Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mansaxel]

On-topic content:

Today I picked up a hp 5372A in running condition for work, from forum member bsdphk. Buying TE for ${EMPLOYER}'s money. There are few things more satisfying. Especially since the traditional service department is downsizing aggressively and reducing the use of TE and servicing skills in favour of tossing broken things and buying new.

In all fairness, BD was spot on when he described modern electronics as essentially unrepairable. There is not much a normal service department can do beyond swapping PCB's. And to do that, you seldom require TE; it is mostly enough to have a paint-by-numbers fault-finding guide.

Anyway, I need the 5372A to properly diagnose my network. We've come full circle, and need the precision it offers to get things verified. I also hope that I can get some text and pictures out to dispel the voodoo that is "timing transmission over stochastic networks". I feel there are some presentations waiting to be written and held.

The enheavyment-enabling rear suspension enhancement on the car is worth its investment, so very much.

[Saskia]

got a Husqvarna 130 tree moped today.

[tautech]

After signing out last evening a toddy of vodka and dry was the plan and a few minutes in front of the goggle box before retiring however there was Callahan from '76 with his 44 Mag and not to watch it would've been plain rude.
So Monday nights are Dirty Harry nights for a few weeks here, ain't watched that stuff in years. 

The .44 Magnum. A truly insane cartridge. Having shot them from a genuine Dirty Harry S&W Model 29 revolver with the 8 inch barrel, I wouldn't think of using just one hand when firing it. The recoil is like stopping a train! It's quite easy to be accurate with it though, as long as you take single shots to allow some time to recover your senses before the next deafening explosion!

 

The contrast when shooting .45 ACP cartridges with the classic Colt M1911 pistol and its comparatively stubby 5 inch barrel couldn't be more striking. I could get good groupings at 25 metres standing with the Model 29. Hitting anything smaller than a barn door at 25 metres with the M1911 was a real challenge. Partly because of the short barrel, but also because despite the fact I'm right handed, I shoot left handed which means I end up dodging the cartridges as they get ejected from the side of the Colt and fly past dangerously close to my eye.

well, hubby and me used to double tap with the .44 Mag. I did sell my .500 S&W (the one with a 2.75" barrel, no comp, cuz nobody would let me try it on their range.

Had a buddy years ago had a Ruger Super Blackhawk in 44 Mag.  Was a joy to shoot, even 1 handed.  The way the revolver naturally rolled in your hand greatly reduced felt recoil.  I had an M1911 chambered in .38 Super Auto.  Had adjustable sights installed and it was pleasant to shoot and accurate enough to keep all shots on paper targets at 25 yards.  I remember being at an outdoor range once back in the day and some poser had one of those .500 S&W.  He couldn't hit paper 15 feet in front of him as he flinched badly every time he pulled the trigger.  Wonder if he was compensating for something.    Then again, I did have a Dan Wesson
357 with the 4 and 8 in heavy vent barrels.  Maybe I was compensating.  Nah. Tautech, I also owned a Beretta 945 .22 pocket pistol back then.  Stinger hypervelocity ammo would punch quarter sized holes in steel lockers at 10 feet.  I miss that one.

Not having done much with one hand guns I'm sure technique has an awful lot to do with the accuracy one can deliver and for the little I've done always the lesser recoiling one provided the best accuracy for my skill level = not much.
This was forefront in my mind when in Phuket Thailand for our older Larry Majors wedding in 2014 when with a little time to kill we were all dragged along to a shooting range and when offered all manners of calibers for some 10m pistol work I selected the very tolerable 38 Special which punched the first 2 shots to the right of the bull and attempting to counteract this with the next shot didn't get the right result and only made the group look worse. 
So back to the hold started with to empty the thing and then to be highly amused by the look on the range attendants face after he wound the targets back in. All but the attempted correction shot were in one ragged hole for which he did a treble take before handing over the target with a good grin.

The little Beretta, what staggered me about it was that it was 5 different weapons each based on what you fed it.
We didn't have any Stinger that day but Laser sure woke the thing up but it would cycle anything from Shorts to the Laser, amazing as most auto rifles won't do that and for sure my 10/22 won't.

Anyway, back to getting a tidy bench arranged for when a customer calls with his busted scope to see what's wrong with it while he waits. Get ya  ready !

[tautech]

got a Husqvarna 130 tree moped today.

Oh the little Orange baby of the fleet.
Our Larry Major in Perth has one for his camping trips and gathering some wood for his outside burner thing...what are them things called.....and anyways it seems to have served him pretty well although a massive step down from the 90cc Husky I'd built him outta spare parts before he left these shores for Aussie skirt.

[mnementh]

Of all the chainsaws I've owned in half a century on this mudball... the only one I actually miss is grand-dad's PowerMac 6. It just worked, and the colder it was the better it ran.

mnem
*mnemories*

[duckduck]

TEA in use:

I bought a Kenwood UHF radio off of ebay. I programmed it to transmit on GMRS channel 01 (the Federal Communications Commission says it should be FM wide-band at 462.5625 MHz) using low power (4W). Almost all radios use 50 Ohm antennas. I tested the (low) power with a cheap SWR/power/freq meter.

So, does this radio transmit on the right frequency? I plugged it into my frequency counter (through a 10W 20dB attenuator) and it looks like it is outputting on 462.56256 MHz (last digit flip/flops due to expected digital capture error). Switching the display from MHz to kHz simply "moves" the view of the captured frequency over several digits, allowing the last three digits to be read. Nothing is calibrated, so who knows what it really is, but that's certainly a good sign.

Just for shiggles and gits, I plugged it into my Rigol DS1202Z-E (200 MHz, 1 GSamples/s). It actually captures a waveform of the correct frequency. Good to know. The radio should be outputting something closely resembling a sine wave (frequency modified). I assume that the displayed waveform is deformed due to the scope not grabbing enough points quickly enough.

I scared myself. When I first plugged the radio into the scope, the Rigol was reading 600V p-p, or something equally crazy. Very quickly I realized that that couldn't be right because something would have blown up. Previously I had viewed mains or power tranny output using my differential probe. I dialed it back from 100x to 1x and things made more sense.

This was a nice exercise for me in computing power levels through an attenuator (to keep from blowing my best TE up), and period vs frequency (to verify scope reading).

I organized my RF adapters the other night. It's now a little crystal of organization in the Abyss of Messiness.

EDIT:

"OVER" light is lit on frequency counter when input freq is too high for selected range. This is expected when measuring 462 MHz in the kHz range.

EDIT EDIT:

More info about digits on the counter here (see pix of manual):

New acquisition:

Wilson WFC-500-E frequency counter
<SNIP>

EDIT^3:

I now grok dB amplification / attenuation for voltage levels. What a wonderful system someone came up with. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel#History

EDIT^4:

Counter TCXO warmed up some more and it reads 462.56251.

[Zoli]

...

Monty Python aside, I've read that a true Canadian is in fact one who knows how to make love in a canoe. One of many skills I hoped to learn up there, but alas... the dwagon family did not make it past the bureaucracy. 

mnem
 

I'm too old(and fat) for this kind of acrobacies, I'll leave it to the young titans; I'll stay with a (not so)short trip in  a row-boat from the time when I was still full of piss and vinegar 

[Vince]

COMPONENT SORTING


I just finished sorting that lot of 25 DIP 8 packages I had.

Still a few I can't find a datasheet for... if someone has one in his computer or file cabinet...

- K1150PG   Well, DIP6 not DIP8, OK.... found many papers from Vishay stating it's one of their opto-couplers. So... Vishay optocoupler it is. However can't find a datasheet for it 

- 1444A and 1444G.  I found that they are ancient RTC chips made by a company that went by the name of " Eurosil ". Can't find a datasheet. All I could find is personal websites saying these chips were unreliable and that it's impossible to find a datasheet for them, ahem...


Other than that, found some cool stuff :

- 6N136 : super fast optocoupler, given for 1Mbps
- SHARP S12ME1 , a photo... THYRISTOR (400V 200mA RMS )!!!!    Yes, apparently such things exist... maybe they make photo triacs as well...
- a RS 485/422 transceiver.
- DS1302 : RTC chip again. This time more recent I think, no trouble finding a datasheet for it, in PDF / modern form as well, not a crappy vintage scan.
- X9313W 10K 32 step digital potentiometer

[Neomys Sapiens]

Regarding the Tek scope setup, I aquired an additional P6245 1.5GHz active probe for 150€ with another one, whose head is held together by tape only, as a free spare.
Just in time, as I can't use the probes of the company TDS7354 and someone noticed that I recently aquired a calibrated scope for myself and suggested that I could perform a urgently needed measurement at home. 
But don't think that I tricked myself in this matter, as the setup time for the measurement will include the performance verification etc. of the new probes and some other stuff that I can now do without undue haste while getting paid.

In other news, Vince's recent post about his I-H OPAs made me notice that my last round of sample requests, which were not for direct consumption at work, lies almost a year in the past. So I started with a maxed out shopping cart at Renesas focused on fast and precision OPAs including some TO99 and Cerdip hermetics, which was duly approved.
Next on the list is ADI, as they have some very interesting new HV OPAs, which I intend to be complemented with some RF parts. At TI, I think I'll focus on parts which I already have but whose stock I deem useful to bolster a bit.
And hey, even longer since I called on the resources of Broadcom (formerly Avago/HP), so there we go.
And I really should not let that much time pass before hitting on them again!
Muahahaha! 

[Neomys Sapiens]

COMPONENT SORTING


I just finished sorting that lot of 25 DIP 8 packages I had.

Still a few I can't find a datasheet for... if someone has one in his computer or file cabinet...

- K1150PG   Well, DIP6 not DIP8, OK.... found many papers from Vishay stating it's one of their opto-couplers. So... Vishay optocoupler it is. However can't find a datasheet for it 

- 1444A and 1444B.  I found that they are ancient RTC chips made by a company that went by the name of " Eurosil ". Can't find a datasheet. All I could find is personal websites saying these chips were unreliable and that it's impossible to find a datasheet for them, ahem...


Other than that, found some cool stuff :

- 6N136 : super fast optocoupler, given for 1Mbps
- SHARP S12ME1 , a photo... THYRISTOR (400V 200mA RMS )!!!!    Yes, apparently such things exist... maybe they make photo triacs as well...
- DS1302 : RTC chip again. This time more recent I think, no trouble finding a datasheet for it, in PDF / modern form as well, not a crappy vintage scan.
- a RS 485/422 transceiver.

I'm not sure where Vishay aquired their optoelectronic line, but the only OC with a leading K which I have (K8031P) is an old TFK part, so maybe your K1150PG could be one too?

[Neomys Sapiens]

I organized my RF adapters the other night. It's now a little crystal of organization in the Abyss of Messiness.

Duckduck, you've got some work (and expense) cut out for you! I can only make sense of that puny collection when I assume that you want to share it's continued growth!

[mnementh]

...In other news, Vince's recent post about his I-H OPAs made me notice that my last round of sample requests, which were not for direct consumption at work, lies almost a year in the past. So I started with a maxed out shopping cart at Renesas focused on fast and precision OPAs including some TO99 and Cerdip hermetics, which was duly approved.
Next on the list is ADI, as they have some very interesting new HV OPAs, which I intend to be complemented with some RF parts. At TI, I think I'll focus on parts which I already have but whose stock I deem useful to bolster a bit.
And hey, even longer since I called on the resources of Broadcom (formerly Avago/HP), so there we go.
And I really should not let that much time pass before hitting on them again!
Muahahaha! 

You want to look into TI's Constant-Current LED Sink Drivers. I've used them for some custom backlighting projects back in the day; but some of them can actually sink enough current for other nefarious purposes.

mnem

[Vince]

COMPONENT SORTING

I just finished sorting that lot of 25 DIP 8 packages I had.

Still a few I can't find a datasheet for... if someone has one in his computer or file cabinet...

- K1150PG   Well, DIP6 not DIP8, OK.... found many papers from Vishay stating it's one of their opto-couplers. So... Vishay optocoupler it is. However can't find a datasheet for it 

[...]

I'm not sure where Vishay aquired their optoelectronic line, but the only OC with a leading K which I have (K8031P) is an old TFK part, so maybe your K1150PG could be one too?

Yes you must be right. One of the Vishay papers I found actually says " Vishay - Telefunken " in the top right corner of the page / header ....

[Cerebus]

Just for shiggles and gits, I plugged it into ...

Imagine a traditional shop in Victorian style, perhaps in a side street in Spitalfields, London. Over the front is a classic hand painted sign, painted with gold leaf on the reverse of glass:

Shiggles & Gits Limited
Purveyors of Scientific and Electrikal Instruments and Machines
Suppliers to Learned Institutions, Universities, and Private Enquirers into the Nature of the World

[Vince]

COMPONENT SORTING

I just finished sorting that lot of 25 DIP 8 packages I had.

Still a few I can't find a datasheet for... if someone has one in his computer or file cabinet...

- K1150PG   Well, DIP6 not DIP8, OK.... found many papers from Vishay stating it's one of their opto-couplers. So... Vishay optocoupler it is. However can't find a datasheet for it 

[...]

I'm not sure where Vishay aquired their optoelectronic line, but the only OC with a leading K which I have (K8031P) is an old TFK part, so maybe your K1150PG could be one too?

Yes you must be right. One of the Vishay papers I found actually says " Vishay - Telefunken " in the top right corner of the page / header ....

Best I could find is that Italian website that sells one :

https://www.tectron.it/product/24744534/soc1012-k1150pg-optoacc-gv-280-830600011400-cny17

The title of the ad suggests (?) that this K1150PG is also known as a CNY17 ?!

CNY17 is a valid Vishay optocoupler part number, there is a datasheet for that.

So I guess I will presume Vishay renamed the old Telefunken K1150PG... into a CNY17 " Vishay " product...

That does not tell me what " CTR bin " my chip is, though, but I guess I can't ask for too much eh...

[tggzzz]

COMPONENT SORTING
- 6N136 : super fast optocoupler, given for 1Mbps

IIRC used in Datron 10x1 meters, and probably elsewhere.

Not sure if failure mode is aging while energised, or simply aging.

[TERRA Operative]

When I turn around, this is what I see....

I am ashamed. 

But I'm working through it, if only people would stop listing tasty gear on Yahoo Auctions....



[EDIT] Oooh, I just noticed an empty spot at the top of the cupboard.... I'll have to deal with that... 

In Japan space is always at a premium, right?

In Tokyo, yep. Where I used to live there was absolutely no garden, no space on the block. Some houses on the street have no place to even park a car (you'd have to rent a car park from someone with a vacant block down the street) and have the front door open directly onto the street, the door jamb is literally right up against the gutter on the side of the street. It's not uncommon here...

My house is further out in Chiba though, it means I have to drive an hour and a half to work each day (I work practically dead center of Tokyo, a short walk from Tokyo Station) but it means I have a reasonable sized house with an actual yard and somewhere to park my car.

[med6753]

When I turn around, this is what I see....

I am ashamed. 

But I'm working through it, if only people would stop listing tasty gear on Yahoo Auctions....



[EDIT] Oooh, I just noticed an empty spot at the top of the cupboard.... I'll have to deal with that... 

In Japan space is always at a premium, right?

In Tokyo, yep. Where I used to live there was absolutely no garden, no space on the block. Some houses on the street have no place to even park a car (you'd have to rent a car park from someone with a vacant block down the street) and have the front door open directly onto the street, the door jamb is literally right up against the gutter on the side of the street. It's not uncommon here...

My house is further out in Chiba though, it means I have to drive an hour and a half to work each day (I work practically dead center of Tokyo, a short walk from Tokyo Station) but it means I have a reasonable sized house with an actual yard and somewhere to park my car.

OK, but given Japan's excellent rail system why don't you utilize that to get to work?

Or is it you don't like being packed in like a sardine? 

[TERRA Operative]

I used to take the train, but I don't fancy marinating in coronavirus...

Plus, I get to and from work on my schedule, it takes the same amount of time anyway, works out cheaper (I drive a hybrid) and I don't have to be near other people.

Also, did I mention that I don't have to be near other people?

[mnementh]

My grandmomma took that to a bit more extreme measures:

"Iff'n you kin see yer neighbors from your front yard, they're too damned close."

mnem
"Lovey... maybe it's time to buy a farm in upstate New York." ~grand-dad

[mnementh]

And Now For Something Completely... ON TOPIC!



Hi-def HP 54621D pr0n: ARCHIVE: HP 54621D Mainboard Pics

I took oodles of pics of the 54621D mainboard while I was trying to reverse-engineer the video.  Instead of shrinking them all to fit in here nice & friendly, I made an archive of the pics one post at a time so I could keep the res as high as possible.

mnem
 

[med6753]

Also, did I mention that I don't have to be near other people?

That in itself makes it worth it. 

[mnementh]

WARNING: HP 54621D to 54600A MONITOR HACKAGE MEGA-POST!

So this all started back here somewhere when I had the silly idea that it might be easy-ish to convince the CDM-7SF191 from my 54600A to make believe it's a CDM-7SX191 that my 54621D can talk to... 

Uggghhh...

Okies... anybody got any tech ref on the monitors used in these HP scopes? I understand the difference between the two implementations is the 54621D and family use 32-grayscale palette, while the 54600A and family use a 2-grayscale palette.

54645A/54600A use HP 2090-0316/DataRay CDM-7SF191, the 54621D uses HP 2090-0384/DataRay CDM-7SX191. My searches in the available HP SMs and on the internet turned up bupkis.

Before I go guessing based on poking around with my scope, does anybody here have actual pinouts and or schematic for these monitors?

Tomorrow I figured I'd start looking at the  CLIP package from the 54645A and see what I can find there. Maybe lookit the video chip on each and see if I can find some datasheets. 

mnem
 

I'm would be surprized if they aren't interchangeable, they look to be standard bought-in monochrome monitors to me, the different greyscaling would be something done in the video processing, on the mainboard and the output just a video signal.
Certainly I saw the video signal on the diagrams for the 54645A, that was posted a few weeks back. I think the other connections are power (+15V?), an external pot for brightness, can't remember what else there is. The chip on the Hitachi CDM-7SF191 board in my 54615B is a uPC1379C, this is a sync signal processor IC intended for small B/W & color TVs and does the vertical & horizontal stuff, that is done by more discrete parts on the earlier scope displays (the only one that a diagram seems available for).David

Yeeah, I'm not sure. IIRC, these are actually a TTL digital input monitor, so not that simple. I need to do some research. 

mnem
 

Neck board has an added 74S03, so maybe 16 new shades of gray.

CNC industry have had small screens for quite some time.
Possibly already have an almost ready replacement LCD.

The 7403 is on the CDM-7SF191 in the 54645A/54600A/54615B, the newer CDM-7SX191 looks to use one or two transistors instead. The larger monitor boards look to use a similar signal processor IC, layout has changed a bit, need to find better pictures.

The boards in my CDM-7SF191 from 54615B, taken before the re-capicide.



Pictures of CDM-7SX191 from ePay listing.




David

That all came to a head with this weekend of tinker-dwagon-ing...

On the Bench ALL OVER the EFFING BENCH Tonight...



A few days ago I got a bug up my arse to make a debugging breakout for the 54600A/54621D J900 connector; I needed to be able to get probes on with the monitor live and I needed to be able to insert a substitute BRIGHTNESS pot for the CDM-7SF191 monitor. You know, just in case there might be a easy way to make it work.

   

I started with a scrap of PCB I had that was already the right size, then added a bit of socket header and pin header, then on pins 7-12 I substituted pins from Dupont splice header to be able to use common Dupont female breadboarding jumpers to break out the signals for testing. 

   

Here's the pinout (ribbon plug flipped hole-side up) and the finished breakout in place on the back of the 54600A.

   

First thing I wanted to look at was the full-bright vs half-bright signals on the 54600A; as expected, they are TTL.



After poking around pins 7-12 of the 54621D, I found only one that looked anything like signal. Rigol is displaying VSync & HSync of both scopes; looks like there's additional information carried on the 54621D's VSync, but otherwise the same TTL signals. Pins 7, 8, 9, & 12 I couldn't distinguish anything valid apart from ambient noise; pin 10 is connected to GND fill on mainboard.

   

Pin 11 has signal; it varies from 0.6-1.2V P-P. HP is showing a zoom of a single wave captured as close as I could manage to the same time as that on LeSiglent. I want to say VGA of some sort, but the porches aren't always where I expect them to be; maybe blanking the screen or writing text, I suspect?

Unfortunately for my hopes of modding the CDM-7SF191 to work in place of the missing CDM-7SX191, it appears the output from the 54621D is a single-channel analog signal with TTL sync. My first guess would be SVGA at 800 x 600. Either that, or the other pins are dead and that points to what killed this scope in the first place.

Later, I may drop the mainboard on the 54621D just to poke around, see if those pins at J900 go somewhere.

But hey... the Rigol and LeSiglent both got used in anger today. Made it pretty clear my thoughts of selling off the 1054Zed were ill-considered.

And so now, here I am with the results of my little "poke around the 54621D mainboard"...

   

Comparison of monitor cable pinouts of 54621D vs 54645A/54600A. This is the pinout of the J900 connector ribbon cable AT THE MONITOR.

As we can see, they did not repurpose the BRIGHTNESS pins; they just circumvented them, then shunted pin 12 to ground through a 10K resistor. The only video is the ~0.7V P-P signal at pin 11. I drew out the circuit of Q960-961, thinking there might be some mixing going on in there, but nothing I could find coming from anywhere but the MegaZoom ASIC. And I'm guessing that the "additional information" I thought I say on the VSync was just a byproduct of both signals being generated in U411, a Quad OR Gate.

   

This is Q960-Q961 in the video out to J900-Pin 11 on the 54621D. Q961 base goes to the Megazoom IC through a 50Ω resistor. Q960 Emitter goes to J900 pin 11.

@factory: Based on this, I'm guessing your surmise that the only real difference between the two is that 74S03 vs the transistor amplifier on the neck board was dead on... but that makes this a bit of a bastard monitor with that weird HSync frequency.

Yes, of course I tried connecting it to a VGA monitor, but all the ones I have are relatively modern, and while they do see the signal if both HSync and VSync are present, all I get is "Mode Not Supported". Maybe if I had some prehistoric analog unit, or the scan converter Robert was talking about, yeah. Or maybe it would sync, but the video would be out to lunch.

At this point I'm inclined to try and figure out the differences between the two neck boards next. Maybe try and ghetto-fab something just for gits & shiggles. 

mnem
*toddles off to ded*   

[mansaxel]

I used to take the train, but I don't fancy marinating in coronavirus...

Plus, I get to and from work on my schedule, it takes the same amount of time anyway, works out cheaper (I drive a hybrid) and I don't have to be near other people.

Also, did I mention that I don't have to be near other people?

As I work in the center of and live outside the capital here (in so many ways not at all comparable to Tokyo, granted) I share your situation. During the more extreme phases of the recent medical unpleasantness, I drove. As I had to do when I worked in the defence forces. But I'm back in the bus now, for the 4 out of 5 days I'm working in the office. And why? I can get a good 45 minutes of mundanes dealt with on the way, each way, email, report writing, et c. And some TE thread catching-up. It makes it possible to deliver a days work and not be away from home so much it starts to become  a nuisance. 

5372A manual reading is coming up on the list of things I need to see to. 

[25 CPS]

For everyone working on 465B scopes, GC Surplus has half a dozen up for auction with a bit over 15 hours to go:

https://gcsurplus.ca/mn-eng.cfm?snc=wfsav&sc=enc-bid&scn=422225&lcn=571280&lct=L&srchtype=&lci=&str=1&lotnf=1&frmsr=1&sf=ferm-clos

It might be local pickup only in Dartmouth, NS, so if they won't ship, that could be geographically inconvenient for just about everyone.

Edit:  Browsing through the listings, it looks like there's six lots of five Tektronix 465B scopes for 30 in total plus a lot of five of the military version of the 2235:

https://gcsurplus.ca/mn-eng.cfm?snc=wfsav&sc=enc-bid&scn=422200&lcn=571255&lct=L&srchtype=&lci=&str=526&lotnf=1&frmsr=1&sf=ferm-clos

If they're lucky, a government lab received new equipment and they're blowing out the old stuff.  If they're not lucky, a government lab got closed down and they're fire sale-ing the equipment after laying everyone off.  Either way, if they won't pack up and ship scopes, I'm not sure the local market within an easy drive of the Halifax/Dartmouth area can absorb 30 vintage Tek scopes like that all at once.  Even if they are willing to pack up and ship them out, I'm not sure there'd be much market for them given what the packing and transportation costs would be like even if each lot sells for very little money.

There is no mention of shipping and but even if there was shipping a lot of 5 across the border will not be cheap. I have a strong suspicion that if they don't get sold they will most likely be crushed.

Don't worry they will get sold. Even for big lots that need to be collected in person. A lot of reseller are scanning those auctions. Not sure how profitable it is, but I saw a lot of items from Dartmouth (east coast) popping up on the ebay store of a seller located British Colombia (west coast).

I know you can designate someone to collect purchases on your behalf on GC Surplus.  Professional buyers like the industrial surplus people probably have a shipper come and remove their lots, package them up and ship them out.  I wonder what the profitability is too.  However auction lots in Dartmouth are being collected and shipped to the west coast, it can't be cheap, and things like those Tektronix 465Bs don't sell for huge money so the margins can't be all that great.