Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering

      

Did not know that he won it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwnie_Awards

Yes. I congratulated him by email personally for it.

I didn't get a reply.

[tggzzz]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lennart_Poettering

      

Did not know that he won it

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pwnie_Awards

Yup, and his responses were remarkably lame. Giving root privileges to any user whose name begins with a number or contains an umlaut is, according to him, OK because he thinks they aren't valid usernames!

He does appear to be like Margaret Thatcher, who was famously summed up (at ICI?) during an early job interview as "dangerously self-opinionated".

[nixiefreqq]

here is my contribution to "tool time".

not just a wrench......but a SUPER wrench.

[Specmaster]

Actually you're pretty good with the 54645 scope on service information. There are two documents of interest:

Firstly the user and service manual (module level) is here:

https://xdevs.com/doc/HP_Agilent_Keysight/HP%2054645A,%2054645D%20User%20&%20Service.pdf

Now here's the good one, the CLIP (component level information package) is here. All 300Mb of it 

https://archive.org/details/HP54645NCLIPImgs

As mentioned in the thread I bounced the parts for reasonable money on their own. Yours is profitable on that front even if it's knackered. In the end I sold the good plastics, the knobs, motherboard (£25 even though it was broken), display assemly and power supply separately and made 2.5x what I paid for it 

If it works the only maintenance risk is the Dallas RAM module and the RIFAs in the power supply board really. They are top notch bits of engineering.

Thanks for links, now on my hard drive 

The CLIP is interesting....  contains all the schematics as.... photographs !! No OEM PDF not even a scan, but actually photographs of the paper schematics. Each sheet is split into several photos.. 109 of them. So first thing to do if I need them would be to reconstitute that puzzle so as to have one single large pic for each schematic sheet. But at least the schematics are there, and in good quality, perfectly usable, so that's the most important...

There are also a couple strange small files that I wonder what they do.. an XML file and an 'squlite' file. Can't open either it appears...
Well the XML file I just opened with a text editor.. not much in it, just a few line of "meta data".

User manual has a mechanal parts list which gives me the HP Part number for the knobs, so I can use that as a search term to go hunting for them on the interweb I suppose.

While I have not had one of these precise types of scopes, I have had another with Megazoom function, and believe me, that is a real bonus, especially when you can have the normal trace on one channel and the portion of interest displayed with Magazoom on the other. I miss that scope now at times.

Also it just shows how much they are in demand still, when as BD said, although his never made it back to full restoration, it still made money flipping the parts as others strive to either restore another or, keep theirs alive a bit longer. Good luck with it, while as Mnem I think said a while ago, it would quickly become the most useful scope in your collection of glowing old Teks.

[Brumby]

Yup, and his responses were remarkably lame. Giving root privileges to any user whose name begins with a number or contains an umlaut is, according to him, OK because he thinks they aren't valid usernames!

Seriously?!!

I can't say I am particularly aware of anything to do with Linux (of any flavour) - but such an approach is so far past bizarre, I just don't know how to respond.    just seems way too inadequate.

[mnementh]

There’s a rush on pliers! I should start insider trading 

Shouldn't you be busy with some tinder business? 

Shelved that. Seems to be a money pit full of people who should be single and out of the gene pool. Plus it was interfering with the toy budget 

Yeah, no surprise.
Tinder is one of those things which are monetarizing the hopes of lost souls. Very ugly business imho.

I wish that was true but it’s really just monetising the ego of the common narcissist and other forms of defective personality and acting as a prostitution contact service. The hopes of lost souls leave rather rapidly after working this out 

What can I say?
I'm a hopelessly romantic and naive human being. 

All y'alls need a Jewish grandmomma to hook you up. And make you knish.   

Not a eye-talian grandmomma... she'll tell you about all the lovely girls, but will keep you all to herself with lasagna, cappucino, crusty breads and  tiramisu... 

mnem
...maybe I should start a service...?   

[Robert763]

I'm pissed off.

There are a couple of scope probes I'd like up for auction later today. Unfortunately they come in 4 4-drawer filing cabinets, and I'd have to take those too. The blasted things are just too big to fit in my car, even two at a time

Well, somebody got a bargain.

It wasn't as if I need another couple of 1.5GHz probes and a 6GHz probe, but I'd have bid 3* higher if I didn't have to think about how to dispose of those bloody filing cabinets.

Sorry, late to this been on the road.
You could have left them with the auction house to put into their next auction......

[McBryce]

All y'alls need a Jewish grandmomma to hook you up. And make you knish.   

Not a eye-talian grandmomma... she'll tell you about all the lovely girls, but will keep you all to herself with lasagna, cappucino, crusty breads and  tiramisu... 

mnem
...maybe I should start a service...?   

As long as you don't have an Irish mother... She'll tell you to go find yourself a girl, but will reject them all, as not good enough for HER son.

McBryce.

[tggzzz]

Yup, and his responses were remarkably lame. Giving root privileges to any user whose name begins with a number or contains an umlaut is, according to him, OK because he thinks they aren't valid usernames!

Seriously?!!

I can't say I am particularly aware of anything to do with Linux (of any flavour) - but such an approach is so far past bizarre, I just don't know how to respond.    just seems way too inadequate.

Make your own mind up! Read the four references at https://pwnies.com/systemd-bugs/

[mnementh]

Has the dust settled on that tool discussion ? Am I allowed to post about TE now, or will anything I say get completely unnoticed / wasted ?

That would be sad because we have great news today in the TE dept....

I had enough a few weeks ago of being called a fool for not getting that 50 Euro ugly yellowed broken old Agilent MSO scope, 54xxxx one thing or another.

No worries, 2 weeks later another one popped up, Agilent again, for a mere 4,000 Euros, yes that's three zeros, and yes still an ugly Agilent one. A week later he lowered the price to only 3,500 Euros, still a tad too much to my taste and wallet ! 

But this week I saw this ad :

https://www.leboncoin.fr/bricolage/2171536160.htm

Title just says " various oscilloscopes" and the full description/body of the ad just says :  " A couple Tek and one HP, in working order ".

Price : " make me an offer ".

Looking at the pic of the HP one, very blurry, could barely make up the model number, looks like " 54645D "... I could see the "Megazoom" badge at the top, and in the bottom right corner the connector for the logic stuff. OK so that must be the one then... and it's a nice good looking HP that I love so much, not the ugly Agilent that I hate so much... and it's not yellowed, and there is life on the CRT, at the least. No broken anything either unlike the Agilent ones a few weeks prior. ALSO it's a 100MHz version whereas the Agilent ones were both 60MHz versions. So I had to act real quick as always, no time to ask questions or pictures or it's game over for you, someone else would have bought it without asking any questions. Always like that. I learned that lesson.

So not knowing anything more about it than what I just exposed, I took a gamble and offered the guy 100 Euros for the HP, thinking 50 Euros would be way too low and I would get outbid. So I thought 3 figure might catch his interest and give me a chance of at least being considered... while 100 Euros is still being reasonable for such a wonderful scope that you have all been selling to me so well, I admit.  I didn't even know if the guy was actually willing to sell the HP scope separately of if he wanted to sell the lot, wasn't clear. I was also very unsure whether he would accept to ship, because his ad says no shipping... and 99% of the time when an ad DOES say shipping is available... the seller then says NO it's not ! So an ad that says no shipping up front... yes, I was not holding my breath to say the least !

But... guy accepted my offer and was OK to ship, he sent the scope yesterday, now waiting for delivery in a Frog lab near you !!! 

So now I need to find a bunch of knobs to give it its pretty face back. No, no 3DP for me, won't cut it... either OEM knobs or nothing. Can these be found or are they unobtainium ? Scope can still be operated without them I guess, so not too worried. It's just for cosmetics.  If you have some HP knobs lying around, a donour HP TE of some kind with the same knobs, I don't know...

So let's see if it will actually be able to display a signal, what errors there are in the self test, what options it might have or not have, RS232, printer output, GPIB, whatever these scopes might have... I have absolutely no idea. I know zero about these scopes, don't know if there is a service manual for them, what are the common problems and hopefully solutions... I know zero.

So the learning curve will be steep...if it needs fixing.   

The 54645D is a good score. I'd have jumped on that in a heartbeat, even with signs of g'rilla abuse. The painful part will be finding the probe pods for the LA section; they can be pricey. Aside from that extra LA module inside, it is the very same scope as I have on my bench... I am a wee bit jelly now. Of course I'll help any way I can, brother; I might even convince myself to mail some knobs to frogland...

Probes should be easy... it's a modern scope and the input capacitance is ~13 puff, so it works well even with the Chinesium cheapies right up to approx 50MHz... higher than that and you'll want to get into some better Chinesium probes or even genuine HPAK (Original was HP 10074A 10X probe).

One thing to remember: this is not a CRO. It is a fully digital oscilloscope that uses a high-resolution CRT monitor because LCDs at the time this was made were simply a inferior display device.

As long as you remember to think about it this way, I have no doubt you'll be able to figure it out.

I've attached the Product Overview (I don't remember where from) as well as the service and programming manuals downloaded direct from HPAK for you.

Good hunting, and welcome to the MegaZoom brotherhood!   

mnem
 

[Saskia]

this pottering blockhead seems to be a special kind of cunt. what a bizarre narcissistic grab-asstic piece of amphibian shit.

[mnementh]

He has only two other items for sale and no knobs.... but instead an old boat anchor, but an actual one !!! 

https://www.leboncoin.fr/profil/2c4e19c4-8981-49ac-8841-504bf4d5d661/offres

At first I thought that all these missing knobs meant that the scope was defective, beyond repair and was used as a donour to fix another one.
So we shall see. However if that were the case then why would he steal 9 knobs but leave two in place ? Sounds silly. You might as well take them all...
So there must be another explanation for that...

So I think there is a still a slight chance that this scope is not a turd, a bunch of defective parts loosely taped together to make it look like a complete scope... We will soon find out...

Odds are he has another similar scope he's keeping or has already sold and robbed them off this one to make it "nice" as it was inferior in his mind for one reason or another. The sleuthing will come in figuring out if that reason was a functional problem or all in the guy's head.

Hopefully yours wasn't pieced together out of the parts taken off a defective unit... or if it was, hopefully the defects are reasonably easy to resolve.

mnem
Right this way! Step right up... Plunk your money down and get in on tonight's round of TEA Roulette...!

[tggzzz]

this pottering blockhead seems to be a special kind of cunt. what a bizarre narcissistic grab-asstic piece of amphibian shit.

I've noted some people have a strong dislike of systemd. I've been agnostic mainly because I haven't needed to look in detail - but I've been wary of centralising things in one large blob.

The attitude of "this pottering blockhead" does indicate one reason people might not trust systemd.

[Cubdriver]

here is my contribution to "tool time".

not just a wrench......but a SUPER wrench.

Where's its cape?

-Pat

Edit to add - I always love seeing those "replace this 9000 piece tool box with our fits-anything wonder wrench!!!11!!!111!111!1!!" ads, where they demonstrate that the tool can loosen everything between 1/4" and 2" across by loosening and tightening hardware in said range - that are all conveniently placed on an unobstructed flat piece of plywood, and just happen to be further apart than said tool is long.  And I'm pretty sure that several things similar to that 'super wrench' from 35 years ago are lurking about in some dark corner here after being given to me for Christmas or a birthday or the like by either my mother or one of my aunts.  I always appreciated the gesture, but felt bad for them having literally wasted their money.   I think my mom finally got it after she gave me a 'wonder wrench' she'd gotten from QVC (a TV shopping network for those outside the states), and I gently told her she'd wasted her money and should return it.  She said something like "but it will work on all these different sizes!"; I then took her outside and opened the hood of the car and pointed out the half dozen or so fasteners it would work on.  Then ALL the rest that it physically could not reach, and that the ratio between the two types was at least 9:1 against the wonderwrench and pointed out (again) that they demonstrated it on completely unobstructed things.  I think she FINALLY 'got' it then.

[nixiefreqq]

here is my contribution to "tool time".

not just a wrench......but a SUPER wrench.

Where's its cape?

-Pat

was a gift from a mother in law way over 30 years ago.

used it once.  tossed it into a locust tree to knock down a hornets nest.

but hey....it never rusted.

[mnementh]

I'm pissed off.

There are a couple of scope probes I'd like up for auction later today. Unfortunately they come in 4 4-drawer filing cabinets, and I'd have to take those too. The blasted things are just too big to fit in my car, even two at a time

Well, somebody got a bargain.

It wasn't as if I need another couple of 1.5GHz probes and a 6GHz probe, but I'd have bid 3* higher if I didn't have to think about how to dispose of those bloody filing cabinets.

Bring a friend; share the blame. 

mnem

[Cubdriver]

here is my contribution to "tool time".

not just a wrench......but a SUPER wrench.

Where's its cape?

-Pat

was a gift from a mother in law way over 30 years ago.

used it once.  tossed it into a locust tree to knock down a hornets nest.

but hey....it never rusted.

LMAO - see the edit I added to my post directly above yours.  Mine all came from similar sources - well meaning relatives of non-mechanical persuasion!

-Pat

[mnementh]

   here is my contribution to "tool time". not just a wrench......but a SUPER wrench.

I've had a couple of those... they're good for one thing: Spinning down a nut on a stud that's so long even deep-well sockets won't reach. Once you get the motion right, you can bring it right down quick to a nice end and finish her off good & tight with a proper box end wrench. 



I have another similar tool, also called a "Super-wrench", that is actually occasionally useful; like the pipe-wrench, due to its geometry  it is self-tightening to an extent; and it can get into some places a pipe-wrench will not. It will turn some oddly shaped things (fittings, rounded fastener heads) a Vise-grip can't get a purchase on, or good for cases where you need the "ratcheting action" cuz many, many turns and only able to get a fraction of a turn at a time.

mnem

[25 CPS]

That was fast even including a Fedex delay.  They claimed the kit was supposed to arrive yesterday but it came this morning:





It's going to take me more time to get to building it than it took for the seller to send it to me.  I'm busy the rest of today.  I'm not sure how tomorrow is going to shape up and Saturday is spoken for with a football game.  Sunday is a total open question depending on what kind of shape the football game leaves me in, and that is a big question because I haven't played since 2018.  Monday or Tuesday, then.

[mansaxel]

Yes, absolutely; that is not to code here in the US. The entire point of the 4-wire pigtail is to keep GND and N separate. Doing this makes the GND a current-carrying conductor. BIG no-no!
mnem
 

Tell me what you think, this is how they installed it:

...

so I removed the yellow/green from the neutral white but....

...

the freaking yellow/green is looping back to the neutral white on the top

How is that going to survive a RCB?

Apart from that, it's a big fat no-no in the civilised world to join PE and N after the terminal in the first central, where they, if the feeder was  TN-C-S (3 phases plus PEN as is common in 1-familiy homes et c), split to never meet again.  If it is TN-S, you'll not even see the split.

Oh, yeah, you live in the Edison worshipping world where voltages are puny, and people kill elephants instead of admitting they're wrong. You don't have a proper 3-phase mains feed.

[Robert763]

Has the dust settled on that tool discussion ? Am I allowed to post about TE now, or will anything I say get completely unnoticed / wasted ?

That would be sad because we have great news today in the TE dept....

I had enough a few weeks ago of being called a fool for not getting that 50 Euro ugly yellowed broken old Agilent MSO scope, 54xxxx one thing or another.

No worries, 2 weeks later another one popped up, Agilent again, for a mere 4,000 Euros, yes that's three zeros, and yes still an ugly Agilent one. A week later he lowered the price to only 3,500 Euros, still a tad too much to my taste and wallet ! 

But this week I saw this ad :

https://www.leboncoin.fr/bricolage/2171536160.htm

Title just says " various oscilloscopes" and the full description/body of the ad just says :  " A couple Tek and one HP, in working order ".

Price : " make me an offer ".

Looking at the pic of the HP one, very blurry, could barely make up the model number, looks like " 54645D "... I could see the "Megazoom" badge at the top, and in the bottom right corner the connector for the logic stuff. OK so that must be the one then... and it's a nice good looking HP that I love so much, not the ugly Agilent that I hate so much... and it's not yellowed, and there is life on the CRT, at the least. No broken anything either unlike the Agilent ones a few weeks prior. ALSO it's a 100MHz version whereas the Agilent ones were both 60MHz versions. So I had to act real quick as always, no time to ask questions or pictures or it's game over for you, someone else would have bought it without asking any questions. Always like that. I learned that lesson.

So not knowing anything more about it than what I just exposed, I took a gamble and offered the guy 100 Euros for the HP, thinking 50 Euros would be way too low and I would get outbid. So I thought 3 figure might catch his interest and give me a chance of at least being considered... while 100 Euros is still being reasonable for such a wonderful scope that you have all been selling to me so well, I admit.  I didn't even know if the guy was actually willing to sell the HP scope separately of if he wanted to sell the lot, wasn't clear. I was also very unsure whether he would accept to ship, because his ad says no shipping... and 99% of the time when an ad DOES say shipping is available... the seller then says NO it's not ! So an ad that says no shipping up front... yes, I was not holding my breath to say the least !

But... guy accepted my offer and was OK to ship, he sent the scope yesterday, now waiting for delivery in a Frog lab near you !!! 

So now I need to find a bunch of knobs to give it its pretty face back. No, no 3DP for me, won't cut it... either OEM knobs or nothing. Can these be found or are they unobtainium ? Scope can still be operated without them I guess, so not too worried. It's just for cosmetics.  If you have some HP knobs lying around, a donour HP TE of some kind with the same knobs, I don't know...

So let's see if it will actually be able to display a signal, what errors there are in the self test, what options it might have or not have, RS232, printer output, GPIB, whatever these scopes might have... I have absolutely no idea. I know zero about these scopes, don't know if there is a service manual for them, what are the common problems and hopefully solutions... I know zero.

So the learning curve will be steep...if it needs fixing.   

The 54645D is a good score. I'd have jumped on that in a heartbeat, even with signs of g'rilla abuse. The painful part will be finding the probe pods for the LA section; they can be pricey. Aside from that extra LA module inside, it is the very same scope as I have on my bench... I am a wee bit jelly now. Of course I'll help any way I can, brother; I might even convince myself to mail some knobs to frogland...

Probes should be easy... it's a modern scope and the input capacitance is ~13 puff, so it works well even with the Chinesium cheapies right up to approx 50MHz... higher than that and you'll want to get into some better Chinesium probes or even genuine HPAK (Original was HP 10074A 10X probe).

One thing to remember: this is not a CRO. It is a fully digital oscilloscope that uses a high-resolution CRT monitor because LCDs at the time this was made were simply a inferior display device.

As long as you remember to think about it this way, I have no doubt you'll be able to figure it out.

I've attached the Product Overview (I don't remember where from) as well as the service and programming manuals downloaded direct from HPAK for you.

Good hunting, and welcome to the MegaZoom brotherhood!   

mnem
 

I have this exact model and it is my go-to 'scope.
You can even plat Tetris on it 
It may even come with the LA cable and probes. Apart from the woven cable they are noting specal just a RC network at each connection. They were common to several LAs so not too hard to find if you don't restrict yourself to the 54645D. I've picked up a LA with cables probes and grabbers for less than the 53645D leads sell for.

Edit: Knobs not available from Keysight but they are not critical just find some that fit for now and wait for a broken 'scope to turn up. You could even buy a non megazoom 54600, swap the knobs and flip it.

[Specmaster]

this pottering blockhead seems to be a special kind of cunt. what a bizarre narcissistic grab-asstic piece of amphibian shit.

Oh for Fecks sake, Saskia, say what you fecking mean will ya, for fecks sake 

[Robert763]

Yes, absolutely; that is not to code here in the US. The entire point of the 4-wire pigtail is to keep GND and N separate. Doing this makes the GND a current-carrying conductor. BIG no-no!
mnem
 

Tell me what you think, this is how they installed it:

...

so I removed the yellow/green from the neutral white but....

...

the freaking yellow/green is looping back to the neutral white on the top

How is that going to survive a RCB?

Apart from that, it's a big fat no-no in the civilised world to join PE and N after the terminal in the first central, where they, if the feeder was  TN-C-S (3 phases plus PEN as is common in 1-familiy homes et c), split to never meet again.  If it is TN-S, you'll not even see the split.

Oh, yeah, you live in the Edison worshipping world where voltages are puny, and people kill elephants instead of admitting they're wrong. You don't have a proper 3-phase mains feed.

The reason it is wrong is of course if the incoming neutral goes open circuit then the entire household 110V load current will be flowing through that bit of wire and the flexible cable causing a fire.

[mansaxel]

There are also a couple strange small files that I wonder what they do.. an XML file and an 'squlite' file. Can't open either it appears...
Well the XML file I just opened with a text editor.. not much in it, just a few line of "meta data".

The sqlite file is a database. It's opened with the CLI tool "sqlite3" or similar. Chances are your Linux box has it, or it's a quick "apt-get" away.

[mnementh]

Vince -

See my posts on repairing my 54645A when I got it:

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/msg3180550/?topicseen#msg3180550

And after the BumbleButt Incident:   

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/msg3288474/#msg3288474

Both are pic-heavy, so lots of slow-loading, I'm afraid. But also gives you a very good overview of what you're getting into working on it.
The only thing that keeps the front/guts attached to the box is the GPIB module if attached and two T20 screws in the back. It seems like "not much" to hold it together, but it is more than enough as long as you don't smash effing thing on the floor like I did. 

Here's a hobbyist vid which shows basic disassembly and the recap (Guy does damage the PCB... I'm sure you'll be more careful  ) of the CRT PCB :



But at least it gives you an idea of what to expect. 

mnem