Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

OK, but what makes the Type 422 so special?

No...you can't have mine. 

No ICs. A late 453 will suffice too 

The 454 has none too and you get 150MHz B/W in the deal as opposed to only 50MHz B/W in the 453.

[bd139]

Stop encouraging me 

[mansaxel]

Fortunately, by applying contact cleaner and cleaning all the residue off the board the situation seems to improve quite a bit. Most keys are actually responsive now, but some (the increment button and some number keys) still seem to need some, uhm, convincing. In spite of that now the instrument is actually useable without frustration!! I've also tested modulation and everything works great.

Those are the "West" switches. You do not take the switch off the board. The steel spring strip comes out from the front and needs a little reshaping.

There is a good video from CuriousMarc on the 3325A which also has the West switches: https://youtu.be/kYV7oWQTfVI .

I think you can get all you need from it, in terms of caring for West switches. One thing I've seen him do, but not in a video I can find right now, is to lift out the buckling springs, flip them over and reinserting them, thereby prolonging key life and restoring the proper key feel.

[tggzzz]

BTW Google shut my account down due to a fuck up migrating away from GSuite which caused me to lose everything. Never trust the bastards!

Quite right.

That's why I use IMAP to mirror my gmail folders on my machine. If gmail or Thunderbird go away, I could still use any old email client to access (multi gigabyte!) mbox files.

[tggzzz]

Typically the moment I am about to drop a load of stuff on eBay because it's the only items there, some bastards have listed other copies of the material. Looks like I'm moving with it  . Really should avoid the hamfests for a bit 

On that, having to skip Newbury annoyingly because of some property handover shite on that day 

You'll probably sell it. The £30 auction one is only for 3 days, and then it will become too expensive to relist. The £60 one is untested. Your's is well displayed.

... and you did sell the Blackstar 2010

[bd139]

Typically the moment I am about to drop a load of stuff on eBay because it's the only items there, some bastards have listed other copies of the material. Looks like I'm moving with it  . Really should avoid the hamfests for a bit 

On that, having to skip Newbury annoyingly because of some property handover shite on that day 

You'll probably sell it. The £30 auction one is only for 3 days, and then it will become too expensive to relist. The £60 one is untested. Your's is well displayed.

... and you did sell the Blackstar 2010

Yes I did indeed. Too yellow for the bench 


Anyway on that note, I'm actually now packing all TE away for the move. No activity for the next month or so while I shuffle crap. All eBay searches disabled and purchasing stopped until complete. 

[bd139]

BTW Google shut my account down due to a fuck up migrating away from GSuite which caused me to lose everything. Never trust the bastards!

Quite right.

That's why I use IMAP to mirror my gmail folders on my machine. If gmail or Thunderbird go away, I could still use any old email client to access (multi gigabyte!) mbox files.

I found an easier solution was to just delete all emails. I have four things in my inbox. Two things I ordered off Amazon. One thing I ordered from Tayda and an EEVblog PM I have to respond to yet.

I'm using Apple's iCloud mail service at the moment. Everything works across iPad, iPhone and Mac exactly the same and it supports custom domains.

At the mercy of convenience without the risk of loss or the baggage of retention

[PA0PBZ]

So total we have 48KB of RAM. But where is the F/W stored, that implements all the extra features ? No EPROM on the board, strange...
I see a chip that might be a micro-controller, so I thought maybe it holds the F/W... it's SCN2661, found the datasheet... oh no, no MCU, just a standalone UART controller to drve the serial port...

So... that means the F/W is stored in RAM ?!!    How evil , twisted do you have to be to do that !
So when the batteries go, I don't just lose the user data/ waveforms stored in the RAM, I also lose the brains of the module, it bricks it !

Wow... I am truly amazed and shocked.... 

Vince,

I don't think there is any firmware in the module, the module is just the parallel and serial ports and the extra storage. The storage is needed for the extra functionality which is already built into the firmware of the scope.

[tggzzz]

Typically the moment I am about to drop a load of stuff on eBay because it's the only items there, some bastards have listed other copies of the material. Looks like I'm moving with it  . Really should avoid the hamfests for a bit 

On that, having to skip Newbury annoyingly because of some property handover shite on that day 

You'll probably sell it. The £30 auction one is only for 3 days, and then it will become too expensive to relist. The £60 one is untested. Your's is well displayed.

... and you did sell the Blackstar 2010

Yes I did indeed. Too yellow for the bench 

Wot, no H₂O₂? I would have thought you kept T-Stoff around to mix with C-Stoff, or are those days behind you?

Anyway, time to have a bath then go and pick up five meters I might even try to have a haircut in order to look less like a ham.

[Specmaster]

Why a HM103 and not a 203 or 207? (Meant the 205)

Tiny and cute and has the component tester still 

Edit: apparently I am an idiot. It’s the HM307 that is tiny and cute 

Edit, you been out in the sun too long.., the 103 and the 307 are I believe the same size but only the 103 has the component tester.

[med6753]

Yes I did indeed. Too yellow for the bench 

That's why the horrible Fluke beige got painted. Except the 8060A and 8021B handhelds. 

[Ice-Tea]

Hmmpppfff.. Pile of Fluke 80i-1010 current clamps. None of them work as they should to various degrees. I don't think they made them themselves anyone know the OEM? Or has a manual?

[TERRA Operative]

Wow many thanks!!

I must confess you made it look very easy. I will continue to practice with the second hand board before touching anything in the one already installed.

I feel it is quite likely the problem here is myself, my manual skills tend to leave a lot to be desired.

Oooh, I've had a lot of practice with these switches!... 

You will too if you keep buying HP gear!   
The good thing is that once you tweak the switches, they are good for another few ages.

[Peter_O]

Wow many thanks!!

I must confess you made it look very easy. I will continue to practice with the second hand board before touching anything in the one already installed.

I feel it is quite likely the problem here is myself, my manual skills tend to leave a lot to be desired.

Oooh, I've had a lot of practice with these switches!... 

You will too if you keep buying HP gear!   
The good thing is that once you tweak the switches, they are good for another few ages.

A video of Curious Marc gives quite a good impression of the West Keys and repair:

https://youtu.be/kYV7oWQTfVI?t=199

[Vince]

..................And it's was freaking 3H13, was supposed to be in bed wasn't I !! 

Piss off to bed Vince and get some  as you're getting too old for all nighters, trust me I know.
C'mon, your precious new HPAK will still be there when you awake. 

Yes but I can't help... when I am doing stuff at the bench, it's like a drug... I just can't stop. As long as I have juice left I just keep going until I am completely depleted....

However regardless of age, I have never, ever been able to skip sleep. The youngsters that can party all night long, not sleep and then go to work the next morning and are able to perform until the evening 'til they leave work... I have NEVER been able to do that !

20 years ago when I was 25 or so, I remember I fooled myself, once, into thinking I COULD. Was working in my lab/living room on my OBD scanner project, at 5AM I thought yeah I am fine, let's keep going, soon the sun will rise and it will be alright. Well no. The sun did rise of course because well... it always does. However that didn't do much for me, and at 10AM I was like ... POOF ! Like an ON/OFF switch, I fell asleep  all of a sudden, out of nowhere, like you flick a switch ! I was completely depleted... luckily I was unemployed like I am today, so I did not have to go to any work... I could just .. sleep peacefully.

So I KNOW I can't make it through the night, I know it's pointless to try to work all night long, because I know full well that at 10AM or noon at "best", I WILL fall asleep eventually.

Plus, now I am job searching, I need to be up at 9AM worst case, so I can at least answer the phone which could potentially ring any time of the day. If I can't be reached before 2PM, that won't leave a good impression will it...

[Cerebus]

BTW Google ... Never trust the bastards!

Never a truer word said.

[Robert763]

TEA arrival
Box appeared today. Od and battered cardboard, poor packing 
Bonus is presence of front and rear transit covers which did their job.
It's the R&S Tektronix CMD-80 cell phone tester. Boots OK from the spinning rust and has OCXO option 
Only very old US and Asian phone standards, no renerall purpose RF generation 
Dispaly is OK. So this one is going to be broken to support  repair of a CMS-33 (display, knob).
The covers are too wide for the CMS-33 but as they are polyethelyene I may try a "cut and shut" job with plastic welding on one.
 

[Ice-Tea]

Bingo!



...

Gonna need it.

[Vince]

Sorry Vince, they did already make the big switch.

The A220 (C-Series) fuselage is carbon, including the wing root.  The wing is carbon as well.

I keep searching on the web but everything I find says otherwise ?! 
Carbon wings yes (though I don't have the details... is it just the skin, or also the two spars and all the ribs ?)   but the center fuselage section, which holds the CWN of course, and represents pretty much the entire fuselage/cabin section on a small aircraft like the A220... every site I see says it's still made of aluminium ?!
So the big jump still not made as far as I can see   

Anyway, soon enough Airbus will cough the cash to make the jump, it's just the next logical step to keep that A/C competitive in the long term.

Okay okay, the manufacturing plant is really more of an assembly plant to put the chunks of carbon together.  Everyone works with partners these days.

Well same for Airbus or any big industrial project, it's just how the industry works these days... subcontract, subcontract, have a bunch of slaves do the work for you and lower prices... and when the economy goes down you don't have to fire any of your own troops, you just say to the subcontractors "Sorry no work for you anymore, you can fire all your employees, not my problem ! "
....so I was fired a year ago that way.. suck to be a subcontractor, you don't get neither the money nor the job security, it's lose-lose !

I have been on the line to see it in person.

So you could see the naked/bare center section and center wing box, no paint (on the inside at least), and it's composite ?
Why does the entire internet lie 
I would ask for pics of that but of course they normally don't allow for that... at least they don't at Airbus.


Here is a shot of the A350 fuselage, did it look like that in the center fuselage of the A220 ? All brown/carbon every where, including all the stringers and frames (bar the two that surround the PAX doors of course, still aluminium) ??

[Vince]

EDIT :

Google Image found me some pics of the A220 fuselage at Mirabel  :

Looks classic full aluminium construction to me... green primer inside gives it away. The shape of the stringers as well. shape of the gussets / clips linking the skin to the frames as well. Also the way the stringers are connected to the skin. Here you can see the lines of rivets / stitching along the stringers. On the 350/carbon the stringers in the cabin are very wide, shaped like an Omega, and are epoxied / glued onto the skin then cured as one piece in a giant autoclave. There are no rivets or fastener of any kind holding the stringers to the skin.

They used brown primer on the outside as used on the 350, maybe to fool the public into thinking it's carbon as well... PR / Marketing exercise I don't know...

Obviously the picture is blurry and Airbus might have done things  completely differently on the A220, I don't know so.... maybe I am all BS sorry. I am just going by the evidence and info I can find and my experience and knowledge of carbon A/C based on the 350 I was working on, and it all seem to agree. 

[xrunner]

Looks classic full aluminium construction to me... green primer inside gives it away. The shape of the stringers as well. shape of the gussets / clips linking the skin to the frames as well. Also the way the stringers are connected to the skin. Here you can see the lines of rivets / stitching along the stringers. On the 350/carbon the stringers are epoxied / glued onto the skin then cured as one piece in the giant autoclave. There are no rivets or fastener of any kind holding the stringers ot the skin.

They used brown primer on the outside as used on the 350, maybe to fool the public into thinking it's carbon as well... PR / Marketing exercise I don't know...

What level of the construction holds pressure? Another set of skin that goes in next? It's not the part we see now is it?

[bd139]

Resistor dev kit arrived:



I have to credit Tayda and DHL here. Ordered 2080 items in 63 line items on Monday evening. Dispatched Tuesday morning from Thailand. Arrived Thursday morning. No customs or duty to pay. Total cost was £37.64 paid 

There are NO MISTAKES in the entire order. I just spent 30 minutes checking it.

If this was CPC half the bags would be empty or have the wrong things in them 

[Vince]

Looks classic full aluminium construction to me... green primer inside gives it away. The shape of the stringers as well. shape of the gussets / clips linking the skin to the frames as well. Also the way the stringers are connected to the skin. Here you can see the lines of rivets / stitching along the stringers. On the 350/carbon the stringers are epoxied / glued onto the skin then cured as one piece in the giant autoclave. There are no rivets or fastener of any kind holding the stringers ot the skin.

They used brown primer on the outside as used on the 350, maybe to fool the public into thinking it's carbon as well... PR / Marketing exercise I don't know...

What level of the construction holds pressure? Another set of skin that goes in next? It's not the part we see now is it?

Well yes it is ! What you see on the pic is all there is to see from an airframe point of view (for the passenger cabin shown here at least) ! The skin of an A/C is just that, a thin panel strengthened by those stringers and frames, that's it.  Needs to be light and simple otherwise it just won't fly ! 

Anything else is just  and  decoration inside to make it pretty and convenient for the passengers. Next step is fitting blankets over the skin to insulate it from the freezing -60°C outside temperature at cruising altitude, because airliners don't want to freeze / kill their customers... dead customers aren't repeat customers ! 
Then you route the electrical harnesses, then the HVAC ducts to keep you warm and comfy, the you hide all that misery with thin white fiber glass trim panels because people don't want to see blankets  and wires and ducts. Then if you want to be fancy you put carpets on the floor, seats, and bob's your uncle !! 

Hell you don't even need to bother with all that decoration and comfort if you just want a cargo/freight version of the plane ! 

[Vince]

Resistor dev kit arrived:



I have to credit Tayda and DHL here. Ordered 2080 items in 63 line items on Monday evening. Dispatched Tuesday morning from Thailand. Arrived Thursday morning. No customs or duty to pay. Total cost was £37.64 paid 

There are NO MISTAKES in the entire order. I just spent 30 minutes checking it.

If this was CPC half the bags would be empty or have the wrong things in them 

Wow, that was quick indeed !!! 
Took longer for my scope to be delivered from 500kms away 

Such a good value for money as well !

Fits my limited budget very well.... looks like I might give that Tayda a try for my resistor kit as well...sounds like a winner.

[McBryce]

Bingo!



...

Gonna need it.

Did they give you a price per kilo for those?? What are you going to do with that many current clamps (other than satisfy your TEA addiction for a further 48 hours)?

McBryce.