Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Robert763]

Some pictures of the internals of the Rapco 1804P6 GPSDO and the repair to the trimble GPS board. The GPS seems to be a Trimble SV-6 but can't confirm. As reported earlier, the 5V was missing and it had a very odd LT1172 circuit. As there were unused pads that matched a 3 terminal regulator, I stuck a LM340T-5 in and it works. I added a heatsink bonded to the board with Loctite 315 thermal adhesive.
Now I just need to find the container I put the 18 odd 2.5mm csk cover screws in for safe keeping 

EDIT:
Found the screws, all back together and working

[xrunner]

Haven't got any TEA for a while but I ran across this - an HP 436A power meter for $30 on the 'bay. Since I obtained the required power sensor (hp 8481A fully calibrated) with the hp 437B power meter I got earlier this year, I'll be set to test this out when it arrives. The 437B has LCD display and this one has nice bright LEDs. But it doesn't store a cal factor table in memory - you gotta use the knob!

 

[Specmaster]

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.

Here is the link to the HP 3311A.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/373611561435
By the looks of the wear & tear on the top and bottom, my guess is that it is actually a metal case.
It looks to my eye that the dings all show a bright metallic colouring.
However, at first glance, the shape of the case made me think plastic, hence the uncertainty.

Hmmm, on closer look, someone photo-shopped out something from the photo of the top, on the top centre at the edge where it meets the front panel...

That has all the hallmarks IMV of being a plastic enclosure, all the clamshell cases I have seen in metal have screws along both sides to secure them.

Take a look at the back of it, you can see the ends of the two black strips that latch the two case halves together, this is used on all of them I have (3311A, 5300 series & 34740 series) and mine all have die-cast metal case halves.

If you haven't seen Tony's 5300 video, then have a look at how they fit together.


David

OK then, they are die-cast and not sheet steel, thats why I thought they were plastic, looking at my own sheet steel enclosure, the returns on the front bezel are were angled at approx 33-45 degrees whereas mine are folded back on themselves with 3 screws a side.

[factory]

Just finished repacking a certain item that is to be forwarded to a certain forum member. I make no apologies for using enough packing tape to uprate the cardboard box to IP68...

A teardown post has been promised, which I will be interested to read, as I haven't had the courage to open mine and witness the infestation of smd caps!   

Looking forward to it's arrival and yes a teardown will be needed, mainly to evaluate the condition of the smd leak-caps, hopefully there won't be too many inside, will need to find some modern junk to practice changing them if needed.
Capacitors from the 80's & 90's worry me more than those from the 60's, due to the mess they make when the seal gives up, even well known good quality brands leak, seen far too many failed in stuff I used to repair at work and conformal coatings helped them spread their corrosive splodge around. 

Also noted that the THS710A/720A thread didn't have any teardown pictures of the non 'A' version, which I suspect this one is.

What is it with you guys (and gal)?

All week while I'm at work you shitpost to the tune of 4 or 5 pages a day, and now it's the weekend and I'm at home, you go completely quiet!   

@RolandK well if we're ok with components for page numbers, there's going to be a lot of low-hanging fruit when we hit page 4000... though we may find out who has the best collection of obscure CMOS jellybean logic!   

I thought it was a little quiet last weekend too, maybe everyone is listing on ePay as that seems broken again. 

Luckily I can't get to my CMOS 4000 series collection, that I bought & saved from disposal at work. If only they would sell their redundant TEA as well, instead of planning to fill a skip with it. 
I do keep the two racks of 74xx series stuff accessible as they seem to be used in the old TEA I find myself repairing.
While I mention those racks from work, does anyone have ideas about the foam all the IC's are stuck in? I've seen IC's legs corroded & ruined by the moisture that the foam attracts, this wasn't a problem at work with air-con in use, but might be here.  Need to do something eventually, or I suspect in a couple of decades they will all be scrap, I have several hundred drawers like this one with all kinds of IC's.


David

[AVGresponding]

I haven't had an issue with IC leg corrosion from that foam, but I guess YMMV. I have seen polystyrene covered in aluminium foil used instead, though I can't vouch for its performance.

[factory]

A quick teardown of my hp 3311A seeing as I hadn't taken any pictures before, it dates from circa 1982 judging from component date-codes, a previous owner removed the serial plate  .
These were introduced sometime in the early 1970's according to here; https://www.hpmemoryproject.org/wb_pages/wall_b_page_10c.htm And first appears in the 1973 catalogue.



The latching mechanism for the case halves.


Only one board in these, with some Nippon Chemicon caps for the power supply.



No RIFA madness to be seen, for a change. 


David

[Cerebus]

I've seen that foam degrade badly with time.

I don't know if it's attracting water, releasing water as it degrades, or the more likely releasing some compound that directly attacks pins, but whichever it is I've seen it make a nasty mess of ICs stored in it once it has begun to give up the ghost. The damage amounts to more than just sticky gunky softened plasticy stuff (aren't I being nice and precisely scientific today) sticking to the pins, it's proper full-on eating the pins away.

[Specmaster]

Just finished repacking a certain item that is to be forwarded to a certain forum member. I make no apologies for using enough packing tape to uprate the cardboard box to IP68...

A teardown post has been promised, which I will be interested to read, as I haven't had the courage to open mine and witness the infestation of smd caps!   

Looking forward to it's arrival and yes a teardown will be needed, mainly to evaluate the condition of the smd leak-caps, hopefully there won't be too many inside, will need to find some modern junk to practice changing them if needed.
Capacitors from the 80's & 90's worry me more than those from the 60's, due to the mess they make when the seal gives up, even well known good quality brands leak, seen far too many failed in stuff I used to repair at work and conformal coatings helped them spread their corrosive splodge around. 

Also noted that the THS710A/720A thread didn't have any teardown pictures of the non 'A' version, which I suspect this one is.

What is it with you guys (and gal)?

All week while I'm at work you shitpost to the tune of 4 or 5 pages a day, and now it's the weekend and I'm at home, you go completely quiet!   

@RolandK well if we're ok with components for page numbers, there's going to be a lot of low-hanging fruit when we hit page 4000... though we may find out who has the best collection of obscure CMOS jellybean logic!   

I thought it was a little quiet last weekend too, maybe everyone is listing on ePay as that seems broken again. 

Luckily I can't get to my CMOS 4000 series collection, that I bought & saved from disposal at work. If only they would sell their redundant TEA as well, instead of planning to fill a skip with it. 
I do keep the two racks of 74xx series stuff accessible as they seem to be used in the old TEA I find myself repairing.
While I mention those racks from work, does anyone have ideas about the foam all the IC's are stuck in? I've seen IC's legs corroded & ruined by the moisture that the foam attracts, this wasn't a problem at work with air-con in use, but might be here.  Need to do something eventually, or I suspect in a couple of decades they will all be scrap, I have several hundred drawers like this one with all kinds of IC's.


David

What kind of heating do you have, anything with a naked flame will also be putting moisture in the air which could be the reason for the corrosion?

[mnementh]

   

On the Bench This Morning...

I've been feeling a little deprived lately, so when I saw these on the shelf next to my usual everything bagels yesterday, I decided to give them a shot for my day off. While not as satisfying as fresh off the iron from my mom's kitchen, they do fulfill the "lazy Saturday morning" requirement of being easy enough to make before I've had my coffee, and along with this imported French strawberry jam, were good enough to make me stop browsing the TEA and just enjoy them.

These Canucks may not know how to make a decent taco, but they do have sense enough to import some things where it matters.

mnem
"mmmmnmmmphlmmmmnmmmmmmm..."

[Vince]

Oh, some " Bonne Maman " jam ?!   Didn't know they exported overseas, wow...

Thanks for supporting our economy / jobs Mnem ! 

[AVGresponding]

A few ebay picks to pass the time:



Quite local to me and I considered it due to collection only, until the price went mental:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/144144096750




Electronics and aircraft, one for the plane-lickers amongst us:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/255082062558




Dot matrix (sorta) DVM:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/133842184880




Far too salty, but maybe a pm will secure it for sensible money?:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184987196105




Too far for me to collect:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334106167229




All the money, but will it end up relisted? Probably not:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/294332711958




Another one of these weird little beasts, not sure why the champers bottle is in the pic:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/154561949546




Sold by Neelix?:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/334111194574




Anyone near Fareham?:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/124853508170




Cheap at the moment:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/393499596987




Another Solartron:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/114934604276

[mnementh]

I said last minutes (or hours), the way you said you usually do, not seconds.

Gixen dashboard is the easy way to keep track of auctions you have a Gix on; they keep track of current bid and will alert you if you use the app or keep a tab open.

I've never had Gix fail to up a bid, and I've done it more times than I can count in the last 30 seconds of an auction. Of course, I was in the US so YMMV, DQMOT, etc...

And of course, you can always still bid against your own Gix from the eBay dashboard... it doesn't have any feelings to get bent out of shape, so  still a good idea to put in a crazy lowball Gixen bid any time you're actually interested in something.

mnem
 

OK, between you and Specmaster shilling Gixen, I tried it for an EQ guitar effect pedal that I've been wanting and ended up being the only bidder. I won it for a good price. I started browsing through the list of auctions ending soon and putting in lowball offers (using Gixen) on a bunch of Agilent bench DMM listings (which required buying an account). I don't think I'm going to win any of these, but I can see how eventually you would, if you kept on playing. Neat.

EDIT:

I have found this to be a real GAS-enabling technology.

While I am still a hobbyist, so have not ever wanted to put in enough concurrent bids to need one of their paid service accounts, it is nice that their rates are crazy cheap if I ever did.

To save you from complete bankruptcy, make sure to read up on and understand their "grouped bid" feature... which allows you to put together a group of similar items, and will freeze bidding on any items in that group after you win one of them.

The way I see it, Gixen just levels the playing field against the pros and semi-pros who can craft bots to do their dirty work for them. 

mnem
 

[AVGresponding]

I don't need Gixen; I have "patience".   

[mnementh]

"The universal warrior uses all weapons at his disposal." ~Sun Tzu (or was it Castaneda... ehhh, who cares?)

mnem
why are you reading this?

[factory]

What is it with you guys (and gal)?

All week while I'm at work you shitpost to the tune of 4 or 5 pages a day, and now it's the weekend and I'm at home, you go completely quiet!   

@RolandK well if we're ok with components for page numbers, there's going to be a lot of low-hanging fruit when we hit page 4000... though we may find out who has the best collection of obscure CMOS jellybean logic!   

I thought it was a little quiet last weekend too, maybe everyone is listing on ePay as that seems broken again. 

Luckily I can't get to my CMOS 4000 series collection, that I bought & saved from disposal at work. If only they would sell their redundant TEA as well, instead of planning to fill a skip with it. 
I do keep the two racks of 74xx series stuff accessible as they seem to be used in the old TEA I find myself repairing.
While I mention those racks from work, does anyone have ideas about the foam all the IC's are stuck in? I've seen IC's legs corroded & ruined by the moisture that the foam attracts, this wasn't a problem at work with air-con in use, but might be here.  Need to do something eventually, or I suspect in a couple of decades they will all be scrap, I have several hundred drawers like this one with all kinds of IC's.


David

What kind of heating do you have, anything with a naked flame will also be putting moisture in the air which could be the reason for the corrosion?

The workshop which I share with my Dad has gas central heating, but is an old building that has been extended in the past with a couple of flat roofed extension, every few years or if a bad storm happens we do get water leaking in. Some repairs were done last year, but the asbestos sheet roof part was leaking very slightly in the heavy rain last week, luckily into the containers left from last time.
Some of the component racks have since been moved to a wooden shed (no heating) to accommodate stuff & machine tools from my late Grandad shed/workshop.

See here for the horror stories with old foam & corroded components, pics in post three. 
https://vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=131907

I've also seen corrosion from the old foam inside old TEA, that was used to prevent board & component leg metal-fatigue due to vibration, as well as the vibration isolation of sensitive components and also those foam lined boxes for accessories.
All those are fairly easy to clean out over the nearest bin.

[mnementh]

Use a laptop when flashing. 

mnem
*currently stripping a GPU*

Fine if you have one, not everyone does 

In this group...? I find that highly suspect.

mnem

[Vince]

A few ebay picks to pass the time:

Quite local to me and I considered it due to collection only, until the price went mental:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/144144096750

"Mental" ? It's just regular prices here in Frog land... look, right now there is exactly the same until for sale here, for very much the same price, 300 Euros fixed price.

https://www.leboncoin.fr/equipements_industriels/2002099358.htm

Granted it's been posted almost 2 months and no takers, which means it's way above "market" price, whatever the market price for this model is... because anything tektronix on this web site, gets bought within 5 or 10 minutes literally. Any decent Tek device that's not sold within 24 hours, will never sell at all.

[AVGresponding]

"The wise warrior does not waste his resources on unnecessary subscriptions"



Not sure if it's nit-picking to point out that this is LED, not VFD:

https://www.bonanza.com/listings/Vintage-Soviet-Russian-USSR-VFD-Display-Digital-Multimeter-4300-1991/390380981?search_term_id=71520653

Nope. No it's not nit-picking, it's just accuracy.

A few ebay picks to pass the time:

Quite local to me and I considered it due to collection only, until the price went mental:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/144144096750

"Mental" ? It's just regular prices here in Frog land... look, right now there is exactly the same until for sale here, for very much the same price, 300 Euros fixed price.

https://www.leboncoin.fr/equipements_industriels/2002099358.htm

Granted it's been posted almost 2 months and no takers, which means it's way above "market" price, whatever the market price for this model is... because anything tektronix on this web site, gets bought within 5 or 10 minutes literally. Any decent Tek device that's not sold within 24 hours, will never sell at all.

imo it's a mental price for a collection only item.

[AVGresponding]

I've never seen a Xerox branded DMM before:

https://www.bonanza.com/listings/Xerox-600T-1515-Digital-Multimeter/696400577

[mnementh]

Get yourself a wall of obsolete (?!?) transistors:      

https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/transistoren-itt-03648-fast-komplette-ve/1821843392-168-6987

Ohhhh Vi-i-i-i-i-i-ince... I got a few transistors need to be characterized and matched into pairs and quads...

mnem

[Vince]

Not sure if it's nit-picking to point out that this is LED, not VFD:
Nope. No it's not nit-picking, it's just accuracy.[/color][/size][/b]

You are too critical... over here sellers would not even be able to figure out it is a DMM... this ad is above average to me !

imo it's a mental price for a collection only item.

Oh yes of course I agree, but sadly 99,999999999% of sellers here somehow price their old stuff untested straight from cave/barn, with an extra digit. Somehow they think because it's super old, they should add a zero to the price rather than remove a zero.
If you try to tell them about it, they just get angry and tell you to look at the price of a new one. Sometimes you don't even have to ask, they tell you right in the ad description: " It costs 700 Euros new ". Yeah.... so what

Getting my 575 for 150 Euros is a miracle but even that is still quite a bit of money for a 60+ year old "as is" boat anchor... which was literally thrown away 40 years before, as people just considered it junk, literally. So if it was junk 40 years ago, worth absolute zero, how comes 40 years later it's worth several hundreds ?! 

It's just greed and makes me mad... no matter how old crusty low spec damaged broken, nothing seems to be old enough to be considered junk that can be given away or for a dime. Sometimes I wonder how I will ever manage to build my lab. So much gear I would like to have, but no matter how old it just never gets really cheap. It's madness....

[mnementh]

Some pictures of the internals of the Rapco 1804P6 GPSDO and the repair to the trimble GPS board.



...Found the screws, all back together and working

OMG!!! would you look at the huge toroidal XFMR in that thing!!!

mnem
if you can't laugh at yerself, you have no business walking this earth.

[Cerebus]

Oh, some " Bonne Maman " jam ?!   Didn't know they exported overseas, wow...

Thanks for supporting our economy / jobs Mnem ! 

Easy to get anywhere as far as I know. Certainly in the UK.

Of course, if you want proper strawberry jam you want Wilkins & Sons "Tiptree" brand jams and preserves from Essex (of all places). Not only do they make the best jam in the world, but they actually grow their own fruit for their jams. Obviously only those fruit that will grow locally. They're not growing apricots in Essex, oh no. They also sell the same fruit fresh locally.

I'm lucky and my local supermarket actually gets some of their strawberries from Wilkins at Tiptree Farm. These are strawberries like you used to get in my childhood - not breed for transportability or shelf life but for strawberryness, absolutely bloody delicious. I had some last week and it was like being transported back to the 1960s.

[mnementh]

Haven't got any TEA for a while but I ran across this - an HP 436A power meter for $30 on the 'bay. Since I obtained the required power sensor (hp 8481A fully calibrated) with the hp 437B power meter I got earlier this year, I'll be set to test this out when it arrives. The 437B has LCD display and this one has nice bright LEDs. But it doesn't store a cal factor table in memory - you gotta use the knob!

 

And for those playing along at home... that cal factor varies with the frequency you're testing; this is why I stopped looking at anything lower than the 437B when I last was looking into these. I found many 437Bs in the $30-50 range that passed self-test except for the sensor warning... even a few 438As (also lovely ruby-red LEDs and dual input).

mnem
 

[Vince]

Of course, if you want proper strawberry jam you want Wilkins & Sons "Tiptree" brand jams and preserves from Essex (of all places). Not only do they make the best jam in the world, but they actually grow their own fruit for their jams. Obviously only those fruit that will grow locally. They're not growing apricots in Essex, oh no. They also sell the same fruit fresh locally.

I'm lucky and my local supermarket actually gets some of their strawberries from Wilkins at Tiptree Farm. These are strawberries like you used to get in my childhood - not breed for transportability or shelf life but for strawberryness, absolutely bloody delicious. I had some last week and it was like being transported back to the 1960s.

What a good salesman  you make Cerebrus ! 

I am sold, will give it a try ! Google found me this website that exports British decent food, they sell that Tiptree brand :

https://www.britishcornershop.co.uk/wilkin-and-sons-strawberry-conserve#

5 pounds and the banner at the top pretends there is no customs duty or taxes for French customers... weird, but well in that case I will check shipping prices and if it's not 20 pounds, might buy some strawberry...