Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Robert763]

Boooo. My Advantest R6144 DC Voltage/Current Generator is still throwing an Error 05. Checked all the chips it says to in the manual and all check out ok, except I can't test the Microcontroller (HD63B03RP) or the GPIB Bus Controller (TMS9914ANL).

I've found a local source for the microcontroller, but I doubt it's that as it needs to work to throw the code. My money is on the GPIB Bus Controller, but it seems China via Ebay is all I can find for sourcing so far....

That is of course if the fault isn't on the main board that does the actual voltage/current generation. I found a bunch of problems there and fixed what I found so far, but that shouldn't cause an error 05.



Too bad the only parts unit on Yahoo Auctions is listed for 10,000yen. Waayy too much for an obviously busted and tampered with unit (especially with no internal photos).... I could do with some spare parts...

I have a BER (display U/S) and useless (obsolete telcom digital test) bit of TEA with a TMS9914ANL in it. Do you want me to check postage to you?

EDIT:
Photo added, this is TEA.
Note the space for a GPIB connector but none fitted. The outer case covered this opening so it never had a connector despite have the TMS9914ANL fitted in a socket.

[med6753]

The TE gods are not smiling upon me today. Got everything back together and STILL have no -15V. 

The only thing left is either the transformer or CR1472 has gone tits up. Measured transformer. 19.1VAC. Output from CR1472. 0 volts. There are no shorts. CR1472 is stone cold. It's dead Jim. Fuck me. In order to remove it I have to take the trigger board back out. Oh well.

My 465 parts mule will be giving up a replacement.

[Peter_O]

My HP boat anchors able to control the GPIB bus got a slave to play.



This HP7470A slept in the storage of an EEVblog member, who was willing to pack this little friend and send it over for small money.
The HP7470A has no carousel but is able to handle two pens nevertheless. It was the first paper-moving plotter ever.
And - different from the younger brothers - it has the PSU included. Standard IEC13.




It arrived today.
I just chopped a felt marker at hand and printed a makeshift adapter.
The very first try just happened to work quite fine.



This old small guy ist quite fast: The plot was done in far less than minute.

[TERRA Operative]

Boooo. My Advantest R6144 DC Voltage/Current Generator is still throwing an Error 05. Checked all the chips it says to in the manual and all check out ok, except I can't test the Microcontroller (HD63B03RP) or the GPIB Bus Controller (TMS9914ANL).

I've found a local source for the microcontroller, but I doubt it's that as it needs to work to throw the code. My money is on the GPIB Bus Controller, but it seems China via Ebay is all I can find for sourcing so far....

That is of course if the fault isn't on the main board that does the actual voltage/current generation. I found a bunch of problems there and fixed what I found so far, but that shouldn't cause an error 05.



Too bad the only parts unit on Yahoo Auctions is listed for 10,000yen. Waayy too much for an obviously busted and tampered with unit (especially with no internal photos).... I could do with some spare parts...

I have a BER (display U/S) and useless (obsolete telcom digital test) bit of TEA with a TMS9914ANL in it. Do you want me to check postage to you?

If you can see what postage is to Japan easily enough, that would be appreciated.  I'll keep poking away and see if I can find exactly what's up, still hoping it's something relatively simple.......

[tggzzz]

The TE gods are not smiling upon me today. Got everything back together and STILL have no -15V. 

The only thing left is either the transformer or CR1472 has gone tits up. Measured transformer. 19.1VAC. Output from CR1472. 0 volts. There are no shorts. CR1472 is stone cold. It's dead Jim.

IIRC those get unpleasantly hot in normal operation.

[TERRA Operative]

My HP boat anchors able to control the GPIB bus got a slave to play.



This HP7470A slept in the storage of an EEVblog member, who was willing to pack this little friend and send it over for small money.
The HP7470A has no carousel but is able to handle two pens nevertheless. It was the first paper-moving plotter ever.
And - different from the jounger brothers - it has the PSU included. Standard IEC13.




It arrived today.
I just chopped a felt marker at hand and printed a makeshift adapter.
The very first try just happened to work quite fine.



This old small guy ist quite fast: The plot was done in far less than minute.

Ooh nice! I have a 7475A that I swear I'll get running one day. Would love to send it vectors from Adobe Illustrator somehow.

[bd139]

The TE gods are not smiling upon me today. Got everything back together and STILL have no -15V. 

The only thing left is either the transformer or CR1472 has gone tits up. Measured transformer. 19.1VAC. Output from CR1472. 0 volts. There are no shorts. CR1472 is stone cold. It's dead Jim.

IIRC those get unpleasantly hot in normal operation.

Yes. If you have really low impedance capacitors they tend to go bang as well.

Not as hot as the bridges in the Hp 1740A though 

[Vince]

DIODES !


OK, several hours doing vintage diode archeology non-stop later... I am done now....  out of 27 stud diodes, and a dozen different part numbers, I have only 3 that I can't find any data on.

Half of the stuff was branded " SILEC ", so I have done some SILEC archeology.

Looks like it was a French semi conductor company doing mostly diodes. Then they renamed themselves " SSC ", standing for " SILEC Semi Conductors ", fair enough.
Then looks like they got taken over by a bigger fish, Thomson-CSF, then SGS-Thomson, aka " ST " these days of course.

After much Googling, an interesting datasheet website kept coming up :

https://www.datasheetarchive.com

Many times when Google failed to find anything, this website found me a page in an old scanned catalogue, with a line about the part I was researching, hence saving my bacon.
Sadly most of the time they give you only the one single page of the catalogue that contains your part... they don't give you a download link to go get the entire catalogue it was extracted from. That's a bit of a bummer, but hey, it's free so you can't complain can you.  However that site did serve me a complete catalogue when I was searching for type " 306Z4 ".   Catalogue is not from a manufacturer, it's a compilation of data with cross indexes. The front page does not say who edited that catalogue but the footer on some pages bears a logo that reads " DATA ". Just... " DATA "... so some company that was called.... " DATA ".. hu...why not. Rings a bell ??
Catalogue is from 1966 and has no less than 786 pages ! The cross indexes take up lots of space at the beginning of the catalogue, and actual data / tables start only at page 178.
It's not OCR'ed so if my elusive 306Z4 part is in there... might take me a life time to find it ! 
Had I the paper / hard copy of that catalogue, would be simple enough to flick through it... but doing the same on my 15 year old computer is no fun at all.... will try anyway.

Found another catalogue as well, direct courtesy of Google this time. SILEC / SSC catalogue from 1977. again no OCR, but colour though. 97 pages of vintage diode porn.

Somehow I enjoy looking at these old catalogues and datasheet immensely. It's like archeology. Looking at these old documents is like a time machine that immerses you in the fun and exciting days of this emerging new tech called electronics. I just love the look of these old documents, they are just nice. I feel I am growing fond of them very fast, it's like a virus spreading... just like it happened for Vintage TE when I bought my first glowing Tek 5 years ago. Look where I am now ! 

I think I will try to find actual paper copies of every old catalogue I can find... I wonder where I could find these things.
My old retired EE friend 150kms away used to have a semi truck worth of catalogues, gathered in the '70s and '80s mostly, when he was most active in R&D, but he threw half of them away to make space !!! 
Well that still leaves him with half a semi worth.. Maybe he can give me a few to appease my appetite for old paper....

Anyway. So out of 27 stud parts, I discovered more diversity than I thought I would ! It's not just big mundane / regular diodes.

No, I have Schottky in the lot (SD41 and MBR6035, both Motorola) and also 10 Watt  Zener diodes (GZ12A, PZ12A and PZ27A, respectively 12V and 27V as one could guess....all from SILEC) and even a TRIAC ( SC40D , General Electric) !

OK so this evening I guess main job is to search the 786 pages of that 1966 DATA catalogue to see if I can find that 306Z4, wish me luck ! 

[mnementh]

I have a sickness. I meant the camera, you pervs... Another highly-rated Canon from days gone by, now in my collection for a mere 8 dollars.

mnem
The mug was just cuz "2 bux at the Thrift"; now I FINALLY have one that holds enough coffee to get me through breakfast...

[Vince]

Is it supplied with tweezers to operate it, as well as x10 magnifying lens so you can see what's displayed on the LCD view finder ?! 

[mnementh]

  are you talking about? This is a Canon, not some drug-store POS. 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

...I just chopped a felt marker at hand and printed a makeshift adapter. The very first try just happened to work quite fine.      This old small guy ist quite fast: The plot was done in far less than minute.

 

mnem
*toddles off to find something constructive to do*

[Vince]

are you talking about? This is a Canon, not some drug-store POS. 

mnem
 

Eh ? It looks minuscule on that pic  ! Doesn't it ?! 

Either that or it's the mug next to it that's 10 times the size of a normal mug, and can contain a gallon ?! 

[Zoli]

are you talking about? This is a Canon, not some drug-store POS. 

mnem
 

Eh ? It looks minuscule on that pic  ! Doesn't it ?! 

Either that or it's the mug next to it that's 10 times the size of a normal mug, and can contain a gallon ?! 

The two leak-tubes will give you the proper size references 

[med6753]

The TE gods are not smiling upon me today. Got everything back together and STILL have no -15V. 

The only thing left is either the transformer or CR1472 has gone tits up. Measured transformer. 19.1VAC. Output from CR1472. 0 volts. There are no shorts. CR1472 is stone cold. It's dead Jim.

IIRC those get unpleasantly hot in normal operation.

Yes. If you have really low impedance capacitors they tend to go bang as well.

Not as hot as the bridges in the Hp 1740A though 

I don't think this bridge really had a chance to go bang with the new capacitor because there definitely was an open circuit. Mystery as to why it's gone. And yes, all the other bridges get very warm.

Already have the 465 parts mule pulled apart and it has several of what appears to be the same P/N bridges but I will check the parts list. 

[mnementh]

are you talking about? This is a Canon, not some drug-store POS. 

mnem
 

Eh ? It looks minuscule on that pic  ! Doesn't it ?! 

Either that or it's the mug next to it that's 10 times the size of a normal mug, and can contain a gallon ?! 

The two leak-tubes will give you the proper size references 

Oh fuck me... My big-arse monitor and big-arse mug conspired to make a optical delusion, and Vince got caught in it.   



No, V... the mug is effing huge, like 32oz... because I need a lot of coffee to get my sorry old scaly dwagon arse moving in the morning. The camera is perfectly normal sized; here it is next to my G10 and my S700.

To give you some idea how big the mug is; those rulers at the top and bottom of it are accurate. I checked. 

mnem
and I hadda hike my sorry ass alla way down to the basement for my old Sony so I could take this pic... so I've already done my penance for gaslightin' ya, buddy.

[ch_scr]

are you talking about? This is a Canon, not some drug-store POS. 

mnem
 

Eh ? It looks minuscule on that pic  ! Doesn't it ?! 

Either that or it's the mug next to it that's 10 times the size of a normal mug, and can contain a gallon ?! 

The two leak-tubes will give you the proper size references 

Oh fuck me... My big-arse monitor and big-arse mug conspired to make a optical delusion, and Vince got caught in it.   



No, V... the mug is effing huge, like 32oz... because I need a lot of coffee to get my sorry old scaly dwagon arse moving in the morning. The camera is perfectly normal sized; here it is next to my G10 and my S700.

To give you some idea how big the mug is; those rulers at the top and bottom of it are accurate.

mnem
and I hadda hike my sorry ass alla way down to the basement for my old Sony so I could take this pic... so I've already done my penance for gaslightin' ya, buddy.

A liter?! Can't really believe that, does not look that large.

[factory]

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

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

David

I know it doesn't fit here, but it has nothing to do with renewable energy either. No one was actually discussing where the energy came from. It could have come from a coal fired powerstation.

McBryce.

Some pictures of that forum section showing my point, I guess EV was added and they didn't change the web address, to avoid forum problems. Clearly not much gets posted there, last post was two days ago. 

I'd opine that the best and greenest source of charging power for EVs would come from treadmills operated by persons sentenced to penal servitude with hard labour for making lamps out of AVO meters.

Urm, treadmills waste energy in normal operation, the one photonicinduction improved certainly did. 

David

[Cerebus]

So only a PEHV would make sense for me currently and given that I have been told, you cannot use a public charging point with them, just makes a mockery of buying a hybrid car.

Completely and utterly wrong (except possibly for some very early PHEVs that had unique power connectors before these were standardised [IEC 62196-1:2003] for all plug-in EVs including PHEVs).

[bd139]

The TE gods are not smiling upon me today. Got everything back together and STILL have no -15V. 

The only thing left is either the transformer or CR1472 has gone tits up. Measured transformer. 19.1VAC. Output from CR1472. 0 volts. There are no shorts. CR1472 is stone cold. It's dead Jim.

IIRC those get unpleasantly hot in normal operation.

Yes. If you have really low impedance capacitors they tend to go bang as well.

Not as hot as the bridges in the Hp 1740A though 

I don't think this bridge really had a chance to go bang with the new capacitor because there definitely was an open circuit. Mystery as to why it's gone. And yes, all the other bridges get very warm.

Already have the 465 parts mule pulled apart and it has several of what appears to be the same P/N bridges but I will check the parts list.

I wouldn’t replace it with a pulled one. They are a notorious weak point. Even the Chinese no brand ones are better now. I think I got a tube of 50 for the 1740A for the price of one Tek labelled part 

[mnementh]

A liter?! Can't really believe that, does not look that large.

That's just a guess, based on my Dragon paw mugs, which are 20 oz... let me go find a measuring cup... 

mnem
 

[Cerebus]

I'd opine that the best and greenest source of charging power for EVs would come from treadmills operated by persons sentenced to penal servitude with hard labour for making lamps out of AVO meters.

Urm, treadmills waste energy in normal operation, the one photonicinduction improved certainly did. 

David

What? Did you think we were going to let the bastards sleep?

[Cubdriver]

My HP boat anchors able to control the GPIB bus got a slave to play.



This HP7470A slept in the storage of an EEVblog member, who was willing to pack this little friend and send it over for small money.
The HP7470A has no carousel but is able to handle two pens nevertheless. It was the first paper-moving plotter ever.
And - different from the jounger brothers - it has the PSU included. Standard IEC13.




It arrived today.
I just chopped a felt marker at hand and printed a makeshift adapter.
The very first try just happened to work quite fine.



This old small guy ist quite fast: The plot was done in far less than minute.

Ooh nice! I have a 7475A that I swear I'll get running one day. Would love to send it vectors from Adobe Illustrator somehow.

I have a 7475A that I was puttering with a few weeks back, too.  The paper drive motor has an encoder issue (missing one of the output signals) and runs away at full bitch in test mode (startled the crap out of me the first time it happened - that sucker is LOUD flat out!).  The drive motor assembly has a board on it, but of course it's a 'replace as a unit' part so there's no documentation that I can find.  I'm hesitant to take it apart as the manual implies that setup requires special, unavailable adjustment procedure, so I don't want to muck with it until absolutely necessary.  I got a replacement LM393 to try replacing the one that's exposed, but of course put the plotter away while waiting for the (since arrived) comparators.  Pics and more effort on it later.

-Pat

[BU508A]

The TE gods are not smiling upon me today. Got everything back together and STILL have no -15V. 

The only thing left is either the transformer or CR1472 has gone tits up. Measured transformer. 19.1VAC. Output from CR1472. 0 volts. There are no shorts. CR1472 is stone cold. It's dead Jim.

IIRC those get unpleasantly hot in normal operation.

Yes. If you have really low impedance capacitors they tend to go bang as well.

Not as hot as the bridges in the Hp 1740A though 

I don't think this bridge really had a chance to go bang with the new capacitor because there definitely was an open circuit. Mystery as to why it's gone. And yes, all the other bridges get very warm.

Already have the 465 parts mule pulled apart and it has several of what appears to be the same P/N bridges but I will check the parts list.

I wouldn’t replace it with a pulled one. They are a notorious weak point. Even the Chinese no brand ones are better now. I think I got a tube of 50 for the 1740A for the price of one Tek labelled part 

I do agree. Those old rectifiers aren't not  as good as the modern ones. The combination of old rectifiers and modern capacitors can overload the diodes (peak current). If I had to replace the rectifier, I would certainly go for a modern one. And if the others get warm or hot as well, I would change them, too.

[Robert763]

Boooo. My Advantest R6144 DC Voltage/Current Generator is still throwing an Error 05. Checked all the chips it says to in the manual and all check out ok, except I can't test the Microcontroller (HD63B03RP) or the GPIB Bus Controller (TMS9914ANL).

I've found a local source for the microcontroller, but I doubt it's that as it needs to work to throw the code. My money is on the GPIB Bus Controller, but it seems China via Ebay is all I can find for sourcing so far....

That is of course if the fault isn't on the main board that does the actual voltage/current generation. I found a bunch of problems there and fixed what I found so far, but that shouldn't cause an error 05.



Too bad the only parts unit on Yahoo Auctions is listed for 10,000yen. Waayy too much for an obviously busted and tampered with unit (especially with no internal photos).... I could do with some spare parts...

I have a BER (display U/S) and useless (obsolete telcom digital test) bit of TEA with a TMS9914ANL in it. Do you want me to check postage to you?

If you can see what postage is to Japan easily enough, that would be appreciated.  I'll keep poking away and see if I can find exactly what's up, still hoping it's something relatively simple.......

Postage is expensive £4.20 (large letter, international standard). PM me if you want it. No rush, it's no going anywhere.