Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

...
In the UK outside with plenty of rain, or damp leaky sheds, lofts, garages etc. is more typical....

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 

I was going to say something based on my observations ... but this comment surpasses anything I could offer.   

Yup... classic bender139 right there... 

mnem


                     HE'S BACK, BABY!!!   

[m k]

Got a close up of the component marked "RV3". Not sure it's a TVS, those should measure infinite resistance? These measure ~200 megs.

Dam, was it RV from the beginning, I'm sure it was VR at some point.
Anyway, pretty hard to guess something that ends to V.
So two words then, Range/Rating Varistor?

Is the color code green brown, 15? x100?

BTW,
Can't find Sweden based parcel forwarders.
Door to door is easy but I obviously need that pseudo address.

[m k]

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 

Another example of neglect of a much scarcer hp scope, these connections concern me, I do keep hoping a spare CRT will appear one day.


To be fair, apart from a few extreme examples, it's not that common to come across cracked tubes, but they almost always seem to crack from the join of the pins & glass base, or the top cap connection.

David

One must wonder what was the calculated MTBF back then, and what was the base of a function.

[AVGresponding]

Got a close up of the component marked "RV3". Not sure it's a TVS, those should measure infinite resistance? These measure ~200 megs.

Dam, was it RV from the beginning, I'm sure it was VR at some point.
Anyway, pretty hard to guess something that ends to V.
So two words then, Range/Rating Varistor?

Is the color code green brown, 15? x100?

BTW,
Can't find Sweden based parcel forwarders.
Door to door is easy but I obviously need that pseudo address.

My bad, I typo'd. Though the pic clearly shows they are marked RV2 and RV3 (RV1 is nowhere to be found).

Given the package style and the apparent preference of HPAK to use GDTs rather than MOVs, I'm going to assume that's what they are.



https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/gas-discharge-tubes/5258793

[vk6zgo]

Don't want to fight for a top loader here. It was enough the past two weeks at home.
May I ask which brand and model of top loader you got? Sounds like you didn't got a good one.

The toploader is good, the frontloader was crap!

[bd139]

Watched TG Maverick at the movie theater near an us air base.
Half of the people where sobbing at the end, it was the biggest american experience I survived.

I liked the movie, even if does not make any sense (at the military strategy level). This reminds me about my wife.

Okay I will not talk about my wife anymore... sorry.

I could barely make it through the trailer without sobbing. Mostly because the vapour from the vomit I was retaining in my mouth was making my eyes water. I just know it’s going to be one of those films which smells of Cheetos and plastic patriotism and i just can’t stand the whole idea. I still haven’t recovered from Armageddon yet.

We have our own garbage here but rather than heavy patriotism it’s heavy twee. Heavy as in neutron star density heavy. Tea, scones and absolutely non graphic serial killers. Just as bad.

[Robert763]

Oh great. Fingers crossed you can extract a suitable refund from them.

This was about damged items due to poor packaging from the auction house in Skegness. I got a response today saying send it back for a full refund.
Yeh, right so they can stick it back in the next auction for some other customer to buy 

[bd139]

Oh great. Fingers crossed you can extract a suitable refund from them.

This was about damged items due to poor packaging from the auction house in Skegness. I got a response today saying send it back for a full refund.
Yeh, right so they can stick it back in the next auction for some other customer to buy 

Joy. Being private auction you can’t really leave them negative feedback either other than shitposting on Google reviews.

[Peter_O]

Don't want to fight for a top loader here. It was enough the past two weeks at home.
May I ask which brand and model of top loader you got? Sounds like you didn't got a good one.

The toploader is good, the frontloader was crap!

My frontloader is from the beginning of the 90s. It's a Miele W699. it got three (self) repairs so far: new bellow gasket, new damping cylinders, motor electronics fix. Runs like the first day.

In case I have forgotton something to throw in, it's just pulling the emergency unlocking thingy to overrule the door lock. Most washing programs do not fill above the door, so it's no problem at all.

[tautech]

Back to some TEA....and from tautech for a change too ! 
Almost ready if we can get hendorog to stop practicing this moves and arrive early enough on day 1 to set up the SNA....the only one with the covers still on...at left.

Nice EMEX gave us WiFi which played just fine with my old SN#12 SDS1104X-E and iPad that's in the 2nd pic.

Oh well, 3 days at the beck and call of potential customers ......has been a good while since face to face times behind the sales counter.....of some 4 decades ago. 

Come save us if not seen by the weekend...........

[bd139]

Awesome. Thanks for the pics. Suitable amount of blinkenlights has been reached there 

Fingers crossed for you on the sales front 

[tautech]

Awesome. Thanks for the pics. Suitable amount of blinkenlights has been reached there 

Fingers crossed for you on the sales front 

Thanks bud, hope all goes well on those new digs.
Sales, well you just never know....some weeks are dead which allows catchup of other stuff  and other weeks are nuts, not #'s but the sort of stuff you sell.
FFS 4 analyzers in the last 3 weeks.....plus just a scope or 2, sold out of PSU's and then a VNA and 6.5 digit meter today....yeah and you gotta fit that in with organizing a stand in NZ's premier technology show too !
Only the adrenalin buzz keeps you going !
And loving it ! 

[McBryce]

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...

have several here. Contact me if you want. Also have GPUs to go along with those. From 1660ti to 3090 ...

would go for a 5600, not the G type, and an external GPU. Or the 3600x. The performance boost you are getting from 5600 imho does not make an upgrade mandatory.
As for RAM, all AMDs just love high speed memory. Would go for 3600, if not faster, CL as low as you can reasonably afford.
Have made good experience with Trident Z 3600 Cl16, but that was some time ago.
SSD: try to find a Samsung PM981. Least troublesome and fastest SSD I had found a while back. The thing to go for if you do not want PCIE4 with your SSD.
600W will be sufficient for 2070/2070 Super and below, 3060 and most likely 3060ti. The 3070ti I have here wants a 750W PSU ...
CPU TDP is about 120W - 140W depending on overclocking or not. (count in a reasonable margin, and I am factoring in the non-G version). I'd summarily add about 100W for the rest (mainboard, DVD if needed, RAM (if overclocked), fans, SSD, HDDs).
Which would give you about 250 W headroom for a GPU if you want to run the PSU in the most favorable load conditions.
250W would give you a 2060/2070/3050/3060/3060ti and a wee bit of headroom. Note: the 30 series GPUs have peak loads that make you shiver unless you undervolt them. A 3080 can easily go up to 500W spikes which would immediately shut down your PSU as the 12V rail could not handle it.

If you are planning to upgrade the GPU anyway and stick with AMD (which is perfectly fine), get a starter GPU which you can flip. Some older model like a 970 or 1060. And throw it out at a later point in time.

just my 2c

If you're planning to do actual A-title gaming and planning the upgrade to a 30xx, I'd go a wee bit more overhead on the PSU, myself. All the 30xx GPUs will spike huge under fast framerate rendering, especially using oversampling or ray-tracing which is finally getting some love from the game devs. If he's going to stream any of his gameplay, this adds even more load; which these GPUs will gladly eat like candy, but they will suck the juice.

If you have any dreams of running anything like MS Flight Sim, I would be going at least 800W if not  1KW - Between AMD's Auto-OC and NVidia's various gaming profiles...  with most of the A-titles nowadays, during gameplay you can be OC-ing BOTH CPU and GPU by 20% or more for several seconds at a a time using relatively tame factory profile presets.

In short... IMO, Saskia's being too kind with the PSU pain pill. 600W is just... barely there for a "my generation" build. It would be running hard even on my 2080Super based system. If you already have the 600W PSU  and are going to use a low-end GPU until you upgrade to a 30xx, I'd plan on upgrading the PSU at the same time.

Agreed on 5600/5600X vs 5600G; pay the extra money and skip the 5600G. The 5600G is known for a lot of issues with "out of the box" compatibility even on B550 MBs.

AMD/Ryzen had problems before with the bootstrapping conundrum; where a MB needed to be flashed to support newer CPUs, but couldn't until booted on an older CPU: [url]https://www.amd.com/en/support/kb/faq/pa-105[/url]

It is my understanding that the 5600G/B550 combination continues this fine tradition, and unless you have one of the MBs that can upgrade the BIOS without a CPU installed, you get to play this particular game of whack-a-mole.



But the big problem with 5600G is that you won't have PCIe4.0 available on any general purpose slots, and you may not even have PCIe4.0 speeds to the NVMe and GPU slot depending on the combination of 5600G and MB/chipset. I know you probably don't care about the GP PCIe3.0 slots, as B550 MB already, but no PCIe4 speeds to the GPU slot is a big deal.

I also agree on maxing out speed over qty for RAM... except that now, the "standard build" for A-title gaming uses DDR4-4400, and entry-level is DDR4-4000. This matters with gaming, as all the "Auto-OC" built into the BIOS uses the XMP profiles associated with these speed ratings to configure the OC speed profiles which are most commonly used for gaming.

So unless you or your son feel like spending days manually configuring those memory OC profiles by trial and error, do yourself a favor and shop the faster DDR4 speeds, even if the latency looks like crap.

16GB is still enough for all A-titles unless you're jumping to 2K/4K video (2K/1440P will be a wee bit cramped; not going to do oversampling with 16GB), and most of the MSI 550 boards are quad-slot, so I'd go with the fastest 16GB kit I can afford at least DDR4-4000, then plan on bumping up with another kit in the future. If you can afford more on RAM now, substitute 32GB and upgrade to 64GB in the future.

SSD... Until you're ready to bump up to a X570 MB where you know all your GPU/NVMe slots are PCIe4.0, the real limiting factor is the Phison E12 controller and PCIe3.0. Improvements in read/write speeds on any PCIe3 NVMe SSDs are going to be incremental at best. You've seen the difference between PCIe3 and PCIe4 on your current gonad-crusher MacBook. 

Since you already have the B550, I'd say go with any established-brand Phison E12-based NVMe drive... but unless you can find one you know is pre-COVID manufacture, I'd look out and research carefully on ALL the current EVO SSDs, as SamSuck has been doing "undocumented revisions" on their parts/specs due to component shortages (specifically the 870/970Plus you mentioned, plus others):

[url]https://www.tomshardware.com/news/samsung-is-swapping-ssd-parts-too[/url] 

Alternately, since this is supposedly going to be a gaming rig and not the daily driver/main PC for essential day-to-day (I always recommend this be the case with your gaming rig for security reasons), you could just shop your best deal on 2 "decent" NVMe drives and put them in RAID 0, as long as you don't mind using SLEEP mode. If you or your son are one of those "gotta boot it cold every time" people, RAID 0 adds 15-30 seconds every startup as the BIOS reassesses the RAID every. fucking. boot. 

   This setup is still error-free after 3 years. 

That post was a monster.

These points are my opinion as a gamer PC builder, and I may have misremembered something or be completely wrong on another. 

mnem
As always, take anything I say with a grain of salt big enuf to pickle a dwagon. YMMV, IANAL, DQMOT, WTFBBQ, DILLIGAF...?

I run MS Flight Sim on a Core i9 11K with an nVidia 3060 / 4K Monitor with a 750W PSU, but it rarely pulls more than 300W total. For MSFS it's not the graphics card that's going to ruin your experience (as it did with FSX), it's the speed of your internet connection that decides your level of disappointment as it's permanently pulling data from the net.

McBryce.

[bd139]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234570662657

Ugh

[AVGresponding]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234570662657

Ugh

  HFM?

I wouldn't pay that for a working AVO, let alone one with an uninsulated lamp socket on the top!



Decided to make the new 4-wire short I've been thinking about. Used some 1.5mm² solid conductor from FP200, some yellow crimp lugs, and those handy Wago banana plugs.
I cut the insulating skirt and the lug from the crimps, to leave just the insulated crimp section, and simply crimped the 4 wires together, no solder to add weird thermo-electric effects.



Though the crimps are tin plated copper, the 4 wires all touch each other copper to copper, so the only material change is the in the plugs.



Not perfect I know, but better than the last one, and a few hundred micro-ohms lower resistance as well, from first rough and dirty measurements.
I'll warm the LCR meter up and get better readings a bit later.

[tggzzz]

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 

That explains Marconi equipment!

Actually it was cost-plus contracts, tight financial (not technical) controls, and paying their engineers peanuts.

While at university I applied for 11 jobs, was offered 19 interviews; guess how the others materialised! One of the GE/Macaroni places had 200 positions!

At one GE/Macaroni place I was talking to the guards on the gate while waiting for transport, and explained that the "milk round" allowed us to see companies with places available. The guard commented "And I'm sure there are other places, aren't there".

I have other stories, which I won't bore you with.

[bd139]

Actually on that, most of the folk at Raytheon were ex Marconi. Was only up the road and didn’t suck as much.

[tggzzz]

Packages from the Skegness auction arrived yesterday. Poor packing and contents damaged 

They can be very hit and miss (ho ho). I've had something with a bent handle, but I was able to unbend it.

For anything big/fragile (e.g. 2445B or atomic force microscope), I've traipsed across the country to that fag end of the universe. Can't do that now; delivery only.

[tggzzz]

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234570662657

Ugh

Didn't even have the imagination to invert it to show a smiley face.

Vendor is in London; go and remonstrate with him.

[tggzzz]

Actually on that, most of the folk at Raytheon were ex Marconi. Was only up the road and didn’t suck as much.

The yanks aren't always as compentent. My current favourite is the Ajax armoured vehicle from General Dynamics, which deafens its occupants.
https://ukdefencejournal.org.uk/builder-to-reimburse-army-if-ajax-vehicle-unable-to-enter-service/

The Ajax is perpetrated at two locations in the South Wales valleys (one with the lowest house prices in the country). Presumably they set up there because there were plenty of unemployed coal miners.

[bd139]

Oh they are terrible. Hence why the project I was working on ended up in the national press for going extremely over budget, then spiralled down the toilet, got renamed twice and then got scrapped before the end of its service life  . Everyone got paid though!

[tggzzz]

Oh they are terrible. Hence why the project I was working on ended up in the national press for going extremely over budget, then spiralled down the toilet, got renamed twice and then got scrapped before the end of its service life  . Everyone got paid though!

If it was renamed twice, it couldn't have been the Nimrod ASW aircraft.

I alway regarded it as remarkable that the first variant was designed to use an obsolete commercial 1950s airframe, albeit heavily modified.

They then repeated that, with a 2003 variant built on the same airframes!

[AVGresponding]

I was unhappy with the results I was getting testing the resistance across the banana plugs on that last design, they were very inconsistent, between about 80 microohms and 4 milliohms. I seriously doubt the credibility of the 80 microohms reading, I think I'm getting noise from the TE effect between the plug and wire, and some inconsistent contact also.

So I changed tack, and decided to make a short using only copper:



This is far superior. It measures consistently 2.35 to 2.40 milliohms "plug" to "plug". I tweaked the "plugs" for a gentle fit into a 4mm socket, it works well.


EDIT: The inductance between plugs measures <20nH, which is basically in the noise as far as this LCR meter is concerned.

[Specmaster]

Oh they are terrible. Hence why the project I was working on ended up in the national press for going extremely over budget, then spiralled down the toilet, got renamed twice and then got scrapped before the end of its service life  . Everyone got paid though!

If it was renamed twice, it couldn't have been the Nimrod ASW aircraft.

I alway regarded it as remarkable that the first variant was designed to use an obsolete commercial 1950s airframe, albeit heavily modified.

They then repeated that, with a 2003 variant built on the same airframes!

Then finally smashed it into tiny pieces for scrap, what a monumental waste of our hard-earned cash, hate to think how many hospitals and the staff to run that would pay for  Government heads should have rolled for that stupid decision 

[Robert763]

Oh they are terrible. Hence why the project I was working on ended up in the national press for going extremely over budget, then spiralled down the toilet, got renamed twice and then got scrapped before the end of its service life  . Everyone got paid though!

If it was renamed twice, it couldn't have been the Nimrod ASW aircraft.

I alway regarded it as remarkable that the first variant was designed to use an obsolete commercial 1950s airframe, albeit heavily modified.

They then repeated that, with a 2003 variant built on the same airframes!

Well the P8 and Wedgetail (like all B737s) have a hell of a lot of parts from the 707 in them. Many people think the 737 is comparable to the Airbus A320 but the basic airframe technology is decades apart. Most don't realise that even the 737 MAX is not fly by wire.