Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Random Tool pr0n: Vintage Makita Cordless Ratchet

Picked this up today while I was thrifting for cheap storage bins. Got a yuuuuge Roughneck Tote too...

Dunno if I'll ever find the square drive slug that fits this; I suppose worst-case I can always save for when I need to ratchet a 21mm-13/16" bolt... 

mnem
*witchett-watchett-witchett-watchett-witchett-watchett...*

You don't have a file ? 

Coulda used that the day before yesterday to access the dry sump drain on the 4 wheel horse but instead had to walk down sheds to get ring spanners as horse don't like running when MT of oil.

Yeah; that part needs to be made of hardened tool steel, not exactly the kind of work I can currently do in my little toolshed at the moment. My first thought was to weld a stubby 3/8" extension inside a nut, but that would require my welder... and then hardening it again, or the nut would get chewed up in short order... plus the reversing mechanism on this thing is you pop the adapter out and flip the whole thing over. 

The 3/8" adapter is part MK-785404-4. I have never seen this website before, but they list it:
https://www.partswarehouse.com/Makita-3-8-Socket-Adaptor-6912D-MK-785404-4-p/mk-785404-4.htm

I'm 'opeless. Ordered.

mnem
I know the site; I already have an account. *shameless tooldwagon-ho*

[AVGresponding]

Guys, thanks for all your helpful tips on how to deal with that horrible screen on the Extech, they helped a lot. I think you'll agree that now the screen is once again useable. There are still some scratches in places but for now I'm happy, it certainly is as good as most of other meters that have plastic screens.

I might occasionally, when I have nothing better to do, continue with the polishing to reduce their effect on the readability of the display. Next time, though, I will remember to mask off the bumper to reduce the wearing away of that 

Now its time to take it apart and look inside, photos to follow later.

That's a good tip as well!   

It also helps prevent polish residue being left behind on textured surfaces...   

[mnementh]

All done. 

I have a stack  of  12-14 year old  MacPros running Ubuntu.   They all have dual 4-core Xeon CPUs and most of them have at least 8GB of RAM.


Two are on my desk at work.    About the only thing that fails are the drives, but they are easy to replace.    A few of them had the graphics card fail.  One of the techs here has a reflow toaster at home.  He 'baked' the cards for me and 2 out of 3 came back to life. 

The newest and the best is a 2010   5,1  we use as a PACS (Picture Archive and Communication System) server.     SSD boot drive on a PCI card and 4 4TB server class drives in the bays in RAID 10.  Everything else is the original parts.  The thing is a tank.


I use the second one as a sand box. 

I  keep a third one on the floor next to my desk as a backup.  Configured and  ready to drop in if our either of our other servers go down.

Yeah, mine came fully loaded with the 30" Cinema display, 4 750GB Barracuda drives, Dual Xeon E5472 (Quad-Core/, 3.00 GHz/12MB/1600 MHz FSB) & 20gigs ECC RAM. Oh, and I got it with all the original cartons. 

It has the "cooks itself to death" NVidia GT8800; I reflowed it booty-fab style and it lasted long enough for me to do the whole rigamarole of installing El Capitan without owning another Mac to use for building the install package, then self-immolated again.

I tried supposedly Mac-optimised builds of: Mint with Cinnamon and Xfce DE, GhostBSD with MATE DE, ElementaryOS, 2 recommended Debian builds, and a couple of other Mac-recommended *NIX variants. Of them, only the Mint/Cinnamon & ElementaryOS would complete the install; the latter with errors that proved fatal next boot.

I have no doubt that Ubuntu would install on the thing, but I really wanted to try one of the more MacOS-flavored variants; if I wanted to turn it into a Windoze box I'd just install Windoze on it. 

I've got it working on the Mint/Cinnamon build with a couple of random aTi GPUs; they work but no PBE. I may reflow that GT8800 one more time and see if I can keep it alive by modding it with a monster cooler; I have a legit install of El Capitan working but it needs the GT8800. There's a lot of room in there to eff around, especially if I leave the last 2 drive bays empty.

Yes, I agree; the thing is a gawddamn tank. With cheese-grater chic. 

mnem
*toys for old farts*

[mnementh]

Amazon Heads-up for my fellow Canucks:

   https://www.amazon.ca/VinTeam-Oscilloscope-100MHz-Probes-Minigrabber/dp/B086PCW59Q

3 PC P6100 Oscilloscope Probe Kit $16.79 - Save wear and tear on your decent probes for cheap with Prime Next-Day included.

   https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07XDK827W/

10000:1 Ignition/HT Inductive pickup - $6.83 with Prime Next-Day included. Even if you don't use it for intended purpose, worth getting to tear apart and tinker on. I expect BW will be pretty low... AF to a few hundred KHz most likely. But may have other uses besides automotive.

mnem
 

[Andrew_Debbie]

I have no doubt that Ubuntu would install on the thing, but I really wanted to try one of the more MacOS-flavored variants; if I wanted to turn it into a Windoze box I'd just install Windoze on it. 





mnem
*toys for old farts*

 The two I use the most don't have displays attached.     UI is a don't care.     I picked Ubuntu for ease of install,  continued support of this old hardware, and long term security updates.    Heck, they even pushed out a microcode update a couple of years back.

[bd139]

All done. 

I have a stack  of  12-14 year old  MacPros running Ubuntu.   They all have dual 4-core Xeon CPUs and most of them have at least 8GB of RAM.


Two are on my desk at work.    About the only thing that fails are the drives, but they are easy to replace.    A few of them had the graphics card fail.  One of the techs here has a reflow toaster at home.  He 'baked' the cards for me and 2 out of 3 came back to life. 

The newest and the best is a 2010   5,1  we use as a PACS (Picture Archive and Communication System) server.     SSD boot drive on a PCI card and 4 4TB server class drives in the bays in RAID 10.  Everything else is the original parts.  The thing is a tank.


I use the second one as a sand box. 

I  keep a third one on the floor next to my desk as a backup.  Configured and  ready to drop in if our either of our other servers go down.

That set up has its own ozone hole 

Realistically you're on the really scary end of the failure bell curve there as well.

[Andrew_Debbie]

& 20gigs ECC RAM.

££££   The RAM for these was and still is expensive.

[med6753]

My next project. Complete teardown and rebuild from scratch this 1951 Heath V-5 VTVM. All new parts except the precision 1% resistors in the divider. I'll test them and if good they stay. They were made in England so let's see how good British engineering USED to be. 

After the complete strip down I'll follow the assembly instructions. Will get new wiring too. And I almost killed the entire project by deciding to clean 70 years of crud off the front panel. The old paint did not appreciate that. It has faded pretty badly but luckily the graphics still show, just barely. I should have left it alone.  Any residual value it had went directly into the toilet.  Oh well.

     

[bd139]

Ooh nice. Looking forward to this one 

[AVGresponding]

I've found ECC RAM to be cheaper than non-ECC, second hand, presumably because most ECC users are businesses that want a warranted item.

[AVGresponding]

My next project. Complete teardown and rebuild from scratch this 1951 Heath V-5 VTVM. All new parts except the precision 1% resistors in the divider. I'll test them and if good they stay. They were made in England so let's see how good British engineering USED to be. 

After the complete strip down I'll follow the assembly instructions. Will get new wiring too. And I almost killed the entire project by deciding to clean 70 years of crud off the front panel. The old paint did not appreciate that. It has faded pretty badly but luckily the graphics still show, just barely. I should have left it alone.  Any residual value it had went directly into the toilet.  Oh well.

   

Don't forget to add the incandescent lamp on the top...   

[bd139]

I've found ECC RAM to be cheaper than non-ECC, second hand, presumably because most ECC users are businesses that want a warranted item.

Not that at all. There's a supply and demand problem thanks to Intel. Intel only support non ECC on their desktop CPUs. There is a massive surplus of ECC RAM that comes from old servers mostly. I have personally taken several terabytes of ECC RAM in a crate and tipped it in a WEEE bin before after an upgrade session. We couldn't even give it away and it costs too much time and money to sell it and deal with idiot buyers if you're a business.

[mnementh]

Ooh nice. Looking forward to this one 

Agreed. This should be fun. 

mnem
*more toys for old farts*

[BU508A]

It's a shame! What a waste. 

[med6753]

Don't forget to add the incandescent lamp on the top...   

The meter itself doesn't have a built in lamp. Just a pilot light in that large hole between the Ohms adj and Zero adj.

Ordering the parts today. The Ohms adj and Zero adj pots were replaced years ago with cheapies with the resulting instability. Will get high quality replacements. The calibration pots are original and are OK. All carbon comp resistors will be replaced along with the caps. It was converted years ago from a selenium rectifier to sillycon so that will remain. The tubes were also replaced and I have spares.   

[mnementh]

...I have no doubt that Ubuntu would install on the thing, but I really wanted to try one of the more MacOS-flavored variants; if I wanted to turn it into a Windoze box I'd just install Windoze on it. 

mnem
*toys for old farts*

The two I use the most don't have displays attached. UI is a don't care. I picked Ubuntu for ease of install,  continued support of this old hardware, and long term security updates. Heck, they even pushed out a microcode update a couple of years back.

Yeah, I've considered turning mine into a media server; then Ubuntu would be the obvious choice. I just wanted to play around with that working 30" cinema display, and honestly, I wanted to the learning experience of messing around with MacOS for the first time in over a decade. Even if it is almost a decade old version. 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Don't forget to add the incandescent lamp on the top...   

The meter itself doesn't have a built in lamp. Just a pilot light in that large hole between the Ohms adj and Zero adj.

Ordering the parts today. The Ohms adj and Zero adj pots were replaced years ago with cheapies with the resulting instability. Will get high quality replacements. The calibration pots are original and are OK. All carbon comp resistors will be replaced along with the caps. It was converted years ago from a selenium rectifier to sillycon so that will remain. The tubes were also replaced and I have spares.   

I think he was talking aboot something like this:



mnem
 

[bd139]

I still think that looks like a black and white minstrel has suddenly had a good idea.

[mnementh]

mnem
Just to agitate.

[Specmaster]

I still think that looks like a black and white minstrel has suddenly had a good idea.

I think that look is intentional 

[Specmaster]

mnem
Just to agitate.

Now that is a good use for old cases, especially those crusty ones  I still think the left one should be spun 180 degrees.

[AVGresponding]

Don't forget to add the incandescent lamp on the top...   

The meter itself doesn't have a built in lamp. Just a pilot light in that large hole between the Ohms adj and Zero adj.

Ordering the parts today. The Ohms adj and Zero adj pots were replaced years ago with cheapies with the resulting instability. Will get high quality replacements. The calibration pots are original and are OK. All carbon comp resistors will be replaced along with the caps. It was converted years ago from a selenium rectifier to sillycon so that will remain. The tubes were also replaced and I have spares.   

I think he was talking aboot something like this:



mnem
 

Exactly!

[med6753]

You got me. Went right over my head. I didn't even hear the whoosh. 

[AVGresponding]

Bonus points if you can get it to do this:

[Cerebus]

Very busy with the relocation and the 8 weeks old son (right now with digital output: 1 cry or 0 sleep).

Send it back to the shop, clearly a fake. The real items have tri-state outputs: Cry, poop, sleep.

Glad to see that you're alive.