Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tautech]

Everything BWD is here:
https://www.kevinchant.com/bwd.html

[med6753]

Picked up a free scope today.  A humble BWD 539A.  Needs a bit of a wipe down on the outside, but looks decent.  As  bonus, it has an asset tag from the University of NSW, which means it could easily have been on campus when I was.

Not turned it on yet ... will be opening it up first.  That's a job for the next day or three.

The story of how it made its way out of the Uni is lost to time - but the person I collected it from told me of the hand he had in its provenance.  There was an estate being cleared with various bits of equipment being - quite literally - tossed out.  He was helping in this endeavour, with some reservations about some of the things being dumped.  While he was not into electronics, he had enough appreciation of these things that when he came upon this scope, he just could not toss it.  He rescued it and has been with him for the last year.

He recently began a clean-up and wanted to find this scope a home where it would be appreciated, so he took the make and model and plugged it into a Google search.  He found a discussion about the model on the EEVblog where it seemed hopeful someone could have an interest.  He then joined for the purpose of posting this under the Buy/Sell/Wanted section ... and now it sits beside me.

Of interest is the heavy stranded wire poking out the back that has been cut.  This is really heavy duty steel with a woven fibre core.  My guess is it was a security thing.

It appears that you can't operate channel 1 or channel 2 independently. It shows "alternate" mode and "chop" mode but not channel 1 or 2 by themselves. 

[Kosmic]

First used EXR I've seen in the wild. $25k is still too rich for my taste, maybe a 50% discount isn't too much to ask for
Let the lowballs begin 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/313883089013

Good luck. I heard Keysight doesn't sell to individual anymore. Even on ebay. Do professional/company shop on ebay ?

[Saskia]

I'm not gonna sacrifice 25k to find out.

And they soo nicely told me to go to a distributor instead of calling them direct ...

[Kosmic]

They probably fired 90% of their customer support department to save money and can't deal with everybody now 

[1Ghz]

After a lots of trial and error,  I found out that one of the 7000uF filter capacitors on the power supply was the culprit.
I removed it and I put seven 1000uF capacitors in parallel. But why parallel? Because I don't have a 7000uF capacitor right now. 
After replacement, it almost works!  But still unlocked in some frequency range. 
I'll investigate later.

I recapped all filter capacitors on the power supply and did some tests.
Almost works, but still unlocked in some frequency range. Probably need some adjustment.
There are many pots. But I was not able to find the service manual for Systron Donner 1618.
To be continued...

[Saskia]

They probably fired 90% of their customer support department to save money and can't deal with everybody now 

Actually it's the consumer protection laws. They don't want to eff around with right to repair and extended warranties, etc.

[Ice-Tea]

Do professional/company shop on ebay ?

I'd say a third to about half of my sales are to companies.

[mnementh]

No, I just need to steal all his money. I don't think becoming a sociopath with no regard for my actions on the rest of the planet is necessary to my fantasy, just lots of money.

History does give a pretty large body of evidence that having the latter either requires or causes the former. 

mnem
"Money is a tool invented by greedy stupid people to ensure that they can continue being greedy and stupid." ~mum

[Neomys Sapiens]

Muahahaha! Soo cheap and all mine!

Sometimes it really pays to have a good visual clutter rejection. The heap of material yielded nearly 100 of the Pomona Mil-contact test adaptors alone. A bit meagre for size 20, but sufficient stock in all other sizes up to 12.

REVISED
Make that 211 Mil Adaptors and the only ones severely underrepresented are #20PIN in red and black and #22 PINin black. The #12 Sockets I rate differently, as the related connectors come with correspondingly lesser pin counts.

#12 Pin red      22
#12 Pin black      16
#12 Socket red      5
#12 Socket black   5
#16 Pin black      16
#16 Pin red      9
#16 Socket black   19
#16 Socket red      12
#20 Pin black      5
#20 Pin black      4
#20 Socket black   17
#20 Socket red      16
#22 Socket red      22
#22 Socket black   23
#22 Pin red      13
#22 Pin black      7

[Kosmic]

They probably fired 90% of their customer support department to save money and can't deal with everybody now 

Actually it's the consumer protection laws. They don't want to eff around with right to repair and extended warranties, etc.

right to repair and extended warranties are no where to be found here. I personally think it's a way for them to save money. They are getting all the hobbyist frustrated though. 

[Neomys Sapiens]

Everything BWD is here:
https://www.kevinchant.com/bwd.html

I took a look on this website out of curiosity and noted the consistent use of the abbreviation'CRO' for Cathode Ray Oscillograph. Would that make a small scope like a Tek 212 or 222 a CRO-Mignon?

[Neper]

That brought back a memory from over 40 years ago when I was in my early teens. I was in the local tool shop which for some reason also sold glassware and china. I was behind a guy at the tool counter who asked for an 18" bastard file.  A little old lady stepped up from behind me and started berating him about using foul languge in front of a "young man" Then she had a o at the shop assitant for laughing so much....

Old German joke, playing in a bookstore, female shop assistant calling into the back room:

"Boss, do we still have Our Virginity?" ... "Not if you don't have it at the front as I don't have it at the rear, either."

I hope it has survived translation.

[m k]

The classic British version of ECA was Tits
Towers international transistor selector
Never did find out if the name was a deliberate joke.

I still have a couple.

Dang, I also have few of those where English is a second language.
One is 3-88109-013-4 TTL pocket book I bought new.

BTW,
I've never done anything with vector network analyzer but I know trigonometry enough that I can guess what I'm seeing.
Practicalities are what one can't really guess.
So, what is the goal, a flat line between difference of what you see and what you want?
Any simple examples of RL stuff?

[mansaxel]

Currently battling with my off-site FreeBSD vm server. (as in it hosts virtual machines.) I had patched it, but not rebooted it. So I went to reboot it, and waited for it to come back up. Which it did not.  Some rummaging around gave me a remote console. Crash loop. Probably a borkened upgrade. Managed to get it single-user booted. Tried unrolling the upgrade, which it claimed to do. Rebooted. Still crashes. Re-did the attempt at booting, got system running, managed to do an upgrade to a higher level, rebooted into a crash. So, let's try again..

 

[Cerebus]

Everything BWD is here:
https://www.kevinchant.com/bwd.html

I took a look on this website out of curiosity and noted the consistent use of the abbreviation'CRO' for Cathode Ray Oscillograph. Would that make a small scope like a Tek 212 or 222 a CRO-Mignon?

Does that make Mike "CRO-Mignon Man"?

[AVGresponding]

Everything BWD is here:
https://www.kevinchant.com/bwd.html

I took a look on this website out of curiosity and noted the consistent use of the abbreviation'CRO' for Cathode Ray Oscillograph. Would that make a small scope like a Tek 212 or 222 a CRO-Mignon?

Does that make Mike "CRO-Mignon Man"?

This is why we don't get many new members   

[mansaxel]

...rebooted into a crash. So, let's try again..

Removed a couple irritating kernel modules from the load-at-boot list. Success. 

[Saskia]

congrats.
Just bid 70 quid for an Ultrasparc 10 ...

[mansaxel]

congrats.
Just bid 70 quid for an Ultrasparc 10 ...

That is about what it is worth. If the 3D card is in it, and there are disks better than the pathetic IDE drives they came with. A SCSI controller and a pair of 10krpm 36GB-drives is about what's required.

[Saskia]

yup. Would not bid more, got too much stuff already.
- Continued with my small arcade
- had a huge bummer wrt potential buyer of the appartment called and declined
- will need to contact realtor tomorrow
- set up ultrasonic and started disassembling the Dracula pb. Which btw was called back into life by a heart transplant. (I mounted a spare CPU board)

Not feeling that great, winter blues.

[Specmaster]

I'm not gonna sacrifice 25k to find out.

And they soo nicely told me to go to a distributor instead of calling them direct ...

Queue loads of second hand Keysight gear being dumped on eBay soon then as they start killing off their hobbyist support.

[Specmaster]

That brought back a memory from over 40 years ago when I was in my early teens. I was in the local tool shop which for some reason also sold glassware and china. I was behind a guy at the tool counter who asked for an 18" bastard file.  A little old lady stepped up from behind me and started berating him about using foul languge in front of a "young man" Then she had a o at the shop assitant for laughing so much....

Old German joke, playing in a bookstore, female shop assistant calling into the back room:

"Boss, do we still have Our Virginity?" ... "Not if you don't have it at the front as I don't have it at the rear, either."

I hope it has survived translation.

Here's your answer 

[Specmaster]

Currently battling with my off-site FreeBSD vm server. (as in it hosts virtual machines.) I had patched it, but not rebooted it. So I went to reboot it, and waited for it to come back up. Which it did not.  Some rummaging around gave me a remote console. Crash loop. Probably a borkened upgrade. Managed to get it single-user booted. Tried unrolling the upgrade, which it claimed to do. Rebooted. Still crashes. Re-did the attempt at booting, got system running, managed to do an upgrade to a higher level, rebooted into a crash. So, let's try again..

 

Sounds like it could be a hardware related issue?

[Specmaster]

yup. Would not bid more, got too much stuff already.
- Continued with my small arcade
- had a huge bummer wrt potential buyer of the appartment called and declined
- will need to contact realtor tomorrow
- set up ultrasonic and started disassembling the Dracula pb. Which btw was called back into life by a heart transplant. (I mounted a spare CPU board)

Not feeling that great, winter blues.

That sounds like the werewolves calling their Dracula out to play / dinner