Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

Proud E3630A owner here too. That and the TTi PL series are spot on.

I must say that I turn to my -hp- Harrison supplies all the time. There's only one thing that they miss -- the current limiter. I sometimes end up using my Uni-T dual 30V supply (which does limit if asked to) because of that -- penis-fingery damage is greatly reduced by limiting current.

To elaborate on why -- the Harrison era supplies are "good enough". And while that might sound derogatory and as "barely coping" it most certainly is not.  What it is about, is that they were built, using the Old Era Tech, as good as humanely possible. This means that they, by virtue of that engineering effort, overcome near-all the problems that commonly plague the Old Bad Tech, and are every bit as good as what you can buy today. There are some matters-of-taste on UI, sure, and the GPIB connector is missing, but do they churn out amps!

On GPIB and its successors: If I was building a test rig for production, I would go straight into that, but if I'm going to set a 15V dual supply up for my opamp project, the finish time is probably shorter for the 6237b than anything else. Hey, it's even got one pot for two polarities!

Got to say that I don’t miss the variable current limit. They have a hard current limit which isn’t usually to far off for whatever you are working on. In fact most of what I tend to work with has a 10-100 ohm resistor in series with it which works as a visual warning that some shit is going down anyway 

If you look at the new Keysight supplies you’ll find many similarities between those and the original 1960s Harrison supplies. The designs were that good.

[AVGresponding]

For voltnuts in DE, in my neighborhood lays this animal(also the seller has some other interesting stuff):
https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/praezision-digital-multimeter-prema-5017-7-1-2-stellen-/1868662563-168-21398

€300 cheaper than the one in the EEVBlog B/S/W forum section. I can't buy it, I just blew a wedge on an Agilent 34401A   

[bd139]

LOL was that the round button Agilent one?

If so you got a good deal on that.

I forgot it

[AVGresponding]

This one:




There's a good chance my bank account will file for a divorce...   

[bd139]

That’s the one! That’s a fine purchase. Only DMM you need. Sell the others. 

Edit: Quick overkill test with new toy.

[tggzzz]

This one:

There's a good chance my bank account will file for a divorce...   

That's a good price considering what they've been fetching recently in Ramco etc auctions.

I'm very happy with the £400 I paid for my 34410A; in particular I like the secondary stats display for mean/min/max/stddev.

I hope the lack of a picture showing it passed the tests doesn't mean that the broken "cal stickers" aren't significant. But you should be OK since it is ebay "used".

Have fun with it!

[Robert763]

Its like bd says, most of us in the UK are limited on space, houses are so expensive here that they tend to be smaller to reduce the cost of them, even then, it is looking almost impossible for young people to be able to afford to buy their own and will be like me, renting for all their life.

To put it into context for you, my room where I spend most of my time is only 1.6M wide by 3.3M long with a door at one end and a window at the other and I sit next to the window, my back to one wall (in the 1.6M part) and in front I have my bench / desk with loads of wall shelves, which again like bd, used to be my work desk during the day and lab bench in the evening. Now that I've retired, its my lab bench 24/7 and also my dinner table apart from Christmastime when we all use the dining table, the rest of the year that is where SWMBO does her cake decorating (sugarcraft) making flowers from icing for cakes etc.

WHAT ?!   1.6x3.3m... 5m2 ?! That's a closet not a room !  Granted a closet with a Window but still 

It's a prison cell no more no less 

I don't know what to say, I sure gathered that London city center, like Paris or any big fancy City, is only for rich people, but BD is not in the fancy parts of the London City, he is near an Airport runway !   So even outside the city centers it's also so expensive ?! 

I guess if you were used to this life in the UK ever since you saw the light of  day, you find it "normal", everyone there endures the same shit so I guess people kinda accept it as the norm there. Still 

Kinda ruins the fun of TEA... knowing what condition you people live in in the UK, it's hard to be in a fun mood now 
I guess the proverbial British phlegm helps a lot with that, but still...... 

I have a bedroom. That's 2m X 3.5m but it's not all usable. One big wall is taken up with bookshelves shared with SWMBO, the doo opens inward which is dead space. Most of the other big wall has a large window so no shelves above the bench. And I have a lot of TE....

The latest issue is employers who having had people work at home for a year or so by making do, think it's OK for them to do so as normal business. I don't see why I should give up my space to save them office rent. We bought the house based on our requirements and that only included one home office (SWMBO's work is by default from home and always has been).

[ch_scr]

Back from my vacation at LOC IN94JV - as recommended to do the opposite of normal conduct on vacation,
I slept in a tent and was outside the whole day. Almost no internet and only one physical book.
By post count it seems you lot did not even have time to sleep? 
Wonderous how the days go by doing "nothing". A change in weather made me come back a few days early,
so I had time to visit the "GDR surplus" store close to my hometown - by now it's only open two days a week in the afternoon,
so visiting is not easy when you live and work over an hour by car away. That said, every visit counts
and when the gentle older lady asked "if she could start setteling up my items" - Thats when I noticed it was already 15 minutes after closing time! 
The haul consists of MIL-spec 7 segment displays (15mA@3.4V per segment), "Československá republika" made "ultra low noise" 0.35W metal film resistors,
GDR made thin film resistor arrays, glass insulated feedthroughs and teflon nubbins for insulation points.
The resistor arrays are mostly 0.5% with 100ppm tempco, as are the metal film resistors, but the 9.09k are 15ppm tempco.
Always when I visit there, between the shelves of boxes filled with components, I feel like a kid in a candy store.
The smell is different from the candy store, but as distinct and not less pleasant 

[tggzzz]

The latest issue is employers who having had people work at home for a year or so by making do, think it's OK for them to do so as normal business. I don't see why I should give up my space to save them office rent. We bought the house based on our requirements and that only included one home office (SWMBO's work is by default from home and always has been).

Mention capital gains tax (when property sold), business rates, insurance - all might be relevant if you work at home.

[bd139]

The latest issue is employers who having had people work at home for a year or so by making do, think it's OK for them to do so as normal business. I don't see why I should give up my space to save them office rent. We bought the house based on our requirements and that only included one home office (SWMBO's work is by default from home and always has been).

Mention capital gains tax (when property sold), business rates, insurance - all might be relevant if you work at home.

It’s not. You can claim tax relief on expenses and some purchases though which I have done.

The trade off from working from home is not paying to commute. That’s a fair rebate. £2708 a year in my case. Not to mention the 17 odd (24 hour days) I don’t have to sit on trains or in traffic for.

[med6753]

I wake up this morning and the birthday girl is already up and in the recliner drinking coffee with the TV on and those familiar accents. Latest episodes of "Vera" are streaming. And so the British invasion is in full swing. I still don't understand her fascination with all things British. I'll tolerate it for the weekend and disinfect the place after I take her home tomorrow. 

At least she ain't drinking tea.     

[med6753]

Edit: Quick overkill test with new toy.

I calibrated my HV probe with 190V. But I guess it doesn't really matter since it's strictly a resistance divider and linear.   

[nixiefreqq]

I wake up this morning and the birthday girl is already up and in the recliner drinking coffee with the TV on and those familiar accents. Latest episodes of "Vera" are streaming. And so the British invasion is in full swing. I still don't understand her fascination with all things British. I'll tolerate it for the weekend and disinfect the place after I take her home tomorrow. 

At least she ain't drinking tea. 

i have mentioned before that swmbo was born in an RAF field hospital and lived in london till she was 5.  then they moved to plattsburgh.

which is worse.....being a brit or upstate ?

ps heading up the mountain to big flat soon for the vhf uhf contest.  hill top ssb roving is the best way to do ham radio......no fm, no repeaters, no hf hobos tolerated.

pps  will have 6 antennas on the truck  (6m,2m,222,430,902, and 1296......anything above that is just microwave wank)

[bd139]

Edit: Quick overkill test with new toy.

I calibrated my HV probe with 190V. But I guess it doesn't really matter since it's strictly a resistance divider and linear.   

Your method is more fun. I may do it as well 

[Robert763]

The latest issue is employers who having had people work at home for a year or so by making do, think it's OK for them to do so as normal business. I don't see why I should give up my space to save them office rent. We bought the house based on our requirements and that only included one home office (SWMBO's work is by default from home and always has been).

Mention capital gains tax (when property sold), business rates, insurance - all might be relevant if you work at home.

It’s not. You can claim tax relief on expenses and some purchases though which I have done.

The trade off from working from home is not paying to commute. That’s a fair rebate. £2708 a year in my case. Not to mention the 17 odd (24 hour days) I don’t have to sit on trains or in traffic for.

Commute was / is (almost) free for me as I can charge the PHEV at work for free. Jut mileage based maintenance and wear.
As I don't have to do a tax return since I closed the limited company it's not worth starting for the small amount I could claim.

[Saskia]

Metcal arrived. is as advertised.

Picked up 2 19" racks (5 /6 u) for 50€ from my favorite returns ramp.

Today the postman rang twice and dropped of a
HP ProCurve 48 Port J9147A + 10 GbE Module + 2p 10 GbE SFP+ Modul for 46,50 Pesos including shipping.

Don't know yet which GBICs were included but will find out ...

[bd139]

Some quick plugin porn (part 1 of N). This is the Tektronix 7M11 which consists of two independent 50R impedance delay lines with trigger pick off on the input. GR-874 connectors for both lines. Impressive 175ps rise time and 75ns total delay included. Due to the impedance match for the pick off there's a x2 signal attenuation. Both the lines are calibrated with the same delay I think as well for differential measurements. Also to note this is an entirely passive plugin and can run standalone. It's ridiculously well engineered and weighs more than the 7L12 did and that was a double slot plugin!

Fells like it belongs in a spacecraft...

Front view:



Business end plumbing and input pick off



Delay line - the heavy bit



Peek in the hole



Have removed the covers to take photos. They have been replaced now

I may actually keep this in case some GR-874 stuff comes along. It'll be interesting to play with discrete delay lines!

[Vince]

Looks very nice BD but boy don't you have no mercy ?!

Your pics were so mega huge it took several minutes to load them all... could watch them being drawn line by line, very slowly, Minitel style !! 

Downloaded one of the pics to check for size..... 3.4MB ?!     

Hey I don't have fiber, just a very dodgy 4G modem !   
That, plus the forum is also painfully slow today, as it often has been in the recent past...

I always resize my pics to 1280x1024 and adjust compression ratio to 75 to get them down to well below 500KB usually.

But that's OK I survived, just jad to play a Sudoku game while it was loading ! 

[bd139]

It’s for the benefit of the folk with retina and 4K displays 

[beanflying]

First few windy days of Spring meant Santa's bean clipped until next years winter growth. If only I could get the Solar Panel bit to grow with  the same vigor or maybe a home made Toupee like no one would know right 

Sort of a bonus now the flipping masks will fit and not get tangled.....

[Cerebus]

Ha. My suspicion is that it's shearing time and somebody grabbed you and had the job finished before they realised that they had a non-sheep upside down between their legs. 

[mnementh]

If I ever win the lottery big, I'd love a bigger house, so we can all have our own dedicated areas for hobbies etc, and loads of living space, but for now, that is just a pipe dream.

I console myself with the knowledge that wouldn't work. Stuff expands to fill the available space.

And then some. As this move-in is constantly reminding me.   

mnem
"How do you feel this morning daddy...?"
"Like I've been run over by a fucking truck." No... wait... like I was trapped under two trucks that were actually fucking."

Yeah, it's gonna be one-a those days...

[tggzzz]

Ha. My suspicion is that it's shearing time and somebody grabbed you and had the job finished before they realised that they had a non-sheep upside down between their legs. 

I didn't realise they had Jacob and/or Herdwick sheep over there!

[mnementh]

...I thought you preferred cows to human beings, and where trying to escape the city life every time you could ! 

bd only prefers cows to humans as neighbors... for everything else he prefers batshit crazy redheads.  And the city is where we keep most of those. 

For those, my local city has a famous zoo. But it is planning to close and move just outside the city.

So... like... a batshit crazy redhead game preserve...? How progressive!   

mnem

[bd139]

Where can I find such a utopia?