Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Neomys Sapiens]

OMG, what have I done  , I just said yes to my first RPN calculator, so its official then, I'm either about to or I've joined the dark side, may the force with you be.
Incoming soon is a HP17BII and a HP10BII to keep my other HP10BII+ calculator company, making my HP collection upto 3.

ok......ok.  let's not panic.  we all make bad decisions sometimes.

the important thing is that you realize it was a mistake.

we need to analyze what went wrong (did bd's story get you on the vodka?)

you just need to stay away from evil influences, and pledge not to allow this sort of thing to happen again.
 
and then DON'T BACKSLIDE! 

Actually, I just remembered that its not my first RPN, somewhere in one of my crates I have a Sinclair scientific that I made from a kit many moons ago 

I still have mine. I decided not to make mine from a kit; there were too many stories about failures when people made Sinclair's audio kits. Instead I bought mice remarkably cheaply from, of all places, a pharmacy next to the Royal Institution.I would have noticed it after attending a lecture there, probably one involving detonating acetylene oxygen mixtures

It was a remarkable achievement. All the keyboard display and computation fitted into 320 instructions. The accuracy was similar to a slide rule, which was the tool used in schools at the time.

How did the aquisition of rodents solve your computation requirements? You would always get 42 as the result and bork your stoichiometric calculation. So no explosion.

[bd139]

This gets more interesting by the minutes. As my intoxicated brain is only capable of processing keywords it only saw mice and explosions. 

Incidentally I didn’t drink enough to buy an SA 

[Neomys Sapiens]

Edit: appear to have befriended a Spanish woman called Martina 

Stop right there! Before you go any further, watch 'Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown' from P. Almodovar.

[tggzzz]

<snip>

what?  a kit built sinclair scientific?

if it were anyone else you would be dead to me.

but since you are usually a voice of reason around here........ you get a pass.

Well thanks for sparing me  What can I say, I was young and full of cum back then and the Sinclair was the only scientific calculator within my price bracket. When that calculator was launched in 1974 it sold as a kit for £49.95 and in today's money that equates to £579 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Scientific#Assembly_kit

I got mine ready-built at that pharmacy for £25. No idea why they had it in the first place. Maybe they had come to realise that too

That was <10% of the price of the other widely available scientific calculator, the HP35

[mnementh]

How did the acquisition of rodents solve your computation requirements? You would always get 42 as the result and bork your stoichometric calculation. So no explosion.

two words: ternary math. All answers are 42. 

mnem

[tggzzz]

Hey I got a 35s 

I've now got a 35

Edit: appear to have befriended a Spanish woman called Martina 

The ones that throw themselves at me are eastern European (probably).

[tautech]

This gets more interesting by the minutes. As my intoxicated brain is only capable of processing keywords it only saw mice and explosions. 

Incidentally I didn’t drink enough to buy an SA 

Still, you'll need to do pretty darn well to do better than a SSA3021X+ > SVA1032X. 

[vk6zgo]

Life lesson of the day. Never drink vodka on a conference call because you’re bored. Turns out I get insanely critical of software development methodologies 

Hamfest trip planned for Sunday. Hitting the FRARS followed by a 12km hike around Dursley Door and Lulworth Cove with the eldest. Might slide a roast in there somewhere 

That's why I stick strictly to single malt whisky on conference calls (don't forget to turn the camera off).

McBryce.

Vodka is purity in a bottle.

Tastes like Metho!

Whiskey is impurity in a bottle.

Looks great--tastes crap!

We know where this leads. Actually fuck it perhaps I should start knocking back that bottle of Glenfiddich…

To me it leads to Dark Rum (not that white crap!), or in a pinch, Port!

[xrunner]

Just got the  HP 3551A Transmission Test Set delivered ...

It's in bad shape 

It's in the garage now because it's got that ancient military surplus / old ham radio shack smell emanating. But here's a teaser pic. Severe corrosion from what I think is bad batteries. Oh dear ... 

More pics tomorrow I expect.

[tggzzz]

I still have mine. I decided not to make mine from a kit; there were too many stories about failures when people made Sinclair's audio kits. Instead I bought mice remarkably cheaply from, of all places, a pharmacy next to the Royal Institution.I would have noticed it after attending a lecture there, probably one involving detonating acetylene oxygen mixtures

It was a remarkable achievement. All the keyboard display and computation fitted into 320 instructions. The accuracy was similar to a slide rule, which was the tool used in schools at the time.

in 1974-75 we knew one guy who had a sinclair calculator.  compared it to my ti sr10.   you could trust all 8 digits on the ti.  like you said, the sinclair was good to 3 or maybe 4 digits.  and the sinclair was slow.  really slow.   slooooooow.   and sometimes the sinclair produced a result that was obviously wrong.   the guys around the table in my study group at the engineering library all agreed that i was better off with the ti and book of trig/log tables.

and then they went out and bought hp 35's.  their daddies must have been rich.   a pox on them all.

3-4 digits at best. Not logs of number <1.

(Anybody remember what $$\bar{1}.3010$$ meant when using 4-fig log tables?)

[tggzzz]

OMG, what have I done  , I just said yes to my first RPN calculator, so its official then, I'm either about to or I've joined the dark side, may the force with you be.
Incoming soon is a HP17BII and a HP10BII to keep my other HP10BII+ calculator company, making my HP collection upto 3.

ok......ok.  let's not panic.  we all make bad decisions sometimes.

the important thing is that you realize it was a mistake.

we need to analyze what went wrong (did bd's story get you on the vodka?)

you just need to stay away from evil influences, and pledge not to allow this sort of thing to happen again.
 
and then DON'T BACKSLIDE! 

Actually, I just remembered that its not my first RPN, somewhere in one of my crates I have a Sinclair scientific that I made from a kit many moons ago 

I still have mine. I decided not to make mine from a kit; there were too many stories about failures when people made Sinclair's audio kits. Instead I bought mice remarkably cheaply from, of all places, a pharmacy next to the Royal Institution.I would have noticed it after attending a lecture there, probably one involving detonating acetylene oxygen mixtures

It was a remarkable achievement. All the keyboard display and computation fitted into 320 instructions. The accuracy was similar to a slide rule, which was the tool used in schools at the time.

How did the aquisition of rodents solve your computation requirements? You would always get 42 as the result and bork your stoichiometric calculation. So no explosion.

Back then we didn't have autocorrupt text entry; all the typos were fully our responsibility.
"DWIM" has always been a bad idea, recently made necessary by devolved text entry hardware.

Another example of devolved text entry hardware is the dismal return to the techniques used to get alphabetic plus numeric plus symbol characters represented in the 32 codes available on 5 channel paper tapes.

[mnementh]

I just ask Siri to do my math homework. 

mnem
personal confusers FTW.

[nixiefreqq]

found my old log trig tables in the bottom of a box down the basement.

it smells like knowledge. (actual knowledge is musty)


(the calculator is just to prove it's authenticity as belonging to a TI smitten fool)

[Cubdriver]

This gets more interesting by the minutes. As my intoxicated brain is only capable of processing keywords it only saw mice and explosions. 

Incidentally I didn’t drink enough to buy an SA 

You obviously need to drink more, then.  What are you waiting for?   

-Pat

[Saskia]

thanks - I am about to scrap the idea anyway. What I would need is a 30 m mast and a 5 - 10 m rotor. This is completely unacceptable if the next house is about 15 m away ...

Of course, you could all those Bozos living annoyingly close around you, that if they don't support your application for a sizeable mast, you would have to go geothermal. Then ensure generous distribution of the horror reports from Landau etc. with the half-metre clefts in the houses...
 

unfortunately drilling for geothermal will only hit water .. we are surrounded by swamp and drainage  look up Apen in Google Maps.

[Cerebus]

<snip>

what?  a kit built sinclair scientific?

if it were anyone else you would be dead to me.

but since you are usually a voice of reason around here........ you get a pass.

Well thanks for sparing me  What can I say, I was young and full of cum back then and the Sinclair was the only scientific calculator within my price bracket. When that calculator was launched in 1974 it sold as a kit for £49.95 and in today's money that equates to £579 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sinclair_Scientific#Assembly_kit

No, you've misread the pricing:

In January 1975, the kit was available for US$49.95, half the price at the time of introduction a year earlier,[13] and in December 1975 it was available for GB£9.95, less than a quarter of the introductory price.

So that's $49.95USD (£21.90GBP at Jan '74 exchange rates, about £165 in today's money) and then £9.95 by the end of the same year (about £75 in today's money).

[Cerebus]

I still have mine. I decided not to make mine from a kit; there were too many stories about failures when people made Sinclair's audio kits. Instead I bought mice remarkably cheaply from, of all places, a pharmacy next to the Royal Institution.I would have noticed it after attending a lecture there, probably one involving detonating acetylene oxygen mixtures

It was a remarkable achievement. All the keyboard display and computation fitted into 320 instructions. The accuracy was similar to a slide rule, which was the tool used in schools at the time.

in 1974-75 we knew one guy who had a sinclair calculator.  compared it to my ti sr10.   you could trust all 8 digits on the ti.  like you said, the sinclair was good to 3 or maybe 4 digits.  and the sinclair was slow.  really slow.   slooooooow.   and sometimes the sinclair produced a result that was obviously wrong.   the guys around the table in my study group at the engineering library all agreed that i was better off with the ti and book of trig/log tables.

and then they went out and bought hp 35's.  their daddies must have been rich.   a pox on them all.

3-4 digits at best. Not logs of number <1.

(Anybody remember what $$\bar{1}.3010$$ meant when using 4-fig log tables?)

Yes, even better I can tell that $$10^{\bar{1}.3010} = ~0.2$$ from inspection.

[bitseeker]

Another TEA incoming. Put a offer on a spectrum amalyser late last night  and it was accepted.
It's a true portable, battery operated 5 - 1100 MHz with a 6.4" colour touch screen. My offer was 3 digits  Just £100 including shipping 
Pictures when it arrives.
That puts the RF spectrum analyser count up to 7

Sounds neat. Well, you passed me up on the SA count. Depending on how you count an RF test set, I'm up to four or five SA. And to think...it started with wanting just one. Doesn't it always?

[bitseeker]

JVC and Pioneer turntable up for farengiing.
(Clearing out surplus stuff ...)

Many moons ago, for want of a good turntable, I went down the HiFi rabbit hole, then the home theater rabbit hole. Many years pass and I have yet to own a turntable. Then TEA happened.

[mansaxel]

...Still, opened the 5372A up today at work and found a Saft 3,6V cell

how much red tape now...?

None extra! Found the right cell, where the terminals are normal TH wires which will slot right in to the mounting place. Only needs a cable tie to fix the cell against the PCB.

I have been considering spot welding cells; I have a long-term project of trying to revive the 4AH packs for my PRC 351 and PRC 320 manpack Clansman radios; which will require some form of battery string assembly.

[bitseeker]

Since becoming a fan of the Datron 1071 meters, I was initially quite excited when I saw one pop up in my eBay search list.

Send you DM.. i have one, need money and was starting to get bored with it.. to many DMMS in my lab.
(never thought i would ever say that.) 

(I didn't think you would either. shock. horror.)

[bitseeker]

Oh and wishing Vince all the best for tomorrow....his first day back at being gainfully employed for a while.

@Vince, best wishes on the new job. Work...at the same time a blessing and a curse for TEA and keeping up with this thread.

[bitseeker]

The other delivery today, opened the box & immediately thought why have they sent these, must be a mistake? 


Turns out they were used as packing, quite heavy though, but they did the job & no damage to the contents. 


Very similar to the first counter I ever bought, but this one is good for at least 60MHz instead of 32MHz.


Racal 9037 smoke test (tants) another day.   

David

Wow, I didn't realize the world was so healthy now. But, ya never know when they'll be worth their weight again.

[mansaxel]

Then it's the red tape of being allowed to use a soldering iron and the Weller desoldering station at work...

You mean you need a hot work permit for some soldering? Aren't you working at a broadcasting station? How has this place ever been put together?

These days, it's being put together by contractors, with their own liability  . Previously, it was a different time. The company saw fit to have broadly competent technical staff... And work has evolved. I'm these days mostly patching fiber cables (won't trust contractors with that, they don't care about cleanliness enough.)  and typing commands on a keyboard.

Now, the insurance companies have, as they do, cartel'ed together a barrier of entry to work called just "Hot Work". They do claim a 80% decrease in hot work related fires since 1990, though, so they just might be on to something.

It's permitted to work with soldering equipment (as in Weichlöten, not brazing) on a specific bench at the service department (the assumption being that the risk assessment and prevention measures have been taken care of, permanently, for that work position), but if you're taking the portable kit, you need to have a recent "hot work" training and know the procedures, both red tape ones and actual ones, the latter mostly being "this is how to turn off the fire alarm" which is important since there are detector trigged inert gas release systems in many technical spaces..

[mansaxel]

unfortunately drilling for geothermal will only hit water .. we are surrounded by swamp and drainage  look up Apen in Google Maps.

That's probably (with my very limited understanding) going to work well (he he), if you actually intend to get thermal out of the geo. Dry bores don't work that well, or so I'm told.