Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

...am a commissioner in my municipality........and getting permits is still a pain in the ass. 

being friends with the local code enforcement officer does not help......it just means he has more opportunities to inspect my stuff for violations.

i consider myself "part of the problem".   tried to resign the commission but the chairman of the governing body asked me to stay until they could find a replacement.  that was a year and a half ago.

can not figure out how to piss them off enough to get fired.

Organise an Urban Golf tournament for beginners in a neighbourhood full of solar panels?

McBryce.

Subtle... and perverse. I like it.   

Remind me to never play Poker with you...

mnem

[Zucca]

In my M37 2013 Infiniti the engine light came on. Scanned the DTCs, found a service bulletin that matches 100% my problem. Engine ECU needs reprogramming, SW bug there.
I went to the dealer today with the service bulletin in my hands.

"Sorry Sir it is not covered by warranty, 162$"

I walked away.

[Robert763]

I literally possess both those, the exact model of micrometer, and a shorter version of the 4lb lump hammer. Earth Spike Fitting Tool Draw whatever conclusion amuses/entertains/terrifies you most...

There, FTFY.

HTH, HAND.

Yerse... Typical of Canford to give a cheap tool a fancy name and then charge more for it. £13.91 ex VAT when you'll get the same in any hardware store for half the price.

There's an English idiom "to call a spade a spade" meaning to speak plainly without unnecessary embellishment of words such as calling a spade a "manual earth moving implement". It's often said of people too, "He's a man who'll call a spade a spade.", particularly of Northerners to imply a certain straightforwardness or forthrightness in speaking. My mother once said of my father (a Northerner) that he was indeed  a "man who'd call a spade a spade", to which my "Auntie" Joyce chipped in and said "He's more likely to call it a 'bloody shovel'". 

I think they are having a joke. Note part of description "performing numerous fine adjustments.."

[Robert763]

In my M37 2013 Infiniti the engine light came on. Scanned the DTCs, found a service bulletin that matches 100% my problem. Engine ECU needs reprogramming, SW bug there.
I went to the dealer today with the service bulletin in my hands.

"Sorry Sir it is not covered by warranty, 162$"

I walked away.

So what are you going to do? In most of europe a engine light on is an annual emissions test fail.

[Cerebus]

You can call me whatever you like, as long as it's not late to dinner.

You can leave in a huff if you like. If that's too soon you can leave in a minute and a huff. 

[Zucca]

So what are you going to do? In most of europe a engine light on is an annual emissions test fail.

In this case I thank God to be in USA, SC. Here they do not give a fuuu

[Vince]

Quick and dirty and you might get lucky. Swap out the tubes in stage 4 and stage 5 and see if the issue moves to stage 5.

If it does fix it my diagnostic fee is $85. If it doesn't fix then tuff shit and get troubleshooting. 

You greedy old man !!!

I understand you have to pay for your new A/C unit, but still ! 

I swapped the tubes but no joy. So troubleshooting it is.

I got somewhere, fixed that stage, now moving on to the next kaput stage. 

So.... here goes.

Now we understand how the dividing effect is produced, I could make more sense of what was going on.

This defective 50us stage was showing either 40us intervals, or a blurry / unstable picture... which I calmed down using the single shot feature of the scope, in digital mode.
This revealed that the blurry image was not due to an unstable signal as such, but rather to the fact that the scope could not present me with a stable picture because... the signal was not periodic / recurrent.
That is... the interval between two markers /spikes would be 40us then 50us, randomly, no "pattern".
But now, we know taht 40us is not just any number, it's a 4x10us, the preceding stage output.
So I started to wonder if all that was wrong was that the monostable RC time constant was not adjusted properly, was too close to 40us and therefore every now and then, would divide by 4 rather than 5.
So I checked R and C. C is a tiny 47pF thing. Pulled one leg so I can measure it reliably. Used my WaveTek 27XT DMM as it's more of a little LCR meter than a mundane DMM. It can measure pF range caps with precision and reliability. Turned it on... without me even doing anything, it was already registering 47pF, bang on ! But I had not connected the probe to the cap yet ! 
It's just the parasitic capacitance of the probes. You can null it out but I have a brain capable of sustracting 47 from whatever the meter would measure. So... I got 100+ pF when I meausre the cap. Minus 476pF, so the cap is about 50+ pF. Close enough, so soldered it back onto the ceramic strip.

Next check ' R '. Made of the trim pot in series with a fixed 2Meg resistor. the latter measured spot on but the trim pot did not. 1.65Meg for 2Meg nominal. According to the parts list, it must be 20% tolerance, so technically it should be good but.. well it's close to the edge.

So at this point, seeing as modifying the time constant / RC value might get me somewhere, and seeing as the the fixed R anc fixed C were good, and only the pot was on the low side... I though OK maybe the problem is indeed the RC value and maybe I just need to tweak the pot. So, I did. I am glad. It fixed the problem(S).

First, I had to make myself a big isolated flat head screwdriver as I don't have any and didn't fancy shorting things out in that kind of instrument ..... so I shove a piece of heat shrink tubing around my screw driver, leaving only 1mm of exposed metal, just enough to be able to stick the tip of the blade inside the slot in the pot shaft. That worked a treat.

I moved the pot from end to end to see what it did. doing this, I can make that stage divide by 3, 4 or 5.  It could then see that my unstable signal was indeed due to the divder hesitating between 4 and 5. Once you put it firmly onto the ' 5 ' side of things, the markers become perfectly stable and set on 50us as they should ! 
Also. I noticed that the "ripple"/undulation effect I described earlier, where the amplitude of the markers was "waving".... well I can reproduce this, and make it go away, at will. It happens when the divider is transitioning between 23/4 or 4/5 pulses. It's just trying to make its mind up. Just add some more trim to make it lean firmly to were you want it to go, here ' 5 ', and the waving effect disappears, all markers now are the same amplitude/height, perfect !
So, I was able to make the this stage just perfect, cool. However, I had to crank the trim pot all the way clockwise. Markers look good but I don't have much headroom/safety margin. I am tempted to increase the value of the fixed resistor a bit, to give me a bit more margin. But for now it looks OK, crossing fingers.

So that's all excellent news ! Not only is it fixed, but cost me nothing, and learned how to cure the instability and "ripple" effects.

So, now that this 4th / 50us stage is working, let's see if that improved the following stages !

It sure did : next one, 5th, 100us, which previously showed 40us and was unstable, now works just fine ! 

So, next one still, 6th, 500us : ahem... doesn't work. It does produces markers, strong ones, good amplitude, and stable but... time interval is 100us not 500. Also, the trim pot has ZERO effect what so ever. As if it was disconnected or something.

So it's not deviding anything.

Next stage, 7th, 1ms works fine, but of course it produces time intervals 5 times shorter than expected since that's what it's fed with... so not its fault !

OK, so now let's see if we can fix this 500us stage then.... stay tuned 

[med6753]

Today's project. My 48 year old Sony ICF-5500W is giving me fits. Issues with the Band Selector. FM broadcast intermittent and VHF completely dead. So let's pull it apart and see what's up.



Remember Lafayette Radio? That's where I purchased this Sony back in 1974. Cost a then expensive $110 USD. I bought it on a payment plan to establish some credit. I think it was $15/mo. This is the 1972 Catalog and the latest audio foolery craze was 4 channel audio. Didn't last long. Within about 2 years it crashed and burned. Lafayette Radio offered a much bigger selection and name brand equipment as opposed to Radio Shack. But Radio Shack did partner with Allied Electronics to offer a competing catalog. I think Allied is still around in some form but the other two are long gone.



Interior of the Sony. It is packed tight. I've never been able to find service data on this receiver. I even sent Sony a snail mail many years ago and got the standard "no longer supported" letter. So every time I pull this Sony apart I'm basically going in blind.



The band selector is that series of gears, cams, and levers beneath the signal meter and to the left of it. It is a very complex arrangement. I didn't know Sony hired German Engineers.  Anyway, first I sprayed it down with 100% IPA and then blow dry. Then deoxit on what were switches buried under that mess. It restored FM broadcast and sometimes VHF would work but not reliably. Turns out that the white lever to the left of the meter was out of adjustment. It pushes out at the bottom and in at the top to engage a slide switch. It was a real fiddly adjustment to get it just right but now everything works.



Ready for another 48 years. 

     

   

[med6753]

So what are you going to do? In most of europe a engine light on is an annual emissions test fail.

In this case I thank God to be in USA, SC. Here they do not give a fuuu

You're lucky. In NYS they do give a fuuu. Automatic fail on annual inspection.

[Cerebus]

In my M37 2013 Infiniti the engine light came on. Scanned the DTCs, found a service bulletin that matches 100% my problem. Engine ECU needs reprogramming, SW bug there.
I went to the dealer today with the service bulletin in my hands.

"Sorry Sir it is not covered by warranty, 162$"

I walked away.

So what are you going to do? In most of europe a engine light on is an annual emissions test fail.

Shitpost on Twitter. Never fails. In fact it's such an effective tactic that I have even considered getting a Twitter account just for those occasions where a little pressure needs to be applied. (I miss the days when a flash of my press card would have a very salutary effect on anyone who was being "difficult" with a customer service issue.)

Oh, and Zucca's now in the US of A, where regulations vary very much from state to state. In some states they'll probably shoot his dog for having the light on, in other's they're more like to fine him if his emissions are too clean. 

[med6753]

In my M37 2013 Infiniti the engine light came on. Scanned the DTCs, found a service bulletin that matches 100% my problem. Engine ECU needs reprogramming, SW bug there.
I went to the dealer today with the service bulletin in my hands.

"Sorry Sir it is not covered by warranty, 162$"

I walked away.

So what are you going to do? In most of europe a engine light on is an annual emissions test fail.

Shitpost on Twitter. Never fails. In fact it's such an effective tactic that I have even considered getting a Twitter account just for those occasions where a little pressure needs to be applied. (I miss the days when a flash of my press card would have a very salutary effect on anyone who was being "difficult" with a customer service issue.)

Oh, and Zucca's now in the US of A, where regulations vary very much from state to state. In some states they'll probably shoot his dog for having the light on, in other's they're more like to fine him if his emissions are too clean. 

You wanna see some rolling wrecks that should not be on the road? Utube "Watch Wes Work". He lives in Illinois where there is no vehicle inspection at all. You'd be absolutely amazed at the condition of some of the vehicles he gets in his shop.   

[Specmaster]

In my M37 2013 Infiniti the engine light came on. Scanned the DTCs, found a service bulletin that matches 100% my problem. Engine ECU needs reprogramming, SW bug there.
I went to the dealer today with the service bulletin in my hands.

"Sorry Sir it is not covered by warranty, 162$"

I walked away.

So what are you going to do? In most of europe a engine light on is an annual emissions test fail.

Shitpost on Twitter. Never fails. In fact it's such an effective tactic that I have even considered getting a Twitter account just for those occasions where a little pressure needs to be applied. (I miss the days when a flash of my press card would have a very salutary effect on anyone who was being "difficult" with a customer service issue.)

Oh, and Zucca's now in the US of A, where regulations vary very much from state to state. In some states they'll probably shoot his dog for having the light on, in other's they're more like to fine him if his emissions are too clean. 

You wanna see some rolling wrecks that should not be on the road? Utube "Watch Wes Work". He lives in Illinois where there is no vehicle inspection at all. You'd be absolutely amazed at the condition of some of the vehicles he gets in his shop.   

What 

What would happen then if a driver was to drive over the state line into a neighbouring state with a warning light on in his instrument cluster and got pulled over by the local police?

[mnementh]

CT does not have annual safety inspection. But they do have biannual emissions. Mostly plug into OBDII, confirm per "Emissions Ready" status it wasn't reset just before the vehicle dropped off, no current DTCs. Commercial/fleet vehicles get the hose up the bum, I think. 

But the flip side of "no safety inspections" is the fuzz can write you some pretty expensive tickets.

mnem
*currently molesting a dirtsucker again*

[Neomys Sapiens]

Today's project. My 48 year old Sony ICF-5500W is giving me fits. Issues with the Band Selector. FM broadcast intermittent and VHF completely dead. So let's pull it apart and see what's up.



Remember Lafayette Radio? That's where I purchased this Sony back in 1974. Cost a then expensive $110 USD. I bought it on a payment plan to establish some credit. I think it was $15/mo. This is the 1972 Catalog and the latest audio foolery craze was 4 channel audio. Didn't last long. Within about 2 years it crashed and burned. Lafayette Radio offered a much bigger selection and name brand equipment as opposed to Radio Shack. But Radio Shack did partner with Allied Electronics to offer a competing catalog. I think Allied is still around in some form but the other two are long gone.



Interior of the Sony. It is packed tight. I've never been able to find service data on this receiver. I even sent Sony a snail mail many years ago and got the standard "no longer supported" letter. So every time I pull this Sony apart I'm basically going in blind.



The band selector is that series of gears, cams, and levers beneath the signal meter and to the left of it. It is a very complex arrangement. I didn't know Sony hired German Engineers.  Anyway, first I sprayed it down with 100% IPA and then blow dry. Then deoxit on what were switches buried under that mess. It restored FM broadcast and sometimes VHF would work but not reliably. Turns out that the white lever to the left of the meter was out of adjustment. It pushes out at the bottom and in at the top to engage a slide switch. It was a real fiddly adjustment to get it just right but now everything works.



Ready for another 48 years. 

     

 

ELECTROTANYA seems to have a service manual.

[med6753]

What 

What would happen then if a driver was to drive over the state line into a neighbouring state with a warning light on in his instrument cluster and got pulled over by the local police?

Well I don't think the cops would normally check if a service light is on. However......if you drive from a state with no inspection and you have bald tires you will get a ticket. But then again....even if your state has no annual inspection a cop can pull you over and ticket you for, as an example, bald tires.

[med6753]

ELECTROTANYA seems to have a service manual.

No it doesn't unless my search is bogus. Sony ICF-5500W

[Vince]

Oh no.... swapped tubes to try to fix the 500us stage (with no luck), and now I see the 100us stage that was working in my previous post a few hors ago.... now misbehaves !
Same symptoms as the 500us stage : nice clean stable markers but... fails to divide, and trim pot 100% inoperative.
Weird.... maybe a tube just died... what else could it be, to happen so suddenly. It has happened to me before... on my 502A scope, it had a gassy/purple tubes, and after only a 2 or 3 minutes, it died for good, just like that.

Maybe all these old tubes have been sleeping for two many years, and don't like being asked to wake up... or maybe the filament voltage is too high and they will blow one after the other...

Pfff.... I like making steps FORward, but no so much BACKward ! 

Will keep swapping tubes to try to see if that is it... wish I had a huge cabinet full of NOS tubes around, like Carlson...

More later....

[ch_scr]

ELECTROTANYA seems to have a service manual.

No it doesn't unless my search is bogus. Sony ICF-5500W

"She" has the ICF-5500M. A quick picture comparison shows the M is a four-band that covers FM, SW, MW and Marine (around 4MHz); while the W is a three-band that has FM, AM and "Marine Weather" / PSB (around 160MHz). Radios look quite the same other wise.

[med6753]

ELECTROTANYA seems to have a service manual.

No it doesn't unless my search is bogus. Sony ICF-5500W

"She" has the ICF-5500M. A quick picture comparison shows the M is a four-band that covers FM, SW, MW and Marine (around 4MHz); while the W is a three-band that has FM, AM and "Marine Weather" / PSB (around 160MHz). Radios look quite the same other wise.

Now I'm confused. Who is "She" ? 

[ch_scr]

ELECTROTANYA seems to have a service manual.

No it doesn't unless my search is bogus. Sony ICF-5500W

"She" has the ICF-5500M. A quick picture comparison shows the M is a four-band that covers FM, SW, MW and Marine (around 4MHz); while the W is a three-band that has FM, AM and "Marine Weather" / PSB (around 160MHz). Radios look quite the same other wise.

Now I'm confused. Who is "She" ? 

Electro Tanya, in my mind she looks a bit like picture related

[mansaxel]

Question for the coax aficionados here...

I'm looking for a 36" BNC - BNC cable, low loss for calibrating my TDS scopes. I have some nice crimped RG58 cables I made with Canare connectors but is there any recommendations for other cables out there that are good quality and low loss, good for up to maybe just over 1GHz?

Also LLS195STR from Harbour Industries, RG-223 (double screen), RG-400 (PTFE, a bit stiffer), SUCOFLEX_103_E

I know it's been very split opinions on it, but to my S-meter, the Aircell 5 from SSB Electronic GMBH was a real boost. It's non-stranded center conductor, so needs a bit of the gentle hand on the bench. I'm using it as feeder from my antenna panel to the front jack on my FT-817 in its "home" position; and that works nicely. I've got a length that goes as lab cable at the bench too, and it works OK, especially since I'm using an angled connector on one end, which makes for easier routing. Now, I'm a HF/VHF person, with the occasional foray into UHF, so "5G" perfomance  is not interesting at all. Even my GPS receiver is downmixed! (it works OK with the supplied length of bedea RG-58)

[mansaxel]

I literally possess both those, the exact model of micrometer, and a shorter version of the 4lb lump hammer. Earth Spike Fitting Tool Draw whatever conclusion amuses/entertains/terrifies you most...

There, FTFY.

HTH, HAND.

Yerse... Typical of Canford to give a cheap tool a fancy name and then charge more for it. £13.91 ex VAT when you'll get the same in any hardware store for half the price.

Yes, it is, I suspect, a joke in several dimensions, mostly aimed at BBC procuring department. I've only ever bought the Wine Rack from the "funnies" department of Canford, but I've bought both cable and other stuff more seriously from them. My favourite product is, I think, the PTV cable markers, coloured in resistance code.

There's an English idiom "to call a spade a spade" meaning to speak plainly without unnecessary embellishment of words such as calling a spade a "manual earth moving implement". It's often said of people too, "He's a man who'll call a spade a spade.", particularly of Northerners to imply a certain straightforwardness or forthrightness in speaking. My mother once said of my father (a Northerner) that he was indeed  a "man who'd call a spade a spade", to which my "Auntie" Joyce chipped in and said "He's more likely to call it a 'bloody shovel'". 

Excellent!

[Vince]

TEk 180A.

OK, making progress.

Been doing a lot of tube swapping.

To begin with, the fact that these two defective stages can produce perfectly good markers, just not with the correct time interval, suggested to me that neither the two cathode followers for the two outputs (tube 12AU7), nor the two diodes (tube 6AL5) were bad. Otherwise it would have I think a major impact on the signal shape. Either no pass any signal at all, a flat line, or distort it massively by showing negative going spikes. But none of that. Markers look 100% valid and stable, clean etc.... Only the division is not working, as well as the trim pot to adjust the division "factor".
That led me to believe that if a tube it was, it had to be the third and last one, the 5965 that contains the 2 triodes that constitute the monostable.

So at first I swapped only this tube, several times (since I have 14 stages at my disposal, I have many to choose from !  .. but no joy.

So just in case, I then swapped al l3 tubes in the stage... still no joy, which kinda comforted me in my assumption.. so that's progress right there.

Then I swapped the tubes in that bad stage, into one of the WORKING upstream stages... and said stages still worked ! So cleared, all these tubes work just fine.

So that now narrows it down to the discrete components. How comes the stage used to work, briefly, and now quit working. Again, only the division/monosable, not the rest of the stage.
So the most likely suspects are then the components related to the monostable... and there aren't a lot ! As you can see from the schematic posted earlier... there is basically just the RC network that sets the run time of the monostable. So, a cap, a resistor, and the trim pot. As I said the symptoms also include a totally unresponsive pot.
So one of these 3 components must have quit. The pot and fixed resistor ? Unlikely...
That leaves me with the cap. I noticed that unlike the first 4 stages that DO work, which use a tiny hollow tubular cap, the defective stages, which use an increasingly higher value of capacitance, happen to use a different style of cap : a big "Domino" mica cap. hmmm... there seems to be pattern here.

Now I know these are usually said to be ultra reliable, a no-brainer... but everything points to them. PLUS, I vivdly remember one of you here recently, was fixing a shit load of Nixie decade boards for his old HP counters. Sorry I forgot who it was... Nixie Freqq or Cubdriver in the US, or  in the UK, AVG or Factory....
Anyway, I remember you said at least one of the boards had precisely a failed Mica cap, adding that it tested GOOD at low voltages when tested with a DMM, but failed in operation when subjected to high voltages.

Unfortunately I don't have a leakage tester.

So... I could simply use the instrument itself as a leakage tester... I mean the appropriate high DC voltage is right there after all ! 
Just need to tap it, connect the Mica cap to it, add a DMM in series to measure current, with a current limiting resistor in series just in case... and see what leakage I get ? Am I being silly or ??   

Other possibility : replace that Mica cap with some other HV cap I might have in my drawers, with a similar / close enough capacitance value.

So.... slow progress, but progress none the less, have not run out of ideas just yet !!! 

[Cerebus]

You wanna see some rolling wrecks that should not be on the road? Utube "Watch Wes Work". He lives in Illinois where there is no vehicle inspection at all. You'd be absolutely amazed at the condition of some of the vehicles he gets in his shop. 

Oh I know. That doesn't mean that I won't take your suggestion later, for amusement purposes. (Just had a quick look to see what videos were there. I love the way "blazer" crops up as many times as a description as it does as a model name.  )

To someone like a Brit, where there are national standards and they are enforced quite vigorously, the stateside regime, where one state is a trainwreck in emissions/safety terms and another (e.g. California) is one of the strictest in the world always seems odd. One of those "state's rights" issues that it seems would be more sensibly addressed nationally. I remember when car companies would make one version of a car for California and another for the rest of the states.

[Neomys Sapiens]

I just can't hide it any longer....

All those pics of 7000 series scopes and their plugins!  It's just too much.



I want one.

You might as well take up the complementary sport in the meantime.