Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Robert763]

I've been a bit quiert on here of late.
Very busy at work and as we have family visiting this weekend lots of work from SWMBO. This included replacing the shower yesterday. On a TE note I spent a fair bit of the weekend working on a bit of custom TE for the day job. Can't say what. I used to do a fair bit of this but someone in accounts decided it was a bad idea but that seems to have gone away. Hopefully I'll get some more. keeps me busy and saves the company money...
@Zoli our local post office is still closed so your care package is delayed.
A VNA arrived in the post but I've not had a chance to play with it yet.

[Robert763]

Well, I finally got one! The fabled true 50ohm 1% Tektronix '012-0482-00' coax cable for my SG503. 
Courtesy of a seller in Kyiv, Ukraine (Yep, apparently the Ukraine postal service is making a point of still running!)
Found it for the cheapest price I've seen so far (but still too much, considering it's just a coax cable...), and still new in bag! 

Congrats! I ordered mine from the US and it wasn't very cheap (150 bucks IIRC). Damn you, Zenwizard Studios... you got me into this!   
Integral piece of calibration equipment.

1976 catalog price for this cable was like $16   (approx. $82 in 2022)

What is so special about it?
Electrical length? It can't be that stable as it uses BNCs.
I can't see whay any 36" good quality cable could not be used.

[Neper]

On the subject of fat in cooking, in this country where I am at the moment, they fry their pommes frites in duck fat.

Everything but vegetable fat. Makes them taste as if they had been cooked in dishwater. 

Real Belgian frites are cooked in beef fat.

[Specmaster]

Another YouTube channel I just found. Test gear tear downs. Very very good ones

https://youtube.com/user/alfa49alfa

Oh, just what I needed. Another time sink. NOT

That's fine, just watch the bits of interest, there will be something I'm sure.

Takes too long to find out. I can speedread at least 10* faster than people can speak. The time taken to load and skip thorugh a video and adverts is intolerable for "wonder if there's anythimg interesting".

What are these things you call "adverts?" Just get your self an adblocker for the computer and you save that time back. 

I thought google's yootoob adverts were difficult to avoid.

Well, I use Adblocker Ultimate and I don't get any adverts on YT at all.

Download it from here https://microsoftedge.microsoft.com/addons/detail/adblocker-ultimate/pciakllldcajllepkbbihkmfkikheffb

[DH7DN]

Well, I finally got one! The fabled true 50ohm 1% Tektronix '012-0482-00' coax cable for my SG503. 
Courtesy of a seller in Kyiv, Ukraine (Yep, apparently the Ukraine postal service is making a point of still running!)
Found it for the cheapest price I've seen so far (but still too much, considering it's just a coax cable...), and still new in bag! 

Congrats! I ordered mine from the US and it wasn't very cheap (150 bucks IIRC). Damn you, Zenwizard Studios... you got me into this!   
Integral piece of calibration equipment.

1976 catalog price for this cable was like $16   (approx. $82 in 2022)

What is so special about it?
Electrical length? It can't be that stable as it uses BNCs.
I can't see whay any 36" good quality cable could not be used.

According to a posting from Alan W2AEW at TekScope Groups, it's just a "good quality" 36" RG58-type cable, no magic involved.
I've performed some measurements with NanoVNA V2 Plus4 in comparison to a 40" RG58 cable. The cable has a very low SWR at 225 MHz (maybe because of the SG503 operating range?), besides that... 50 +/- 4 Ohm

Shameless self-promotion: https://physik.co-i60.com/2022/01/new-addition-to-the-lab-nanovna-v2-plus4/

[bd139]

On the subject of fat in cooking, in this country where I am at the moment, they fry their pommes frites in duck fat.

Everything but vegetable fat. Makes them taste as if they had been cooked in dishwater. 

Real Belgian frites are cooked in beef fat.

My grandmother cooked her chips in beef fat.

She died of heart failure at 72. I think her blood was probably lumpy 

[ch_scr]

Curious Marc has been at it again, this time real TEA content:

[AVGresponding]

Myself, I have a harem of the best controller ever made, so pretty much a non-issue until they're so worn out they fall apart: the 2nd gen XBox360 controller. Of course, no stoopit touchpad, so not user-friendly for you on PS4. 

EDIT: That said; the pot in most gimbals is just a voltage divider, so unless it's using one of the "speshul" 40-60° resistor tracks like some RC transmitters, you should be able to replace a 500Ω pot with a more common 1KΩ pot with very little trouble.

Cheers,

mnem
 

"The best controller ever made" varies depending on your hand size. With large hands you'd expect I'd prefer XBOX controllers, but I don't like them particularly. I find the button layout annoying (though perhaps not quite as annoying infuriating as the PS4 Share/Options buttons) and the "rumble" is laughable.

I don't want to use a different value in case it affects the taper; we're back with the "third party controllers never get the analogue right" problem here.

If the bean counters weren't in charge, maybe we'd get refined versions of the N64 analogue stick. Yes, they could have drift issues, but those were down to mechanical wear (an issue you could refine out, or at least down) which is almost always curable.

[AVGresponding]

On the subject of fat in cooking, in this country where I am at the moment, they fry their pommes frites in duck fat.

Everything but vegetable fat. Makes them taste as if they had been cooked in dishwater. 

Real Belgian frites are cooked in beef fat.

My grandmother cooked her chips in beef fat.

She died of heart failure at 72. I think her blood was probably lumpy 

My paternal grandmother was a traditional cook too, and she died at 102, a few weeks short of her 103rd birthday in fact. A lot of it has to do with your genetic luck of the draw.

[bd139]

Curious Marc has been at it again, this time real TEA content:

Curious Marc is just about the only YT channel left that isn't a total shite pile

[Specmaster]

You definitely don't want to funding this guy's TE murder activities with ad-revenue, RIP HP 212A.


David

Oh hell we should group shame that absolute bastard. Unsubscribed!!!

That's our very own oz2cpu
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/profile/?u=620870

Well, I guess each to his own, while I don't agree with his actions on the HP212A, he is certainly entitled to do as he pleases with it. Listening to him go on about it, I get the feeling that he is very much into modern compact gear that occupy little space. Perhaps he has a space issues, who knows. Personally, if I didn't have either the space for it or the need for it, I'd have flipped it because someone would have loved to have that on their bench 

Unscribing is something I won't be doing just on the basis of one video, I might be cutting my nose off to spite my face, there could well be hidden gems amongst his videos, such as that Multimeter Kyoritsu K-1420 Vacuum Tube Voltmeter 1970 test teardown video. I never knew that meter existed, and I'd love one to match up with my Kyoritsu K-1400 which has a superb dial and puts Avometers to shame for its clarity.

To my mind Colour is another thing that I ignore, what matters most is, does it work, does it do what I want it to,  is the price right for me and is it a boat anchor or not (I don't have the space for boat anchors). When I look at my gear, I see a sea of greys, beige, creams, bluey grey, blacks, brown, yellow and red. So a little green scope wouldn't put me off, I mean after all, I baulked at the idea of buying the Brymen 867s because it was red, similarly the same with my Fluke 27 and 85's because they were yellow. Now, I just accept them for what they are not on their colour.

[med6753]

That hp 212A looked absolutely pristine and he apparently made no attempt to bring it up. Blasphemy.

And then he becomes a tube rapist right on camera. Some people have no shame.

If he owns it it's his right to run over it with a steam roller if he wishes. 
You might think the guy knows not what he's doing however if you check his profile he's suitably qualified and experienced to make decisions about any HW in his ownership.

Can I run over him with a steam roller? 

Seriously, yes....he has every right to do with the equipment as he pleases. I often make that same decision. Fix it or junk it? But my "junk it" is almost always after there's an attempt to fix it. And certainly not something as pristine as that hp was.

It pretty much all looked pristine, the three I watched all worked too, making me think they all came from a deceased collector.
First impressions of this channel, it's like the complete opposite of Mr Carlson, where instead of repair, the working historic TE gets turned in bits.
I suspect most of the nice stuff, gets treated the same way by others too, only the stuff that looks to have been stored in the sea, gets on ePay.

David

It's pretty much apparent that his intention was to rip it down to bits right from the get go. For example....the large brown block that turned out to be a capacitor. He could have determined what it was by looking at the schematic....which I'm sure could have been easily obtained. Instead he rips it apart and yep, it's a capacitor. No shit Sherlock. Poor excuse for an engineer as far as I'm concerned. 

Edit, and Carlson may drone on and on. But at least the end result is a restoration, not a box of parts.

[BU508A]

Curious Marc has been at it again, this time real TEA content:

Curious Marc is just about the only YT channel left that isn't a total shite pile

***Me, looking at my YT channel list***

Well, I think there are a lot more good channels out there in the YT universe.

The Signal Path for example. Or W2AEW. Or Steve Mould. ...

[med6753]

The Signal Path for example.

If I had half his knowledge I'd be dangerous. 

[ch_scr]

Curious Marc is just about the only YT channel left that isn't a total shite pile

***Me, looking at my YT channel list***

Well, I think there are a lot more good channels out there in the YT universe.

The Signal Path for example. Or W2AEW. Or Steve Mould. ...

devttys0 has some great demonstrations, to bad he has no new content.
sm5bsz is absolutely crazy (in a good way), too bad nobody really understands what he's doing besides himself (but he really tries)
FeedbackLoop has good repair videos.

[Specmaster]

I know that there has been much testing done on batteries before, and that Dave has covered this topic at various times, however, I still thought that this one was rather interesting, and it also helps to explain just why they appear expensive, all explained at the end.

[tggzzz]

On the subject of fat in cooking, in this country where I am at the moment, they fry their pommes frites in duck fat.

Everything but vegetable fat. Makes them taste as if they had been cooked in dishwater. 

Real Belgian frites are cooked in beef fat.

My grandmother cooked her chips in beef fat.

She died of heart failure at 72. I think her blood was probably lumpy 

My father occasionally gave me something he had as a kid. A slice of bread with beef dripping.

Back then farmers won prizes for animals with the most fat.

[tggzzz]

Well, I finally got one! The fabled true 50ohm 1% Tektronix '012-0482-00' coax cable for my SG503. 
Courtesy of a seller in Kyiv, Ukraine (Yep, apparently the Ukraine postal service is making a point of still running!)
Found it for the cheapest price I've seen so far (but still too much, considering it's just a coax cable...), and still new in bag! 

Congrats! I ordered mine from the US and it wasn't very cheap (150 bucks IIRC). Damn you, Zenwizard Studios... you got me into this!   
Integral piece of calibration equipment.

Mine came free with one of the Tek1502s I've restored and flogged.

At least I had the wit to find out what it was before including it with the TDR Now I have to ensure that the sproglet doesn't throw out that uselessly short piece of TV cable.

If you want to know why it is good, login to Tekscopes on groups.io (if you need to signup, you don't belong in this thread  ) and see
https://groups.io/g/TekScopes/topic/31795268 "REVISED, UPDATED, EXPANDED, and IMPROVED Evaluation of the Tektronix 012-0482-00 cable for the SG503" REVISED, UPDATED, EXPANDED, and IMPROVED Evaluation of the Tektronix 012-0482-00 cable for the SG503

[vk6zgo]

On the subject of fat in cooking, in this country where I am at the moment, they fry their pommes frites in duck fat.

Everything but vegetable fat. Makes them taste as if they had been cooked in dishwater. 

Real Belgian frites are cooked in beef fat.

My grandmother cooked her chips in beef fat.

She died of heart failure at 72. I think her blood was probably lumpy 

My father occasionally gave me something he had as a kid. A slice of bread with beef dripping.

Back then farmers won prizes for animals with the most fat.

Delicious!--not the bland stuff you bought in the shops, though, but the results of a roast, with tiny bits of burnt/caramelised onion, beef itself, carrot, parsnips & pumpkin in it.
Best on a nice thick slice of German Rye Bread!

[tggzzz]

On the subject of fat in cooking, in this country where I am at the moment, they fry their pommes frites in duck fat.

Everything but vegetable fat. Makes them taste as if they had been cooked in dishwater. 

Real Belgian frites are cooked in beef fat.

My grandmother cooked her chips in beef fat.

She died of heart failure at 72. I think her blood was probably lumpy 

My father occasionally gave me something he had as a kid. A slice of bread with beef dripping.

Back then farmers won prizes for animals with the most fat.

Delicious!--not the bland stuff you bought in the shops, though, but the results of a roast, with tiny bits of burnt/caramelised onion, beef itself, carrot, parsnips & pumpkin in it.
Best on a nice thick slice of German Rye Bread!

Don't forget the small amount of dark gelatin with the strong umumi flavour (not that we knew umami existed then).

As for rye bread, I counted myself lucky that we could get delicious white bread from a baker, not the "Mother's Pride" plastic from a factory.

[bd139]

Been eating a lot of the Jasons bread at the moment you get in Waitrose. They do some nice loaves. And unlike the Waitrose in house bakery, they actually cook it properly.

Looking at these YouTube comments I may have to do some YT videos when I have moved with content that is:

1. To the point
2. Concise
3. Informative
4. Not attention driven
5. Respects equipment, not destroys it.

[mnementh]

Myself, I have a harem of the best controller ever made, so pretty much a non-issue until they're so worn out they fall apart: the 2nd gen XBox360 controller. Of course, no stoopit touchpad, so not user-friendly for you on PS4. 

EDIT: That said; the pot in most gimbals is just a voltage divider, so unless it's using one of the "speshul" 40-60° resistor tracks like some RC transmitters, you should be able to replace a 500Ω pot with a more common 1KΩ pot with very little trouble.

Cheers,

mnem
 

"The best controller ever made" varies depending on your hand size. With large hands you'd expect I'd prefer XBOX controllers, but I don't like them particularly. I find the button layout annoying (though perhaps not quite as annoying infuriating as the PS4 Share/Options buttons) and the "rumble" is laughable.

I don't want to use a different value in case it affects the taper; we're back with the "third party controllers never get the analogue right" problem here.

If the bean counters weren't in charge, maybe we'd get refined versions of the N64 analogue stick. Yes, they could have drift issues, but those were down to mechanical wear (an issue you could refine out, or at least down) which is almost always curable.

   https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/08/29/you-know-what-they-say


   https://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2001/11/28/the-rest-of-the-story

I have no idea what you're talking aboot.     But seriously... that was more than 2 decades ago... I think we need to let that meme die the ignominious death it so richly deserves.  As for "The best controller ever made"... if you ask the hardcore gamers... as in those who actually bother to go to gaming conventions like PAX, the top two answers are going to be XBOX360 & the current XBOX Elite controller with more than 50% combined... and the latter 40-45% gets divvied up between all other comers. Has been this way for over a decade... so much so it's a meme in its own right. PS controllers have always had a counterintuitive layout, especially for southpaws.

Technical issues... the pot will be linear taper in most gimbals, even the cheap ones used in game controllers. The only "weirdness" you'll have in most cases is some pots will have the resistor strip printed so it is only a 60-90° arc, as that is all that's used. The days when we used fixed resistors across a pot to vary the linearity of the output are long-past for decades now. Dual-rate, gain & exponential are all controlled in software.

I'd say your only option really... unless you're willing to commit some hot-air-gun abuse to make a bubble in the controller shell for a larger pot... is going to be Hall-Effect, then. I'd suggest you get that HE Nintendo controller from Amazon:   https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QJN8ZD9 and try it... odds are it will pair up with your PS4.  Then pop the cover off and eyeball the guts, then look for suitable substitutes for the HE gimbals, then send it back to Amazon for a refund.

Def worthwhile for your own R&D efforts, I'd say.

mnem

[mnementh]

85% Ground Beef... I'm worried, what's the other 15% made up of

The people sleep better when they don't know how laws and sausages are made.  (Otto von Bismarck)

"Parts is parts." ~ Frank Perdue

mnem

[tggzzz]

Been eating a lot of the Jasons bread at the moment you get in Waitrose. They do some nice loaves. And unlike the Waitrose in house bakery, they actually cook it properly.

Looking at these YouTube comments I may have to do some YT videos when I have moved with content that is:

1. To the point
2. Concise
3. Informative
4. Not attention driven
5. Respects equipment, not destroys it.

By observation, I have to conclude that 1 and 2 seem to be the attributes that few master.

Add "6. Has content that can only be shown in a video".

Old corporate videos were good examples, since they cost a lot to manufacture/replicate and watch.

[bd139]

Been eating a lot of the Jasons bread at the moment you get in Waitrose. They do some nice loaves. And unlike the Waitrose in house bakery, they actually cook it properly.

Looking at these YouTube comments I may have to do some YT videos when I have moved with content that is:

1. To the point
2. Concise
3. Informative
4. Not attention driven
5. Respects equipment, not destroys it.

By observation, I have to conclude that 1 and 2 seem to be the attributes that few master.

Add "6. Has content that can only be shown in a video".

Old corporate videos were good examples, since they cost a lot to manufacture/replicate and watch.

I tend to do presentations like 1950s army training films for that reason.

If a video didn't cost much it's not worth much. It takes a lot of time and planning to do even a 5 minute video. Which is the problem now.

I have a list of topics. The first thing I want to do is evolving a small-signal BJT model from concepts, applying it to a design and building a reusable design tool out of it. That's engineering not maker crap.