Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Neomys Sapiens]

Those are good trucks. Before GM went "el cheapo". Will last forever if you take care of it and don't live in the Rust Belt!

Just downloaded the service manual. What a dream!
To me it now doubles the value!

Good documentation makes me so so happy!

PS: one day when the engine dies.... convert to EV 

Now just get rid of the turd country camouflage..

[mansaxel]

their addiction to fuxxoring E17 base bulbs in every damned thing. 

You mean E14, innit? Goes to wikipedia to read up on the Edison thread system.  Blimey.



Obviously, IKEA has a different product offering regarding lights in northern America. It's like McD in Italy or France. "Same" but clearly different.

Our IKEA visit was the most effective yet. Order was pre-booked, when we had 300m left, at the last traffic lights, Wife started the check-in, and once we were parked, told the app license plate and parking spot number. I barely had time to tip the rear seats and clear out the Kökkenmödding of my cargo area before a gentleman arrived with the goods on a cart.  Very convenient, no time wasted. We got straight on to the christmas tree shopping, literally within minutes.

[Andrew_Debbie]

There was a weird confluence of events, back when my wife and I were courting; we'd met online, in one of the fandoms associated with the TV show Farscape. We attended several of the fan-launched conventions for the show, and at one of them, Signal Room, a band formed by two of the show's actors, debuted their first album.

Ahhhh 

That


explains this . . .

[Robert763]

I swapped out most of my halogen or tungsten bulbs for LEDs a long time ago. It makes a tremendous impact on your energy bill and it will be about the first thing I do when settled in the new house.

oh yes, I need to do the same for my '79 C10



PS: I love my US truck even more than my last car BMW F11 525xd!

You can fit some LED "sealed beam" replacement headlamps to that. No only are they bright and last forever, they are E marked and road legal. Just make sure you get the one piece type. The new reflector with "H4" LED kits are not legal.

[Andrew_Debbie]

No bids on the HP 5326A.   Seller re-listed.   Most likely does not work.  Might be missing parts???    Only 50MHz. 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/324950098314


Is is worth  99EUR + 20.99EUR shipping + vat?  143.98EUR   ~  $165  or  £124.00


I'm slightly interested, mostly to save it from becoming a clock.   

[McBryce]

No bids on the HP 5326A.   Seller re-listed.   Most likely does not work.  Might be missing parts???    Only 50MHz. 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/324950098314


Is is worth  99EUR + 20.99EUR shipping + vat?  143.98EUR   ~  $165  or  £124.00


I'm slightly interested, mostly to save it from becoming a clock.

Assuming the tubes are still in it?

McBryce.

[AVGresponding]

Gaffer Tape Saves The World... again.   

   

So wifey had a bit of a incident involving the ramp on the ToD; popped this section of the fender apart and one of the plastic pop-anchors was lost. Normally for this kind of screwup I'd just substitute a license-plate anchor and screw as that maintains the "no metal-to-painted-metal contact" intent of the original plastic pops (this reduces rust-out at key mounting points like this tab), but alas, I could not find any in the Bucket o' Bolts™ recovered during last night's unloading before Discord.

I did, however, find a generic fender-pop... but nothing suitable to use for a backing plate except this fender washer. A couple layers of Gaffer-tape later, and I'm pretty sanguine about this repair... we'll see how it holds up.

Of course, I'll get the correct bits on the way ASAP; but as we have only the one vehicle and kids who must be Christmas-shopped for... we're going to go with this for now.

mnem
"Daddy fix it!!!"

No cable-ties? pfft

[Andrew_Debbie]

Assuming the tubes are still in it?

McBryce.

That is the $100 question...      I can't tell if it has the tubes or just spaces where they should be.

Looks like if it does have tubes it has 7.   


Listed as Used.   I should be able to return it if it is missing parts.

[dl6lr]

https://github.com/openscopeproject/HP34401a-OLED-FW

Although I appreciate the reverse engineering work done, I find the final solution being ugly. Working yes, but not aesthetic.

[Specmaster]

Some of the last halogen lights at home bit the dust 5 minutes ago; as Wife and I was at the home improvement store (Not the architect/design school, dear aardvark!) I managed to remember that I'd actually remembered what LED lamps I needed to replace them, so found some with the right dispersion (36° and not 130° which the first ones we found were...), bought them, and now they're fitted. From 20W per lamp to 2,6W. Some improvement, close to 8 times.  With energy prices driving the most of inflation here right now (1 liter diesel fuel borders on 20SEK or ~2€ and the spot consumer prices for electricity have been up at 6SEK per KWh momentarily; I managed to secure a fixed rate, albeit a month too late... ) saving power is imperative. Now, I need to kill some more power in the machine room, and we should see results.

Mixed results here with LEDs, Garden floodlight, Kitchen and 2 bedrooms and the lab, all converted to LEDs, the rest of the rooms are still low energy compact fluorescents and so far after 7 years only the Garden, Lab and Kitchen still have the original LEDs, the others have been replaced several times and these LEDs are not cheap to buy either. My son has a fitting in his room that uses 5 LEDs (candle lamps with SES caps, Osram lamps costing around £4 each and they typically last about 3 months. My hall and landing have 4 light fittings with normal candle lamps in them and those lamps have lasted so far well over 5 years.

Mother-in-Law has LEDs in her kitchen and hallway, 4 fittings that take 3 G9 plastic body 2.8W LEDs each, and it seems that these LEDs are always blowing and at £14 for 4, far from cheap and this year alone I have had to replace about 12 of the LEDs, costing some £42. I have just purchased on her behalf 32 halogen 28W G9 lamps at a total cost of £20, and we are going to try those out. The same number of LEDs would have cost her £104 and I seriously that they would consume anywhere near the equivalent amount of power in a year to run them.

[dl6lr]

Wanted to finally receive SAQ on christmas, so I checked for some reception circuits. Found the one using a ferrite antenna from prinz.nl. So I 3d-printed a reel for the coil. In fact I printed two, as I have a 8mm rod and one with 10mm diameter. Both with unknown material. As the site suggests 900 windings to be applied for 3B1 ferrite, I went to the model making club where there is a lathe. Setup the lathe and wound the coil with it, observing my watch to get close to the number of windings. Put some more on, as my thought was: Unwinding is easier than winding  . Measured the coil with the larger ferrite rod at home and found the inductance to be 220mH, where around 82mH is required  So this (unknown Chinoxcube) rod seems to have a higher permeability. The second one has 100mH, so this one is a better fit.

Have to unwind some turns on both...

[mnementh]

...SWMBO had placed a quest upon me, that I should find our Christmas tree and ornaments, etc.

After hoeing out to the point that I could lay a 2x10 across two stacks of oversized bins, I was able to locate and recover the 4 foot tree from when we had a apartment together, and by reaching across The Chasm of Unfathomable Cardboard Boxes with a baseball bat, was able to recover some of her classroom storage bins and pool-noodle percussion clubs. I felt like Indy hanging off the cliff by my fingernails on that one.

that will have to serve for now... rescuing the classroom materiel should buy me a day or two of reprieve before I start sleeping in the doghouse.

Good luck on your move,

mnem
*toddles off to take some pillz*

When the seasons ho-ho-hoeing
Is done by scaly beasts
The elves are a-fleeing
To get away ungreased

              BWAHAHAHAHA!!!

In all seriousness... one of the things I DID unearth yesterday was my Tevo Tornado and related schizz... I spent aboot 30 seconds dreaming of whipping out a few 3DP toys this year, before the gravity of my current sitch came crashing down upon my head.

mnem
I also found Brrrrrrrruce, the sawblade-shark... I think he will make an appearance, if I can find a Santa hat for him...   

[mnementh]

Thank you Z, for that perfect segue into This Old Chestnut:



This old Chestnut...                                         By mnem

Chestnuts roasting on an open Tek scope;
Jacks and plugs aligned in rows...
Yuletide songs played on tube amplifiers,
And folks warming their hands by the triodes' glow.

Every TEA'er knows... a little extra grid bias and a heated cathode,
Help to make their nixies bright.
EEs and HAMs with their benches all aglow,
Will find it hard to flip that breaker tonight.

They know the carrier's on his way;
He's loaded all kinds of scopes and meters and maybe a 2-way.
And every nerdling's child is going to spy,
To see if a therumin can really make you fly.

And so I'll offer to tune the phase;
on antennas from one to ninety-two...
Although it's been tuned, many times, many ways,
There's no such thing as just right, even when it's Christmas, at two...

Merry Christmas all you maniacs, and may your God go with you!


mnem

[mnementh]

Monday Morning Cardio...

I know it doesn't look like much, but that represents a solid 45 minutes of sweaty work for the crusty ol' tinkerdwagon outside at the buttcrack of dawn, in ~20°F weather after defrosting the car for SWMBO. 

Honestly, something it wouldn't hurt me to make a habit of.

mnem
 

[dl6lr]

Mother-in-Law has LEDs in her kitchen and hallway, 4 fittings that take 3 G9 plastic body 2.8W LEDs each, and it seems that these LEDs are always blowing and at £14 for 4, far from cheap and this year alone I

I have 5 G9 in the kitchen. I found the G9 (replacements) to be very sensitive, the fluorescent lamps already cooked their electronics, most of the LEDs just kills themselfes (corn type bulbs) too. I had a pair where the LEDs fell of the board after removing the failing lamp... Now I have two cheap ones installed, that seem to be reliable, and one Osram type. Two of the fluorescents are still working.

[mnementh]

...There was a weird confluence of events, back when my wife and I were courting; we'd met online, in one of the fandoms associated with the TV show Farscape. We attended several of the fan-launched conventions for the show, and at one of them, Signal Room, a band formed by two of the show's actors, debuted their first album.

Ahhhh...   That      explains this . . .   

Yup... wifey and I partied with Wayne Pygram, Anthony Simcoe, and Lani Tupu after the Q & A at the hotel bar. Lani was soft-spoken, but funny as hell when he did speak; Wayne and Anthony were pretty gregarious, but all about "everything but Farscape" as they were "off the clock" if you know what I mean.

Somewhere on the intardnet there is video of mnem ( I went dressed as him, full pullover latex mask and all, for my role as a Scvarran warlord in Oklamoya, a fan-filk opera... long story) getting his nose picked by Virginia Hey, who was simply amazing in person. So very proper in the way she spoke and moved, yet prone to do and say the most outrageous things like they were nothing.

That was before the production/distribution arm of Henson copyrighted the term "Scaper" and restricted the actors to only sanctioned Farscape Cons to counter the fan-launched Cons which some bean-fucker... err, bean-counter decided were harming the "brand"... 

Ahh, well; all distant memories now... but part of what makes a tinkerdwagon. 

mnem
Uh oh... I think I hear a little grrl stirring...

[TERRA Operative]

Got a quick question....

I have a 10MHz OXCO that after a bandpass filter etc, is putting out 595mV P-P into 50ohms, how to best and simply get this to 0dB (0.775V) for a bit of a general reference? I'm thinking a buffer amp, but is there a best practice for this?
I just want a simple way to do it, for a little USB powered 'pocket 10MHz reference' I'm making for laughs.

[ch_scr]

Mother-in-Law has LEDs in her kitchen and hallway, 4 fittings that take 3 G9 plastic body 2.8W LEDs each, and it seems that these LEDs are always blowing and at £14 for 4, far from cheap and this year alone I

I have 5 G9 in the kitchen. I found the G9 (replacements) to be very sensitive, the fluorescent lamps already cooked their electronics, most of the LEDs just kills themselfes (corn type bulbs) too. I had a pair where the LEDs fell of the board after removing the failing lamp... Now I have two cheap ones installed, that seem to be reliable, and one Osram type. Two of the fluorescents are still working.

With regard to LED bulbs - cooling is king, and as a rule of thumb in that regard, heavier bulbs are better.
Still, for isolation safety, they tend to pot the electronics (at least for the german market) - "dead weight" indeed! And it allows the supply electronics to get even hotter...
In general, physics has to be observed, the heat has to go from the LED-package to the environment.
A "corn cob" LED-bulb is an excellent example for a design where it is very hard to get the cooling right - best to avoid them in general.
Still, only the most cunning designs (of what I have seen) have the LEDs itself fail - usually the power supply fails before.

Source: I get my colleagues to bring their dead LED bulbs to me (to (seldom) repair and (often) harvest the LED). Repair is most often thwarted by "physically break to open" design.

@Specmaster: I am very surprised to hear of that many broken ones! But the small-packaged 230V ones are the most challenging (as power supply and led share the same puny heat"sink").
Are they not failing fast enough to get new ones via warranty?

[Zucca]

You can fit some LED "sealed beam" replacement headlamps to that. No only are they bright and last forever, they are E marked and road legal. Just make sure you get the one piece type. The new reflector with "H4" LED kits are not legal.

Have you ever driven in SC, USA? What you see moving on the road is the opposite of road legal.
No TÜV, it's "old far west freedom".

Thanks for the info, always right on the money.

[ch_scr]

Got a quick question....

I have a 10MHz OXCO that after a bandpass filter etc, is putting out 595mV P-P into 50ohms, how to best and simply get this to 0dB (0.775V) for a bit of a general reference? I'm thinking a buffer amp, but is there a best practice for this?
I just want a simple way to do it, for a little USB powered 'pocket 10MHz reference' I'm making for laughs.

Not sure how high your supply voltage is, but at 5V I would think a transistor amp should do it? At 3.3V that might get challenging regarding voltage swing.
Design wise, a gain stage with feedback to tame it down and a buffer stage for the current? 
Surely, there are integrated solutions (but can you get the IC at this day and age?) Maybe two gates from a 74VHCU04 with lower feedback to have the tiny gain?
In general not the most energy efficient, but at 3.3V a 74LVCU04 might be easier to get going than the transistor circuit.

[mansaxel]

the others have been replaced several times and these LEDs are not cheap to buy either.

No, and if you're getting ones that will outlast you, and your children, they're even more expensive, but that does pay for itself unless it's something that burns 10 minutes a week. We have lights that are on more than half the day, and since we're at home a lot these days that drives lighting usage up.

I fully agree that the shitty ones are not worth it, but, as I wrote (and you did omit from your quote ) I've yet to swap one of the good ones, unless it by mistake has been run from a dimmer which kills them in short order.

[Zucca]

Obviously, IKEA has a different product offering regarding lights in northern America. It's like McD in Italy or France. "Same" but clearly different.
Our IKEA visit was the most effective yet. ... Very convenient, no time wasted...

I still believe hell is my wife dragging me into IKEA for eternity.
No matter how short or how efficient I prefer to run one hour rather than go there.

[Robert763]

Have you ever driven in SC, USA?

Yes.
Sorry forgot you are no longer in Italy. You still have a tricolour flag on your profile.

[TERRA Operative]

Got a quick question....

I have a 10MHz OXCO that after a bandpass filter etc, is putting out 595mV P-P into 50ohms, how to best and simply get this to 0dB (0.775V) for a bit of a general reference? I'm thinking a buffer amp, but is there a best practice for this?
I just want a simple way to do it, for a little USB powered 'pocket 10MHz reference' I'm making for laughs.

Not sure how high your supply voltage is, but at 5V I would think a transistor amp should do it? At 3.3V that might get challenging regarding voltage swing.
Design wise, a gain stage with feedback to tame it down and a buffer stage for the current? 
Surely, there are integrated solutions (but can you get the IC at this day and age?) Maybe two gates from a 74VHCU04 with lower feedback to have the tiny gain?
In general not the most energy efficient, but at 3.3V a 74LVCU04 might be easier to get going than the transistor circuit.

The OCXO runs at 12V, so I have a boost converter running that. So, I have +5V and +12V available to use.
I want to get a sine wave output rather than square wave, so TTL stuff might not be ideal unless I put the bandpass filter after?

[Ice-Tea]

Obviously, IKEA has a different product offering regarding lights in northern America. It's like McD in Italy or France. "Same" but clearly different.
Our IKEA visit was the most effective yet. ... Very convenient, no time wasted...

I still believe hell is my wife dragging me into IKEA for eternity.
No matter how short or how efficient I prefer to run one hour rather than go there.

The key is understanding the signs. If she tells you at some point "we may have to go to Ikea, I ran out of those convenient ziplock bags", you make sure the next day you just "happen" to be in the neighbourhood of Ikea, bring the ziplock bags (all sizes, just to make sure) and innocently drop them on the counter when you get home.