally sift through and decide what to with it all.

[mansaxel]

Today's work and catch: 3x 15 metres 12-pair Belden Brilliance individual-jacketed audio multicore. For free. Only it was under 15cm of other cable, under the raised flooring. But, for free is not bad. Now I only need to get the right MS3106 37-pin connectors, and some panels and Neutrik XLRs, and there's a nice little multicore cable system coming. Will be an excellent fit for my 10-channel Studer desk and the small jobs I do with it.

Also, our restrictions lifted a bit this week, so now there might be a performance season after all.

[BU508A]

Quick update to the AD587 PCBs from ch_scr.
I've assembled one this evening and did a quick test with the DMM7510.

Results so far:
- this little device performs quite well
- need much better shielding than thin air
- will assemble a shielded cable for the measurements

And since the lot of you wants always to see some pictures, here we go:

Top:


Bottom:


Measuring the DUT:


Keithley DMM7510:

[Specmaster]

Perhaps this might help explain some stupid delivery delay problems that have been reported by some of our American friends recently?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-us-canada-56821931

[Cerebus]

I put it down to the fact that I must have twisted my body awkwardly while panning with the plane to capture the perfect photo.

And hopefully that's all it is. As I said, I've pulled an intercostal muscle before without knowing how I did it - the thing in that case was I was certain what it was because the pain was exactly the same as when I broke my ribs, just less intense - more "Fuck that hurts when I move!" rather than "Do I really need to breathe? Asphyxiating must hurt less than my ribcage does when I do breathe."

Meanest thing you can do to someone who's broken a rib? Tell them a really good joke. However, best to avoid them for, ooh, six months after they've healed if you do.

[mnementh]

Quick update to the AD587 PCBs from ch_scr.
I've assembled one this evening and did a quick test with the DMM7510.
(SNIP)
Keithley DMM7510:

Nice tidy work. 

mnem
But of course, you know... if they're agreeing like that, one of them is wrong and the other is lying to cover for it.

[ch_scr]

Quick update to the AD587 PCBs from ch_scr.
I've assembled one this evening and did a quick test with the DMM7510.

Results so far:
- this little device performs quite well
- need much better shielding than thin air
- will assemble a shielded cable for the measurements
[...]

Nicely done 
What I can tell is that these IC's make cute thermometers, at least if you have a long scale DMM. For fun, put your cupped hand above the IC at close distance. After a moment, you'll see a nice thermal drift developing on the graph, from the infrared radiation of your hand alone. Inside an oven or with additional thermal compensation they should perform quite nicely. A case just evens things out but you'll still have a thermometer imho.

[beanflying]

Even heated references or more likely the 34401A drifts a little with Temp. This afternoons shack temp is a few C down on yesterday and accordingly the reading is a few PPM higher......

Also hot off the Laser yesterdays Box gluing jig. Looks and seems like it will work just like intended acrylic glue job tomorrow. Love it when a plan comes together 

[tautech]

Even heated references or more likely the 34401A drifts a little with Temp. This afternoons shack temp is a few C down on yesterday and accordingly the reading is a few PPM higher......

Also hot off the Laser yesterdays Box gluing jig. Looks and seems like it will work just like intended acrylic glue job tomorrow. Love it when a plan comes together 

Bean Shack streaming coming is it with the new IP camera ? 

[beanflying]

Bean Shack streaming coming is it with the new IP camera ? 

One of the shack security Cameras. This WiFi one is just thrown here and has resolution enough to watch/check the 3D Printers from Bed to see if the Spaghetti monster has visited.

[capt bullshot]

A random interesting observation by my radio clocks:

Normally the DCF77 transmitter uses a mechanism that shifts the transmitter phase by steps of 100ns. There's an observation receiver somewhere (don't know where) that receives the transmitted signal and the transmitter phase gets adjusted by said 100ns steps to compensate for whatever happens on the way from the transmitter through the antenna.

Normally this behaviour looks like some random phase noise superposed to the phase of the received signal, like this:



The phase has steps of nominally 2.79 degrees every few seconds.

This morning, the signal looked like this:



No steps, just noise. I've seen this before, it's rather rare. I don't know if the phase correction just isn't necessary or if someone turned off this control loop by intention.

I've noticed this (the 2.79° steps) when I tested my radio clock for the first time and was curious about it - is this some kind of secret data transmission? So I just asked the folks at PTB and got an answer, explaining this control system, which matched exactly my observation. At the time I've asked them, it wasn't documented on their public website.

[Robert763]

Today's work and catch: 3x 15 metres 12-pair Belden Brilliance individual-jacketed audio multicore. For free. Only it was under 15cm of other cable, under the raised flooring. But, for free is not bad. Now I only need to get the right MS3106 37-pin connectors, and some panels and Neutrik XLRs, and there's a nice little multicore cable system coming. Will be an excellent fit for my 10-channel Studer desk and the small jobs I do with it.

Also, our restrictions lifted a bit this week, so now there might be a performance season after all.

If you are making up panels for your own use why not use 37 way D types rather than the expensive mil-spec round connectors?
You might even get lower crosstalk if wired high top row. low bottom row, screen top row, next screen bottom row next high top low bottom etc.
 

[Robert763]

Bean Shack streaming coming is it with the new IP camera ? 

One of the shack security Cameras. This WiFi one is just thrown here and has resolution enough to watch/check the 3D Printers from Bed to see if the Spaghetti monster has visited.

Hope you've changed the password 

[beanflying]

Bean Shack streaming coming is it with the new IP camera ? 

One of the shack security Cameras. This WiFi one is just thrown here and has resolution enough to watch/check the 3D Printers from Bed to see if the Spaghetti monster has visited.

Hope you've changed the password 

Yep it was admin/password so I went extra tricky and changed it to pass

[mnementh]

   Ahhh, the good old days... when real men were SysOps, and our password was assword...    
    ↑ This one is 2.4Ghz analog... security is "you unplug the fukkin' thing when you aren't using it".

mnem
And yes, that is a hockey puck it is glued to for ballast. Local resources, ehhh...?!?

[BU508A]

new video from Marco Reps about a Wainlux L3 Laser engraver:

[Cerebus]

Today's work and catch: 3x 15 metres 12-pair Belden Brilliance individual-jacketed audio multicore. For free. Only it was under 15cm of other cable, under the raised flooring. But, for free is not bad. Now I only need to get the right MS3106 37-pin connectors, and some panels and Neutrik XLRs, and there's a nice little multicore cable system coming. Will be an excellent fit for my 10-channel Studer desk and the small jobs I do with it.

Also, our restrictions lifted a bit this week, so now there might be a performance season after all.

If you are making up panels for your own use why not use 37 way D types rather than the expensive mil-spec round connectors?
You might even get lower crosstalk if wired high top row. low bottom row, screen top row, next screen bottom row next high top low bottom etc.

I wouldn't advise that, just for mechanical reasons. This stuff will be an inch or more outside diameter, and stiff, that needs something with some meat in it to keep it under control. It'd make a good enough lever that, even if you could figure a way out of clamping it to a D37, it could exert enough force to bend a D connector in half.

Here's a rather poor shot of a piece of that stuff, end on:



The inner cores are jacketed too, thusly:



Just grooming that lot onto a D37 would be, erm, 'interesting'.

It's been over thirty years since I last had to make up cables out of similar individually jacketed FTP cables and I still remember what a PITA it was to do. It took me over a day just to make up one 'hydra' with a bunch of XLRs on one end and a nice beefy EDAC connector on the other. The individual conductors are reasonably delicate, you've got a heavy outer and screen, 12 internal jackets and 24 individually insulated wires to strip, 37 conductors in total to get to length and if you make a mess you can't easily cut the one you messed up back an inch and try again without making it the wrong length versus the other 11 it is inextricably connected to. Then when you're done you have to do the whole thing over at the other end.

[Cerebus]

And yes, that is a hockey puck it is glued to for ballast. Local resources, ehhh...?!?

But where's the hot pink hockey tape? 

AvE actually inspired me to try some hockey tape. Mine's a tasteful maroon as I couldn't get any hot pink and just called "sports tape" in the UK because our national religion is either the Church of England, talking about the weather, whinging, or fighting in the carparks of flat-roof pubs, depending on who you ask. Useful stuff. Think of it as mini Gaffa tape and you wouldn't be far off the mark.

[beanflying]

new video from Marco Reps about a Wainlux L3 Laser engraver:

Will have a look later but initial thoughts its a lot of money for no enclosure/fume extraction and not much performance against some of the better 40W CO2 Lasers before you even get into the K40 price range. These and the similar overdriven Diode Lasers are not the way to go.

[mnementh]

And yes, that is a hockey puck it is glued to for ballast. Local resources, ehhh...?!?

But where's the hot pink hockey tape? 

AvE actually inspired me to try some hockey tape. Mine's a tasteful maroon as I couldn't get any hot pink and just called "sports tape" in the UK because our national religion is either the Church of England, talking about the weather, whinging, or fighting in the carparks of flat-roof pubs, depending on who you ask. Useful stuff. Think of it as mini Gaffa tape and you wouldn't be far off the mark.

I save the HPHT for bandaging my fingums when I have a workshop-ily mishap, of course. Nothing less will do.

I've found a ready supply of proper black-black gaffa tape at the local dollar store... normal, duct-tape-sized rolls of it of course, so still not the same...    but it does stick like a mofo like the real thing, especially to arm hairs. *wince*

Oh, and the big red kit of 0-rings, the miserable little gawddammit... the one from Princess Auto starts at A006-1/8 ID, so I still had to get the little kit yesterday.



mnem
 

[mnementh]

Today's work and catch: 3x 15 metres 12-pair Belden Brilliance individual-jacketed audio multicore. For free. Only it was under 15cm of other cable, under the raised flooring. But, for free is not bad. Now I only need to get the right MS3106 37-pin connectors, and some panels and Neutrik XLRs, and there's a nice little multicore cable system coming. Will be an excellent fit for my 10-channel Studer desk and the small jobs I do with it.

Also, our restrictions lifted a bit this week, so now there might be a performance season after all.

If you are making up panels for your own use why not use 37 way D types rather than the expensive mil-spec round connectors?
You might even get lower crosstalk if wired high top row. low bottom row, screen top row, next screen bottom row next high top low bottom etc.

I wouldn't advise that, just for mechanical reasons. This stuff will be an inch or more outside diameter, and stiff, that needs something with some meat in it to keep it under control. It'd make a good enough lever that, even if you could figure a way out of clamping it to a D37, it could exert enough force to bend a D connector in half.

Here's a rather poor shot of a piece of that stuff, end on:      The inner cores are jacketed too, thusly:

Just grooming that lot onto a D37 would be, erm, 'interesting'.   It's been over thirty years since I last had to make up cables out of similar individually jacketed FTP cables and I still remember what a PITA it was to do. It took me over a day just to make up one 'hydra' with a bunch of XLRs on one end and a nice beefy EDAC connector on the other. The individual conductors are reasonably delicate, you've got a heavy outer and screen, 12 internal jackets and 24 individually insulated wires to strip, 37 conductors in total to get to length and if you make a mess you can't easily cut the one you messed up back an inch and try again without making it the wrong length versus the other 11 it is inextricably connected to. Then when you're done you have to do the whole thing over at the other end.

Yeah, one of these days I'm going to have a similar joy myself... making the DB25 interconnect to whatever decoder I hook up to this thing once I resurrect it. I've yet to actually see whatever external decoder is meant to go with one of these, so not sure if that is a balanced input or IN/OUT loop; but 6 all-discrete THX-certified channels... yummeh.

mnem
 

[ch_scr]

Yeah, one of these days I'm going to have a similar joy myself... making the DB25 interconnect to whatever decoder I hook up to this thing once I resurrect it. I've yet to actually see whatever external decoder is meant to go with one of these, so not sure if that is a balanced input or IN/OUT loop; but 6 all-discrete THX-certified channels... yummeh.
mnem
 

Not sure about what model of decoder should be used, but by now it sure would be obsolete...
Got the schematic from the usual place: https://elektrotanya.com/onkyo_tx-sv919thx_sch.pdf
...and attached the spicy bit as a picture for "the ones playing at home".
Might help with the ressurect as well 

[Cubdriver]

Yeah, one of these days I'm going to have a similar joy myself... making the DB25 interconnect to whatever decoder I hook up to this thing once I resurrect it. I've yet to actually see whatever external decoder is meant to go with one of these, so not sure if that is a balanced input or IN/OUT loop; but 6 all-discrete THX-certified channels... yummeh.
mnem
 

Not sure about what model of decoder should be used, but by now it sure would be obsolete...
Got the schematic from the usual place: https://elektrotanya.com/onkyo_tx-sv919thx_sch.pdf
...and attached the spicy bit as a picture for "the ones playing at home".
Might help with the ressurect as well 

Is it just me, or am I somehow missing something - it appears that there's a mistake on that schematic - lines labeled AC-3FR and AC-3CNT from P103a go to the lines labeled C+ and R+ respectively (in other words, reversed) on P201.  Looks like somebody somewhere along the line made a boo-boo.  I wonder which end is correct.

-Pat

[ch_scr]

Yeah, one of these days I'm going to have a similar joy myself... making the DB25 interconnect to whatever decoder I hook up to this thing once I resurrect it. I've yet to actually see whatever external decoder is meant to go with one of these, so not sure if that is a balanced input or IN/OUT loop; but 6 all-discrete THX-certified channels... yummeh.
mnem
 

Not sure about what model of decoder should be used, but by now it sure would be obsolete...
Got the schematic from the usual place: https://elektrotanya.com/onkyo_tx-sv919thx_sch.pdf
...and attached the spicy bit as a picture for "the ones playing at home".
Might help with the ressurect as well 

Is it just me, or am I somehow missing something - it appears that there's a mistake on that schematic - lines labeled AC-3FR and AC-3CNT from P103a go to the lines labeled C+ and R+ respectively (in other words, reversed) on P201.  Looks like somebody somewhere along the line made a boo-boo.  I wonder which end is correct.

-Pat

That's the marking on the "other end"

[Saskia]

Looking for a Keysight N6700 mainframe now after getting a new N6736b 100v module in its original packaging free of charge " on the house"