Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Yeah, that was what I searched for as well, but the only one I could find that had legible schizzmatics was the one for the SC110A. If you find one for the SC110 that's legible, you should send it to Ed/BAMA too.

mnem
 

[Saskia]

@Robert
finally managed to open the box, very well packaged, thank you for that.
Those 4 little green gizmos appear to be specialized radiation dosimeters.

Do you happen to know if they still work ?
Would you have a manual for those ? I do not want to attract too much attention by sniffing around ...

[Cerebus]

Maybe a wee bit of Kapton tape on probe pin and around ground ring?

mnem
 

Correct, that was what I was referring to when I mentioned caftan tape, I got the name wrong, my bad.

Kaftan tape was what you used to have to put over Demis Roussos' mouth to stop him from singing. 

[Cerebus]

Yeah, that was what I searched for as well, but the only one I could find that had legible schizzmatics was the one for the SC110A.

Were they drawn by the Judean Popular People's Front? 

[BU508A]

Kaftan tape was what you used to have to put over Demis Roussos' mouth to stop him from singing. 

        

Demis Roussos, the singing whiner on duty.
(Demis Roussos, der singende Jammerlappen vom Dienst.)

[mnementh]

I watched about 30 seconds of a video from TOP POP... ghahhh.

mnem
There's 2 minutes of my life I'll never get back...

[BU508A]

Since we are having here some vehicle crazy people, The Tim Traveller is presenting the world's most bonkers bus:

[BU508A]

I watched about 30 seconds of a video from TOP POP... ghahhh.

mnem
There's 2 minutes of my life I'll never get back...

Harr harr harr.   

[mnementh]

Yeah, that was what I searched for as well, but the only one I could find that had legible schizzmatics was the one for the SC110A.

Were they drawn by the Judean Popular People's Front? 

That would suggest that one of them actually did something rather than whinge about how bad it was that nobody was doing anything aboot it... 

mnem
Oh, wait... there was that one...

[factory]

Wow, I tried to look for a Sinclair SC110 and found the service manual for that model, not the A variant. Now to see what if any are the differences between the two?

Strange though as mine has Thandar on the enclosure but Sinclair on the main PCB but the control panel is nameless??

The SC110 manuals that are on Bama have both thander & Sinclair on the cover page.
I've had a quick look at both the non A & A version manuals.
Comparing the parts list with the later A version, I see some resistor values have changed and it has at least one extra. Five of transistors are no longer labelled as matched and D17 is a different part no too.

David

[Neper]

Kaftan tape was what you used to have to put over Demis Roussos' mouth to stop him from singing. 

 

You made my day.

We used to call him Demis Eunuchos.

[mnementh]

mnem
Damn you, BU508A...

[Robert763]

@Robert
finally managed to open the box, very well packaged, thank you for that.
Those 4 little green gizmos appear to be specialized radiation dosimeters.

Do you happen to know if they still work ?
Would you have a manual for those ? I do not want to attract too much attention by sniffing around ...

Hi,
No idea if those ones work. They were a random handfull out of the untested box. Power is a CR2450 cell negative to the threaded ring and positive to a litte spring contact at the side. The cell covers are unobtanium at a sensible price. I've used  thin piece of steel spring strip or pcb material but easyist is to hot glue a 2x AAA holder on the back. The contacts on the front are for a passive high level gamma and neutron sensor that is independent of the main circuit which uses a PIN diode detector.
Manual attached     

[Ice-Tea]

I'm thinking "recent cal".

[med6753]

TE budget in the red for a while.

[Specmaster]

mnem
Damn you, BU508A...

Been there to Mount Pleasant Sorting office in one of my earlier jobs, they used to be customers and been down to that train station doing some work, also there was simply miles upon miles of conveyors within the main building itself moving mail from A to B, C etc with a maze of passage ways weaving their way over, under and through those conveyors and walls etc to get to various depts within the system itself. Of course back then I was a lanky beanpole and able to navigate those routes, now I'd simply get wedged in some locations seeing as I've turned into a large unit with old age 

[Saskia]

@Mike enjoy  the conditioned climate

[med6753]

@Mike enjoy  the conditioned climate

I certainly will but my wallet won't. 

[BU508A]

TE budget in the red for a while.

How did you get this thing upstairs? Had some help (I hope)?

[med6753]

TE budget in the red for a while.

How did you get this thing upstairs? Had some help (I hope)?

Nope, it's still in the CR-V and will remain there until my Son comes over to help me install it. No way will I risk it myself. 

[Specmaster]

Since we are having here some vehicle crazy people, The Tim Traveller is presenting the world's most bonkers bus:

I'd seen photos of those buses before, but never knew anything else about them. When I started my apprenticeship with the National Bus Company in 1964, we used to have Midland Red coaches stop at our station on route to London from Birmingham. The reason for mentioning this is that they actually build their own buses and the most famous of them was the CM5 as shown in this video. Built in 1959 for use on the UK's first motorway, the M1. Apart from being (to my mind at the time) ugly with that bulging windscreen, they were actually capable of speeds of 85MPH, which at that time was unheard of before as buses and coaches were limited to just 30MPH, but seeing as they were designed to offer high speed travel on the M1 between Birmingham and London to rival trains, they were given a higher speed limit of 70MPH.

[Specmaster]

Made some progress today with the Thandar SC110 mini portable scope, stripped it down for fault-finding and after a good long coat of looking at under magnification I have so far failed to find a smoking gun, it really all looks pretty good to me. All the solder joints that are visible without further stripping seem to be in good condition, maybe I might find something lurking beneath the vertical and horizontal board once I remove it, who knows.

I find a few caps with small holes in them, but they exhibit zero outward signs of suffering, the holes appear to have been there from new  .

Here a few pics so far, I doubt that I shall be working on it tomorrow as I shall be over at Hangar 11 collection, working on that Ferguson TE20 tractor restoration.

I guess you have tried an external X input, as the "Trig sweep/Ext X" switch seems to be set to the Ext X input, that will disable the sweep. Those push button switches are often found with very dirty contacts, in the older HP scopes I've been bought, often nothing happens until they have all been exercised many times.


Those through-pins, that join that tracks on the top & bottom of the boards were often a nightmare at work, we would get intermittent faults that were usually one of more of those crappy things, the only solution for us was to replace them all to avoid warranty claims, they were often too tarnished to resolder.

David

I haven't yet tried an external signal, mainly because I don't have a sig gen handy on the bench at the moment, but I'm thinking about tracking one out and doing just that, what sort of input would it require, sine, square, or triangle?

[factory]

Anything you like from DC up to 2MHz, max voltage 2.5V according to the book, it's the external X input for use in X/Y mode, just with some limitations.

With DC you should be able to get full deflection of the dot either way, with positive one way, negative the other, center the dot with the X position first. Hopefully this will confirm if the X output amp is working.

P.S. Oh I was wrong yesterday about the switch position, the labelling is in for normal sweep & out for external X input.

David

[dl6lr]

Found some small capacitors. In fact, eight of them.:



Those are 65mm diameter and 150mm height, screw terminals.
Charged them slowly to 32V for a test, measured 30V after 8h being disconnected.

In the same box: 20 of these Siemens caps:



very small footprint: 35mm diameter and 85mm height.

[Saskia]

where ? I need some of those for experiments with 2 adjacent rails ....