Author Topic: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread  (Read 18840765 times)

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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118100 on: April 22, 2022, 11:08:50 am »
Common sense is a rare commodity anymore. All one has to do is think back to toilet paper.  ::)

Common sense has always been a rare commodity, so much so that one wonders how it got its name.

However, I don't think it's a problem with common sense, it's think it's a problem with people feeling entitled and selfish. When I was growing up my parents would, when I was being selfish as children are want to be, lecture me on "Having consideration for others", and back in the day it diid seem that society in general would look down on selfishness, greed and lack of consideration for others in a way that would reign in bad behaviour.

Then came the Thatcher/Reagan era where a philosophy that being greedy and selfish was OK became part of the public agenda. We went from a general philosophy of "Don't take more than you need" to "Grab all you can and damn anyone that tries to stop you". The rot started setting in there. The attitude now applies to toilet rolls and road space that others might also have need of as much as it does to wealth. People used to restrain themselves for fear of "Tut tutting" and disapproving looks, the response now to any disapproval is just a defiant glare back with an attitude of "I've got as much right as anyone else to take this, I was here first, fight me for it". People seem to have lost the ability to be embarrassed or feel any shame when caught out being selfish.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Online BU508A

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118101 on: April 22, 2022, 11:32:09 am »
Found today this ebay auction about a high voltage linear regulator, type LR8

https://www.ebay.de/itm/142379371554

I've bought five of them, because I got the idea to build a nice regulated power supply for vacuum tubes.
Conveniently, there was a schematic attached to this auction.

“Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.”            - Terry Pratchett -
 
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Offline Wolfgang

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118102 on: April 22, 2022, 11:35:44 am »
Hi Monty,

try ChangPuak for a better circuit that includes current limiting and that does not need any special parts.
https://www.changpuak.ch/electronics/VB408.php

or my stuff
https://electronicprojectsforfun.wordpress.com/power-supplies/high-voltage-lab-power-supplies/a-250v-150ma-variable-linear-power-supply/

Regards
  Wolfgang
 
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Online BU508A

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118103 on: April 22, 2022, 11:37:47 am »
Hi Monty,

try ChangPuak for a better circuit that includes current limiting and that does not need any special parts.
https://www.changpuak.ch/electronics/VB408.php

or my stuff
https://electronicprojectsforfun.wordpress.com/power-supplies/high-voltage-lab-power-supplies/a-250v-150ma-variable-linear-power-supply/

Regards
  Wolfgang

Hei Wolfgang,

thanks for the hint, I'll have a look and I'm sure, that your design will be better.  :-+ :)
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118104 on: April 22, 2022, 11:45:13 am »
Bacon, egg & cheese tacos and freshly-perked 100% Columbian coffee. yummm.

that is all.

mnem
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118105 on: April 22, 2022, 11:45:22 am »
Found today this ebay auction about a high voltage linear regulator, type LR8

https://www.ebay.de/itm/142379371554

I've bought five of them, because I got the idea to build a nice regulated power supply for vacuum tubes.
Conveniently, there was a schematic attached to this auction.




I don't like the way that the zener shares its current with the regulator divider chain, it's not exactly going to provide the most reliable operating point for the zener once it reaches zener/avalanche operation.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline med6753

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118106 on: April 22, 2022, 11:50:18 am »
Bacon, egg & cheese tacos and freshly-perked 100% Columbian coffee. yummm.

that is all.

mnem


Sounds keto to me. Not.
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Offline med6753

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118107 on: April 22, 2022, 11:52:45 am »
Common sense is a rare commodity anymore. All one has to do is think back to toilet paper.  ::)

Common sense has always been a rare commodity, so much so that one wonders how it got its name.

However, I don't think it's a problem with common sense, it's think it's a problem with people feeling entitled and selfish. When I was growing up my parents would, when I was being selfish as children are want to be, lecture me on "Having consideration for others", and back in the day it diid seem that society in general would look down on selfishness, greed and lack of consideration for others in a way that would reign in bad behaviour.

Then came the Thatcher/Reagan era where a philosophy that being greedy and selfish was OK became part of the public agenda. We went from a general philosophy of "Don't take more than you need" to "Grab all you can and damn anyone that tries to stop you". The rot started setting in there. The attitude now applies to toilet rolls and road space that others might also have need of as much as it does to wealth. People used to restrain themselves for fear of "Tut tutting" and disapproving looks, the response now to any disapproval is just a defiant glare back with an attitude of "I've got as much right as anyone else to take this, I was here first, fight me for it". People seem to have lost the ability to be embarrassed or feel any shame when caught out being selfish.

You know, I agree. And all I have to do is look at my neighbors as prime examples of no consideration of others (make noise and slam doors in the middle of the night) and self entitlement.
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Offline med6753

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118108 on: April 22, 2022, 11:55:44 am »
Found today this ebay auction about a high voltage linear regulator, type LR8

https://www.ebay.de/itm/142379371554

I've bought five of them, because I got the idea to build a nice regulated power supply for vacuum tubes.
Conveniently, there was a schematic attached to this auction.



I've used that device but only as a 190V reference...or attempted to. For PSU use I guess it's OK but for absolute precision not so much.
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Offline capt bullshot

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118109 on: April 22, 2022, 11:57:35 am »
Found today this ebay auction about a high voltage linear regulator, type LR8

https://www.ebay.de/itm/142379371554

I've bought five of them, because I got the idea to build a nice regulated power supply for vacuum tubes.
Conveniently, there was a schematic attached to this auction.




I don't like the way that the zener shares its current with the regulator divider chain, it's not exactly going to provide the most reliable operating point for the zener once it reaches zener/avalanche operation.


In normal operation, the zener should never conduct. It's there for MOSFET gate protection, e.g. at power up or other adverse conditions.
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Offline mansaxel

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118110 on: April 22, 2022, 12:08:02 pm »


Wire-nuts are still, and will be, replace-on-sight for me.

I would agree that Wago is a much superior connector and I intend on trying them out the next time I have to do some wiring. However, why disturb a wire nut that has probably been in place for decades and is functioning properly? No need to answer because I already know the answer. You don't trust them and you have the full support and backing of the majority of this group. Fine, I'll go along with that.

Now applying the same principle why do I always get nannies waving their fingers at me when I mention that I will replacing all electrolytic capacitors in a piece of equipment with a proven track record of failure? After all, they have been in place for decades and functioning properly...right? Well, not quite. But I always get a Mary Poppins or two think I'm being wasteful. No, smart. Perhaps they should open their umbrellas and fly away.   

Now, now. I might rephrase this to: I replace wire nuts if and when I have to go into a wallbox and change things. Because that I was I meant (I don't see them with wallboxes closed, so "replace on sight" was indeed true :-DD ).  Wire nuts are not permitted to be reused here, not even the really good (good for a wire nut, that is, which is not much) ones we can buy here, so replacement with new wire connection device is required anyway.

And no, this is not equal to crapacitors, because they are, as you write proven to have aging issues. The wirenut is crappy right from the start.  In the crapacitor case, it's mostly about matching and evaluating their decline, which process has a lot of judgement in itself. That's why we're agreeing that they will fail, but disagree on when to replace.

5440 update: Not much. Will go through the other low voltage supplies and check for shorts today. Completely possible that one more tant bit the bullet when the -30V that acts as main reference voltage for all other low voltages got back on track. 

Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118111 on: April 22, 2022, 12:13:36 pm »
Well Pat, it appears you nailed it. I waved that red flag in front of Murphy and he ran with it. Rather than USPS sending the package north towards me from their international center in NYC they sent it west to Phillipsburg, NJ which is on the NJ/PA border. Why? Who the freak knows.  :palm: I have a picture of the package and it's properly addressed. I can only hope there is a method to their madness but I wouldn't bet on it.  ::)

Sounds to me as if your parcel may in fact be traveling on the mythic Buffalo-Springfield postal hub route. If it makes a stop in Newark that is very likely; of course, it may never escape cuz... Newark.  ;)

mnem
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« Last Edit: April 22, 2022, 12:16:17 pm by mnementh »
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Offline med6753

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118112 on: April 22, 2022, 12:19:01 pm »
Well Pat, it appears you nailed it. I waved that red flag in front of Murphy and he ran with it. Rather than USPS sending the package north towards me from their international center in NYC they sent it west to Phillipsburg, NJ which is on the NJ/PA border. Why? Who the freak knows.  :palm: I have a picture of the package and it's properly addressed. I can only hope there is a method to their madness but I wouldn't bet on it.  ::)

Sounds to me as if your parcel may in fact be traveling on the mythic Buffalo-Springfield postal hub route. If it makes a stop in Newark that is very likely; of course, it may never escape cuz... Newark.  ;)

mnem
The more things change, the more they stay the same...

Yep, I've had packages circle that sewer Newark several times.  :palm:
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Online BU508A

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118113 on: April 22, 2022, 12:19:37 pm »
Found today this ebay auction about a high voltage linear regulator, type LR8

https://www.ebay.de/itm/142379371554

I've bought five of them, because I got the idea to build a nice regulated power supply for vacuum tubes.
Conveniently, there was a schematic attached to this auction.




I don't like the way that the zener shares its current with the regulator divider chain, it's not exactly going to provide the most reliable operating point for the zener once it reaches zener/avalanche operation.


In normal operation, the zener should never conduct. It's there for MOSFET gate protection, e.g. at power up or other adverse conditions.

That was my understanding of this zener diode too.
In the meantime I had a look at the suggestions from Wolfgang and this replacement circuit for the VB408 looks interesting.

Link to the VB408 datasheet
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118114 on: April 22, 2022, 12:32:17 pm »
Found today this ebay auction about a high voltage linear regulator, type LR8

https://www.ebay.de/itm/142379371554

I've bought five of them, because I got the idea to build a nice regulated power supply for vacuum tubes.
Conveniently, there was a schematic attached to this auction.




I don't like the way that the zener shares its current with the regulator divider chain, it's not exactly going to provide the most reliable operating point for the zener once it reaches zener/avalanche operation.


In normal operation, the zener should never conduct. It's there for MOSFET gate protection, e.g. at power up or other adverse conditions.

No, it looks as if the intent is that in normal (non-startup) conditions the zener sets the Vgs. If it was forward biased Vgs would be negative and the FET would be off. So it must be reverse biased. With no load it won't protect the gate at all, there's nowhere for the reverse current to go, therefore the intent must be to set Vgs as it's bugger all use for protection. All in all it looks poorly thought out - if the zener is gate protection it fails in the no load situation, if it's to set Vgs then it's got an unpredictable and uncontrolled operating point.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 

Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118115 on: April 22, 2022, 12:38:24 pm »
Over here most major items are covered by Federal standards. But not all of them. For example. In NYS if I have to replace the cat convertor it must be one that is CARB (California Air Resources Board) certified. It cannot be a generic replacement like most other states. And those CARB certified convertors naturally are much more expensive. Now does NYS do tailpipe tests like California? Nope. But if you install a generic non-certified convertor it won't pass NYS annual inspection.
Yeeeaaahhh... there are more important considerations than just cost. You want to believe that cheaper cat is just as good; but it's not.

Speaking from experience, a large part of CARB certification has to do with QC or at least non-CARB converters not having stringent-enough control on variance in catalytic action. Non-CARB aftermarket cats have a much higher incidence of recidivism when used as a generic replacement. Most common failure mode, if the FW supported the code, was taking too long to enter closed-loop mode due to the cat taking too long to ignite. Just because the cat isn't clogged does not means it's good.

Most garages I worked at eventually got to a point where they refused to install ones that weren't CARB-certified; too many "You just put this cat in and my MIL came back on after a week" debates with customers. Of course, the Dodge garage wouldn't install anything emissions-related that wasn't from an OEM channel partner.

EDIT: I forgot about 3-way/4-way cats. (Yes, really... there is such a thing. :o)

In order to be CARB-compliant, a cat has to be 3-way construction or I believe now the current standard is 4-way. These come up to temp and ignite faster, burn cleaner and are far more durable (harder to clog/fracture due to overheating) than older technologies. The non-carb compliant cats are not necessarily so. You can use these newer technology cats in place of any tech which is older; not so the other way around.

mnem
*now awaiting the knock at the door from The Great Catspiracy goon squad*
« Last Edit: April 22, 2022, 01:19:18 pm by mnementh »
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Online BU508A

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118116 on: April 22, 2022, 12:46:02 pm »
Found today this ebay auction about a high voltage linear regulator, type LR8

https://www.ebay.de/itm/142379371554

I've bought five of them, because I got the idea to build a nice regulated power supply for vacuum tubes.
Conveniently, there was a schematic attached to this auction.




I don't like the way that the zener shares its current with the regulator divider chain, it's not exactly going to provide the most reliable operating point for the zener once it reaches zener/avalanche operation.


In normal operation, the zener should never conduct. It's there for MOSFET gate protection, e.g. at power up or other adverse conditions.

No, it looks as if the intent is that in normal (non-startup) conditions the zener sets the Vgs. If it was forward biased Vgs would be negative and the FET would be off. So it must be reverse biased. With no load it won't protect the gate at all, there's nowhere for the reverse current to go, therefore the intent must be to set Vgs as it's bugger all use for protection. All in all it looks poorly thought out - if the zener is gate protection it fails in the no load situation, if it's to set Vgs then it's got an unpredictable and uncontrolled operating point.

If the output is shortened, then for a short time you'll have the potential of the 4.7µF capacitor at the gate and ground at the source. This will destroy the MOSFET nearly instantly, because for the IRF820 the max. UGS is 20V. The ZD16 is limiting this to 16V.
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Offline AVGresponding

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118117 on: April 22, 2022, 12:50:00 pm »
Found today this ebay auction about a high voltage linear regulator, type LR8

https://www.ebay.de/itm/142379371554

I've bought five of them, because I got the idea to build a nice regulated power supply for vacuum tubes.
Conveniently, there was a schematic attached to this auction.




I don't like the way that the zener shares its current with the regulator divider chain, it's not exactly going to provide the most reliable operating point for the zener once it reaches zener/avalanche operation.


In normal operation, the zener should never conduct. It's there for MOSFET gate protection, e.g. at power up or other adverse conditions.

No, it looks as if the intent is that in normal (non-startup) conditions the zener sets the Vgs. If it was forward biased Vgs would be negative and the FET would be off. So it must be reverse biased. With no load it won't protect the gate at all, there's nowhere for the reverse current to go, therefore the intent must be to set Vgs as it's bugger all use for protection. All in all it looks poorly thought out - if the zener is gate protection it fails in the no load situation, if it's to set Vgs then it's got an unpredictable and uncontrolled operating point.

If the output is shortened, then for a short time you'll have the potential of the 4.7µF capacitor at the gate and ground at the source. This will destroy the MOSFET nearly instantly, because for the IRF820 the max. UGS is 20V. The ZD16 is limiting this to 16V.

You beat me to it, serves me right for prioritising my lunch over my post...
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Offline Specmaster

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118118 on: April 22, 2022, 01:17:57 pm »
Common sense is a rare commodity anymore. All one has to do is think back to toilet paper.  ::)

Common sense has always been a rare commodity, so much so that one wonders how it got its name.

However, I don't think it's a problem with common sense, it's think it's a problem with people feeling entitled and selfish. When I was growing up my parents would, when I was being selfish as children are want to be, lecture me on "Having consideration for others", and back in the day it diid seem that society in general would look down on selfishness, greed and lack of consideration for others in a way that would reign in bad behaviour.

Then came the Thatcher/Reagan era where a philosophy that being greedy and selfish was OK became part of the public agenda. We went from a general philosophy of "Don't take more than you need" to "Grab all you can and damn anyone that tries to stop you". The rot started setting in there. The attitude now applies to toilet rolls and road space that others might also have need of as much as it does to wealth. People used to restrain themselves for fear of "Tut tutting" and disapproving looks, the response now to any disapproval is just a defiant glare back with an attitude of "I've got as much right as anyone else to take this, I was here first, fight me for it". People seem to have lost the ability to be embarrassed or feel any shame when caught out being selfish.
Wow, careful there, bordering on politics  :-DD But all joking aside, I think you're spot on with that analogy, standards do trickle down from the top and so-called figureheads, we only have to look at our current illustrious leader and his current shenanigans. Under his stewardship we have MP's with death threats and a sitting MP murdered and a massive rise in blatant racism.

It seems that other drivers these days have completely forgotten or have lost the ability to see through the windows of the car in front, doing so would have revealed the on coming traffic passing the bus who was discharging or pickup passengers. You see them come up behind you in the fast lane on motorways and dual carriageways, and you're the tail-end Charlie of a long string of cars overtaking slow lorries and those muppets do their level best to get past you, even if it means undertaking and then when they get in front, slam their brakes on once they see what you could see. If I can see past the cars in front of ease, then so can they, either that or we have a lot of very short-sighted drivers  :palm: :phew: :-DD
Who let Murphy in?

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118119 on: April 22, 2022, 01:43:46 pm »
Glowing Tek RM17 update

Worked some more on it.

Last night I looked into AC/DC input coupling switch to see why it was stuck / inoperable.
Turns out it was very much like Papa Smurf had recently on his Tek acquisition. The shaft was kinda "welded" to the body of the switch.
However luckily, just like him I was able to revive it, so it was not yet welded solid..
Using pliers with long handles, and with a lot force, I was able to turn the shaft, which was good news.



So I put the scope on its arse to have gravity help me a bit, and applied a bit of penetrating oil and worked the switch a few times. Help only marginally... so I soaked it with penetrating oil again and went to bed, letting it soak over night. Must have worked. This morning there was a noticeable improvement, so much so that I could now use the knob to turn the shaft, no need for pliers anymore, great. However the knob with so much less lever action, was of course extremely stiff, unusable. I could turn it using my fingers, but it was very hard/painful.  So I put some machine oil  this time, and worked the switch a 100 times for 20 minutes. Eventually managed to make it 100% smooth again, phew !  :phew:  Works as good as new now, super happy. However the skin on my fingers came off, now it hurts and will take a few days to heal.  >:( But well, at least I achieved something, so I don't mind the pain too much.

Then after that to finish it off, I replaced the knob because it was  damaged. A small chunk of it was missing at the top on the edge, right by the white dot. Not much of the dot is left.
That's when you appreciate having lots of Tek scope donors you can just pinch whatever part you need from ! :D


Then a drop of machine oil in the detent mechanism of the attenuator and time base switch.. did wonders, they turn much more smoothly now.
Some contact cleaner in the attenuator switches too, to see if that would solve my problems.

So now I was ready to test drive the scope again to see if that made any improvement to my two problems :

Quote from: Vince
On ranges 20 / 2 / 0.2 and 20mV / DIV settings, it fails to display the square wave. Instead, it displays sharp negative and positive pulses. That is, the square wave is like going through an RC "differentiator"  circuit. a parasitic one of course ! Must be a simple fix I guess... broken connection, bad contact somewhere...
Since it affects only all the 20/2 etc ranges, the problem must be localized to a decade selector, hence should be able to narrow it down quite a bit in the schematic, I would think.

Zero improvement there, contact cleaner didn't help. So there must be a solid failure in the x2 attenuator RC network (see below).
Need to locate it, hoping it's accessible enough for me to inspect it up close.


Quote from: Vince
- On the 3 most sensitive ranges, 50 / 20 / 10mV, which are all AC only, the amplitude of the trace is way too small ! Like 2 or 3 DIV instead of 10, something like that. Also, the trace incessantly moves up and down, like a roller coaster. So me think the AC coupling cap is dead, and passing only part of the signal.

With AC/DC switch now working as good as new, I was able to test the AC coupling cap. It works perfectly. So that's not causing my problems. It must therefore lie in the circuitry of these 3 AC only ranges. However, I am confused because looking at the schematic... I don't see anything circuitry specific to those 3 AC only ranges  :-//  So I don't see what the problem could be  :-\ 

I had another play with the DC balance trimmer. Looks like it's very finicky. Very touchy and can't keep its setting very well... and there is a huge asymmetry in it's adjustment range. Can make the trace only one division upward, but downward it can make the trace go off the screen way off, at the bottom.

So much so that I though well maybe again a tired 6AU6 tube in the vertical amp, a classic problem. But the amp looks fine to me : with the input grounded, and the vertical control centered, the trace is centered as well. And it I turn the knob end to end, trace can easily go off screen either side.
So the DC balance asymmetry is specific to that control... need to look that up in the schematic.


Cooling fan now turns 100% freely, very happy with that. There is a bit of axial play in the rotor, one millimeter or so, that makes the baldes hit the air filter if you raise the front of the scope a bit with a spool of solder as you do... but well, a rack mount scope is not meant to anything but level so... I can't really complain. Maybe I can take the motor apart and add a washer to take up the slack, as I gather people do that kind of thing on old TE...

That's all for now. If you have brilliant ideas to help me solve my 2 problems, don't be shy, you will have my immense gratitude, if that's any motivation.

Time to go do some more productive work now, on my garage construction. It can't be all electronics 24/7, life is more diverse than that...



« Last Edit: April 22, 2022, 01:59:00 pm by Vince »
 
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118120 on: April 22, 2022, 01:45:42 pm »
No such thing as "auxiliary driving lights" for road use. On the front they are headlights or foglights. Less tha 24" above the ground can only be a foglight.
On diconnectting DRLs, if you have an accident involving vibility of your vehicle this might be used against you.

One needs to be careful when making definitive statements like "Less tha (sic) 24" above the ground can only be a foglight". While that might be true under, for example, "The Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations 1989", it may not necessarily be true of New York's Vehicle and Traffic laws.

And anyway, if we are talking about "The Road Vehicles Lighting Regulations 1989" the relevant figure for the minimum height of headlamps is 500mm.

In addition, "fog lights" tend to have a wide beam while "driving lights" have a narrow beam for distance. These lights fall into the latter category. Regardless of someone's height definitions they really do reach out and provide early warning for the local deer which like to do suicide by car. I also have them biased slightly to the right so as to not blind oncoming drivers  and also the fore mentioned spotting of those 4 legged dumb asses lurking amongst the trees ready to dash out.
Yeah... fog lights as used for off-road/rally racing are not supposed to be floodlights, they're supposed to be spotlight-focus. Any wide-dispersion lighting you put on your vehicle is just going to bounce off the rain/fog right in front of the vehicle and blind you.

One of the things you have to consider is that a lot of this "tech" is now created, manufactured and brought to market by committee, not by engineers who actually know what the pluck they're doing. After a few decades of being pummeled by marketing wank from AwfulZone and CarQueebs, it's no surprise that even the marketing wank from the car manufacturers is utterly illiterate from a technological point of view.

The marketeers at the carmakers are "adults" who grew up having their brains bludgeoned with advertisements created by people who didn't know their asses from a hole in the ground, and regulations like those Robert quoted where it has to be called a Fog Light don't help.

Any illumination lighting on your vehicle (as opposed to signal/marker lighting) is supposed to be aimed using a pretty technical methodology (the old targets on a wall/line of tape on the ground are not the correct way to do this; that involves an adjustment head with bubble levels attached directly to the bulb) to prevent blinding oncoming motorists. When I was a punk kid, this was part of your vehicle safety inspection (growing up in New York and Pennsylvania).

Nowadays, even people who do this shit for a living (especially auto-body repair people) don't even know that the aim of the headlight can be adjusted, or that almost all integrated headlight assemblies have an adjustment mechanism with bubble-levels built-in to ensure they can be aimed correctly.

mnem
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118121 on: April 22, 2022, 01:53:12 pm »
These wretched critters also tend to travel in threes.  Most people seem not to understand.

Now you have me convinced that they are artiodactyls of questionable morality!



mnem
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118122 on: April 22, 2022, 02:02:18 pm »
...This wouldn't happen if they could remember, or even might have heard the Golden Rule: "Drive at such a speed that you can stop, on your own side of the road, within the distance you can see is clear.". It's not complicated, it's easy to understand, it's not difficult to do, but it seems beyond the ken of every other driver I meet.  It's the daily encountering of this kind of idiocy that has taken all the pleasure out of daily driving for me over the past few years.
Yes, well when you consider that most of their education about everything comes from the boob toob and video games, you should just be glad if they don't expect to be able kill themselves (and you too) and just respawn on the nearest high-ish location. 

mnem
Aww, man... the batteries in my universal controller died... :o
« Last Edit: April 22, 2022, 02:23:15 pm by mnementh »
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118123 on: April 22, 2022, 02:07:10 pm »
Bacon, egg & cheese tacos and freshly-perked 100% Columbian coffee. yummm.

that is all.

mnem
Sounds keto to me. Not.
Just like the last time you said this, I'm still making my breakfast tacos with Carb Balance Tortillas. 4 grams net carbs FTW.  ;)

mnem
"It's kinda like  déjà vu... kinda like  déjà vu..." :o
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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #118124 on: April 22, 2022, 02:19:55 pm »
Common sense is a rare commodity anymore. All one has to do is think back to toilet paper.  ::)

Common sense has always been a rare commodity, so much so that one wonders how it got its name.

However, I don't think it's a problem with common sense, it's think it's a problem with people feeling entitled and selfish. When I was growing up my parents would, when I was being selfish as children are want to be, lecture me on "Having consideration for others", and back in the day it diid seem that society in general would look down on selfishness, greed and lack of consideration for others in a way that would reign in bad behaviour.

Then came the Thatcher/Reagan era where a philosophy that being greedy and selfish was OK became part of the public agenda. We went from a general philosophy of "Don't take more than you need" to "Grab all you can and damn anyone that tries to stop you". The rot started setting in there. The attitude now applies to toilet rolls and road space that others might also have need of as much as it does to wealth. People used to restrain themselves for fear of "Tut tutting" and disapproving looks, the response now to any disapproval is just a defiant glare back with an attitude of "I've got as much right as anyone else to take this, I was here first, fight me for it". People seem to have lost the ability to be embarrassed or feel any shame when caught out being selfish.
Wow, careful there, bordering on politics  :-DD But all joking aside, I think you're spot on with that analogy, standards do trickle down from the top and so-called figureheads, we only have to look at our current illustrious leader and his current shenanigans. Under his stewardship we have MP's with death threats and a sitting MP murdered and a massive rise in blatant racism.

It seems that other drivers these days have completely forgotten or have lost the ability to see through the windows of the car in front, doing so would have revealed the on coming traffic passing the bus who was discharging or pickup passengers. You see them come up behind you in the fast lane on motorways and dual carriageways, and you're the tail-end Charlie of a long string of cars overtaking slow lorries and those muppets do their level best to get past you, even if it means undertaking and then when they get in front, slam their brakes on once they see what you could see. If I can see past the cars in front of ease, then so can they, either that or we have a lot of very short-sighted drivers  :palm: :phew: :-DD
Yes, and lets not forget the inevitable string of muppets who deliberately go down a exit ramp because it's empty, then expect to cut in front just because they're ahead of you.

Hey asshole... you're not a bloody genius, you're the fucking reason this line of traffic is backed up in the first place. And right of way belongs to the vehicle already in a lane, not you just because you're further ahead. Or because you want it.


mnem
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