Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[beanflying]

It's now five AM and I should have been asleep hours ago, so I'm hitting the sack.  Tek stuff later today.   

-Pat

You better or I'll come over and steal it all while you're sleeping. 

The lab guardians will not stand idly by should such an attempt be made!   









 

-Pat

Better watch out, Pat has an army guarding his lab! 

...and there are three more that aren't pictured here...   

-Pat

If you suspect a raid from a Catnip bearing @Med just take the Cat squad for a holiday and I will send you some of my guardians 

[tautech]

What breed is that one Bean ?

[beanflying]

What breed is that one Bean ?

Just one of the fairly common Aussie Huntsman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huntsman_spider The most danger one ever put me in was dropping from the Sun Visor into my lap while I was driving a Ute with nearly 1000kg of pumps in the back.

[cyclin_al]

It's now five AM and I should have been asleep hours ago, so I'm hitting the sack.  Tek stuff later today.   

-Pat

You better or I'll come over and steal it all while you're sleeping. 

The lab guardians will not stand idly by should such an attempt be made!   









 

-Pat

Better watch out, Pat has an army guarding his lab! 

...and there are three more that aren't pictured here...   

-Pat

Oh!  From the photos, I thought I had you beat there...
I only have two that do not come into the lab, to match your other three.
In my case, one of those two is heavy artillery (no, I mean horse.  No, bigger than a miniature horse, canine!), rather than feline...

[cyclin_al]

   Also found in my cheap-ass curb-score Samsuck TV... and on Amazon for $12 delivered: https://www.amazon.ca/gp/product/B07LCBLB8N

mnem
*clicky-clicky...clickety-clickety...*

There are half a dozen cute little relays in the thing. Keyboard : tactile switches, however not the cheap kind : Look at them, 100% metallic construction ?!     Never seen luxurious ones like that... probably because all the ones I salvaged came form cheap consumer devices, not pro stuff made for field use !

Thank you for burning 10 dollars from my bank account.

  did I do now?!?

mnem
*looks all over his keyboard for the "burn $10 from your bank account" macro...*

It's those darn tactile switches you found on Amazon!  His currency is not the Canadian peso, so it is only $10 instead of $12.99 CAD.

-- you can tell a Canadian price by the .99 cause it appears a whole dollar cheaper that way 

EDIT:  still holding on to my wallet ... Must resist ...

Oh... now I see. I thought Z was blaming me for something Vince  said. Looks like the "nested quotes mismatch bug" in SMF bit us both.

Huh... I always thought the xxx99.99 pricing thing was mostly a 'merkin flimflam marketeering thing. Guess I shouldn't be surprised the infection crossed the border ahead of me. 

As for the switches... why resist...? I bought them cuz I needed 6 of the metal ones to fix that curb-score Samsuck TV; and we both know there's no way in hell the rest of the kit will go unused in any of our labs. For 10 bux, a total no-brainer.

mnem
 

In the end, could not resist.

However, these cost me much more than the $12.99 CAD.

The dog got very excited on the arrival of the delivery person.  Yeah, we do not get many visitors out here.

A friend who lives slightly further out into the boonies told me that Amazon does not deliver to them, and instead uses Purolator for delivery service.

Anyways, in the excitement, the dog got accidentally tangled up in a table cloth. 
Said table cloth covered a work table of 42" by 96" .... in turn completely covered by completed LEGO sets (some completed per LEGO instructions, some completed with custom designed add-ons by the kid).
Everything ended up on the floor in bits scattered everywhere (and some bits in places other than the floor) 

It took almost an hour to pick up all the LEGO, inspect the room, find more LEGO pieces, inspect again, find more pieces ... and so on. 
I have no idea how much time it is going to take to rebuild all those LEGOs, with the kid asking for help to find the pieces he wants from the parts boxes.

SWMBO saying that she could finally put the tablecloth in the laundry is not sufficient consolation by any means .... 

... all of this for just a tiny box of switches 

[bitseeker]

More checkout of the 436A.

...

That's a mighty spiffy looking bench, xrunner! I'm jealous.

[Cubdriver]

More plug ins from yesterday's haul:



And it had the cables/grabbers!




-Pat

[mansaxel]

I am not sure what's most expensive... buying all that TEA.. or feeding and paying the vet for all these cats !

Only cat in my life is that of a neighbour and he comes only to see me to ask for food ! Nothing else !    Little Bastard !

Notre chat est 16 ans. Il a visité le vet trois fois, un pour couper, un pour les yeux, et finalement un pour une bataille avec un autre chat.

(our cat's been to the vet thrice in 16 years, the neutering, once for a runny eye, and once for some battle damage.)

The TE is definitely more expensive, even counting the retirement food (which of course is much more expensive because salespeople).

[bitseeker]

Some pictures of TE having done a detail wrong:

Get yer flamethrowers ready, folks!

 

Hopping on the wagon. Famous foul up of the binding posts on the Riden RD-series DC power supplies. It even got a "Why?!" from Dave. The problem: green is not ground! On these models, the green binding post is the positive terminal for charging batteries.

EDIT:

This is personal for me because that is my RD6006P in the picture. I put a note on the top of the unit to remind me. It's a exceptional power supply for the price.

I remember that one. Pretty bad, it is.

At least the display doesn't use serifed fonts.

[dl6lr]

Oh hell, you are too fast. Missed page 4020 during night, so this too late...

[mansaxel]

At least the display doesn't use serifed fonts.

My theory is that there are some cheap, universally available fonts with good coverage in many Unicode points that, for Latin characters are rendered with those thin serif faces. Since this, then, is likely to be a font available on computers in all corners of the world, and is known to contain vectors for Latin code points, it gets used. 

If you look closely, it is not uncommon to see fonts like it used in "manuals" "translated" to "English", which sort of reinforces the point. (Mind you, the translators do a MUCH better job than I would manage if I was tasked with producing "Don't be an idiot" text in, say, Chinese. )

[bitseeker]

I suppose that's possible, but it'd be odd that a serifed font would have so much better coverage, especially for computer use, since sans serifed ones are legible in more sizes.

Since we're just speculating, I'll propose that it's as simple as someone liked the font and started the production run. Everyone else saw it, thought it was the thing to do, et voilà, serifs everywhere.

At least RD did find a suitable sans serif one. 

[capt bullshot]

A quick test of the latest arrival, a Pagel Electronics 6-UHF electronic counter, so far I've drawn a blank on any information on this one, was trying to at least find an advert, as I'd like to know the maximum frequency it will count. This is 110V only, but it might be possible to change the transformer for a 110V/230V one, depending on what the secondary requirements are.

Nice one, especially the incandescent displays:

http://www.decadecounter.com/vta/tubepage.php?item=10

[capt bullshot]

And now, some of the plug-ins from yesterday's haul.  More pics to follow as I go though things.

7A22 - that's quite a powerful one if you want to look at very small signals. I've got one of them that helped me find some PCB trace voltage drop related issues in a quite modern board, this wasn't visible with any modern kind scope, and the signals were dynamic so the DMM didn't help either.

[srb1954]

See above. In this case directly applicable, as 5000 and TM500 differ only in a notch in the PCB.

Yes, I brought a 5000 extender because the TM500 extenders seem to also seem to go for silly prices. However, I need another one for my dual width plug-ins but the 5000 extenders seem to be very rare on the usual auction sites.

[srb1954]

All appear to be in excellent physical condition, which seems a rarity for these things as the knobs are pretty delicate and based on what I see listed online people are inclined to toss them around rather carelessly.  My plug-in-less mainframes will be happy.

-Pat

It is rare these days to see a collection of 7000 plug-ins without any broken knobs. Take extra care when removing the knobs not to put any stress on them as the plastic body can shatter quite easily.

[BU508A]

Keithley 6517A electrometer + 6522 scanner card + cable (NAWTS):

https://www.ebay.com/itm/403136023490

[McBryce]

Guys, you're slacking

I was divided on whether I should post a 4018 or not.

McBryce.

Please don't double down on that joke!

Does no one actually have these parts? the last few all look snurched from other sites. I found a random PCB earlier and may/will post pictures on the appropriate page, or if I miss the page due to work, will post it anyway. 

David

As I do a lot of vintage computer repairs, yes, I have boxes of TTL and CMOS through-pin chips, I just couldn't be bothered looking for the correct part and photographing it when I can find a clear picture of one in seconds on the interwebs.

McBryce.

[Cubdriver]

One of the two really cool plug-ins that came with the lot:



Working on getting it set up and operating.

-Pat

[bd139]

Looking good. Fingers crossed for you 

[Cubdriver]

Looking good. Fingers crossed for you 

Thanks.  ....aaaannd here is is five AM once again and stupid here still hasn't gone to bed.     Time to hit the hay.

-Pat

[Cubdriver]

All appear to be in excellent physical condition, which seems a rarity for these things as the knobs are pretty delicate and based on what I see listed online people are inclined to toss them around rather carelessly.  My plug-in-less mainframes will be happy.

-Pat

It is rare these days to see a collection of 7000 plug-ins without any broken knobs. Take extra care when removing the knobs not to put any stress on them as the plastic body can shatter quite easily.

That's for sure!  They usually look like someone's taken a hammer to them what with the brittleness of the plastic over time, and the tiny size of the control knobs.  In their defense, I doubt when they were being designed and built that anyone at Tek would have imagined that there would be nuts like us still using them 40-50 years down the road.  I definitely lucked out with these - they were very well cared for.

-Pat

[tautech]

One of the two really cool plug-ins that came with the lot:



Working on getting it set up and operating.

-Pat

You just want to be hated don't you ! 

[Specmaster]

Tss tss tss !  I was the genuine 100K post ! 

.. but people just kept deleting old posts of theirs, so the 100K " award" actually changed hands a few times since !

At least it kept that picture off the landmark post and page.

And yet somehow, I seem to recall it was actually bd139 that had the genuine 100,000th post 

[Specmaster]

To celebrate this significant milestone - we direct our thanks (and all the blame) to the founder of this thread...

D'oh! I missed post 100K. Congrats, Bumby! You get a Jammy Git for grabbing the momentous, one-of-a-kind, priceless post number.



And now we know that 6-digit post numbers are OK. Next milestone: 1/4 million? 

Tss tss tss !  I was the genuine 100K post ! 

.. but people just kept deleting old posts of theirs, so the 100K " award" actually changed hands a few times since !

Nope.
The first one who did the 100k posting was bd139. :-)

This was the first 100k posting: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/msg3662665/#msg3662665

And this is showing the proof: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/msg3662680/#msg3662680

 

Thanks, that was what I remembered as well and posted about as I'm reading chronological order to catch up after being out yesterday.