Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

Re PCs. Thanks for all the advice. While I appreciate the flexibility here, the constraint is 500 quid spend max. Also the games are likely to be Sims 4, GTA V and Minecraft. This is merely to stop the Ryzen 3500U laptop she has melting a hole in the table. Even that machine does the job fine. In future it might get a 1660 in it at worst 

[mnementh]

...And we thought TE boat anchors are bulky!   

And the follow up video

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XGL3rskcQD0

It's working ! 

That reminds me... my son came home yesterday from shopping with mum... he and his sister are now both sporting mullets.   

mnem
I didn't even know there was such a thing as a "girly mullet"...

[tggzzz]

That reminds me... my son came home yesterday from shopping with mum... he and his sister are now both sporting mullets. 

Take a photo; useful blackmail material later.

“Keep a diary and one day it'll keep you.” ― Mae West

[Ice-Tea]

Schlumberger / Enertec 4002 on the bench. Works , but looks a bit "off" to my eye. Now on to the task of figuring out if my understanding of SA operation is off, the unit is poor but witin spec or something is indeed not OK.

Reduce the span and see if that improves the peak's location. There are surprising tolerances on the frequency accuracy of SAs, related to the span.

Or simply use a frequency counter!

Can't wrap my head around of what actually bothers me or at least not how to explain it without sounding like a moron. Will set up camera and report back

[mnementh]

   7 & 9 pin "miniature" tubes don't much care about conditions---the working bits are sealed inside, after all, & the pins are quite rigid. Octals may suffer, because the connecting leads inside the plastic bases are a bit more flimsy.

Lost vacuum is usually the result of "one off" sealing problems in service, or rough handling of loose tubes. Even though I have no real space for a 500 series CRO, I would grab it if it were nearby at that price.

I have to disagree with you there, unless the outside environment is very dry, i.e the desert mine dumps, that a certain Youtuber has found old TVs & radios to resurrect. In the UK outside with plenty of rain, or damp leaky sheds, lofts, garages etc. is more typical. The tube pins corrode to the point they crack the glass and you can say goodbye to the vacuum, or the neon fill for volt-ref & display tubes.

Example from a 50MHz hp scope, 2/3rds of the glassware was cracked and it didn't matter it they were German, British, Dutch, US or Japanese, etc. brands, they failed they same way.     I was able to rescue enough OK tubes to get the vertical input plug-in going and a couple for the delayed timebase plug-in, but that was it. The rest became a parts donor, as I have three of them that are in much better condition.  - David

Wow that's a lot of white tubes indeed !

Still not a showstopper in the case of this 547 since again, that would be dead easy to spot when I would have looked at it. Hell even if not in the flesh, on pictures alone it would be easy to spot. Plus if the pins are corroded that bad, there would also be obviosu signs of corrosion everywhere else in side the scope, would also be easy to spot even remotely on pictures.

My take on it, based on the picture an extensive  experience of French sellers on that website... is simply that this scope has been pulled from a garage and put on that terrace / garden simply so the guy can have broad day light to take decent pictures of it. Many of the scopes I bought were taken pictures of in a similar fashion and none appeared to actually have been living in the environment the pictures were taken at. Thankfully. If that scope had indeed been sitting for years outside where that pic shows, the outside of it would be in a much worse condition I think. There would be nothing left of the side covers to begin with. Like no paint left, just rusty panels.

I just don't see the decorative value of that scope in a garden. If just for that it's unlikely it would have been sitting there for years under the rain... Again... its condition would be obvious once seeing it in the flesh, so it does not matter the speculation and guesses. If it's just down the street you simply go have a look (armed with a screw driver to open it), and be done with it. Like it, take it. Don't like it, don't take it. Simple... 

I've avoided jumping in on this as it's already a moot point because "distance". 

But the obvious answer here is if it were within reach... just looking at that pic, there's 20 quid worth of salvageable knobs on the thing, and just that CRT bezel/nuts is worth that little bit. Much better spent saving this orphan Tek from the elements than lunch at the local drive-thru, for example. 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

I'm mostly harmless ...

Where my mind went with that comment...   

you are exactly on my line of thought ...

As long as she's tipsy and feeling warm & fuzzy, sure. 

Piss her off and she's the right hand of Tyr. Until Fenrir spits it out for Ragnarok.

mnem
"Ambrosia for my men... and mead for my horses."

[Robert763]

OK OK... so if CPC has some cheap good stuff of their own, OK might be worth the trouble (looked at your CPC topic.. scary) I don't know... but for everything else why not just order direct from the UK Farnell web site ?

In 15+ years I have never had any issue with a Farnell order here. Only thing I hate is that 99% of the time, my order comes in 2 or 3  different deliveries, because the items are stored in various warehouses of theirs, throughout Europe. So I have one transistor coming from a French warehouse, a resistor coming from a UK warehouse, etc etc. Problem is that I get billed by each different warehouse !
So when I order for say 50 Euros worth of good from Farnell's website, on my bank account I don't see this single50 Euros payment. Instead I will a 13.67 Euros payment from one Warehouse, then 3 days later another warehouse will charge me 23.69 euros, etc etc, and I have to keep track of all these payments in my bank account to make sure it all adds up to the expected total amount. It's an accounting shit show, I hate that ! 

Farnell is a lot more expensive on the same lines generally.

Example if I want 50x 1K 0.25W 1% resistors:

CPC = £1.19 inc VAT
Farnell = £3.20 inc VAT

For the same fucking item.

I can the same shipped from Tayda for $1 but the delivery cost usually kills the efficiency of that.

I agree CPC is cheaper than Farnell for same item. Racco storage boxes are another example.
One reason for this is Farnell have a better quality system and issue at least a basic certificate of conformity with most orders. This has t least some cost but many companines QA proceedures won't allow CPC for produduction.

[mnementh]

Re PCs. Thanks for all the advice. While I appreciate the flexibility here, the constraint is 500 quid spend max. Also the games are likely to be Sims 4, GTA V and Minecraft. This is merely to stop the Ryzen 3500U laptop she has melting a hole in the table. Even that machine does the job fine. In future it might get a 1660 in it at worst 

In that case, get the 5600G from either Amazon (so you can return if unable to get going on your B550 MB) or a local shop that can do the "old CPU shuffle" to get your MB updated to support the processor if need be.

Go 16GB DDR4-4000 RAM (see my earlier note about XMP profiles for why), and shop your SSD carefully to avoid the ones with "undocumented parts alteration" due to component shortages.

Spend for a 800W PSU if you need to buy now and planning to upgrade to a 30xx in future. If you already have the 600W, use it until you need better, or buy one of the "builder specials" off NewEgg or slAmazon. Don't forget to shop NewEgg AND pcpartpicker.com assiduously until you have to buy... a couple-three weeks shopping time is usually enough of a window to get a "steal of a deal" on these components.



Oh, and make sure whatever case you buy, that it has the PSU in a tunnel which isolates its airflow from the rest of the case. This is the "minimum standard" for real gamer PCs now... tho a lot of MFRs are still flogging the old "big open box" designs that simply don't cut it anymore.

mnem
 

[Neomys Sapiens]

If you must know, I did win an auction for the girl version of something similar to the Inspector Callahan style slug thrower.

I just figured Dirty Harry Clint Eastwood throwing "Nacktschnecken" at Saskia



SCNR (Yes, I know, there's a lot of other translations for slug, most probably better matching the matter).

I can imagine the sound when they hit something/someone. YUCK!

[mnementh]

ONE OF US. ONE OF US!

Still think that old kit looks better than my new kit 

That's because they didn't skimp on the details, and developed the tech to make the designer's "minimalist vision" a reality yet still possible in a mass-production scenario.




Things like this; the power/BT LED on the "Magic" keyboard. Rather than just make a plastic bezel or "flush" light-toob, to keep the clean unbroken lines of that gorgeous anodized aluminum, they developed the tech to microdrill this pattern of holes in the aluminum so the LED light could get out, using the anodizing as the "lens and bezel". Also delicious is the fact that LED is emerald green. 

Bloody brilliant.

mnem
*toddles off to fight the lawn some more*

[cyclin_al]

...
On investigation I found that the timing of the clock and data input signals did not meet the timing specification of the chip. Or anything actually becuase the clock changed just before the data    The signals came for a I/O card in a PC. The PC software subroutine had never been changed in the several years it had been in use without issue.  I also noticed that the same data was sent about 30 times. Talking to the now "head of Sofware" who wrote the subrotine he admitted that it didn't work at first but as repating the dats many times seemd to work he left it like that.
...

Ah! I think those software guys need educating with something heftier than a cluestick. Time to get out the metastability mallet. 

Actually I'm quite surprised that something that randomly hit a stable timing margin only one time in thirty managed to work at all.

That's actually quite a good example of the chewing gum and string quality of a lot of software that you'll always hear BD and me moaning about. Programming is hard, proper hard, and there's a tendency for programmers to develop hubris as well as code. Programmers have to learn a lot about each application area that they have to develop for as well as the actual computer technology that is their basic stock in trade, and I've noticed a tendency for a lot of then to acquire a delusional self belief that "If I can learn to do all this, I can do anything.". This has the obvious result of lots of Dunning-Kruger moments.

I would say that software quality is directly related to development practice and not necessarily individuals. Poor or inexistent development practice lead to low quality even if your staff are really good. When I say "development practice" I mean coding guidelines, code review, automated tests and submit procedure. All that is expensive though (in time and infrastructure) and you need to decide what level of quality you are looking for. If the question was never raised the quality level will probably be really low.

The far swing of that is aviation software validation like RTCA DO-178 (and DO-254 for things like CPLDs). While the standard allows different levels of validation for different applications (Design Assurance Levels) most companies seem to have written their processes so you have to produce ALL the documentation for even the most basic application. I think this is because they copy the example in the standard which is for critical software and don't know enough to even combine documents. Often consultants are used for this and they are not going to do more than they have to.
Anyway this results in huge cost and in many cases using relay logic or similar when a microcontroller would do a much better job with a few hundred lines of code.

The other aspect I see a lot of is the requirements coming down to the software people. 

Whazz it s'pozzed ta do???
Yer thing-a-majig doesn't work?  Oh, well, that is not what you asked my software to do....

I have seen compartmentalized design where the software person has nothing but the requirements document, and no idea exactly what technical language the author of the requirements used.
They may have to implement it blindly, or literally according to the requirements.  There is often no communication to question the requirement in order to understand, or to send a message back to indicate something that makes no sense at all.

[cyclin_al]

Good staff evolve good processes. Bad staff evolve no processes or evolve them and circumvent them.

And management, in an attempt to get stuff made that works, jump on the latest cargo cult development methodology without any understanding of what the problem(s) is/are. Thus we get Agile^TM or some-such as a religion  and the rituals are followed like they would be if the High Priest says that such-and-such a ritual will rid the patient of their disease (and "Thank you for your 'donation'") when a doctor would say "Take this penicillin and stop shagging pox-ridden whores.".

I'm on my third year of  engineering and I have to take a class about business (more specifically, it is called "Técnicas de Emprendimiento" which translate roughly to "entrepreneurship techniques") and about three weeks were about Agile management.

What a freaking (is it acceptable to use this word in the forum?) piece of crap (same question). To pretty much everyone of us it seemed like a cult. Sometimes we would do "simulations" in class of what a "Sprint Daylies" or "Sprint Review " would be.

After that, we did something called Belbin personality test and the teacher complained there were always very few "creative " and "entrepreneurial" people on his engineering clases....

What really enrages me is that we waste time in such bull crap but then we don't have to time to finish the subjects that really matter (for instance, in our class of Electrical Energy Conversion we haven't managed to reach solar system design).

Sorry for the rant but I'm just happy I'm not the only one who seems to be repelled by these things.

A technical entrepreneurship course should cover a range of topics about how to develop your product and bring it to market, and then support it.
How to survive implement a toxic work environment (Agile) should not be part of the curriculum....

[mnementh]

I'm just going to leave this here where anybody might trip over it...




mnem
 

[cyclin_al]

Ugh so my middle one wants a gaming PC. She has a T495 Ryzen 5 3500U pro laptop which isn't cutting the mustard now. Plus the constant fan noise is pissing me off 

Anyone care to comment on the following idea:

- Ryzen 5600G
- 16Gb corsair LPX 3200 RAM (2x 8Gb)
- 500Gb Samsung 870 Evo Plus
- Be quiet 600W supply
- Lian Li Liancool 205M
- have monitor, keyboard, mouse, MSI B550 board, be quiet cooler floating around already which can go in it. Oh and a ripped off win 10 pro license 

Will upgrade the GPU next year...

+1 for 3600 RAM low CL.  Also, do not skimp, as you are making up for a GPU which nowadays have 12GB on their own.

Here in the GWN, the Ryzen 3700G is almost the same price as the 3600G...

Depending on the future GPU, you might be needing to upgrade the PSU.  This is something I missed when I got a SuperNova 550; it is not going to be up to the task to power a future RTX 3060 GPU...

[BU508A]

This poster is saying, that the Fluke 8375A is a 5.5 digit DMM, not a 6.5 digit.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/lets-see-your-nixie-tube-equipment/msg788595/#msg788595





There is one in Italy: https://www.machinio.com/listings/54321456-fluke-8375a-in-poggibonsi-italy

[Specmaster]

No dice. Gave it a careful clean to remove what I took to be near microscopic flux spatter from the manufacturing process. No effect.

I can't find any obviously buggered passives, time to move on to active components. This thing is full of analogue switches, my next move is to probulate those to see if any are failed short/open, since if that happened on the range division circuitry at some point it could have this effect I think.

I'm curious as to what the glass capsule parts are in the protection circuit; they are not GDTs, you can see a solid slug inside them, and they are marked "VRxx", and have a (in circuit) resistance of ~190MΩ. There are also some curious smd things labelled "BDxx" that look like slugs of carbon, and measure like a ZoL, but those are usually a ceramic substrate with a "0", right? These look like smd caps made of carbon   

Some macro photos of those mysterious objects would help to identify them, I think. 

You can see the glass capsule components easily enough in the pic I posted; they are just under the first and last PTCs. There's one of the mysterious "BDxx" carbon slugs on the bottom left of the pic, just under the shield contact spring.

Those glass capsules, could it be that they are some kind of spark gaps?

I assume, GDT means in some way "spark gap" 

Yes, sorry, Gas Discharge Tube.



And we thought TE boat anchors are bulky!   

And the follow up video

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XGL3rskcQD0

It's working ! 

And that was only a wee baby one, now here is a real one 

Edit: I love these grand old instruments, they are just so awesome and what a marvellous piece of engineering, be they be the original mechnical ccontrol system or the updated electronic control systems on them.

My kids hate them,   

[Robert763]

What are these people smoking?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/255558730547?
A skanky 5000 'scope with a custom Non Destructive Testing (NDT) module for £2660 

[med6753]

I have to disagree with you there, unless the outside environment is very dry, i.e the desert mine dumps, that a certain Youtuber has found old TVs & radios to resurrect.
In the UK outside with plenty of rain, or damp leaky sheds, lofts, garages etc. is more typical. The tube pins corrode to the point they crack the glass and you can say goodbye to the vacuum, or the neon fill for volt-ref & display tubes.

Example from a 50MHz hp scope, 2/3rds of the glassware was cracked and it didn't matter it they were German, British, Dutch, US or Japanese, etc. brands, they failed they same way. 
I was able to rescue enough OK tubes to get the vertical input plug-in going and a couple for the delayed timebase plug-in, but that was it. The rest became a parts donor, as I have three of them that are in much better condition.

P.S. the modified TV flyback transformer is not something it left the factory with.

David

What is unique about the British environment that would cause that? I have seen vacuum tubes salvaged from TV's, radios, etc that have been left out in damp and wet conditions for years and while the tube pins did indeed have some corrosion the tube itself had in tact vacuum. I've never seen a mass loss of vacuum like that.

Are you sure someone didn't maliciously tap each tube with a heavy screwdriver or hammer?   

Edit.....I have had at least 2 miniature tubes crack spontaneously at the base and lose vacuum when put into operation for the first time in years. But they were not cracked prior to heating up. 

[bd139]

I have to disagree with you there, unless the outside environment is very dry, i.e the desert mine dumps, that a certain Youtuber has found old TVs & radios to resurrect.
In the UK outside with plenty of rain, or damp leaky sheds, lofts, garages etc. is more typical. The tube pins corrode to the point they crack the glass and you can say goodbye to the vacuum, or the neon fill for volt-ref & display tubes.

Example from a 50MHz hp scope, 2/3rds of the glassware was cracked and it didn't matter it they were German, British, Dutch, US or Japanese, etc. brands, they failed they same way. 
I was able to rescue enough OK tubes to get the vertical input plug-in going and a couple for the delayed timebase plug-in, but that was it. The rest became a parts donor, as I have three of them that are in much better condition.

P.S. the modified TV flyback transformer is not something it left the factory with.

David

What is unique about the British environment that would cause that? I have seen vacuum tubes salvaged from TV's, radios, etc that have been left out in damp and wet conditions for years and while the tube pins did indeed have some corrosion the tube itself had in tact vacuum. I've never seen a mass loss of vacuum like that.

Are you sure someone didn't maliciously tap each tube with a heavy screwdriver or hammer?   

We have the dampest sheds on this planet, the most negligent owners of stuff and enough pigeon shit to burn a hole through to the earth’s core. We just do bad things better 

[bd139]

What are these people smoking?
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/255558730547?
A skanky 5000 'scope with a custom Non Destructive Testing (NDT) module for £2660 

I always offer £20 to people like this 

[med6753]

I have to disagree with you there, unless the outside environment is very dry, i.e the desert mine dumps, that a certain Youtuber has found old TVs & radios to resurrect.
In the UK outside with plenty of rain, or damp leaky sheds, lofts, garages etc. is more typical. The tube pins corrode to the point they crack the glass and you can say goodbye to the vacuum, or the neon fill for volt-ref & display tubes.

Example from a 50MHz hp scope, 2/3rds of the glassware was cracked and it didn't matter it they were German, British, Dutch, US or Japanese, etc. brands, they failed they same way. 
I was able to rescue enough OK tubes to get the vertical input plug-in going and a couple for the delayed timebase plug-in, but that was it. The rest became a parts donor, as I have three of them that are in much better condition.

P.S. the modified TV flyback transformer is not something it left the factory with.

David

What is unique about the British environment that would cause that? I have seen vacuum tubes salvaged from TV's, radios, etc that have been left out in damp and wet conditions for years and while the tube pins did indeed have some corrosion the tube itself had in tact vacuum. I've never seen a mass loss of vacuum like that.

Are you sure someone didn't maliciously tap each tube with a heavy screwdriver or hammer?   

We have the dampest sheds on this planet, the most negligent owners of stuff and enough pigeon shit to burn a hole through to the earth’s core. We just do bad things better 

See my edit above.

You sure it wasn't leprechauns with hammers? 

[bd139]

So chavs then?

[bd139]

ONE OF US. ONE OF US!

Still think that old kit looks better than my new kit 

That's because they didn't skimp on the details, and developed the tech to make the designer's "minimalist vision" a reality yet still possible in a mass-production scenario.




Things like this; the power/BT LED on the "Magic" keyboard. Rather than just make a plastic bezel or "flush" light-toob, to keep the clean unbroken lines of that gorgeous anodized aluminum, they developed the tech to microdrill this pattern of holes in the aluminum so the LED light could get out, using the anodizing as the "lens and bezel". Also delicious is the fact that LED is emerald green. 

Bloody brilliant.

mnem
*toddles off to fight the lawn some more*

They used to have that on the side of the macbooks so you could see the charging state.

Alas they replaced it with the LED on the magsafe adapter now which is just an LED inset with plastic cover.



I will say that the fit and finish on these is like no other machine. Everything else feels like it's made of junk now.

[Saskia]

Re: PSUs: I ran 2 3080 and a 3090 off a single 1kw PSU ... with serious undervolting.
550W or 600 W PSUs are usable for 2070 max.
If you want more graphics ooomph get a better PSU.
(Currently with a 750W Corsair Platinum HX ....)

and effing drunk with cherry wine.

[Neomys Sapiens]

Ok, as it was repeatedly pledged that we should coordinate such things here, I am going seriously for all three special Tektronix items which are due on ebay.de tomorrow! If anyone here is among those existing bids, please tell in time!