Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Oh no, not an EV argument again, pleaaaaase... I still have not healed from the last one, it's too soon.
Bottom line is : does not matter if one likes them or not, because this week I heard that European parliament or whatever it's called, has voted their law for good now, it's set in stone. By 2035 car manufacturers (motorbikes too ?? Didn't say...), will be allowed to sell only EV, and not even hybrids no, 100% electric.

Gotta love politicians mandating a timeline for scientific discovery and technological advances.   

-Pat

The technology has existed for half a century; we could've gotten there with lead-acid tech if we actually fucking wanted to.

All that's really needed is to get big oil out of the fucking way.

mnem
tzzzzt.

[med6753]

The technology has existed for half a century; we could've gotten there with lead-acid tech if we actually fucking wanted to.

You serious? With lead acid? Range: 50 miles under ideal conditions. Battery weight: 2 tons.

I don't think so. 

[bd139]

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

[mnementh]

That bloody Avo lamp has been relisted again. 

I hope it stays on there as long as the heathkit microphone lamp as a warning to others.

Don't think that would stop them...



mnem
There is no bottom to the LCD...

[bd139]

Oooh someone listed a 3458A for £2k auction or £3k buy it now here.

And no I'm not buying it 

[mansaxel]

I think it is a "C" connector---very much like an "N", but a "bayonet" type.
They used to be relatively common, not so much, anymore.

I concur. C. Used on some milspec radios; there's a dipole centre in the Clansman family using it, and there was widespread use in the civil defence radio nets in Sweden from 1970 and on.

[Neomys Sapiens]

That reminds me of the time I had to go stick some ram in a box in a data centre. As it was fully managed we found out when we got there all they had was telecoms racks and there was a huge pile of DL380’s stacked on top of each other. Mine was at the bottom. We jacked 9 machines up carefully with 4 people and a pile of Oreilly books and slid the node out carefully while everything was live.

It can be done 

When, as a schoolkid, I went around the inside of the Heathrow control tower, I was horrified that I had to be careful not to catch on the cables dangling between racks of equipment. It looked a bit like TERRA Operative's pictures.

I doubt I'd be able to do that at Swanage nowadays

The NATS sites are somewhat special. Like 'special needs' special.

[mnementh]

The technology has existed for half a century; we could've gotten there with lead-acid tech if we actually fucking wanted to.

You serious? With lead acid? Range: 50 miles under ideal conditions. Battery weight: 2 tons.

I don't think so. 

  Most people don't need the range or power of a ICE vehicle most of the time. Even THAT 50 mile range is more than enough for a huge portion of the miles driven in the US every day; I'd bet more than half.

You're thinking of home-made golf-cart battery and forklift motor conversions from the 70s. The EV1 first-gen had lead-acid batteries and advertised 80 mile range; it was known to do much better according to users. It was literally loved by its users. Later versions used a NiMH pack which doubled that range. This technology is nearly 30 years old.

While no EV will replace all ICE vehicles, we certainly could've been MOSTLY EV long before I graduated high-school.  If we really wanted to be EV, we'd long ago have figured out a business model that makes EV the first choice for daily driving and commuting, then ICE vehicles convenient and cost-effective to "borrow" or "rent" when you really need it.

mnem
We are fucking doomed.

[srb1954]

More nails in the coffin for EV cars as they currently stand.

And his conclusion at the end? "I still, on the whole, really like it." And he's thinking of dumping one of his household's fossil fuel cars and getting an additional electric car. So "nail in the coffin" is a serious misrepresentation of what this video actually says.

His price comparison vs a petrol car based on the most expensive electricity tariff he can find is highly misleading. Most people would be able to find a cheaper tariff. For comparison against his quoted figure  of 38p/kWh I charge my car at the equivalent of 4.9p/kWh during the night or only 16p/kWh even if I charge it during the day.

And he points out that if you work from home that your electricity bills will rise. Somehow this also becomes a failing of the electric car

[Vince]

OK I think I am making progress with the diode sorting... now all is left are the big ass ones. Big ass as in... you need a soldering iron AND a wrench to use them !


All the smaller diodes are done now.

I have a few specialty diodes, like Germanium, Schottlky, and also a couple ultra specialized vintage diodes : BA282 and BB329. Datasheet is very exotic/unusual and says they are meant for one thing only... HF work, switching bands in a Television tuner. I don't do TV stuff but I kept them anyway, so I can play with them when I get to the point where I touch RF stuff, though mildly / modestly so.

I also have a few " Fast avalanche " diodes, says their data sheet.
Don't know what that means.. .they all come in a grey glass bead package, with thick terminals, like this :



For example the ones I have are :

BYV16
BYV28-200
BYV38
BYW172D
BYW178

Datasheet all give various information but it looks like they are meant for fast rectification like in switch mode power supplies, and "soft recovery", whatever that means. The surge current data is given for a 10ms half sine wave, i.e. rectifying 50Hz mains... 50Hz isn't exactly "fast" in my book... so a bit unsure what these diodes really are used for. And what does this "fast avalanche" means in a concrete manner... what does that do that's useful and the more mundane black plastic cylindrical diodes can't do ? 

I guess I will do some Googling / Wikipedia-ing... later. Time to go to bed for now, 1AM here... will worry about avalanches and sorting my big ass diodes... tomorrow.

Good night. hopefully when I wake up tomorrow all the EV BS will be over, making way for politics sex drugs guns and religion instead 

[GreyWoolfe]

Yesterday arrival: The IdealTek pliers which I've ordered at TME.

Here are some pictures. The grid has minimal distance of 1mm and the resistor is for size comparisons.

The ES6023B:


The ES6025:


Working with the ES6025 is a real joy. Good handling, precise pliers, I like it! Will be a good successor to my P-500. 

Not a tool but my first cherry cake in 2022:


The Gooseberries on the left are part for my fruits in rum, which I've started yesterday as well.

Man, are you being rude and disrespectful to the diabetics here.   Seriously though, looks farking amazing and probably smells/tastes even better.  Never had gooseberries.  I wouldn't mind trying one if I had the chance.  One only, I am off my Metformin for good and plan to stay that way.

[tautech]

OK I think I am making progress with the diode sorting... now all is left are the big ass ones. Big ass as... you need to a soldering iron AND a wrench to use them !

Stud diodes they're called not big ass ! 

[mapleLC]

Look at this BS:

https://www.ebay.com/itm/203991370560

[vk6zgo]

I’m going no car. Problem solved.

Ham spotted today with silly antenna 

What's silly about the antenna?

It is a perfectly good multi-element Yagi (I would guess for the "70cm" band), which the ham concerned is using in a portable setup.
It is not mounted on the car for mobile use, as that really would be silly!

There are many reasons why a ham might want to "go portable"----maybe no room at home for a reasonable antenna, or they may be participating in one of the ongoing competitions which are centred around various points of interest, like mountain/hill summits, lighthouses, National Parks, etc.

A ham might well think we are silly, with our obsession with finding, refurbishing & using elderly test equipment, or a fisherman silly, for standing on a beach in the middle of winter, brandishing a 15 foot fibreglass rod, with an expensive reel attached.

I've tried beach fishing, & it really is silly!!
I never learnt how to cast properly, the howling "Sou-Westers" would take the line & blow it back further down the beach, where the seagulls would fall upon the bait.

I lassoed a pelican once, when something similar happened at a river's mouth.

Sorry about the great slab of type, but it seems that the unthinking default reaction to hams on this forum has become a sneer.

[vk6zgo]

The technology has existed for half a century; we could've gotten there with lead-acid tech if we actually fucking wanted to.

You serious? With lead acid? Range: 50 miles under ideal conditions. Battery weight: 2 tons.

I don't think so. 

  Most people don't need the range or power of a ICE vehicle most of the time. Even THAT 50 mile range is more than enough for a huge portion of the miles driven in the US every day; I'd bet more than half.

You're thinking of home-made golf-cart battery and forklift motor conversions from the 70s. The EV1 first-gen had lead-acid batteries and advertised 80 mile range; it was known to do much better according to users. It was literally loved by its users. Later versions used a NiMH pack which doubled that range. This technology is nearly 30 years old.

While no EV will replace all ICE vehicles, we certainly could've been MOSTLY EV long before I graduated high-school.  If we really wanted to be EV, we'd long ago have figured out a business model that makes EV the first choice for daily driving and commuting, then ICE vehicles convenient and cost-effective to "borrow" or "rent" when you really need it.

mnem
We are fucking doomed.

"Restored Cars" magazine had an article some years back, where a 1950s Renault 750 was converted to electric power.
It, from memory, used lead-acid batteries, had a useful range of 50-70km, & could easily keep up with modern traffic.
Unfortunately, the "RC" mag website doesn't have a archive of old magazine articles, & the vehicle concerned seems to have sunk from sight.
There are one or two others which have been modified throughout the World, but details of them are sketchy.

[TERRA Operative]

Are we still spinning in circles on the fucking EV vs ICE thing? 

Can we please not? Take it to another thread, please.

[mnementh]

Oh, come the fuck on. This isn't politics, it isn't religion. It's actual tech, and it is at least tangentially related to the core topic, in that EVs are a place we use some of the TE we like to play with. And a place where we sometimes play with our TE.

This is what I was talking about with the stupidity of "zero tolerance". You start that shit, then everybody's pet peeve becomes a 3rd rail, and before you know it this thread is gonna about as interesting as listening to fucking 11m band.

We're still talking, it's not gotten personal, and sooner or later we will self-regulate. Please take the OT-Nazi-ing to another thread.

mnem
 

[tautech]

Oh, come the fuck on. This isn't politics, it isn't religion. It's actual tech, and it is at least tangentially related to the core topic, in that EVs are a place we use some of the TE we like to play with. And a place where we sometimes play with our TE.

This is what I was talking about with the stupidity of "zero tolerance". You start that shit, then everybody's pet peeve becomes a 3rd rail, and before you know it this thread is gonna about as interesting as listening to fucking 11m band.

We're still talking, it's not gotten personal, and sooner or later we will self-regulate. Please take the OT-Nazi-ing to another thread.

mnem
 

And yet I give you this, thanked by a few regulars here:

Please take the EV shite to the correct part of the forum. 

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/renewable-energy/

David

Yeah it is OT yet tech too but keeps popping up with regular monotony whereas it should be in it's proper place.
Any new EV technologies might be of passing interest to us all then should also get a redirect to the proper place.

[mansaxel]

Since I was on 3rd shift and a contractor I was not aware of field fail data but it is my understanding that a node fail in a Z is an extremely rare event. But there was one instance where a customer engineer fucked up a node install in a pre-announce machine in a Walmart data center that caused an enormous stink. The smell was so bad that all of us techs were given additional training on the proper node removal/install. 

Squalid-Mart? Fuck... calling what they run a "datacenter" is being generous. I still see tickets come through for them to replace CISCO 2900 series... with "recertified" CISCO 2900 Series. The stores around here are still running the very same XP-Embedded IBM registers I installed in San Antonio in like 2003...

mnem
Not without my thumbs.

Now, now. What's being run in the edge, that is storefront,  shall confirm to a pretty limited profile of usage, and if the application designers weren't morons (like building RPC on top of UDP without error handling; I've seen it done, it drives LOTS of cost in the network, because packet loss is a no-no. "Don't"; that's my advice...) but just merely doing something over TCP, a 2900 series switch is going to give stellar service as long as the crapacitors don't shit themselves, and lightning damage is kept at bay. The crucial part mostly is how much latency and packet loss the corporate WAN offers; unless there's a local cache making OLTP going only on the LAN.  A sensible redundancy solution could be to have two switches for the cashier line, and have half the registers per switch. And feeding the switches from different breakers. 

Also, if all links to the switch are being kept at the same speed, there will be no buffering problems for downstream traffic and the puny packet memory size of a 2900 (which is where they saved money) won't be of any significance.  If phones are IP, there's a strict priority queue for voice data keeping it OK. If you can deal with the rest of the traffic being equal priority, you're good.

In the computing centre, that's another thing entirely. There it's important to be able to run 24/7 with very high quality of service. And the bandwidth demands are higher, the traffic separation demands are higher, the aggregation of services like FCOE et al onto hardware and links much higher (that's why you buy that Uncle Smurf hardware, to gather as much as possible onto it, saving money in the process.) But it is entirely possible to run a network with both el-crappo switches and more advanced gear in; with routers in-between it most often is a very economical proposition, and with skill, it can deliver very good results.

[mansaxel]

TE update:  In anticipation of repairing my 5245L, for which new mains inlet connector is (finally) forthcoming, I've ordered a paper copy of the manual because I found one at reasonable price. Still haven't heard from Artek. As I ordered over the weekend, that might be reasonable, for a few hours more. (it's Monday 07:16 here in the UTC+2 land and those dragging their feet at UTC-6 or so still have weekend excuses to evoke.)

[TERRA Operative]

Oh, come the fuck on. This isn't politics, it isn't religion. It's actual tech, and it is at least tangentially related to the core topic, in that EVs are a place we use some of the TE we like to play with. And a place where we sometimes play with our TE.

This is what I was talking about with the stupidity of "zero tolerance". You start that shit, then everybody's pet peeve becomes a 3rd rail, and before you know it this thread is gonna about as interesting as listening to fucking 11m band.

We're still talking, it's not gotten personal, and sooner or later we will self-regulate. Please take the OT-Nazi-ing to another thread.

mnem
 

If we are talking at least tangentially about using test equipment on vehicles in any way, that's cool. Applications for TE are great. I love it.
But the same old circular discussions of "EV is best", "No ICE is best" are just tiresome and already done before.  No-one is going to convince anyone to change their religion vehicular power plant preferences on a forum anyway....

Just like you'll never convince me that anyone makes a better scope than Tektronix.  

OT is fine (and you have my divine blessings    ), but the same-old same-old is just a bit blagh.
Plus my scrollin' finger gets sore after a page or so of car stuff because I'm soft, and I need my TE fix!
"just sayin'...." Now that I've had my morning apple juice (Coffee is yucky, Give me my sippy cup) I'm not feeling so ornery, apologies to come across too harsh.....

Anyway, I'm currently fixin' an Advantest R6144, it don't burn guzzoline, but I'll make a short story if anyone is interested in the 5-year-to-date (including hibernation period) ongoing repair story...

[bd139]

Glad I was unconscious or out during the EV debate 

Got day off today so my task is filling up Farnell and CPC baskets with more test cables and parts  . Need to do an AC cal on the 3465A as well but I don’t have the cables required at the moment 

There’s another 34401A appeared, this time a 2009 Agilent one, so I will attempt to obtain that, get it calibrated, check the HP 34401A against it and then lose that one. So keep your hands off with the competition 

[BU508A]

Glad I was unconscious or out during the EV debate 

Got day off today so my task is filling up Farnell and CPC baskets with more test cables and parts  . Need to do an AC cal on the 3465A as well but I don’t have the cables required at the moment 

There’s another 34401A appeared, this time a 2009 Agilent one, so I will attempt to obtain that, get it calibrated, check the HP 34401A against it and then lose that one. So keep your hands off with the competition 

I've put it on my watchlist just for curiousity. 
My bet is: it will go way over 400 pound. 

Edit:
Currently, 31 people (including me) have it on their watchlist. Yeah, competition baby. 

[bd139]

Yeah I may stretch to that. It’s not going to sit there as an ornament. It has work to do. I’d therefore like one with a little more headroom on the display lifetime. Plus I can probably get £400 for the old one if I’m patient 

[BU508A]

Good luck! Keep my fingers crossed for you.