Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

- Kept the best for dessert : I could not believe it... in that lot was a VOLTAGE REFERENCE !!!   
A chip Chinese one of course, probably not much good but since I don't have any yet have 25 old DMM, even a Chinese one is marvelous, I have a Vref now, my start in Volt nuttery !!! 
See pics. It's a nice one : comes with the crap acrylic case AND a battery with charging circuitry on the PCB. Has a tiny USB port to charge it.. need to see if I have a USB cable with the correct plug type, and will charge it overnight and play with it tomorrow. The sticker at the back gives a real measurement of each output (2.5V, 5V, 7.5V and 10V). I see that it uses an AD584KH.

Welcome to the rathole, and it really is a rathole.

I'd be wary about relying on the numbers on the back; frequently all devices show the same numbers. It might be looking at fleabay to see if you can find the same numbers elsewhere

Your first task will be to take your best voltmeter, and leave it on continuously for a couple of weeks recording the output voltage. Why? Because there can be noticeable drift, and a cheap supplier is unlikely to leave them for that time before they record the output.

I agree to be wary of the numbers written on the back but these two have proven time and time again to be accurate. And yes, they do drift somewhat with temperature. But for spot checks they have been a valuable tool.

[tggzzz]

- Kept the best for dessert : I could not believe it... in that lot was a VOLTAGE REFERENCE !!!   
A chip Chinese one of course, probably not much good but since I don't have any yet have 25 old DMM, even a Chinese one is marvelous, I have a Vref now, my start in Volt nuttery !!! 
See pics. It's a nice one : comes with the crap acrylic case AND a battery with charging circuitry on the PCB. Has a tiny USB port to charge it.. need to see if I have a USB cable with the correct plug type, and will charge it overnight and play with it tomorrow. The sticker at the back gives a real measurement of each output (2.5V, 5V, 7.5V and 10V). I see that it uses an AD584KH.

Welcome to the rathole, and it really is a rathole.

I'd be wary about relying on the numbers on the back; frequently all devices show the same numbers. It might be looking at fleabay to see if you can find the same numbers elsewhere

Your first task will be to take your best voltmeter, and leave it on continuously for a couple of weeks recording the output voltage. Why? Because there can be noticeable drift, and a cheap supplier is unlikely to leave them for that time before they record the output.

I agree to be wary of the numbers written on the back but these two have proven time and time again to be accurate. And yes, they do drift somewhat with temperature. But for spot checks they have been a valuable tool.

Temperature drift is less of an issue since the temperature can be controlled.

Age drift is more of a problem since it could be a positive or negative change. That's why HPAK etc age lots of references, and select the best.

When I get around to flogging my references, I'll indicate they are well aged

[Vince]

- A couple of little antennae. They sport a BNC 50R connector it looks like, so I of course rushed to stick on of them to my scope, hoping to see something on the screen to keep me entertained... no luck : the BNC of the antenna will NOT fit on the scope ?!     Looked more closely, see picture below... could not believe it. The BNC on the antenna looks like a Male plug on the OUTside, but INside it's FEmale not male !     It's neither male nor female, it's a mix of the two, it's a " hybrid " !!  What the hell is this thing ?! I sure don't have any adapter for such a weirdo plug !     If you know where to find one...

Looks like a nice haul, Vince.

That's a reverse sex BNC - my understanding is that they're used in antenna applications like that to keep radiated power levels in check - the oddball connector is the manufacturer's way to prevent (or at least helps to prevent) an uninformed user from plugging in a higher gain antenna that would cause the device to radiate a stronger signal than it's certified to, and keep it within regulation specs. 

https://rna.rosenberger.com/product/reverse-sma-bnc-tnc/

-Pat

Thank you very much ! 

All this pain because once again manufacturer are dumbing down their customers. If really they think they are that stupid that they can't use it, well then don't bother making stuff for them in the first place 

[Vince]

Vref : thanks for the comments tggzzz and Papa Smurf.

Yeah looking at drift coul dbe fun, but since my best DMM is my Metrix MX56 which is only 0.025% , I would be measuring the meter not the ref !
MX56 is burried for now, but since everything is sorted now, I should be able to find it pretty quickly.
It does have data logging (and calibrating as well) capavilities via its infra-red serial port. However the cable is unobtainium, though I plan on making my own at some point, siince it appears others have done so with ease. I do want to play with that at some point.

Anyway, battery in the Vref is now fully charged, measured it at 4.18V. But... the bloody thing shows absolutely.... zero sign of life whatsoever. Completely dead.
So I need to fix it before I can play with it !
Well who am I to complain... I like fixing stuff right ?? ........

Hopefully I can get it going again... are schematics avalailble ?  Why do I even ask.... of course they aren't... 

Circuit doesn't look too complex so I guess I stand a reasonable chance even without schematics... crossing fingers ! 

[med6753]

Age drift is more of a problem since it could be a positive or negative change. That's why HPAK etc age lots of references, and select the best.

When I get around to flogging my references, I'll indicate they are well aged

Agreed. These two have weeks of power up time. 

[Kosmic]

57Ex top notch, the best of the best, I approve !

Based on the of the range MX56 but ads temperature measurement which is normally only found on the MX 54, not on the 53 nor 56.

So you get all the feautres + the best accuracy of the range.

Sure you lose the 10A current range but it's not like it gets used that often anyway... if you do need the 10A then just grab any other meter, no matter how crap it will be good enough.
High current readings on a DMM has never been mega accurate anyway 

I have clamp meters and home-made shunts that cover me from uA to kA in any case, imo better than risking internal meltage of a treasured DMM (all mine are treasured, even the derided 139C).

It's in good company in that the other meters in regular front-line rotation are a Fluke 289, Brymen 869S, and Tektronix DMM912. There would be a Gossen M242A but it is currently in the repair queue
 

How did you make your home-made shunts exactly ? I was reading about shunt recently.

[BU508A]

Here is a thread to those chinese AD584 references:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/cheap-chinese-ad584-voltage-reference-legit-cal-data-let_s-find-out!/

I've attached the datasheet of the AD584 to this posting.

A review with lots of details of this module:
https://chinese-electronics-products-tested.blogspot.com/p/ad584lh-voltage-reference-module-tested.html

HTH

[med6753]

The Type 105 passed an extended burn-in with flying colors. After some rearrangement I managed to get some space for it on the display shelf. Now that equipment shown does not just sit there and collect dust. I regularly rotate equipment for some power up time on bench 1. The two 485's that were there have been rotated out for a 465B/DM44 and 475A. Both powered up OK but were very fussy about triggering but then settled down. That seems to be a characteristic of the 400 series especially the 475A. It just proves you need to exercise this stuff.

BTW, I do dust the equipment every week. 


 

[Andrew_Debbie]

The other day I managed to get myself a free digital camera from the "trash nothing" website...

Damn fine glomming there, Spec! Almost as good as my curb-score fully-loaded MacPro, and arguably more useful.

mnem
 

I agree with the jammy git - but I'll lean towards the camera as the better score.  (I know if I had the choice of one or the other, it would be the camera that would be accompanying me home.)

Yeah, I kindof feel the same... my only valid assessment of comparative value is the $$$ of the thing as configured when new... which, according to my online research, a dual Xeon MacPro with 24GB RAM, 4 750GB Barracuda drives and 32in Cinema display, was somewhere in the vicinity of US$13,000, plus unknown $$$ in every form of graphic arts & video studio/rendering softwares under the sun.

This thing was somebody's livelihood... I think they used it for fashion photography advertisements and commercial video; it even has to Pantone & DIC color calibration studio software.

The scary part is that if I knew anything about this line of work and could get the licenses on all the software to authenticate again... I'm pretty sure that even today it would still be a more than capable workstation.

mnem
 

Apple   does not support MacOS on hardware this old.  Your options are to run an OS that hasn't had a security update in years, hack the installer and hope for the best  or  install an OS that is in support.

I have  a  2010 MacPro 5,1   dual 4-core Xeons running 24/7 as a PACS  (Picture Archive Server)    I upgraded the storage   4x 2TB server class drives and a Samsung SSD in a PCI slot.    Everything else is original.   

With 8-cores the benchmarks are not at all bad for a 12 year old machine.    It is just a little slower than the year old Core i7-9700  I use at home.


Real performance is ok too.    It does about 1 million  JPEG-2000 image compress and decompress every single day  as well as other compute heavy tasks.

[AVGresponding]

57Ex top notch, the best of the best, I approve !

Based on the of the range MX56 but ads temperature measurement which is normally only found on the MX 54, not on the 53 nor 56.

So you get all the feautres + the best accuracy of the range.

Sure you lose the 10A current range but it's not like it gets used that often anyway... if you do need the 10A then just grab any other meter, no matter how crap it will be good enough.
High current readings on a DMM has never been mega accurate anyway 

I have clamp meters and home-made shunts that cover me from uA to kA in any case, imo better than risking internal meltage of a treasured DMM (all mine are treasured, even the derided 139C).

It's in good company in that the other meters in regular front-line rotation are a Fluke 289, Brymen 869S, and Tektronix DMM912. There would be a Gossen M242A but it is currently in the repair queue
 

How did you make your home-made shunts exactly ? I was reading about shunt recently.

With resistors in series/parallel to get the power/resistance I need. I measure the resistance with my LCR meter, which has an accuracy of 0.05% and resolution of 10 micro-ohms.
That means I can get good basic accuracy regardless of the nominal resistor tolerances, though obviously ppm/°C is another matter...

[Kosmic]

Here is a thread to those chinese AD584 references:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/cheap-chinese-ad584-voltage-reference-legit-cal-data-let_s-find-out!/

I've attached the datasheet of the AD584 to this posting.

A review with lots of details of this module:
https://chinese-electronics-products-tested.blogspot.com/p/ad584lh-voltage-reference-module-tested.html

HTH

Talking about AD584 ref, I bought those recently. I got 2 of them to see if the measurement sheet was the same or if they really took the time to measure the references.



The one measured by a 3458a is 780uV (78ppm) off and the other one 476uV (47.6ppm) off. You can potentially use them to check 4.5 digits meters, but I wouldn't trust them at 5.5 digits and higher.

In any case, even if they are off, they actually increased my confidence level on my local 10V ref and 2 of my best meters

[tautech]

BTW, I do dust the equipment every week. 

STOP stroking your Tek's Med, that's just plain kinky !

Hopefully this will only last a few months more until the Lady Cop retires. 

[Robert763]

Talking of Voltage references, I put the Metrix MX 51Ex on the Time Voltage calibrator. It is spot on. +- 1 count across the range 
Ohms are spot on too.
It's a nice meter. While I've desigined equipmen to use in Ex atmospheres I do't hve ny need of an Ex meter. I have a couple of Fluke 25's which are Ex but not to latest standard.
Seeing how much this cost new and what some used Ex meters go for I might have to flip this one.
I've not received any reply from the seller. If I don't get a response tomorrow I'll consider opening a "not as described" case.   

[mansaxel]

New purchase: [hp] 5316A counter.  With Channel C option, according to pictures. Not according to ad! Now, what I need the most is a 2-channel counter, with reference input, to compare 10MHz clocks, in time-nutter light fashion. I've got TTi ironplastique to go to 1,3GHz, so Channel C is mostly bonus.

Not a Jammy Git level purchase, but since shipping is local total is pretty OK nevertheless.

Pic from ad:



Update as I get my hands on it.

Now, I've got two GPIB instruments. The "need" to connect them becomes stronger.

[Vince]

Talking of Voltage references, I put the Metrix MX 51Ex on the Time Voltage calibrator. It is spot on. +- 1 count across the range 
Ohms are spot on too.
It's a nice meter. While I've desigined equipmen to use in Ex atmospheres I do't hve ny need of an Ex meter. I have a couple of Fluke 25's which are Ex but not to latest standard.
Seeing how much this cost new and what some used Ex meters go for I might have to flip this one.
I've not received any reply from the seller. If I don't get a response tomorrow I'll consider opening a "not as described" case.

Yes I can have it !!! 

... but no... because I can't pay "market" price for it, not even close ! 

I will have to wait until like you I find one for 30 quid... 


I offer you 60 quid, that's 100  % more than you paid for it, that's an excellent flip yet still affordable for me ! 
.. with some luck with shipping and taxes and other import shit, might end up costing me less than 100 Euros.

OK too bad for me. I hope it will go to a good home at least !   

[Cerebus]

The other day I managed to get myself a free digital camera from the "trash nothing" website...

Damn fine glomming there, Spec! Almost as good as my curb-score fully-loaded MacPro, and arguably more useful.

mnem
 

I agree with the jammy git - but I'll lean towards the camera as the better score.  (I know if I had the choice of one or the other, it would be the camera that would be accompanying me home.)

Yeah, I kindof feel the same... my only valid assessment of comparative value is the $$$ of the thing as configured when new... which, according to my online research, a dual Xeon MacPro with 24GB RAM, 4 750GB Barracuda drives and 32in Cinema display, was somewhere in the vicinity of US$13,000, plus unknown $$$ in every form of graphic arts & video studio/rendering softwares under the sun.

This thing was somebody's livelihood... I think they used it for fashion photography advertisements and commercial video; it even has to Pantone & DIC color calibration studio software.

The scary part is that if I knew anything about this line of work and could get the licenses on all the software to authenticate again... I'm pretty sure that even today it would still be a more than capable workstation.

mnem
 

It would be, with software of an appropriate generation, but software bloat has made it useless. I used a MacPro for years. It screamed along. If I power up the old MacPro and try to load a contemporary website, I wait, and wait, and wait. If I load, if I can, recent software, it crawls, whereas if I use it with the generation of, say, [32 bit] Illustrator that's loaded on it, it still screams. Go figure...

[Cerebus]

- Kept the best for dessert : I could not believe it... in that lot was a VOLTAGE REFERENCE !!!   
A chip Chinese one of course, probably not much good but since I don't have any yet have 25 old DMM, even a Chinese one is marvelous, I have a Vref now, my start in Volt nuttery !!! 
See pics. It's a nice one : comes with the crap acrylic case AND a battery with charging circuitry on the PCB. Has a tiny USB port to charge it.. need to see if I have a USB cable with the correct plug type, and will charge it overnight and play with it tomorrow. The sticker at the back gives a real measurement of each output (2.5V, 5V, 7.5V and 10V). I see that it uses an AD584KH.

Welcome to the rathole, and it really is a rathole.

I'd be wary about relying on the numbers on the back; frequently all devices show the same numbers. It might be looking at fleabay to see if you can find the same numbers elsewhere

Your first task will be to take your best voltmeter, and leave it on continuously for a couple of weeks recording the output voltage. Why? Because there can be noticeable drift, and a cheap supplier is unlikely to leave them for that time before they record the output.

I agree to be wary of the numbers written on the back but these two have proven time and time again to be accurate. And yes, they do drift somewhat with temperature. But for spot checks they have been a valuable tool.

Temperature drift is less of an issue since the temperature can be controlled.

Age drift is more of a problem since it could be a positive or negative change. That's why HPAK etc age lots of references, and select the best.

When I get around to flogging my references, I'll indicate they are well aged

As long as you don't start selling body parts on the same basis ...

[mnementh]

- A couple of little antennae. They sport a BNC 50R connector it looks like, so I of course rushed to stick on of them to my scope, hoping to see something on the screen to keep me entertained... no luck : the BNC of the antenna will NOT fit on the scope ?!     Looked more closely, see picture below... could not believe it. The BNC on the antenna looks like a Male plug on the OUTside, but INside it's FEmale not male !     It's neither male nor female, it's a mix of the two, it's a " hybrid " !!  What the hell is this thing ?! I sure don't have any adapter for such a weirdo plug !     If you know where to find one...

Looks like a nice haul, Vince.

That's a reverse sex BNC - my understanding is that they're used in antenna applications like that to keep radiated power levels in check - the oddball connector is the manufacturer's way to prevent (or at least helps to prevent) an uninformed user from plugging in a higher gain antenna that would cause the device to radiate a stronger signal than it's certified to, and keep it within regulation specs. 

https://rna.rosenberger.com/product/reverse-sma-bnc-tnc/

-Pat

Thank you very much ! 

All this pain because once again manufacturer are dumbing down their customers. If really they think they are that stupid that they can't use it, well then don't bother making stuff for them in the first place 

It's done to comply with FCC and similar regulatory body requirements in other nations that the connector for a transmitting antenna be made differently from common cable connectors such that morons not easily be able to coat hanger abuse or buy  antennae over the counter (like in truck stops, etc) that make a cheap-@ss handheld like my Baofeng UV-5R able to grossly exceed their advertised PEP and blanket the band with harmonic noise from a untuned antenna.

That doesn't stop the 'feng-spanking 1d10ts from buying them off AliEx and GoodLuckBuy, etc... But it does slow down the Children's Band crowd (11m) from just buying stoopit power OTC and bringing their inanity to the higher code-free license bands.

It's a good thing. 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Yeah, I kindof feel the same... my only valid assessment of comparative value is the $$$ of the thing as configured when new... which, according to my online research, a dual Xeon MacPro with 24GB RAM, 4 750GB Barracuda drives and 32in Cinema display, was somewhere in the vicinity of US$13,000, plus unknown $$$ in every form of graphic arts & video studio/rendering softwares under the sun.

This thing was somebody's livelihood... I think they used it for fashion photography advertisements and commercial video; it even has to Pantone & DIC color calibration studio software.

The scary part is that if I knew anything about this line of work and could get the licenses on all the software to authenticate again... I'm pretty sure that even today it would still be a more than capable workstation.

mnem
 

Apple   does not support MacOS on hardware this old.  Your options are to run an OS that hasn't had a security update in years, hack the installer and hope for the best  or  install an OS that is in support.

I have  a  2010 MacPro 5,1   dual 4-core Xeons running 24/7 as a PACS  (Picture Archive Server)    I upgraded the storage   4x 2TB server class drives and a Samsung SSD in a PCI slot.    Everything else is original.   

With 8-cores the benchmarks are not at all bad for a 12 year old machine.    It is just a little slower than the year old Core i7-9700  I use at home.

Real performance is ok too.    It does about 1 million  JPEG-2000 image compress and decompress every single day  as well as other compute heavy tasks.

It would be, with software of an appropriate generation, but software bloat has made it useless. I used a MacPro for years. It screamed along. If I power up the old MacPro and try to load a contemporary website, I wait, and wait, and wait. If I load, if I can, recent software, it crawls, whereas if I use it with the generation of, say, [32 bit] Illustrator that's loaded on it, it still screams. Go figure...

Yeah, no... The software was already on the machine, but sadly original boot hdd has some mental problems, so I had to install El Capitan on another drive. While I do have the install packages for most of the software, and it will start enough for me to see what it is, I don't have access to the original owner's accounts, so can't actually use it.

I use it every day to watch my Dust and Linus vids on yoobToob, and I peek in here several times a day; MacOS sleep/resume is just a delight after a lifetime of "will it or won't it or will it bork my hdd" with Winbloze.

It is more than good enough for that light use, and if I pop a Mint/Cinnamon OS disk in it, it is effing fast, even on spinning rust. With SSD, I have no doubt it would be as usable as my 4 year old i7 Lenovo laptop as a daily driver, and could probably get some real work done if I ever got my Kung-Fu up to snuff.

mnem
*heeds Hypnos' siren call...* 

[cyclin_al]

Neji-Saurus PZ-58 Alert: Sanely-priced, free shipping to the US.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/133896582872

Runner-up:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/353842334855

mnem
 *toolish*

Does not ship to Canada 

[Brumby]

Yeah, I kindof feel the same... my only valid assessment of comparative value is the $$$ of the thing as configured when new...

I don't think I'd be game to look at the gear I have in that light.  IMO, it's only worth what its worth on today's values.

[mansaxel]

so I had to install El Capitan on another drive.

I finally moved off  High Sierra couple months ago. My private laptop, which this is being written on, is a Model A1502, i.e. Early 2015 13" Retina Macbook Pro. It is fast enough for everything I do on it; the main problem is that it has only 128GB storage, which is a bit of a squeeze today. I run Catalina on it. High Sierra was not bad, not at all, but the main problems I had was that Home Brew would not bother, and that X.509 certificates were not updating properly, giving problems first and foremost with LetsEncrypt certs, which require updated certificate chains.

While I do have the install packages for most of the software, and it will start enough for me to see what it is, I don't have access to the original owner's accounts, so can't actually use it.

mmm, one never owns software. capitalist dream of making the poor sods pay again and again.

if I ever got my Kung-Fu up to snuff.

I wish you stop underrate yourself here. You've got the mind for it, I can tell.

The problem is that you're likely to be frustrated by the myriad things-that-look-they-might-work in most Linuxen. The complete lack of oversight, taste and regulation in the Linux world makes things a bit chaotic there. Like visiting a cliché oriental bazaar and trying to do a trend analysis of the carpet market.  Every subsystem has at least 17 slightly varying graphic config utilities that each consume 8x the compute resources that the underlying actual daemon/whatever will, just to look cute. And none of them work. As soon as one gets into tinkering mode (and Dragons do!), the only path is text editor on config file.

You instead probably need to install something that is very simple and actually will deliver to promise, like one of the BSDen.

[BU508A]

Review of a cheap spot welder by The Noise Path:

[BU508A]

Marco Reps is selling some of his stuff:

https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-bestandsliste.html?userId=15084259

NAWTS

[Andrew_Debbie]

Yeah, no... The software was already on the machine, but sadly original boot hdd has some mental problems, so I had to install El Capitan on another drive. While I do have the install packages for most of the software, and it will start enough for me to see what it is, I don't have access to the original owner's accounts, so can't actually use it.

I use it every day to watch my Dust and Linus vids on yoobToob, and I peek in here several times a day; MacOS sleep/resume is just a delight after a lifetime of "will it or won't it or will it bork my hdd" with Winbloze.

It is more than good enough for that light use, and if I pop a Mint/Cinnamon OS disk in it, it is effing fast, even on spinning rust. With SSD, I have no doubt it would be as usable as my 4 year old i7 Lenovo laptop as a daily driver, and could probably get some real work done if I ever got my Kung-Fu up to snuff.

mnem
*heeds Hypnos' siren call...* 

Ubuntu 20.04LTS  works very well on these.  I've never set one up for dual boot with MacOS, but I don't see any reason why it wouldn't work. 

Here is a glimpse inside.  It has been in 24/7 server duty since 2010.      Four years ago I pulled the Apple RAID card and the original drives.


Samsung SSD on a OWC  PCIe to SATA 6 card.     4x  2TB  WD Gold Enterprise class  spinning hard drives in  Linux Software RAID.      In real use there was little speed difference between the software RAID and the Apple RAID card. 

NICs in the other slots.