Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[vk6zgo]

Delivery from Kiwi land. Tautech sent me a probe that goes to the Tek 212 mini. Mine is missing the correct probes. Thanks Rob! 



He also sent me this. Not quite sure what it is but obviously 3D printed. A bottle opener possibly? 

Really pleased you can use it Med and wasn't aware you didn't have either of the correct probes. 
Musta missed that post. 

Yeah the creator of the 3dp bottle opener will be along in a little while when he drags his sorry arse from the sack....yep it's originally all the way from the Shipwreck Coast in Oz sporting his bean grinding company logo.

Techs & EEs don't need bottle openers as long as they have a pair of sidecutters!

Or it you really want one, you can use a chunk of wood with two strategically placed screws like the bloke on the Oz "Better Homes & Gardens" TV programme made.
He prettied his up a bit, though!

[beanflying]

Delivery from Kiwi land. Tautech sent me a probe that goes to the Tek 212 mini. Mine is missing the correct probes. Thanks Rob! 



He also sent me this. Not quite sure what it is but obviously 3D printed. A bottle opener possibly? 

I recognize that opener you have been the recipient of regifting 

[mnementh]

"He who does not like cats, will not get a beautiful women" - chinese proverb
...make of that what you will...

It's not working. 

I think you are messing the formal logic up.

• It is a prerequisite to like cats to befriend beautiful persons of the appropriate gender.
• Liking cats will not in and of itself lead to said befriendment.

I was reading it as "If you can put up with the shenanigans of the average cat you are now qualified to put up with the shenanigans of an Irish Redhead a beautiful woman.". 

mnem
no comment.

[GreyWoolfe]

"He who does not like cats, will not get a beautiful women" - chinese proverb
...make of that what you will...

Well thankfully I am not Chinese.  I hate cats, married a beautiful woman and have 2 awesome dogs.

[beanflying]

Techs & EEs don't need bottle openers as long as they have a pair of sidecutters!

Or it you really want one, you can use a chunk of wood with two strategically placed screws like the bloke on the Oz "Better Homes & Gardens" TV programme made.
He prettied his up a bit, though!

This is also a way to use up my Dad's stash of Aussie 1 cent coins and the trash ends of 3DP filament rolls 

[med6753]

I recognize that opener you have been the recipient of regifting 

I shall treasure it always. 

[tautech]

Techs & EEs don't need bottle openers as long as they have a pair of sidecutters!

Or it you really want one, you can use a chunk of wood with two strategically placed screws like the bloke on the Oz "Better Homes & Gardens" TV programme made.
He prettied his up a bit, though!

This is also a way to use up my Dad's stash of Aussie 1 cent coins and the trash ends of 3DP filament rolls 

Med's now 0.01 Aussie Peso richer. 

[mnementh]

Is that more or less than a El Paso peso...?

mnem

[Specmaster]

I almost forgot to post these, but last Thursday my son and me went to RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall as it was a nice day, and we also had been tipped off that Boeing were going to be delivering  4 new F15s to their new owners and that they were stopping overnight at Mildenhall and here a few photos from that trip. They were shot RAW and I normally only shoot in JPG mode, and it's taken a bit of time to locate my copy of Photoshop to edit them and convert into JPGs to reduce the file size.

The following photos are all taken at Mildenhall on that afternoon.

Edit: The P3 photo was taken by my son as this was taking off just as we were pulling up, so he jumped out and snapped it while I parked the car.

[med6753]

I almost forgot to post these, but last Thursday my son and me went to RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall as it was a nice day, and we also had been tipped off that Boeing were going to be delivering  4 new F15s to their new owners and that they were stopping overnight at Mildenhall and here a few photos from that trip. They were shot RAW and I normally only shoot in JPG mode, and it's taken a bit of time to locate my copy of Photoshop to edit them and convert into JPGs to reduce the file size.

The following photos are all taken at Mildenhall on that afternoon.

Edit: The P3 photo was taken by my son as this was taking off just as we were pulling up, so he jumped out and snapped it while I parked the car.

I thought all P-3's had been retired in favor of the P-8 Poseidon. I guess not.

Those F-15E's don't look like they are in USAF markings. Any idea what country they are? Israeli? Saudi?

[mansaxel]

"He who does not like cats, will not get a beautiful women" - chinese proverb
...make of that what you will...

It's not working. 

I think you are messing the formal logic up.

• It is a prerequisite to like cats to befriend beautiful persons of the appropriate gender.
• Liking cats will not in and of itself lead to said befriendment.

I was reading it as "If you can put up with the shenanigans of the average cat you are now qualified to put up with the shenanigans of an Irish Redhead a beautiful woman.". 

That is another, probable, take on it, but even modified as such won't change the logic - cat ownedship is only a prerequisite.

[Brumby]

Dogs have masters,
Cats have staff.


I don't fall into either category - but somehow I seem to know what the inside of the dog house looks like .... much better than I think I should.   

[med6753]

Dogs have masters,
Cats have staff.


I don't fall into either category - but somehow I seem to know what the inside of the dog house looks like .... much better than I think I should.   

But inside a "cat" house is so much more fun......or so I've been told. 

[Vince]

Oh boy... just woke up, first thing I see is Dragon fire again, so much of it I am completely roasted.

Who needs coffee anyway, nothing beats the smell of Dragon fire in the morning eh ?! 

Dear Dragon, so much drama again, so much fire, you just can't help can you.

You once again clearly demonstrated that :

1) You 100% missed my point, probably did not really read me. Or maybe my English is so bad I don't know.

2) You are even putting words in my mouth that I did not say nor even mean at all.. which certainly did not help your comprehension.

3) Said words though, have been said... but by others, not by me, which again highlights the fact that you don't really care about what I say, you just read at the speed of light, mix every thing up and just build a scenario that fits your purpose... throwing fire, as always.

If you were really trying to help you would actually take the time to read and understand what people say and mean, rather than immediately jumping on your keyboard to write a full page of fire with lots of drama to imply I am stupid and that because of me the earth will probably stop rotating and we will all die.

Now shall I be surprised by all of this ? Of course not, not in the slightest 

Next time you want to "help".. just picture your wife instead of me, and that will lead you to doing the right thing.

[psykok]

Hi,

I need to reorganise my workshop to get some free  space.

I have 2 HP Spectrum analyzer: 8568a, 3562a
They are in mint condition and working well but they are definitely taking too much room in my small space.

So I thinking to get rid of them and maybe buy some  more modern and more compact SA, what would be your advice?
My only concern is that no modern  SA is working under 9khz like the 3562A



Alex

[Vince]

One reason I think for the lower power is that it runs 24/7, possibly Bitcoin mining?

I have already stated my reasons for low power -> Not waste costly electricity + make it low noise/quiet + make it easier thermally to fit into the old Aptiva case I want to use. Dragon please don't reply or I will cut your tail. Unlike you, I did read your message carefully so I know what you actually think, I took note of it, believe it or not. Don't need more of it though.

Bitcoin mining  ? No, not at all, I am not into bitcoin or crypto mining at all, never will.  I keep the computer running 24/7 purely for availability. I want it ot be ready to go instantly no matter what time of the day or night I might want to. Just like I do'nt want to have to wait if I have an urgent need to go to the loo.. last thing I want is to have to boot and set up a computer and type a password and start an app before the loo will let me unload my stuff.
Just like you expect a light switch to be immediately available. I did try 15 years ago to compromise and gave the "sleep" or "hibernate" modes a chance...but it at least in Linux it does not "just work" on my Desktop, no matter what the H/W. Either does not work or works unreliably or sometime freezes or what not. It's just not reliable enough that I can contemplate using it, far from it. No, even 15 years later I I doubt it works today, Linux rarely solves problems, it only pretends they are working on it.. or sometimes they just say you are doing it wrong, it's a feature not a bug ! 
Last week I got a notification about a bug report I filed on Ubuntu... 15 years ago. 


Personally, I'd rather run at far higher speeds and get more done, mine runs at 4 Ghz 125W TDP and will accept an overclock to 4.2 Ghz, but I'm happy to prolong its life, so I leave it at its native speed.

Mine only runs 24/7 if a do a complete scan of the hard drives as it has 4 TB of storage attached, and it can take a while to chunk through that so it gets left on overnight sometimes

That's another reason it will need to run 24/24 indeed : I would like to add a NAS to do automatic backup every night, of both the main computer and the future lab computer. NAS would also be handy to let both computers access and share files between each other easily. Could also use it to access the files wirelessly from my smarthphone or a future laptop maybe. A kind of local cloud to gety easy access to all my data, from any computer. Just a dream for now but will at least give it a try...

[Vince]

I have 2 HP Spectrum analyzer: 8568a, 3562a
They are in mint condition and working well but they are definitely taking too much room in my small space.

So I thinking to get rid of them and maybe buy some  more modern and more compact SA, what would be your advice?
My only concern is that no modern  SA is working under 9khz like the 3562A

It's nothing to do with "modern" SA. Modern ones are exactly like your old HP 8568s... they don't go down to DC.

Your 3562a is not a SA it's a DSA. DSA go down to DC but only go up to 100kHz....
So what you need if a modern SA plus a modern DSA.

Problem is... do DSA still exist today... I can't find any on Keysight's website.... maybe these things don't exist anymore ? People ?
Given the extremely low bandwidth, 100kHz, maybe today the DSA functionalities are merely some feature one can add as an option to a scope...
Maybe you can get one with a computer based user interface ? Just a small USB box for the analog front-end, and the software running on a computer ?

At any rate there is nothing wrong with modern SA,  they are just like the old ones frequency range-wise, no more no less.

[Robert763]

Hi,

I need to reorganise my workshop to get some free  space.

I have 2 HP Spectrum analyzer: 8568a, 3562a
They are in mint condition and working well but they are definitely taking too much room in my small space.

So I thinking to get rid of them and maybe buy some  more modern and more compact SA, what would be your advice?
My only concern is that no modern  SA is working under 9khz like the 3562A



Alex

It depends what you want / need.
You will have trouble replacing the perfomance of the 8568 with modern low cost SA but for functonality and size the Sigilent unts are good for the money.
For low frequency work look at the high resolution (12 or 16 bit) Pico technology PC based 'scopes.
Their software does FFT with pretty good perfomance. Much better than a standard (8 bit) 'scope FFT.

https://www.picotech.com/oscilloscope/picoscope-4000-series
https://www.picotech.com/oscilloscope/4000/picoscope-4000-series

   

[ch_scr]

Todays fun with Virtual Test Equipment, otherwise known as Simulation - wiggly lines edition:
Having thought about "hybrid couplers" (that split a RF signal into two equal parts at 90° relative phase and have a magical 4th "Isolated" port)
I remembered I had a book on the subject and after skimming it through and looking for a web calculator I came up with two circuits for consideration:
A very simple one with only L and C:

The more complex one from the book with 3 transformers:

Now, how good are they? Through the magic of open source spice simulation (thanks XYCE circuit simulator), we get the following:
(blue and green are the two outputs, red is the isolated port)
Simple:

As you can see, phase is reasonably well behaved but the isolated port is extremely narrow band. It basically only works excactly on frequency.
Transformer based:

Now that's more like it, very well behaved over 2.8MHz bandwith (@ 0.3dB amplitude imbalance).
Now, what to do with such a thing? The book gives examples - maybe you want a voltage tuneable phase shifter?
Easy, use the "Input" as input and the "Isolated" as output  Now, connect tuneable capacitors (varactor diodes) to ground on the other two ports...
It looks like this for the two capacitance values given in the picture - works fine 

That concludes todays wiggly line segment, have a fine day!

[Robert763]

I have 2 HP Spectrum analyzer: 8568a, 3562a
They are in mint condition and working well but they are definitely taking too much room in my small space.

So I thinking to get rid of them and maybe buy some  more modern and more compact SA, what would be your advice?
My only concern is that no modern  SA is working under 9khz like the 3562A

It's nothing to do with "modern" SA. Modern ones are exactly like your old HP 8568s... they don't go down to DC.

Your 3562a is not a SA it's a DSA. DSA go down to DC but only go up to 100kHz....
So what you need if a modern SA plus a modern DSA.

Problem is... do DSA still exist today... I can't find any on Keysight's website.... maybe these things don't exist anymore ? People ?
Given the extremely low bandwidth, 100kHz, maybe today the DSA functionalities are merely some feature one can add as an option to a scope...
Maybe you can get one with a computer based user interface ? Just a small USB box for the analog front-end, and the software running on a computer ?

At any rate there is nothing wrong with modern SA,  they are just like the old ones frequency range-wise, no more no less.

That's fighting talk 
Most modern SAs are "Real Time"  FFT designs while older ones are swept superhetrodyne designs. There is a lot of difference.
See https://rfmw.em.keysight.com/wireless/helpfiles/89600b/webhelp/subsystems/concepts/Content/concepts_types_spec_an.htm
While the results look the same, both types can be set to give different or "incorrect" measurements of a signal. This has led to issues with FFTs being used for EMC compliance measurments for example. More up-todate standards give guidance on use of real time analysers. They should be better for EMC measurements but the standards were written around the swept instruments.

[med6753]

OK, got it heated up and ready to go although it is damn early in the morning. 

And it doesn't go well with coffee. 

[mansaxel]

I have 2 HP Spectrum analyzer: 8568a, 3562a
They are in mint condition and working well but they are definitely taking too much room in my small space.

So I thinking to get rid of them and maybe buy some  more modern and more compact SA, what would be your advice?
My only concern is that no modern  SA is working under 9khz like the 3562A

It's nothing to do with "modern" SA. Modern ones are exactly like your old HP 8568s... they don't go down to DC.

Your 3562a is not a SA it's a DSA. DSA go down to DC but only go up to 100kHz....
So what you need if a modern SA plus a modern DSA.

Problem is... do DSA still exist today... I can't find any on Keysight's website.... maybe these things don't exist anymore ? People ?
Given the extremely low bandwidth, 100kHz, maybe today the DSA functionalities are merely some feature one can add as an option to a scope...
Maybe you can get one with a computer based user interface ? Just a small USB box for the analog front-end, and the software running on a computer ?

At any rate there is nothing wrong with modern SA,  they are just like the old ones frequency range-wise, no more no less.

9KHz is the lower end of the RF spectrum. And it would not surprise me if it is in a lot of specifications that signals like SAQ should be possible to monitor.  Modern audio analysers, if they're not simply a competent computer sound card and software, usually manage spectrum analysis in the audible spectrum and then some. So, the market for a 20Hz and up SA as a separate box from a TE manufacturer simply does not exist anymore.  Last time I did live sound, the mixer GUI had a SA on every input signal, so a real-time spectrogram was made and overlaid on the EQ curve window. Very useful.

Also, as you note, some scopes allow for spectrum analysis too.

Anecdotal story: To naïve me, "spectrum analysis" was all about 1/3 octave bands in the audible spectrum. That was what I was exposed to, and what i expected from a SA. So I still, out of habit, check any SA I encounter for its lower frequency.

[Andrew_Debbie]

I have already stated my reasons for low power -> Not waste costly electricity + make it low noise/quiet + make it easier thermally to fit into the old Aptiva case I want to use. Dragon please don't reply or I will cut your tail. Unlike you, I did read your message carefully so I know what you actually think, I took note of it, believe it or not. Don't need more of it though.

Bitcoin mining  ? No, not at all, I am not into bitcoin or crypto mining at all, never will.  I keep the computer running 24/7 purely for availability. I want it ot be ready to go instantly no matter what time of the day or night I might want to. Just like I do'nt want to have to wait if I have an urgent need to go to the loo.. last thing I want is to have to boot and set up a computer and type a password and start an app before the loo will let me unload my stuff.
Just like you expect a light switch to be immediately available. I did try 15 years ago to compromise and gave the "sleep" or "hibernate" modes a chance...but it at least in Linux it does not "just work" on my Desktop, no matter what the H/W. Either does not work or works unreliably or sometime freezes or what not. It's just not reliable enough that I can contemplate using it, far from it. No, even 15 years later I I doubt it works today, Linux rarely solves problems, it only pretends they are working on it.. or sometimes they just say you are doing it wrong, it's a feature not a bug ! 
Last week I got a notification about a bug report I filed on Ubuntu... 15 years ago. 


Personally, I'd rather run at far higher speeds and get more done, mine runs at 4 Ghz 125W TDP and will accept an overclock to 4.2 Ghz, but I'm happy to prolong its life, so I leave it at its native speed.

The computer I'm using right now, boots to Ubuntu 20.04LTS from cold in 30 seconds. 



Ubuntu isn't for everyone, but it does work on modern hardware.   Most of the software  I use is  available native on Ubuntu:   MATLAB, MS Teams, Remmina, fsl*, psychtoolbox, various development environments, Kicad  X-Plane 11.  There is browser  based Office for Outlook,  One Drive, Word.  This computer is set up dual boot with Win10 for Photoshop, Illustator, games and TE firmware updates.

On this hardware, X-Plane 11 has a slightly higher frame rate on Ubuntu 20.04 then it does on Win10.    Not enough to matter TBH and I usually use X-Plane on the Windows side to keep games and work seperate.


Here is the hardware:


Asus Q370M-C Micro ATX LGA 1151 v2 Socket DDR4 x4 2666MHz VGA HDMI 2x DisplayPort   --   Typical modern buisness motherboard.
Intel Core i7-8700
16GB 2400MHz DDR4 PC4-19200 CL17 Dual Ranked x8 based Unbuffered NON-ECC 1.2V 1024Meg x 64
WD Green 240GB M.2 2280 SSD 3D Nand  (Ubuntu)
WD Blue 512GB SSD for Windows.   

Ubuntu ran on this hardware in January 2020 with zero issues.   By then the Q370 chipset had been out for about a year.

May 2020 I added:
Palet GTX 1650Super  graphics card and a 500W power supply.     The  open source drivers that come with Ubuntu are not very good.   Installing the nvidia driver was a minor annoyance



Before the graphics card, the power consumption was quite low.  Even with the card in it isn't bad unless I'm using the GPU.




* fsl is a collection of tools for analysis of MRI, fMRI and DTI data -- > https://fsl.fmrib.ox.ac.uk/fsl/fslwiki

[TERRA Operative]

Speaking of computers, anyone got an old motherboard with an ISA slot laying around in a small-ish form factor?

I'm off to Akihabara tomorrow, but I'm not going to hold my breath toooo long...

[Specmaster]

I almost forgot to post these, but last Thursday my son and me went to RAF Lakenheath and RAF Mildenhall as it was a nice day, and we also had been tipped off that Boeing were going to be delivering  4 new F15s to their new owners and that they were stopping overnight at Mildenhall and here a few photos from that trip. They were shot RAW and I normally only shoot in JPG mode, and it's taken a bit of time to locate my copy of Photoshop to edit them and convert into JPGs to reduce the file size.

The following photos are all taken at Mildenhall on that afternoon.

Edit: The P3 photo was taken by my son as this was taking off just as we were pulling up, so he jumped out and snapped it while I parked the car.

I thought all P-3's had been retired in favor of the P-8 Poseidon. I guess not.

Those F-15E's don't look like they are in USAF markings. Any idea what country they are? Israeli? Saudi?

Nope, they are not yet in their proper markings because they are still in transit, but they are for the Qatar Air Force. Interestingly, throughout their entire trip so far, the pilots have had battles with various ATC's trying to route them to RAF Lakenheath because that is the UK home for F15s. They wanted to route via Mildenhall because they were due to leave on Sunday morning and Mildenhall being the air refuelling base is open 24/7 whereas Lakenheath closes over the weekends.

Now there seems to be a problem, as all 4 F15s are still at Mildenhall.