Author Topic: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread  (Read 18839100 times)

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Offline bd139

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97525 on: August 13, 2021, 05:51:53 pm »
Is a 5335A close enough for you?

Here is one in Canada, probably within road trip distance of 25CPS or the dwagon:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/373116324971
I cannot quite make out in the photos what is listed on the options sticker.
Tempted myself, but have already overspent on home repairs and other necessary stuff (according to SWMBO...).

Same seller on fleabay also has a HP 3311A, Fluke 1900A, crimp tools and other items.

Someone (Pat maybe?) once mentioned that HP made some 3311A in metal enclosure instead of plastic. Is that readily discernible in photos? The aluminum and plastic versions of the 3478A are easy to differentiate, but I've only ever seen the plastic version of the 3311A (that I know of).

I have a 3310A, 3310B, 3312A and 33120A. A non-plasticky 3311A might be nice.

Well I couldn't find anything with the forum search, I do have to say I always thought the hp 3311A, 5300A series counters, 34740A series voltmeters had plastic cases, until  I found a 3311A at a local HAM sale, I then released they were actually in die-cast metal cases.
If you've seen a plastic cased 3311A, could it have been a very late production one???

Having said that, there are some economy models, such as the 3476A & those little PSU's that do have plastic cases.
And the front & some insulating fixings inside of the 3490A I have, are also made from badly aged fragile plastic.

David

The case was die cast and was eventually redesigned to be a two part injection moulded. I think that didn’t happen until they worked out how not to make the insides quite as toasty as my 5381A which would have turned it into a pile of slag in about ten minutes flat  :-DD. Mine is die cast.
 
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Offline Saskia

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97526 on: August 13, 2021, 06:10:03 pm »
Started packing. lugged 6 DVD racks downstairs today (of the 2.02 m kind) and need to get to my taxes later tonite.

Started clearing house. Lugged ~250kg of vinyl LPs to auction house.

FFS I could have sent you a shipping container, there are enuff freight consolidators in your area ... :D
 

Offline bd139

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97527 on: August 13, 2021, 06:14:28 pm »
I just bought some gear to bounce. Got a tidy looking 50MHz TBS1052B-EDU For under 100 quid. Reckon I can double that just by taking some better photos :-DD

tautech can leer at it disapprovingly  :-DD

Edit: wow even 50MHz analogues go for more than that at the moment  :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm: :palm: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/114837779169
« Last Edit: August 13, 2021, 06:30:31 pm by bd139 »
 
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Offline Zucca

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97528 on: August 13, 2021, 06:31:29 pm »
FERENGI DNA
Can't know what you don't love. St. Augustine
Can't love what you don't know. Zucca
 
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Offline bd139

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97529 on: August 13, 2021, 06:33:14 pm »
No comment  :-DD

Edit: also I've got to stop buying test gear now or I'm going to turn into Tony and get a sun tan off all the displays or have a repair queue longer than xrunner and bitseeker combined  :palm:
 
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Offline factory

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97530 on: August 13, 2021, 06:41:42 pm »
Anyone interested in an ESI 252 impedance meter, which didn't sell last time? It does have international shipping, but I'm not sure if it might be 115V only:-//
https://www.ebay.com/itm/154564410462


Or in the stupid price category (decimal point in the wrong place  :palm:), a Wayne Kerr B900 LC bridge/ dual voltmeter, mine cost than £100 on an ePay auction.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/184926434517


And an ancient scope calibrator from Cossor.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/114933387252


David
 

Offline xrunner

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97531 on: August 13, 2021, 06:42:44 pm »
Edit: also I've got to stop buying test gear now or I'm going to turn into Tony and get a sun tan off all the displays or have a repair queue longer than xrunner and bitseeker combined  :palm:
I told my friends I could teach them to be funny, but they all just laughed at me.
 
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Offline McBryce

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97532 on: August 13, 2021, 07:03:53 pm »
Anyone interested in an ESI 252 impedance meter, which didn't sell last time? It does have international shipping, but I'm not sure if it might be 115V only:-//
https://www.ebay.com/itm/154564410462


David

I like the fact that they are so truthful about the function/pinout of that edge connector. They even went to the bother of printing it on the case!  :-DD

McBryce.
30 Years making cars more difficult to repair.
 
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Offline Specmaster

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97533 on: August 13, 2021, 07:06:56 pm »
Yeah, a fair bit of my kit is now from the TTi family, I have 3 PSU's, Cap meter, Scopemeter, 3 bench meters, pulse generator, function generator and a counter, all British made, like we discussed doing a few years back, except, I haven't flipped any of my British gear  :-DD. Even our benefactor Dave said in one of his videos recently, that TTi make some pretty smick gear and is available pretty much globally and well worth picking up if you can.  :-+

Edit, Even the BNC sockets on the SM630 have plastic shells to aid the safety aspects of using it on live gear, I expect that their probes of the day would have been fitted with insulated plugs.

You’re doing better than me. I’ve got the PL320 still. That’s being buried with me  :-DD

On British gear I still have the D75, Farnell TOPS1, the solartron 7150 plus and the TTi PL320.
Other British gear I have is 4 (6 after Sunday) Avo's, 1 Feedback Function Generator, 1 Advance RF signal generator, 1 Advance AF signal generator and 1 Heathkit Cap tester, making my tally 21 bits of kit, its growing nicely  :)

What nothing from Marconi, Racal, Airmec, Dawe, Taylor, Venner, Wayne Kerr, etc. ??? Maybe those will help you find some more British TEA to feed your addiction.  >:D

David
I used to have a Marconi (boat anchor), a Racal boat anchor and a Taylor boat anchor, but I flipped them for slightly smaller boat anchors  :-DD

Something doesn't quite add up here....  :-DD And some of my Taylor & Racal gear isn't boat anchor grade.  ;)

David
Ok, how about I clarify then, the Marconi and the Racal were not functioning kit even though they were sold as such. Seeing as I managed to get them at a good price, I was able to flip them and not lose money, which I then used to purchase other British gear and similar with the Advance RF generator, working but only AM, flipped for a slightly smaller AM/FM generator.

Hmm, ooh er now I come to think about it, I have had other British gear and I'd forgotten about them. I had 56 years ago a Cossor 1035 (or a 1049) dual beam scope, not to be confused with a dual trace, and then about 8 years ago an old MOD hollow state (weighed a metric ton) scope which was I think was made by Huntley in Telford, and also a few years later a Sharetree AM/FM signal generator the latter did get flipped, the Cossor went to heaven.

I'll get my coat then........  :o
« Last Edit: August 13, 2021, 07:08:56 pm by Specmaster »
Who let Murphy in?

Brymen-Fluke-HP-Thurlby-Thander-Tek-Extech-Black Star-GW-Avo-Kyoritsu-Amprobe-ITT-Robin-TTi
 
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Offline BU508A

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97534 on: August 13, 2021, 07:13:46 pm »
I had a fight with gimp regarding this Sisyphos Tekscope (I have used the 547).
Here are the results:

Difference is the lettering, EEVBLOG vs. EEVBlog


I created then a version with a transparent background and uploaded it to spreadshirt.
This is how it looks on their preview on their website (I do like the grey background):



If somebody is interested, I can upload the xcf files from gimp.

What do you think about this result? Any suggestions, comments, improvements?
@bd139: I did not convert it to a vector graphic image, because I don't know how to do this.  :-//
“Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.”            - Terry Pratchett -
 
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Offline factory

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97535 on: August 13, 2021, 07:16:54 pm »
Anyone interested in an ESI 252 impedance meter, which didn't sell last time? It does have international shipping, but I'm not sure if it might be 115V only:-//
https://www.ebay.com/itm/154564410462


David

I like the fact that they are so truthful about the function/pinout of that edge connector. They even went to the bother of printing it on the case!  :-DD

McBryce.

Some possible info on the test lead connections here; https://antiqueradios.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=272794

And it seems to be still in production, OK the brand has changed to Tegam.
https://www.tegam.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/252-Manual-Rev-L.pdf


David
« Last Edit: August 13, 2021, 07:18:32 pm by factory »
 

Online Vince

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97536 on: August 13, 2021, 07:17:34 pm »
Well.... look what's on my bench today ?  :popcorn:

I always wanted one so badly, a Tek 575 hollow state transistor/curve tracer !   :)... but too rare over here, and always 500 Euros "as is take it or leave it, don't ask pics or questions, untested", so not for me.
But perseverance finally paid off !  3 days ago one popped up ! and advertised at only 100 Euros on top of that, ie a MASSIVE BARGAIN !!!!  :scared:   Ad did sport a "Make me an offer "button. So I clicked on that and offered well, the 100 Euros he was asking for. 30 seconds later I gave it a second thought and cancelled my offer, to make another one... 150 ! I saw the ad very late, 3 hours after it was published. That's an eternity. It was obvious by that time the seller had already been bombarded with 20 people wanting it, each offering more than the asking price hoping to get it. So I figured if I want even a slight chance of getting a response from the seller, even if negative.... would be to offer him more than the 100 Euros he asked, and offer sufficiently more that it might attract his attention and possibly, though unlikely, make me the highest "bidder".  I also gave him my phone number.
5 minutes later he calls me saying OK deal done. Got bombarded with 20 people, they offered me more than the 100 I asked, but your offer is the best, so deal done !  :D :D :D :D

We chatted a bit, cool guy, he was happy his Tek would go to a loving home rather than to a tube hoarder that would dump the dead corpse in the nearest junk yard as soon as he would be done extracting all the tubes from it...

2 days later  I visit the guy, in the middle of nowhere. I mean, really the French definition of it : city of "Bourges" in the center of the country, very rural area. Worse than that... actually 50 kms north-east of the city, in as rural and deserted area as you can come up with. Google Maps could not even find his place (it would tell me I had to go in the middle of wine yard...). When I arrived at the nearest most plausible location I could come up with... tried to give him a call so he could give me direction to pinpoint his house... but alas phone said "Sorry Bob, NO SERVICE AVAILABLE" That's my luck ! Lost and unable to phone him, I am screwed !  :palm:
Had to walk half a mile to get a semblance of signal, a thin slice of network.... just enough that the phone accepted to dial the number... saved. guy came to pick me up. His house was not even visible when you are 50 meters from it, it's hidden by lots of trees, you just can't see it, at all.

Anyway. cool guy. Almost retired, electronic teacher at university in Rouen city north of France. His house in Bourges is just a secondary/leisure house to relax away from human kind and most forms of life.
I was appalled when he confessed having thrown away old tube Tek stuff by the DOZEN decades ago ! The uni he worked at in the '80's was filled with hollow state Tek stuff, that was gathering dust/obsoleted. He picked them up all for free by the truck load, kept a few dumped the rest because it was too many and worth nothing, back then it was considered by all as pieces of junk no one wanted.
Very recently he sold no less than 15 old classic Tek scopes ! Argh I am late ! :(

He kept only one for himself, the one he preferred : a 585A. Have one too but his is in mint condition and comes with a cool blue phosphor CRT and a very unusual graticule I have never seen. Special purpose graticule for God knows what application. I have seen the graticule for Video signal monitoring, there is special purpose Tek scope for that... but his was not like that, different still. Wish I had my camera so I could take a pic to show you. vertically it is short, maybe 2 or 3 major divisions. Horizontally is spans all thje screen or so, and is highly non-linear. Have not slightest clue about it, neither did the guy...

Anyway, guy used his 575 curve tracer decades ago, but stopped using it like 10/15 years ago (still working at the time). He kept it in his lab/house, so warm and dry, great  :)

Over the phone he said he tried to power it up when he put it up for sale, but that nothing would come up on the screen. so I was a bit worried that maybe, potentially, after 10+ years sitting, filter caps might have shorted and as I understand it it could cause the rectifier tubes to die and worse the unobtainium main transformer to go with it... so still a bit worried. Was praying though that maybe the fuse would have blown before the transformer did...

Yesterday, a couple days later then, I drove to his house in Bourges, 450+ kms away...
He went to power it up for me. I thought OK he already tried it so if it wanted to blow, it would already have done so, so no big risk there. Plus... he actually powered it through a Variac to bring the voltage up progressively, in case a disaster might happen..how thoughtful !  :-+

He flicked the power switch on the Tek then said : " it only displays a spot and that's it ... ".
Hey ! " a spot "... that's A LOT better and more reassuring than "NOTHING on the display " ! At least it means the CRT and main transformer are probably OK, or not totally dead at least, it's what matters most !
Then a spot appeared, and it even drew a little squiggly line on the screen !  :D  Looked like a little triangle or something...
but was bright and sharp and stable/rock solid, so was happy !  :D

Guy had still a few "Tek bits : a whole stack of 500 plugins... like, I don't know... like too many to count ! Something like 40/50, probably. Even had a cool 1L5 spectrum analyzer plugin ! :D  Pristine inside out.
Also has a special plugin in his 585A, the one that generates a fast rising pulse to help calibrate the scope. A single letter plugin, D T K R I can't remember which Letter plugin it was. would love to have that...

He said in his main house In Rouen he still has some Tek stuff not yet sold or scrapped... said he would take pics and inventory what's left, in case something might interest me. Oh, and he said he would GIVE me a type 81 adapter plugin for my 585, so I can use 500 plugins with it. He has two of these plugins so has no use for the second one. How kind is that ?!  :)
Great because I do not have the adapter plugin for my 585A...

Anyway, took the beasty home with me. Arrived home at almost midnight. Too tired to anything so waited until today to take pics and open it up and give it a test ride... See below.

I grabbed the first tranny I could find, TO92 package, BC something, and stuffed it in the test jig at the bottom.
Played with all the knobs semi-randomly and eventually I could get it do display a nice set of curves, YEAH !!! IT WORKS !!!  :box:   The most important controls appear to work : can vary collector voltage, scale and move around the graph, vary the number of steps, change polarity / PNP / NPN...
CRT bright and sharp, stable... the beast basically works, nothing major wrong with it !  :D
Of course I will have to RTFM to give it a comprehensive test, assess every feature, caliber, knob and switch, so of course there might still be some trouble shooting ahead, but whatever it is, it's gonna be minor. All the fundamentals of the beast are good !  :-+

So most of the work on this beast is going to be TLC and cosmetic restoration. It's not exactly in concours condition, though nothing majorly wrong with it either. Goal is to not just clean it, no... this one needs, and deserve, some more in depth restoration.

The thing is, guy had actually TWO of these beasts, decades ago. Both defective. With two, he made a good one. Of course he long discarded the donor unit...  :(
So it's a bit of a Frankenstein unit. inside, 80% of it is in great shape, will clean up just fine, but 20% is a little more crusty. Nothing major, but needs some love.
Blue panels might benefit from a respray, will have to get some paint custom mixed, and get a little spray gun. Never done it.

I want to see how good I can make it look, experiment with restoration techniques... and later apply what works, to all my 500 scopes...

The eagle eyed amongst you will already have spotted the two main things wrong at the front :

-  CRT bezel mounting studs : one of the 4 is missing. No big deal, surely a standard part I can salvage from one of my 500 scopes.

- Big knob for the " Series Resistor " selection : clearly not original. It's the correct style and size, but not the correct model : it's dark grey rather than black, and it's got a hole in the center, as if there was a little red know supposed to go on top of it.
But again not a problem. I checked on my 500 scopes. That knob is a standard one. It's used in all my scopes as the voltage selector for the probe calibrator. So I can just salvage one.

Then the next main thing I need to do, is to look after all the toggle switches and push-buttons. See example pics below. The threaded part of the switches, along with the retaining nut and washer, are very crusty and rusty. Looks horrible. so I need to take the face plate out, remove all those switches, clean them as best I can, then try and find some company that can redo the plating on them, so they are shiny again. Or maybe one can do it at home ? I see some on Youtube videos of people doing some DIY electro-plating with an old computer ATX power supply... but then you would have to be able to source the required chemicals, and have a way to control the thickness of the plating so it's not too thin an wears out rapidly then you have to do it all over again... I would rather give it to some specialized company. Doesn't even have to be local, seeing as the parts are so small and light, I guess I could just post them to wherever...

What else.....

- It's a very ealry unit I think : SN 007839 . But the dead give away of it's age is the fact that... it uses Selenium rectifiers ! So must be early to mid '50's. By the late '50's all my scopes all had moved away from Selenium.

- The two carry handles at the top of the cabinet are the real leather kind (another clue of its age...), not the fake plasticky rubbery one that some of my other classic Teks have. Normally the real leather handle dry out and literally turn in to dust and disintegrate... even have a scope with ZERO leather, only the inner metal reinforcement is left !  Well, on this 575 both leather handles are in surprisingly good shape !
Bright work of course needs replating, but leather itself is fine. Leather care products will be enough to make it like new again.

- There is a cool metal plate riveted to the top of the cabinet, featuring a table and a graph and some instructions...

- Little spool of silver solder still inside the scope  :)

- Power cord : a modern cord has been hard wired, for practicality, but the original American socket has been retained so it still looks pretty original  at the back 8)



The trip cost me about 150 Euros (half ethanol to feed the thirsty Safrane, and half motorway tolls ), same as the 575, but who cares.. I can just pretend I went to visit family or something, or went away to visit something during summer vacation..



Overall I am over the moon. Can't believe I managed to grab one of these, and for only 150 Euros, and a working unit at that.
Plan is to make it look as good possible and give it a full time spot in the lab, so I can admire it all day long and have it handy to actually give it some use whenever I can  8)  I will try to find a Tek cart to put it on  8)

Pics, then need to cook something for dinner, it's 21:15 already !  :scared:


Message was pretty long so probably lots of typos, so I apologize in advance if it's a tough read ! I did spend the time to proof-read it once... but usually that's not quite enough...


Offline xrunner

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97537 on: August 13, 2021, 07:31:24 pm »
Wow Vince great find, and nice story too. Be interested in pics of the innards. The back of it looks like an old water cooler my dad had in the house a long time ago ...  :P
I told my friends I could teach them to be funny, but they all just laughed at me.
 

Offline Cubdriver

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97538 on: August 13, 2021, 07:37:56 pm »
Congrats, Vince - nice score!

-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 

Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97539 on: August 13, 2021, 07:50:24 pm »
   

Today's Thrift Scores: (All prices in Canuckistan Shekels)

$6 - ALLSOP monitor stand exactly the right size for my monitor. This is a complete game changer; totally alters the feel of my workspace positively.  :-+

$6 - Holt Industries 20+2+1 Component Drawer unit - All drawers intact and even a good handful of dividers. A welcome change; I should be able to get rid of my oodles of Dollar store mini-drawer things and put at least my current collection of caps and resistors in some semblance of order.

$12 - NIKIN (huh..? :o) Composite CCTV cameras (so good I couldn't find any hits at all for the brand) were so cheap I just had to see what was inside. Only one of them had a lens and another with a cap; hopefully that doesn't mean the CCDs on the other 2 have been burnt from exposure to sunlight.

$25 - EVGA GTX670 GPU - PCIe 3.0 x16, DX12, 2GB GDDR5, 2x DVI-D/DL, 1 HDMI, 1DisplayPort. Not exactly cutting edge performance at a whopping 2.7 TFLOPS, but it is on the list of video cards "flashable compatible" with my MacPro running El Capitan. The baggie it came in was from a AMD Radeon RX5700, so there might be a chance it was just swapped out for a upgrade!

No evidence of smoke, scorching or bits knocked off; just the usual amount of dust inside & out for a card this vintage. This appears to be a reference design board, so I am hopeful that a proper disassembly/cleaning/thermal pad service will bring it up 100%.

mnem
*toddles off to sign a lease*
« Last Edit: August 13, 2021, 07:54:07 pm by mnementh »
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Online Vince

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97540 on: August 13, 2021, 07:57:57 pm »
Or in the stupid price category (decimal point in the wrong place  :palm:), a Wayne Kerr B900 LC bridge/ dual voltmeter, mine cost than £100 on an ePay auction.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/184926434517

David

Wow that bridge looks really nice, would not mine having one ! Can't believe you got one for under 100, especially on Ebay where everything is so overpriced.
Lucky you ! 8)
 

Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97541 on: August 13, 2021, 08:04:28 pm »
Some good points.

I contacted Mirfield and they have already replied saying they will send another unit out and to keep this one. They think that their supplier has thrown a few bad ones in to make up numbers. They apologised and are running self tests before sending them out now apparently. Now I know there is a probability, based on reading the group, that there are ones with modified firmware to pass the self tests so I will DFU the official firmware without such mods onto it and check it works then to make sure I'm not getting screwed. This might be a genuine issue at this point. Time will tell.

I do have to give a thumbs up to Erik at tinySA who has quite frankly amazing support and so far the Mirfield turnaround is minutes  :-+
DFU both units and then you might end up with 2 working ones  :-+

Just remember... "DFU mode" means DON'T. FUCK. UP. Or you may wind up with a nicely decorated brick.  :-DD

mnem
Actually, STM32xxxx are remarkably hard to kill... but man, you can spend days pulling your hair out fixing one that's stuck in zombie mode... :o
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Offline dl6lr

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97542 on: August 13, 2021, 08:06:28 pm »
5 minutes later he calls me saying OK deal done. Got bombarded with 20 people, they offered me more than the 100 I asked, but your offer is the best, so deal done !  :D :D :D :D

Congrats, Vince! I still have to get one for a reasonable price. I dunno where to put it... Have to make my sons leave the house then.

Regards, Bernd
 

Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97543 on: August 13, 2021, 08:06:41 pm »

That guy in Orilla, ON has a 2020A for $300... it was one of the items I was thinking "might make it worth the trip".

https://www.ebay.com/itm/324608786118

mnem  :wtf: was I thinking...?
"Orilla" sounds too much like "Gorilla". I would avoid.  :P :-DD

Fortunately, I keep my scales numbered in case of just such a encounter...  :-DD

mnem
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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97544 on: August 13, 2021, 08:08:48 pm »
I had a fight with gimp regarding this Sisyphos Tekscope (I have used the 547).
Here are the results:

Difference is the lettering, EEVBLOG vs. EEVBlog


I created then a version with a transparent background and uploaded it to spreadshirt.
This is how it looks on their preview on their website (I do like the grey background):



If somebody is interested, I can upload the xcf files from gimp.

What do you think about this result? Any suggestions, comments, improvements?
@bd139: I did not convert it to a vector graphic image, because I don't know how to do this.  :-//

Nice job  :-+

Sooo where do I buy one?  :-DD
 
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97545 on: August 13, 2021, 08:10:07 pm »
Can anyone recommend a 4-wire kelvin leads/clips set with banana (safety OK) plugs? Looking for something dirt cheap, around USD25.

My experience when I wanted some was that I couldn't find fully assembled leads that were "cheap enough" by my criteria. I ended up making my own up come ça:



The Kelvin clips I used were cheap Chinese ones and although they don't look much in either this photo or the vendor's photos they are reasonable quality. Ditto the dual banana plugs. Add a bit of silicone test lead (yes, our friends in the Middle Kingdom again), some nylon expandable sheathing and some heatshrink and they're served me well for a couple of years now.

Mmmhmmm... looks like maybe some potential for a little "cottage industry", what with all the shit BREXIT is dumping on China-Direct anything now... :o

mnem
of course then you still have to buy the materials, so...  :scared:
alt-codes work here:  alt-0128 = €  alt-156 = £  alt-0216 = Ø  alt-225 = ß  alt-230 = µ  alt-234 = Ω  alt-236 = ∞  alt-248 = °
 

Online Vince

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97546 on: August 13, 2021, 08:10:31 pm »
I had a fight with gimp regarding this Sisyphos Tekscope (I have used the 547).
Here are the results:
What do you think about this result? Any suggestions, comments, improvements?

Yep suggestion !  ;D

Go the extra mile with Gimp and cleanup the face plate of this 547 to get rid of the 3 red/orangy stickers that mutilate its beautiful looks !  ;D  Takes 5 minutes to do !   I can do it for you if you e-mail me the picture, am using Linux / Gimp too. I know nothing about image manipulation but I know how to "delete" stickers... the "clone" tool is your friend ! 8)  Use a brush with a soft edge to help blend the touch-ups with the background so one can't tell the image was reworked.

 

Offline Specmaster

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97547 on: August 13, 2021, 08:14:15 pm »
Some good points.

I contacted Mirfield and they have already replied saying they will send another unit out and to keep this one. They think that their supplier has thrown a few bad ones in to make up numbers. They apologised and are running self tests before sending them out now apparently. Now I know there is a probability, based on reading the group, that there are ones with modified firmware to pass the self tests so I will DFU the official firmware without such mods onto it and check it works then to make sure I'm not getting screwed. This might be a genuine issue at this point. Time will tell.

I do have to give a thumbs up to Erik at tinySA who has quite frankly amazing support and so far the Mirfield turnaround is minutes  :-+
DFU both units and then you might end up with 2 working ones  :-+

Just remember... "DFU mode" means DON'T. FUCK. UP. Or you may wind up with a nicely decorated brick.  :-DD

mnem
Actually, STM32xxxx are remarkably hard to kill... but man, you can spend days pulling your hair out fixing one that's stuck in zombie mode... :o
I always get a little scared doing firmware updates, really need a UPS for safety’s sake but hey those things cost some serious money.
Who let Murphy in?

Brymen-Fluke-HP-Thurlby-Thander-Tek-Extech-Black Star-GW-Avo-Kyoritsu-Amprobe-ITT-Robin-TTi
 
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Offline Robert763

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97548 on: August 13, 2021, 08:18:21 pm »
Anyone interested in an ESI 252 impedance meter, which didn't sell last time? It does have international shipping, but I'm not sure if it might be 115V only:-//
https://www.ebay.com/itm/154564410462


David


I like the fact that they are so truthful about the function/pinout of that edge connector. They even went to the bother of printing it on the case!  :-DD

McBryce.

All joking aside, that is an excellent LCR meter. connector is for a component fixture or kelvin clips. I'd be all over it but I already have one. Still sold by Tegam for a LOT more money.
 

Online Vince

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #97549 on: August 13, 2021, 08:19:00 pm »
Some inside piccies of the 575  :)

As often the bottom side of the decks are pristine, only the upper parts are filthly because that's where dust and dirt collects, gravity and all that.

 
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