Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Robert763]

@mnementh I love a cheese grader Mac Pro, I have a MacPro4.1 in my garage that I upgraded to 8 cores {(and I think 32gb ram), what are your specs?}; I see your geforce card, wanted to do that for playing older games. What's your usage plan for the Mac Pro?

P.S. First post (minus those in the support sub-forum), love reading y'alls back and forth over the years. Had a lurker account that dave purged btw

My use-case for the MacPro is... daily driver to become at least moderately proficient with MacOS. El Capitán was kindof holding that back, so the patched version of Catalina became necessary.

Specs according to EveryMac are:

Processor Speed:    2.8 GHz    Processor Type:    Q. Core Xeon E5462 x2
Details:    Each of two 45-nm Xeon E5462 (Harpertown/Penryn) processors has four independent processor "cores" with 12 MB of level 2 cache per processor (each pair of cores shares 6 MB). It also features a 128-bit SSE4 SIMD vector engine, and 1.6 GHz "64-bit dual independent frontside buses."

Turbo Boost:    N/A    Custom Speeds:    2.8, 3, 3.2 GHz*
Processor Upgrade:    LGA 771 Sockets    FPU:    Integrated
System Bus Speed:    1.6 GHz    Cache Bus Speed:    2.8 GHz (Built-in)
ROM/Firmware Type:    EFI    EFI Architecture:    64-Bit
L1 Cache:    N/A    L2/L3 Cache:    12 MB*
RAM Type:    PC6400 DDR2 ECC    Min. RAM Speed:    800 MHz
Details:    Uses "800 MHz DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM (FB-DIMM) memory" and has a "256-bit wide memory architecture".

Standard RAM:    2 GB    Maximum RAM:    64 GB*

Installed: 20GB ECC RAM, 4x 750GB 7200RPM Barracuda SATA-II HDDs, Generic-FW NVIDIA GTX670, DOSDUDE1-patched Catalina OS

The GTX670 was a necessary upgrade, as the original NVIDIA 8800GT was one of those with the self-desoldering GPU chip. I resurrected it with booty-fab reflow soldering; it lasted long enough to get a legit copy of El Capitán installed.  Main problem is that the Cinema Display will not even turn on unless it detects signal from a GPU in full Dual link DVI format. I got lucky and found it at a Thrift Store for $25; it were filthy but cleaned up well, and is on the list of "will work without flashing, but you lose the EFI pre-boot environment" GPUs here: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/gpu-compatibility-list-for-cmp.2174600/

The physical form-factor of the MacPro makes swapping HDDs literally a moment's diversion, so I really don't have a problem with losing that.  It was hard just letting the patched version of Catalina work and not freak out until it finally came up; but somehow I managed. 

As HDD swapping is so easy, I may eventually also do a Mint/Cinnamon build again; maybe even Win10 too. Haven't decided yet.

Oh, and welcome to the nuthouse, James.  

The neverending taco truck in the corner is is very proud of its shiny new wheels, so do compliment them if you visit; I've been doing half Columbian Supremo/half dark roast Hazelnut ground at COSTCO a few days ago, so the coffee should be half-decent for a few days, even if beanflying is AWOL. Papa Smurf's herd of hollow-state Teks is still grazing in the front yard, while bd139 is on walkabout in the real world, but we see him from time to time in the Discord, so we know he's alive. If you see Vince battling a floor polisher, give him a hand, willya?  The crusty old Aardvark in the corner is a great source of Mac info; he's been irreversibly contaminated for decades, but watch out if he reaches for the conversational cutlery... Oh, and the pervy little dragon fancier schtick is mine; I've been offering classes but they are full at this time! 

mnem

That is very similar to my Dell T5400, both in size and specification.
The Dell has two 3 GHz E5450s so a touch faster. t has the maximum 32 GB of RAM too. I Got 4 of them for free a few years ago.

[mnementh]

For good or evil... I made it to the other side. Trying to decide whether the value of Catalina (the latest OSX) is worth the inherent security risk of running MacOS that has been "patched" by an out-of-channel 3rd party to work with this old box... I suppose if Frustion360 works with it, I can just not use it for anything that has money or important communications tied to it...

(1) Catalina (10.15) is not the latest, the latest is Monterey (12) two major version further down the line
(2) Catalina is still actively getting security patches (latest 2022-003)
(3) It's been called macOS, not OS X, since Sierra (10.12) in 2016, six major versions back

Okay, okay... sure. Officially, yes. I referred to it specifically as the latest version of OSX as it is the last 10.x version, and I believe saw it referred to as such informally. 

We aren't talking officially here with this patched version, so I really have a hard time mustering any GAF for this obviously small distinction; if Catalina can be patched by a single hobbyist so it mostly works with hardware this old, I don't personally see anything that came between 10.11 and 10.15 as any kind of major version change. For sure not major as in the core architecture changes from PPC to Intel or from Intel to ARM.

mnem
"One, two! One, two! And through and through;
the vorpal blade went snicker-snack!
He left it dead, and with its head,
he went galumphing back..."

*rubs neck while things grow back*
"You insensitive prick! Do you have any idea how much that stings...?"

[mnementh]

@mnementh I love a cheese grader Mac Pro, I have a MacPro4.1 in my garage that I upgraded to 8 cores {(and I think 32gb ram), what are your specs?}; I see your geforce card, wanted to do that for playing older games. What's your usage plan for the Mac Pro?

My use-case for the MacPro is... daily driver to become at least moderately proficient with MacOS. El Capitán was kindof holding that back, so the patched version of Catalina became necessary...

You forgot to add it doubles as a space heater 

Not even in the same league as my old gaming rig with air-cooled ASUS WTF-ever GPU and FX-8350. This thing stays stone-cold unless I spend hours watching videos. The FX-8350 starts getting warm just booting up. While I'm sure the MacPro does need that ~900W PSU for the work it was designed to do, so far I have yet to actually see that level of workload.

For example, right now I feel considerably more heat coming off that fanless Meanwell PSU than the MacPro.

mnem
*toddles off to the Frustion360 D/L page*

[mnementh]

Processor Speed:    2.8 GHz    Processor Type:    Q. Core Xeon E5462 x2
Details:    Each of two 45-nm Xeon E5462 (Harpertown/Penryn) processors has four independent processor "cores" with 12 MB of level 2 cache per processor (each pair of cores shares 6 MB). It also features a 128-bit SSE4 SIMD vector engine, and 1.6 GHz "64-bit dual independent frontside buses."

Turbo Boost:    N/A    Custom Speeds:    2.8, 3, 3.2 GHz*
Processor Upgrade:    LGA 771 Sockets    FPU:    Integrated
System Bus Speed:    1.6 GHz    Cache Bus Speed:    2.8 GHz (Built-in)
ROM/Firmware Type:    EFI    EFI Architecture:    64-Bit
L1 Cache:    N/A    L2/L3 Cache:    12 MB*
RAM Type:    PC6400 DDR2 ECC    Min. RAM Speed:    800 MHz
Details:    Uses "800 MHz DDR2 ECC fully-buffered DIMM (FB-DIMM) memory" and has a "256-bit wide memory architecture".

Standard RAM:    2 GB    Maximum RAM:    64 GB*

Installed: 20GB ECC RAM, 4x 750GB 7200RPM Barracuda SATA-II HDDs, Generic-FW NVIDIA GTX670, DOSDUDE1-patched Catalina OS...

That is very similar to my Dell T5400, both in size and specification. The Dell has two 3 GHz E5450s so a touch faster. t has the maximum 32 GB of RAM too. I Got 4 of them for free a few years ago.

Yeah, I dunno about the differences there. They're both Harpertown, and the 5462 is a newer CPU, so why the supposedly lower base/boost? I'm guessing the 5462 must've been a custom run for Apple? 

But yeah... obvi the customer pays a premium for all that anodized aluminum on the UberCheeseGrater. I'm still glad I happened to be in the right place at the right time... I can't count the number of decommissioned plastic-fantastic Dell servers I sent straight to fleaBay with HDDs stripped out; this one is gonna be around as long as I can keep it alive. 

mnem
 

[PA0PBZ]

There's more than one way to skin a cat 

[Neper]

You forgot to add it doubles as a space heater 

I wonder how he can stand the noise without going berserk, especially with that thing standing right next to him on the desk. I had a G5 in a cheese-grate housing with a total of nine (9) fans, all of them original. On a warm day, it would sound somewhat like this:

http://www.fotoralf.be/audio/Ethiopean_DC10.mp3

[mnementh]

F360 is still downloading my library... but even so, still very usable. Had to do the same damned "make read-only, then make editable again" workaround as with the Windoze version for AutoDorks' stoopit "Personal Use License" policy change, so I guess there is some consistency. 

Not sure I like this new version of Cura... I'd been putting off updating as I had my "several revisions out of date" version set up exactly the way I like it... now I'll have to find all those settings again.  I don't see the current push in software to "declutter" by hiding all the settings you use all the time as "progress".


mnem

[mnementh]

You forgot to add it doubles as a space heater 

I wonder how he can stand the noise without going berserk, especially with that thing standing right next to him on the desk. I had a G5 in a cheese-grate housing with a total of nine (9) fans, all of them original. On a warm day, it would sound somewhat like this:

http://www.fotoralf.be/audio/Ethiopean_DC10.mp3

For starters... MacPro is not the same as G5; a big difference in generations. Completely different internals, including all aggressively thermally-controlled 120mm fans, and Xeons generate considerably less heat than the G5. This thing is as quiet as my all-water-cooled gaming rig, aside from the rattle of spinning rust HDDs. Shhhhhhh!!!   

That quietude is one of the things that made me want it for a living room PC; and why that 3DP PSU with 80mm fan on the Cinema display HAD. TO. FUCKING. GO.   


mnem
Ahhh...    

[ch_scr]

You forgot to add it doubles as a space heater 

I wonder how he can stand the noise without going berserk, especially with that thing standing right next to him on the desk. I had a G5 in a cheese-grate housing with a total of nine (9) fans, all of them original. On a warm day, it would sound somewhat like this:

http://www.fotoralf.be/audio/Ethiopean_DC10.mp3

For starters... MacPro is not the same as G5; a big difference in generations. Completely different internals, including all aggressively thermally-controlled 120mm fans, and Xeons generate considerably less heat than the G5. This thing is as quiet as my all-water-cooled gaming rig, aside from the rattle of spinning rust HDDs. Shhhhhhh!!!   

That quietude is one of the things that made me want it for a living room PC; and why that 3DP PSU with 80mm fan on the Cinema display HAD. TO. FUCKING. GO.   


mnem
Ahhh...    

Well the Apple page says the "Mac Pro early 2008 with 2x 5400 Series Xeon" has an idle of 155W and a max of 318W. Yeah, thats like two 75W lightbulbs idle, no big deal, electricity is cheap...
But still, a modern 450$ mini pc can do similar things with 15W idle and 35W max. It's like changing to LED lightbulbs, these things will also never come through, lightbulbs were good enough for people for 100 years, they should be good enough still...

[mnementh]

Yeah, now we're devolving into the old Jaguar XK family vs Hyundai WTF-ever argument... There's a lot more than fuel economy to consider here.

mnem
vroom.

[Neper]

Well the Apple page says the "Mac Pro early 2008 with 2x 5400 Series Xeon" has an idle of 155W and a max of 318W. Yeah, thats like two 75W lightbulbs idle, no big deal, electricity is cheap...

A few months after I replaced my old G5 with a new Mac Mini and our two 19" CRT monitors with modern flat screens the local utility company turned up, took our former power meter with two displays for peak and off-peak rates and installed a single-rate meter because we didn't use enough electricity anymore.

[factory]

An off-the-beaten-track auction in Hampshire UK, collect or arrange collection. Looks like a silent key clearout. The crappy pictures appear to show a Tek 2445, A TTi function generator, a Gould oscillator, and an Advance RF signal generator.

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/pump-house-auctions/catalogue-id-srpum10214/lot-2757a91c-acad-4bfa-b319-ae5a01041ff4

The RF signal generator is a Heathkit one (possibly RF-1U), not an Advance.


David

[Robert763]

You forgot to add it doubles as a space heater 

I wonder how he can stand the noise without going berserk, especially with that thing standing right next to him on the desk. I had a G5 in a cheese-grate housing with a total of nine (9) fans, all of them original. On a warm day, it would sound somewhat like this:

http://www.fotoralf.be/audio/Ethiopean_DC10.mp3

For starters... MacPro is not the same as G5; a big difference in generations. Completely different internals, including all aggressively thermally-controlled 120mm fans, and Xeons generate considerably less heat than the G5. This thing is as quiet as my all-water-cooled gaming rig, aside from the rattle of spinning rust HDDs. Shhhhhhh!!!   

That quietude is one of the things that made me want it for a living room PC; and why that 3DP PSU with 80mm fan on the Cinema display HAD. TO. FUCKING. GO.   


mnem
Ahhh...    

Well the Apple page says the "Mac Pro early 2008 with 2x 5400 Series Xeon" has an idle of 155W and a max of 318W. Yeah, thats like two 75W lightbulbs idle, no big deal, electricity is cheap...
But still, a modern 450$ mini pc can do similar things with 15W idle and 35W max. It's like changing to LED lightbulbs, these things will also never come through, lightbulbs were good enough for people for 100 years, they should be good enough still...

That's the original X54xx Xeons. Both Med's Mac and my Dell have the much lower power E54xx versions. Minimal difference in performance but big difference in power consumption and consequrntly fan noise.
The Dell Precision workstations are  differerent beast to the standard desktops.  Much heavier for a start.

[tggzzz]

An off-the-beaten-track auction in Hampshire UK, collect or arrange collection. Looks like a silent key clearout. The crappy pictures appear to show a Tek 2445, A TTi function generator, a Gould oscillator, and an Advance RF signal generator.

https://www.the-saleroom.com/en-gb/auction-catalogues/pump-house-auctions/catalogue-id-srpum10214/lot-2757a91c-acad-4bfa-b319-ae5a01041ff4

The RF signal generator is a Heathkit one (possibly RF-1U), not an Advance.


David

A google image search does yield low res images with the same logo in the top left.

Adds to the suspicion it is a silent key or house clearance sale.

[Vince]

Just received my ADSL "box"/modem from "Orange".. to replace my nightmarish 4G modem. Got an SMS yesterday saying the services were switched on, ADSL box was redy to go. Cool... I thought.

Just plugged it.... LCD screen on the box says " Failed to connect ". The same Orange ( New trade name for the ex French Public Telecom company) were the same ones who installed the copper lines to my house 9 months ago. Technician back then said "I will test the line remotely later and if you don't hear back from me, then it means it's all good to go ". I never heard anything back from him or anyone at Orange... so I assumed my freaking brand spanking new copper line was all fine ans set up. My ass.  Will call them tomorrow     

[mnementh]

Well the Apple page says the "Mac Pro early 2008 with 2x 5400 Series Xeon" has an idle of 155W and a max of 318W. Yeah, thats like two 75W lightbulbs idle, no big deal, electricity is cheap...

A few months after I replaced my old G5 with a new Mac Mini and our two 19" CRT monitors with modern flat screens the local utility company turned up, took our former power meter with two displays for peak and off-peak rates and installed a single-rate meter because we didn't use enough electricity anymore.

Oh, I'm certain it was only that change at fault. 

mnem
Hmmmm... car battery, or DPS-1200FB with big fat hairy capacitor stack...

[factory]

PSU recap.

Thanks for the comments and thanks Andrew for the offer ! 

OK so I spent a few more hours today clicking on websites. An absolute chore.

I took the time to complete the BOM on Mouser. Almost 30 Euros, including 5 Euros for a single lone Tantalum cap that Papy Smurf paid less than 2 Euros for in his BOM...
I press the trigger/order button. I am offered the expected 20 Euros export "deal" for shipping and customs fees etc... OK.
Then I click "Next", to select the payment method... and oh, what's that ?! They now add a new line to the order summary : " French Taxes, 10 Euros ", no detail/explanation 
So much for the "20 Euros flat rate we take care of everything for you " ! 

So 60 Euros in all, for 30 Euros worth of goods.

Order cancelled, bye bye.

Mouser also had the OEM Lithium backup battery for the CPU board, excellent, but won't export it (as TerraOperative said in his video..), so useless to me.

So I tried Reichelt and it's 30 Euros shipped, half price, not much hesitation from my part.
Well actually I pushed it to 35 Euros to get a backup battery. Not OEM of course, a cylindrical one, not available here, so much thicker than the flat / low profile original battery. Hoping it will clear the scope cover, we shall see. If it does, it's gonna be a close call.

The result of this PSU recap searching is that I am appalled, stunned and disgusted. It is my first and last "mass"/brute force recap, until the world/situation comes back to normal. Never again.

Now some more on-line searching for me today, this time to find a supplier for the plinths in the bedroom... hoping it will be a bit easier....

I hate spending hours sat in front of the computer searching for stuff, whatever that stuff is.
I like designing, thinking, creating, doing, building, crafting, testing, using/playing with stuff.... not searching all day long for stuff on-line   

It took me some time to go through the cap list from the 2465 thread & find equivalents I was happy with  from RS & Farnell (Nichicon, Rubycon, Panasonic), then I worked out which supplier was cheaper for each of the caps, I had four units to recap, I went with slightly overkill on the 2465B (with the TV trigger option board) with some Nichicon BT series.



I had to buy two line filters to replace the Schaffner madness.  And still need to buy another four pin EF651625 battery (didn't realise so many had the battery), wish I had seen Small Battery Company as they have the correct type for less than Farnell. Mouser offended me by not being able to send the battery (which is not made in the US). Don't think a round battery will fit on the board, you will probably need to add some wires & mount it somewhere else.


David

Edit: added four pin to battery type.

[mansaxel]

5316 update:

It arrived.

It is an A, not a B.  Mea Culpa. 

Condition is good to fair, no feet, all buttons OK, tops on knobs gone as usual. (No need to paint blue, med!)

Did not power it up, but took it apart:

It has Option 003, C channel. Was advertised as 100MHz counter, even though the pics clearly showed the Channel C BNC.

Innards are gorgeous golden PCB's, [hp] style we all know and cherish.

No RIFA madness detected.

Oscillator is very basic; it's got the standard unnumbered option of a non-crystal oscillator. Part of me wants to say "Go System!" and just build a DA for my GPSDO, alternatively repurpose as DA the Extron video switcher I got by mistake from Ebay (they claimed to ship an audio switcher, but all I got was a S-video switcher. Raised dispute and was refunded. Seller did not want return.)  but parts of me also want to build a OXCO board and geek out. (after which my more challenging measurement tasks mostly will require locking to a house clock anyway!)

I'm going to let the house calm down a bit, fix up the kitchen, run some laundry and so on, and then it'll go on the bench for a power-up and if successful, I'll integrate it in the system setup.  I now have more counters (4, two hp, one TTi and one Philips) than any other bench instrument in my inventory, not counting DMMen.

[ch_scr]

Yeah, now we're devolving into the old Jaguar XK family vs Hyundai WTF-ever argument... There's a lot more than fuel economy to consider here.

mnem
vroom.

All I'm saying is, now that you got the darn thing roaring again and an almost viable OSX on it... I guess you can find a sucker enthusiast to sell it to for $$$
And get yourself something reasonable 

[Vince]

[..} had four units to recap, I went with slightly overkill on the 2465B (with the TV trigger option board) with some Nichicon BT series.

[..] need to buy another EF651625 battery (didn't realise so many had the battery), wish I had seen Small Battery Company as they have the correct type for less than Farnell. Mouser offended me by not being able to send the battery (which is not made in the US). Don't think a round battery will fit on the board, you will probably need to add some wires & mount it somewhere else.

David

Ohhhh.....noooo.... 

When TerraOperative said the original Battery was available but no export.... it did not occur to me that maybe... as you saw.... you could buy a non-original... with the same package/specs ! 

Just searched Google for " LTC-7PN ", and sure enough you can by a LTC-7PN in Frog land. Farnell France has it like in the UK... for 20 Euros. Google found me a French website that sells them for half that price, 11 Euros.

The cylindrical one I bought is a Varta "half" length AA cell, 14.5mm diameter, with axial leads, so I should have no problem soldering it to the foot print on the PCB. Diameter-wise, it might fit without relocating it, because TerraOperative in his video did just that, using a Panasonic, see picture below, from his video.

Thanks then.... now I know if the Varta doesn't fit, no worries the LTC-7PN is still readily available locally for 11 Euros 

https://www.batteries4pro.com/fr/piles/lithium/3,18259-pile-lithium-36v-750mah-ef651625-ltc-7pn-4894128152996.html

[Neper]

Oh, I'm certain it was only that change at fault.

Mostly, yes. Just imagine a four CPU G5, a fat Windoze computer, with four 3 1/2" disk drives each, plus two 19" CRT monitors, altogether around 1 kW, and all that running every day from 9 am to well after midnight, about 16 hours on 7 days a week. I suppose you can do the math yourself.

[ch_scr]

Oh, I'm certain it was only that change at fault.

Mostly, yes. Just imagine a four CPU G5, a fat Windoze computer, with four 3 1/2" disk drives each, plus two 19" CRT monitors, altogether around 1 kW, and all that running every day from 9 am to well after midnight, about 16 hours on 7 days a week. I suppose you can do the math yourself.

OK, I'll admit it, that's an actual room heater. Dwagon toy is just an overpowered illumination, but at least the lamp base is nice to look at

[mnementh]

BWAHAHAHAHA!

You forget... I'm from the age of Athlon multi-CPU workstations. Those really are some big ceramic-element heaters. And by today's standards, about as smart.

mnem

[mansaxel]

5316 update:

It arrived.

It counts. There are obvious issues with stability in this setup; the 200CDR needs lots of time to settle (talk about space heater!) and as noted the oscillator in the 5316 is a simple one. But everything works and is responsive.  I'm starting to really like the ergonomics of it, IMNSHO it beats the TTi TF830 which is not a bad counter, but this one is nicer to handle.

[factory]

[..} had four units to recap, I went with slightly overkill on the 2465B (with the TV trigger option board) with some Nichicon BT series.

[..] need to buy another EF651625 battery (didn't realise so many had the battery), wish I had seen Small Battery Company as they have the correct type for less than Farnell. Mouser offended me by not being able to send the battery (which is not made in the US). Don't think a round battery will fit on the board, you will probably need to add some wires & mount it somewhere else.

David

Ohhhh.....noooo.... 

When TerraOperative said the original Battery was available but no export.... it did not occur to me that maybe... as you saw.... you could by a non-original... with the package/specs ! 

Just searched Google for " LTC-7PN ", and sure enough you can by a LTC-7PN in Frog land. Farnell France has it like in the UK... for 20 Euros. Google found me a French website that sells them for half that price, 11 Euros.

The cylindrical one I bought is a Varta "half" length AA cell, 14.5mm diameter, with axial leads, so I should have no problem soldering it to the foot print on the PCB. Diameter-wise, it might fit without relocating it, because TerraOperative in his video did just that, using a Panasonic, see picture below, from his video.

Thanks then.... now I know if the Varta doesn't fit, no worries the LTC-7PN is still readily available locally for 11 Euros 

https://www.batteries4pro.com/fr/piles/lithium/3,18259-pile-lithium-36v-750mah-ef651625-ltc-7pn-4894128152996.html

That one from the French seller is not correct for the LTC-7PN (EF651625) used in some Tek 2445x 2465x scopes, seems to be missing the two mounting pins from the other side, look for the same part number but with four pins.




David