Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Robert763]

And, as is custom, I'm presenting the Page Instrument:



Some history: This is my first vintage TE.  It came to me, working, as a gift when I worked at the Royal Institute of Technology. I ran it with various inputs as a display, which through "being-left-on" cooked its PSU  ,  and made me repair it.

This then turned out to be my first TE repair, where one gets a badly scanned manual and finds new parts; IIRC a resistor that had gone O/C and a broken cap.  It's got the dreaded PH-163 input connector, and the 50Hz option. Which is good because: It uses, IIRC, the mains frequency as time base, and is as accurate as one can ask.

Bonus question: What are its neighbours? I've cropped the pic, but there are enough clues.

On the left HP 432A on the right HP 427A

[mansaxel]

And, as is custom, I'm presenting the Page Instrument:



Some history: This is my first vintage TE.  It came to me, working, as a gift when I worked at the Royal Institute of Technology. I ran it with various inputs as a display, which through "being-left-on" cooked its PSU  ,  and made me repair it.

This then turned out to be my first TE repair, where one gets a badly scanned manual and finds new parts; IIRC a resistor that had gone O/C and a broken cap.  It's got the dreaded PH-163 input connector, and the 50Hz option. Which is good because: It uses, IIRC, the mains frequency as time base, and is as accurate as one can ask.

Bonus question: What are its neighbours? I've cropped the pic, but there are enough clues.

On the left HP 432A on the right HP 427A

100% correct.

[tggzzz]

But there's nothing even remotely as good as [LTSpice] out there.

Microcap has a good reputation; I haven't tried it.

It was commercial, but is now free beer.

LTSpice has the advantage that you can send ascii text files to other people, not collections of proprietary format files.

[tggzzz]

Paranoia rules surpreme ! Dont believe yourself too much 

Don't believe the simulator too much either!

But I agree with you.

[Specmaster]

Well stranger things has finished now. There’s nothing else to do apart from stab each other.

Anyway on topic, I spent the last 2 hours filling up LTspice with bits of Farnell TM6 and comparing to measurements. It appears unfortunately that the chopper is likely to be faulty. It dumps a hell of a lot of current into the two LEDs and I think they have got dim and it’s not shuffling enough electrons through. Going to attempt to work out a way of proving this one way or another…. TBC…

Edit: also due to the stupid high impedance I need to make a bob pease FET probe…

I need to reacquaint myself with LT-Spice, I did start it a while ago and gave up because I found it had a steep learning curve and couldn't be arsed at the time, to much going on, but maybe the time is coming that I could get started again.

Yeah I don't blame you.

LTspice is quite frankly fucking horrible. It's written by engineers with absolutely no clue whatsoever about consistency or design or usability. The documentation is crap and it craps all over your filesystem like a rabid pigeon showing absolutely no respect or acknowledgement for anyone. Every part of it adheres to "not invented here".

And then they made a Mac version which is basically the same but completely entirely misses the entire Mac UI guidelines leaving you with twisted mutilated hands trying desperately to use the PC oriented keyboard shortcuts which barely even make sense on a PC. And it's buggy. So so so fucking buggy. Eventually you learn where all the bugs are but you have to hop around the software like someone trying to navigate through a cow dung filled field at night.

But there's nothing even remotely as good as it out there. Which is SO FUCKING DEPRESSING it makes me want to cry. So I will begrudgingly suffer.

Honestly if AD wanted to hire me I'd gladly rewrite both versions so they aren't absolutely cancerous and cage the engineers in the simulation engine dungeon where they belong, provided minimal sustenance and a black coffee drip directly into the stomach.

Hope that puts you off some more because it's actually painful using it. You just have to be that special kind of obtuse and stubborn to use it 

That was what I kept finding, you learn a rule for this or that and then you discover there is a different set of rules for doing much the same thing but because its in another part of the program, i.e., different module, the rules changed eh whats that all about 

Last time I played with it, I entered the audio amplifier circuit for a Hacker Sovereign radio and played around with transistor substitution, as the Ge ones were almost completely unobtainable. Ran the simulation and it predicted it would run OK and gave excellent frequency response in the simulation, in fact the results looked brilliant, but the harsh reality was just pure gut wrenchingly crap. It wasn't even upto the standard of the very early Japanese pocket transistor radios. All the parts tested good on their own but put them together, nar-nar not having it, made you feel ill. Hackers are supposed to have a nice rich tone to them, they even carried the "By Appoint to H.M. The Queen" crest  , at that point I gave up on it and deleted it from my system.

I have just downloaded it again and will later when I get time, install it and I'll do the same with micro-cap following Kosmic's advice and Christian has also very kindly offered to do a special Discord training session on LT Spice, which I might take him up on, later when things get less hairy round here.

[tggzzz]

I would often grab one, take it back to my bench, & continue with my work, ----I know, the O.H & S. people would have a fit!
The "wake up call" that it was probably not a good idea came when I dunked my soldering iron in the coffee cup!    OOOOPS!

The coffee did help when mulling*over some obscure fault on, mainly Picture Monitors, but also including some fairly weird stuff peculiar to TV studios.

*I did originally type "poring over", but thought better of it in this crowd!

Using a soldering iron was a traditional way to mull wine. Never heard of mulling coffee, though.

Not an electric soldering iron, of course.

[tautech]

Christian has also very kindly offered to do a special Discord training session on LT Spice, which I might take him up on, later when things get less hairy round here.

 

[tggzzz]

Well stranger things has finished now. There’s nothing else to do apart from stab each other.

Anyway on topic, I spent the last 2 hours filling up LTspice with bits of Farnell TM6 and comparing to measurements. It appears unfortunately that the chopper is likely to be faulty. It dumps a hell of a lot of current into the two LEDs and I think they have got dim and it’s not shuffling enough electrons through. Going to attempt to work out a way of proving this one way or another…. TBC…

Edit: also due to the stupid high impedance I need to make a bob pease FET probe…

I need to reacquaint myself with LT-Spice, I did start it a while ago and gave up because I found it had a steep learning curve and couldn't be arsed at the time, to much going on, but maybe the time is coming that I could get started again.

Yeah I don't blame you.

LTspice is quite frankly fucking horrible. It's written by engineers with absolutely no clue whatsoever about consistency or design or usability. The documentation is crap and it craps all over your filesystem like a rabid pigeon showing absolutely no respect or acknowledgement for anyone. Every part of it adheres to "not invented here".

And then they made a Mac version which is basically the same but completely entirely misses the entire Mac UI guidelines leaving you with twisted mutilated hands trying desperately to use the PC oriented keyboard shortcuts which barely even make sense on a PC. And it's buggy. So so so fucking buggy. Eventually you learn where all the bugs are but you have to hop around the software like someone trying to navigate through a cow dung filled field at night.

But there's nothing even remotely as good as it out there. Which is SO FUCKING DEPRESSING it makes me want to cry. So I will begrudgingly suffer.

Honestly if AD wanted to hire me I'd gladly rewrite both versions so they aren't absolutely cancerous and cage the engineers in the simulation engine dungeon where they belong, provided minimal sustenance and a black coffee drip directly into the stomach.

Hope that puts you off some more because it's actually painful using it. You just have to be that special kind of obtuse and stubborn to use it 

I beg to disagree about LtSpice. In my opinion,
- the user interface is nonstandard but efficient once you learned the ropes (painfully, I agree).
- the numerics are world class. Mike Engelhard is a multi-decade experienced simulation pro who absolutely knows what he is doing.  The many specialized numeric models for seemingly single components (voltage sources, caps, coils, ...) all with their parasitics are there because the more complex models facilitate the numeric treatment due to less artefacts and close-to singularities coming from idealized components.
- Simulation speed is awesome in most cases. The reason is that the whole solution procedure is compiled into assembly/machine code and then run, without any interpretation. The fastest Spice I know, by orders of magnitude.
- There are video tutorials with Mike where he shows why LtSpice is by far the most used simulator worldwide. The bag of tricks he uses is quite impressing.

Mike is a Klingon not respecting people with minor intellectual abilities a lot. His software was never meant to pamper the weak, but to solve, as much as possible, all simulation problems the user of LT chips might ever encounter, even if specialized code for complex functional blocks had to be specially developped. After the AD takeover of LT, Mike retired (rumors say due to style incompatibility with managers). Ergonomics never was high on his priority list, I am sure. Anyway, show me a *really* better Spice, and I will try it.

Recoding LTSpice with its present functional contents is a bet you will probably loose by any standards. Its weird, but the current code is several million LOCs and has absorbed the (Klingon style documented) black magic of decades of solved user problems and gotchas. Much fun to replicate that ...

https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/lt-journal-article/ltjournal-v24n4-01-df-spicedifferentiation-mikeengelhardt.pdf

I see a lot of typical engineering excuses for producing horrible software in your post. To clarify my position is producing software that isn’t horrible so I’ve heard all these before 

Certainly not talking about reimplementation which would be stupid but removing some of the sharp edges and clunk from the user interface.. Regardless of the simulation engine capabilities which are excellent, the product isn’t done until someone has made it usable. The last 20% needs sorting.

This is the same reason Linux on the desktop is a crap solution for most people. No one did the last 20% of the work.

I remember a professor at Imperial College, who also did some industrial design gigs at an art and design college.

He pointed out that if you asked them to design an egg, they would all create something which was the right size and shape. Better designers' eggs would have the right coloration. The best designers' eggs would have the right weight. None of them would have anything inside.

I'll feed my belly before I feed my eye

[Wolfgang]

Well stranger things has finished now. There’s nothing else to do apart from stab each other.

Anyway on topic, I spent the last 2 hours filling up LTspice with bits of Farnell TM6 and comparing to measurements. It appears unfortunately that the chopper is likely to be faulty. It dumps a hell of a lot of current into the two LEDs and I think they have got dim and it’s not shuffling enough electrons through. Going to attempt to work out a way of proving this one way or another…. TBC…

Edit: also due to the stupid high impedance I need to make a bob pease FET probe…

I need to reacquaint myself with LT-Spice, I did start it a while ago and gave up because I found it had a steep learning curve and couldn't be arsed at the time, to much going on, but maybe the time is coming that I could get started again.

Yeah I don't blame you.

LTspice is quite frankly fucking horrible. It's written by engineers with absolutely no clue whatsoever about consistency or design or usability. The documentation is crap and it craps all over your filesystem like a rabid pigeon showing absolutely no respect or acknowledgement for anyone. Every part of it adheres to "not invented here".

And then they made a Mac version which is basically the same but completely entirely misses the entire Mac UI guidelines leaving you with twisted mutilated hands trying desperately to use the PC oriented keyboard shortcuts which barely even make sense on a PC. And it's buggy. So so so fucking buggy. Eventually you learn where all the bugs are but you have to hop around the software like someone trying to navigate through a cow dung filled field at night.

But there's nothing even remotely as good as it out there. Which is SO FUCKING DEPRESSING it makes me want to cry. So I will begrudgingly suffer.

Honestly if AD wanted to hire me I'd gladly rewrite both versions so they aren't absolutely cancerous and cage the engineers in the simulation engine dungeon where they belong, provided minimal sustenance and a black coffee drip directly into the stomach.

Hope that puts you off some more because it's actually painful using it. You just have to be that special kind of obtuse and stubborn to use it 

I beg to disagree about LtSpice. In my opinion,
- the user interface is nonstandard but efficient once you learned the ropes (painfully, I agree).
- the numerics are world class. Mike Engelhard is a multi-decade experienced simulation pro who absolutely knows what he is doing.  The many specialized numeric models for seemingly single components (voltage sources, caps, coils, ...) all with their parasitics are there because the more complex models facilitate the numeric treatment due to less artefacts and close-to singularities coming from idealized components.
- Simulation speed is awesome in most cases. The reason is that the whole solution procedure is compiled into assembly/machine code and then run, without any interpretation. The fastest Spice I know, by orders of magnitude.
- There are video tutorials with Mike where he shows why LtSpice is by far the most used simulator worldwide. The bag of tricks he uses is quite impressing.

Mike is a Klingon not respecting people with minor intellectual abilities a lot. His software was never meant to pamper the weak, but to solve, as much as possible, all simulation problems the user of LT chips might ever encounter, even if specialized code for complex functional blocks had to be specially developped. After the AD takeover of LT, Mike retired (rumors say due to style incompatibility with managers). Ergonomics never was high on his priority list, I am sure. Anyway, show me a *really* better Spice, and I will try it.

Recoding LTSpice with its present functional contents is a bet you will probably loose by any standards. Its weird, but the current code is several million LOCs and has absorbed the (Klingon style documented) black magic of decades of solved user problems and gotchas. Much fun to replicate that ...

https://www.analog.com/media/en/technical-documentation/lt-journal-article/ltjournal-v24n4-01-df-spicedifferentiation-mikeengelhardt.pdf

I see a lot of typical engineering excuses for producing horrible software in your post. To clarify my position is producing software that isn’t horrible so I’ve heard all these before 

Certainly not talking about reimplementation which would be stupid but removing some of the sharp edges and clunk from the user interface.. Regardless of the simulation engine capabilities which are excellent, the product isn’t done until someone has made it usable. The last 20% needs sorting.

This is the same reason Linux on the desktop is a crap solution for most people. No one did the last 20% of the work.

As I said, the ergonomics of LtSpice is certainly the weak side of the product. I am pessemistic about any improvements in near future, because:
- Mike retired and he was more or less "the product"
- He did not think that user friendlyness was very important, to put it mildly.
- They dont feel the need to do something. LtSpice, as opposed to the Linux desktop, *owns* the pro simulation market.

So, no hope. The way to go is to learn the ropes while uttering shameless curses all the way until its works

[bd139]

That is exactly what I’m doing 

I am mostly uttering “at least it’s not NI MultiSim or Proteus” 

[m k]

-hp- 4952A update:

The disc drive is broken. electrically and mechanically. Besides scrapeing the surface, it does not read from the lower head. The resistance of the head coils are OK, but one cannot swap the flex cables of both heads as they have mirrored  layout and are too short. So this is the cause why it will recognize no disc and fails to format a disc. The drive used is an old Sony drive, nearly unobtainium. So I prepared a Gotek floppy emulator with the latest FlashFloppy firmware. I prepared a special ribbon cable that cuts the wires that power the drive and rerouted to a power supply connector. Pin 1 is extracted to go to a pin header on the drive.
Fortunately I had an older Gotek with STM32F105, newer models use the Artery chip AR32F415and the cheaper ones use a QFN32 package that do not have all pins.

The config was tweaked to fit the disc layout 80 cylinders, 2 sides, 16 sectory a 256 bytes) of the 4952A. I had to use the logging firmware to find out some more parameters, see below.

Inserting a USB stick, the 4952A seeks to cylinder 78, then back to zero and indicates "Non LIF disc". Unfortunately formatting does not work, it formats cylinders 0 to 76 but gets stuck at cylinder 78 and reports "Bad disc". But prepared images from real discs are working, I can read and write to those.

HP used two different copy protection schemes in their instrument:
1. An unusual disc layout where cylinder 78 head 1 uses sector ids starting at 17 and cylinder 79 using sector ids starting with 97. This was used to disable copying discs with other machines.
2. Application programs from their original discs can not be copied to another disc in the 4952A. Doing so will copy the application file, but the copied disc refuses to load the application with "Application denied". As the instrument does not approach the disc before emitting the error, this should be some information in the directory part of the LIF.

Unnecessary to say, the disc images that are available for the 4952A are made with Teledisk from already copied discs (You can see the unused tracks on cylinder 77 heads 0 and 1 and cylinder 78 head 0 are in DOS format with 9 sectory a 512 bytes with contents of DOS programs.

Currently disassembling the FDC ROM...

What you need, a vanilla copy of the original disk?
That will be easy if you have the disk.

Get old DSHD drive, must have 34 pin connector function pins.
Get 8 bit logic analyzer, anything should be fast enough.

Write a small program that is only stepping heads in and out.
Or use external jump wires.

Connect logic analyzer to index and read data pins and collect.
Use jump wire for side selection.
Since you are only missing those few high tracks you're already done before you can say lentokonesuihkuturbiinimoottoriapumekaanikkoaliupseerioppilas.
(military term but not gun related)

Or use the approach from the link.
https://www.chzsoft.de/site/hardware/preserving-a-floppy-disk-with-a-logic-analyzer/

[25 CPS]

GP ultra AA’s. Never had one leak yet. One did go open circuit once but that was it.

Interesting we had an exploding llama the other day.  This was a bunch of GP LR44’s in a light up llama toy my youngest had. Went with quite a bang. So don’t buy their LR44’s 

Was the youngster using WinAmp when the Llama exploded?

[mnementh]

I see a lot of typical engineering excuses for producing horrible software in your post. To clarify my position is producing software that isn’t horrible so I’ve heard all these before 

Certainly not talking about reimplementation which would be stupid but removing some of the sharp edges and clunk from the user interface.. Regardless of the simulation engine capabilities which are excellent, the product isn’t done until someone has made it usable. The last 20% needs sorting.

This is the same reason Linux on the desktop is a crap solution for most people. No one did the last 20% of the work.

Indeed.

It's like creating a high performing F1 racing car only to have skid-steer and a fruit box for a seat.

I managed to muddle through 3 generations of Eagle. Do I stand a chance of surviving Christian's tutorial...?   

mnemories:
I remember my grand-dad's F-150 after putting the 500 Caddy/TH400 in... I hadn't finished boxing in the shifter and crap, so when I first drove it I sat on a 5-gallon bucket and almost killed myself when it tipped over. Then my best buddy Drucker hadda drive it... he came back with a big ol' shite-eating grin: "That thing is siiiick!"

[srb1954]

I remember a professor at Imperial College, who also did some industrial design gigs at an art and design college.

He pointed out that if you asked them to design an egg, they would all create something which was the right size and shape. Better designers' eggs would have the right coloration. The best designers' eggs would have the right weight. None of them would have anything inside.

Typical industrial designer's attitude. They always leave it up to the long-suffering engineer to figure out a way to fit the contents into the "beautiful", but too small, enclosure that they designed.

The engineer is never, ever allowed to make modifications to the enclosure to make it more functional or easier to manufacture as that would destroy the "purity" of the designer's concept.

[mnementh]

And, as is custom, I'm presenting the Page Instrument:   

Some history: This is my first vintage TE.  It came to me, working, as a gift when I worked at the Royal Institute of Technology. I ran it with various inputs as a display, which through "being-left-on" cooked its PSU  ,  and made me repair it.

This then turned out to be my first TE repair, where one gets a badly scanned manual and finds new parts; IIRC a resistor that had gone O/C and a broken cap.  It's got the dreaded PH-163 input connector, and the 50Hz option. Which is good because: It uses, IIRC, the mains frequency as time base, and is as accurate as one can ask.

Bonus question: What are its neighbours? I've cropped the pic, but there are enough clues.

On the left HP 432A on the right HP 427A

100% correct.

Robert, please take this as the compliment it's intended... but you are one scary motherfucker sometimes. 

mnem
 

[factory]

Here are mine, both came from the US, the 'B' does at least have a 1MHz crystal fitted as standard, the 'A' needs some custom divider ICs, to get the reference working from 50Hz mains.



The choobs in these seem to get the rust/crack related failure of the pins.

David

P.S. hopefully won't be sniped on another counter, ending very soon in the US.

Yeah, those little inverted number tubes seem to be less robust than most - I’ve had a few dead ones, too.

Any joy on the counter you were going for?  I was watching a 5323A, but it ended while I was out and about, and went for more than I’d have been inclined to pay.

-Pat

Guess I'm not the only one to find those inverted choobs failing, I did have a board (from a job lot, bought a decade or so ago) with three fitted, all were dead. I even bought NOS spares at great expense and some of those didn't work either, they seem more unreliable than those custom decoder/driver ICs.   

And yes it was the 5323A and I only just won it, quite expensive but they aren't exactly common, might have gone for less if the seller hadn't put the choob word in the title, this is also a risk with GSP, fingers-crossed they don't steal it. 

David

[mnementh]

I remember a professor at Imperial College, who also did some industrial design gigs at an art and design college.

He pointed out that if you asked them to design an egg, they would all create something which was the right size and shape. Better designers' eggs would have the right coloration. The best designers' eggs would have the right weight. None of them would have anything inside.

Typical industrial designer's attitude. They always leave it up to the long-suffering engineer to figure out a way to fit the contents into the "beautiful", but too small, enclosure that they designed.

The engineer is never, ever allowed to make modifications to the enclosure to make it more functional or easier to manufacture as that would destroy the "purity" of the designer's concept.

Thankfully, Frustion360 has this "rescale" function... 

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

[Kosmic]

But there's nothing even remotely as good as [LTSpice] out there.

Microcap has a good reputation; I haven't tried it.

It was commercial, but is now free beer.

LTSpice has the advantage that you can send ascii text files to other people, not collections of proprietary format files.

Micro-cap is pretty good. Just having an extensive library of components is really useful.

Kiss Analog did bunch of tutorials on Youtube:

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kiss+analog+micro-cap

[factory]

NIXIE DVM REPAIR

OK I am motivated, well at the moment anywho.

I decided to resume work on fixing my turd of a Nixie DVM, Rochar type A.1335, for those who remember this thing.

IIRC that will be round 3.

Just powered it up and quick test to see if it's still alive since the last time I worked on it... 2 or 3 months ago ? Can't even remember when that was. A while ago.

Well at power up, nothing on the Nixie, all dead.... then after 4 seconds some light coming out of them, partially lit digits, then eventually it all comes back to life and they are all rocking.
Strange that. Maybe some leaky caps somewhere that makes for this progressive wakening. I don't know.

...snip...

So that will be my first activity on the meter... it's 17h15 I will spend a bit of time this evening on it, and maybe an hour or two every evening after work.
A little bit at a time, hopefully I will eventually make progress and fix the thing.

If you leave if off again for a few months, you could connect a voltmeter across the display HT supply, if you find the voltage low & climbing slowly, then it's the capacitor reforming, if this happens too often, then it would probably be a good idea to replace the HT capacitor(s).

P.S. you should really avoid using the N***e word, as it just helps google index TE, for the display choob rapists to find & destroy.

David

[Specmaster]

<snip>

I managed to muddle through 3 generations of Eagle. Do I stand a chance of surviving Christian's tutorial...?   

mnemories:
I remember my grand-dad's F-150 after putting the 500 Caddy/TH400 in... I hadn't finished boxing in the shifter and crap, so when I first drove it I sat on a 5-gallon bucket and almost killed myself when it tipped over. Then my best buddy Drucker hadda drive it... he came back with a big ol' shite-eating grin: "That thing is siiiick!"

Oh crap, have I inadvertently landed Christian into doing a tutorial now, oops sorry Christian, I didn't mean to do that, honest. 

[ch_scr]

<snip>

I managed to muddle through 3 generations of Eagle. Do I stand a chance of surviving Christian's tutorial...?   

mnemories:
I remember my grand-dad's F-150 after putting the 500 Caddy/TH400 in... I hadn't finished boxing in the shifter and crap, so when I first drove it I sat on a 5-gallon bucket and almost killed myself when it tipped over. Then my best buddy Drucker hadda drive it... he came back with a big ol' shite-eating grin: "That thing is siiiick!"

Oh crap, have I inadvertently landed Christian into doing a tutorial now, oops sorry Christian, I didn't mean to do that, honest. 

Let's do a hang out on Discord with screen sharing when you're ready, it'll be fine 

[Wolfgang]

That is exactly what I’m doing 

I am mostly uttering “at least it’s not NI MultiSim or Proteus” 

Could you collect and take notes of all the foul language that occurred using LTSpice ?
I started to do it. Maybe its quite entertaining to others 

[Cubdriver]

Yeah, those little inverted number tubes seem to be less robust than most - I’ve had a few dead ones, too.

Any joy on the counter you were going for?  I was watching a 5323A, but it ended while I was out and about, and went for more than I’d have been inclined to pay.

-Pat

Guess I'm not the only one to find those inverted choobs failing, I did have a board (from a job lot, bought a decade or so ago) with three fitted, all were dead. I even bought NOS spares at great expense and some of those didn't work either, they seem more unreliable than those custom decoder/driver ICs.   

And yes it was the 5323A and I only just won it, quite expensive but they aren't exactly common, might have gone for less if the seller hadn't put the choob word in the title, this is also a risk with GSP, fingers-crossed they don't steal it. 

David

Nice!  Congrats!  Glad to know I didn’t wind up bidding against you.  I was at least partially put off by the quoted shipping costs; don’t even want to think what it might set you back to get it across the pond!  My fingers will also be crossed for it to arrive safely.

-Pat

[bd139]

That is exactly what I’m doing 

I am mostly uttering “at least it’s not NI MultiSim or Proteus” 

Could you collect and take notes of all the foul language that occurred using LTSpice ?
I started to do it. Maybe its quite entertaining to others 

“Blithering wanker shite bastard” was what it was called when the mac version decided to dump two resistors on the same spot with one click. It does that randomly. You get used to looking for unexpected junctions before hitting run.

[Wolfgang]

That is exactly what I’m doing 

I am mostly uttering “at least it’s not NI MultiSim or Proteus” 

Could you collect and take notes of all the foul language that occurred using LTSpice ?
I started to do it. Maybe its quite entertaining to others 

“Blithering wanker shite bastard” was what it was called when the mac version decided to dump two resistors on the same spot with one click. It does that randomly. You get used to looking for unexpected junctions before hitting run.

I once called it "numerically imbecile idiot" when it consistently refused to simulate a high voltage circuit just because a super small ESR resistor for a filter cap was missing.