Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Cubdriver]

Hiding from the weather?

Tea, and toasted buttered currant buns
can't compensate for lack of sun

-Pat

[factory]

snip....

BTW,
some PP stuff.
Signal generators and spectrum analyzers okay, but resistance calibrator, and then AC calibrator.
Must be a collector fight, there is still time though.
Then what's wrong with counters, everybody already have one?

Only bought one 9835 Racal counter here  , a probably knackered Huntron tracker  , Tek 453 scope, the pile of HP 180/182 scope remains, some GR cables (in a box of crap), the HP 651B oscilloscope , a test set No1 lamp foot and finally got a HP 10020A probe set (missed the one last week on ePay).
Missed out on several relisted lots that "stream" didn't complete sale on last time & "LED" won this time, bet they will get relisted again.

David

And literature, what about the literature.
(and some I don't understand even with google)

Ah yes I forgot a couple of lots, the pile of databooks that didn't sell in the last auction, thought I would take a punt on them as the description mentioned HP, which as none of the books are HP, must mean that the trio of folders have something HP in them (I had a PM that they might be HP journals).
The semiconductor data books will be useful too, kind of miss not being able to use the library at work, much prefer paper for this; than crappy unreadable scanned pdfs on the phone, or data archive websites that promise but fail to deliver. 

P.S. Other lots I forgot, were another Systron/Datapulse pulse gen type 88, the cox 303 TV related coder thingy for opening price and the HP storage normalizer, no idea if it has the card for the Spec An or Network An, but it does have the interconnect cable, think Ice Tea got the 180T SA with the matching connector on the back (went way above my bid limit), no idea if any of the 180/182 frames on the parts heap lot have this. 

David

[factory]

Oh my cigarette flavour kitkat PROMs arrived from Russia about a week or two ago.



Finally got a chance to play with the ancient programmer at work in my lunchbreak this week, I took the two known good PROMs from the working 5340A & the 20 soviet PROMs with me.
Three of the soviet PROMS failed the blank check, two had code & the other was full of FFs.
The HP PROMS were then read and two copies of each created, during this process two chips refused to program with errors (making a total of five duds so far). I took pictures of the code as read in hexadecimal & verified them last night against binary code in the 5340A manual, they match perfectly , will try them in the faulty board at the weekend. 




P.S. from memory the programmer built into the 386 PC, is a variant of the UEI PC82 programmer shown here: http://matthieu.benoit.free.fr/120.htm
You might notice the built in Triniturd™ monitor has vertical deflection issues too, I suspect it's due to tired crapacitors, as it was worse when first switched on.

David

[AVGresponding]

Hiding from the weather?

What weather ? 
21C currently and forecast of 24C. Forecast showers this arvo and 11km winds.

Just don't go for a swim...

tbh the weather doesn't bother me unless it snows. It's very hilly here and even the quattro has its limits, and the Insignia is pathetic.

[DH7DN]

Don't forget to secure your belongings with boat anchors 

[tggzzz]

Hiding from the weather?

What weather ? 
21C currently and forecast of 24C. Forecast showers this arvo and 11km winds.

Record wind gusts of 122mph Concomitant transportation shutdowns and power outages.

[Specmaster]

Hiding from the weather?

Tea, and toasted buttered currant buns
can't compensate for lack of sun

-Pat

Oh, well I had plenty of sun and way too much wind, maybe I overdid the toasted buttered current buns then eh 

[mansaxel]

Stompology update:

• We have carrier.
• We have modulation.
• We have carrier range switching
• We have modulation depth control
• Wh have modulation rate control

A principle of operation reminder: It is a BBD / Eimerkettenspeicher analog delay line that is timed by the carrier frequency. Thus, wave,
modulation, and control of rate and depth are the fundamentals we check for before inserting the BBD.

I am pretty convinced we could have some issues with battery operation if it was considered. Power draw follows modulation, and that looks like it could be audible. Very obvious if one casually can pop in a large wiggly-meter DC current clamp instrument in the circuit.

Having TE makes me a better stomp box builder. So far, this is the list of instruments utilised:

• Fluke 123, DC secondary voltage and LFO waveform (a very tidy triangle wave)
• MetraHit 25, DC supply voltages (3 in all, 2 of which are voltage divider created references), resistor value check.
• DE-5000, component verification
• [hp] 428b, supply current monitor
• [hp] 427a, supply voltage vs LFO waveform monitoring
• Tek 465b, waveform check, a nice square
• [hp] 6206b, power supply.

[BU508A]

The semiconductor data books will be useful too, kind of miss not being able to use the library at work, much prefer paper for this; than crappy unreadable scanned pdfs on the phone, or data archive websites that promise but fail to deliver. 

There are still some data collections available in the dead-tree form. Disadvantage: they are a bit outdated (2010/2011):
ECA books

ECA homepage

Newer Versions are available as DVDs or online access only (valid for one year):
DVD versions

Online databases

The DVD version is longer usable than one year. I have here a version from 2014 and I still can use it offline.

And, as always: NAWTS

[tautech]

Hiding from the weather?

What weather ? 
21C currently and forecast of 24C. Forecast showers this arvo and 11km winds.

Just don't go for a swim...

That's Aussie over in Sydney.
Pretty big shark apparently and although the poor chap swam there regularly there was big hungry shark hunting down schooling fish and he grabbed what he thought was a seal doing the same.....but it wasn't.

[Cerebus]

I'm not too fussed about being limited to data sheets in pdf form, what I miss are paper catalogues.

You could have no idea of what kind of connector might do the job you had on hand, sit down with something like the old Digikey catalog (sic), flip through and 20 minutes later you'd have made a decision. I went through that exercise with the on-line Digikey catalogue the other day, wasted half an hour, and decided I'd try again another day when I had a couple of hours to burn.

Also idle reading of catalogues could alert you to possibilities, parts and ideas you could mentally file away until you had a use for them. A website oriented to parametric searches does not make an interesting distraction when you're having a cup of coffee. I wonder if this kind of skill is disappearing along with others that don't fit a "digital first" world?

[tautech]

Hiding from the weather?

What weather ? 
21C currently and forecast of 24C. Forecast showers this arvo and 11km winds.

Record wind gusts of 122mph Concomitant transportation shutdowns and power outages.

Just last weekend we had a tropical storm ....even one with a name that I now forget.....pass nearby Auckland and our 63yr old harbor bridge was closed for some hours for the 1st time in all those years however the authorities were gun shy after after a light truck high sider got tipped a few months ago and took out a structural member creating chaos for a week or so until engineers contemplated how to replace it. 
FFS, replace like with like using rivets as it was made originally. 

[tggzzz]

Hiding from the weather?

What weather ? 
21C currently and forecast of 24C. Forecast showers this arvo and 11km winds.

Record wind gusts of 122mph Concomitant transportation shutdowns and power outages.

Just last weekend we had a tropical storm ....even one with a name that I now forget.....pass nearby Auckland and our 63yr old harbor bridge was closed for some hours for the 1st time in all those years however the authorities were gun shy after after a light truck high sider got tipped a few months ago and took out a structural member creating chaos for a week or so until engineers contemplated how to replace it. 
FFS, replace like with like using rivets as it was made originally. 

It is normal for the old Severn bridge to be closed in high winds. It was a remarkable pioneering structure back in '67, but is showing signs of age.

Today both Severn bridges were closed simultaneously, for the first time.

[Cubdriver]

I'm not too fussed about being limited to data sheets in pdf form, what I miss are paper catalogues.

You could have no idea of what kind of connector might do the job you had on hand, sit down with something like the old Digikey catalog (sic), flip through and 20 minutes later you'd have made a decision. I went through that exercise with the on-line Digikey catalogue the other day, wasted half an hour, and decided I'd try again another day when I had a couple of hours to burn.

Also idle reading of catalogues could alert you to possibilities, parts and ideas you could mentally file away until you had a use for them. A website oriented to parametric searches does not make an interesting distraction when you're having a cup of coffee. I wonder if this kind of skill is disappearing along with others that don't fit a "digital first" world?

I spent plenty of time thumbing through the McMaster-Carr catalog (the most memorable thing I found there in the mid 90s was a breathalyzer!) during lunch at my previous job, and the DK and Mouser ones, too.  I agree wholeheartedly with your comment about finding things such as connectors by looking at pages with pictures rather than trying to parametrically search them out - that can get frustrating because I often know what I want, but am not sure what they call it and thus get aggravated going down the various rabbit holes in search of the right thing.  Don't get me wrong, I think their parametric search engines are amazing and make finding most things very easy, but searching for something that you'll know when you see it usually winds up being an exercise in frustration.  That's the part that makes me want to tear my hair out.  I still have a hard copy of one of the last DK catalogs I got (2010), and will occasionally use it to search for things the old fashioned way.  (And as one who started as a hobbyist in the mid-late 70s when the DK catalog was like a thin magazine, perhaps 1/3 the thickness of the contemporary Radio Shack catalog, it blows me away how it grew to be 3"/80 mm thick over time.)

-Pat

[mnementh]

I'm not too fussed about being limited to data sheets in pdf form, what I miss are paper catalogues.

You could have no idea of what kind of connector might do the job you had on hand, sit down with something like the old Digikey catalog (sic), flip through and 20 minutes later you'd have made a decision. I went through that exercise with the on-line Digikey catalogue the other day, wasted half an hour, and decided I'd try again another day when I had a couple of hours to burn.

Also idle reading of catalogues could alert you to possibilities, parts and ideas you could mentally file away until you had a use for them. A website oriented to parametric searches does not make an interesting distraction when you're having a cup of coffee. I wonder if this kind of skill is disappearing along with others that don't fit a "digital first" world?

Yeah, for me it was McMaster-Carr & the ECG catalogs. I enjoyed looking for substitutes the hard way.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

"Where is everybody?"   (EF)

Dwagon family has been busy making to-do & shopping lists since SWMBO decided last night that we're going to leverage the 3-day weekend to get our last load and other car from the storage unit in Ohio.

Right now figuring just how much keto food I can pack in our little cooler; think maybe I'm gonna make several orders of fried eggs tonight, as we need to leave early: 8 hours each way. Good thing I'll be able to split up the kids between 2 cars on the way back.

Cheers,

mnem

[Cubdriver]

"Where is everybody?"   (EF)

Dwagon family has been busy making to-do & shopping lists since SWMBO decided last night that we're going to leverage the 3-day weekend to get our last load and other car from the storage unit in Ohio.

Right now figuring just how much keto food I can pack in our little cooler; think maybe I'm gonna make several orders of fried eggs tonight, as we need to leave early: 8 hours each way. Good thing I'll be able to split up the kids between 2 cars on the way back.

Cheers,

mnem

Drive fast, take chances!   

-Pat

[Specmaster]

Hiding from the weather?

What weather ? 
21C currently and forecast of 24C. Forecast showers this arvo and 11km winds.

Record wind gusts of 122mph Concomitant transportation shutdowns and power outages.

Just last weekend we had a tropical storm ....even one with a name that I now forget.....pass nearby Auckland and our 63yr old harbor bridge was closed for some hours for the 1st time in all those years however the authorities were gun shy after after a light truck high sider got tipped a few months ago and took out a structural member creating chaos for a week or so until engineers contemplated how to replace it. 
FFS, replace like with like using rivets as it was made originally. 

It is normal for the old Severn bridge to be closed in high winds. It was a remarkable pioneering structure back in '67, but is showing signs of age.

Today both Severn bridges were closed simultaneously, for the first time.

Even the Queen Elizabeth II bridge over the Thames was closed today, and this was a bridge that when it was designed and built was claimed that it would not need to be closed at any time, but I know that it has been closed many times now.

[mnementh]

Stompology update:

• We have carrier.
• We have modulation.
• We have carrier range switching
• We have modulation depth control
• Wh have modulation rate control

A principle of operation reminder: It is a BBD / Eimerkettenspeicher analog delay line that is timed by the carrier frequency. Thus, wave,
modulation, and control of rate and depth are the fundamentals we check for before inserting the BBD.

I am pretty convinced we could have some issues with battery operation if it was considered. Power draw follows modulation, and that looks like it could be audible. Very obvious if one casually can pop in a large wiggly-meter DC current clamp instrument in the circuit.

Having TE makes me a better stomp box builder. So far, this is the list of instruments utilised:

• Fluke 123, DC secondary voltage and LFO waveform (a very tidy triangle wave)
• MetraHit 25, DC supply voltages (3 in all, 2 of which are voltage divider created references), resistor value check.
• DE-5000, component verification
• [hp] 428b, supply current monitor
• [hp] 427a, supply voltage vs LFO waveform monitoring
• Tek 465b, waveform check, a nice square
• [hp] 6206b, power supply.

Just out of curiosity... how much current draw are we talking here...?

Just because it won't run off a 9-volt battery doesn't mean battery power isn't a option any more.  I'm seeing now some very interesting cylindrical cells showing up at the pack-recycler shops...

https://batteryhookup.com/

mnem
 

[Specmaster]

"Where is everybody?"   (EF)

Dwagon family has been busy making to-do & shopping lists since SWMBO decided last night that we're going to leverage the 3-day weekend to get our last load and other car from the storage unit in Ohio.

Right now figuring just how much keto food I can pack in our little cooler; think maybe I'm gonna make several orders of fried eggs tonight, as we need to leave early: 8 hours each way. Good thing I'll be able to split up the kids between 2 cars on the way back.

Cheers,

mnem

Good luck, I hope that the other car will co-operate after all this time. Drive safely.

[vk6zgo]

I'll throw in a pack of Maalox and a bucket of Magenbitter![/b][/i]

Just got a text back from cousin Imogene... she's happy to oblige, as long as it's not Cointreau and as long as there's no Smurfs.

Magenbitter is just that, bitter. Cointreau is not. I've had memorable (or lack of) experiences with both.

When in Karlsruhe, I mostly slept and ate icecream from Lidl. Then I took a 320km/h (that is 200mph) train to Paris.

That's a far cry from my experience of "strap hanging" on a slow train from Dijon to Paris back in '74.(obviously not so far, but far enough!)

The Railway information lady, who shared a kiosk with the Dijon City info lady, knew no English, I knew no French, & the latter, who was fluent in English would not, under any circumstances, translate.(I don't think they liked each other, at all!)
Hence, I went away with the impression that there were plenty of seats, so no need to reserve one.

They had other, pretty fast, trains even back then, but mine was pretty much the "milk run", so all I saw of them was a blur!

[mnementh]

6nm FTW...   

mnem
 

[vk6zgo]

snip....

BTW,
some PP stuff.
Signal generators and spectrum analyzers okay, but resistance calibrator, and then AC calibrator.
Must be a collector fight, there is still time though.
Then what's wrong with counters, everybody already have one?

Only bought one 9835 Racal counter here  , a probably knackered Huntron tracker  , Tek 453 scope, the pile of HP 180/182 scope remains, some GR cables (in a box of crap), the HP 651B oscilloscope , a test set No1 lamp foot and finally got a HP 10020A probe set (missed the one last week on ePay).
Missed out on several relisted lots that "stream" didn't complete sale on last time & "LED" won this time, bet they will get relisted again.

David

I've always felt that Huntron trackers were born knackered, but that's just me!
I guess if you are fixing a whole series of identical boards, they may have a place, but I have not found them useful.

[vk6zgo]

At my local Bunnings I noticed they store their welding gases in two locations - maybe 20m apart.  One has the oxygen and shielding gas bottles and the other has acetylene.  I thought for a microsecond and realised that storing the oxygen and acetylene at a distance from each other was probably a good idea.

Made me look twice when I saw two such bottles strapped next to each other on the back of a ute in the car park.

They are going to sit on a trolley together & be dragged around a workshop when in use.
There are a lot of "scary" stories of explosions of Acetylene bottles (hardly ever in conjunction with their oxygen counterparts), but such things happen so rarely, that you have more chance of winning Lotto every week for a year.

Back in the day, Oxy-Hydrogen welding was used a lot in critical work, as Acetylene doesn't burn as cleanly.
It was also used underwater below a certain depth.

[vk6zgo]

Here in Essex, UK we are being battered by Storm Eunice with gusts of up to 90mph, I know that the Isle of Wight has had gusts of 92mph recorded today so far. It sounds really terrible in my lab, we have solar panels on the roof of the house and at times the whole roof seems to shudder as the wind howls between the room tiles and the panels. So glad that the storm is now and not in a few months when the trees would be in leaf as I have trees back and front that are taller than the house. If your in the UK and the storm has not yet reached you, prepare for it by securing things wherever possible.

We have a red weather warning in effect and millions of people have been told to stay at home, in doors, not to go to work and trains and buses have had services cancelled because of the conditions.

I bet it is delightful in Southhampton!
Even at the best of times, the winds there are what we call "lazy winds" in West Oz---they are too lazy to go round you, so just go straight through you!