EEVblog #556 - Mailbag

[EEVblog]

Mailbag Monday
https://www.youtube.com/user/mikeselectricstuff
http://www.hioki.com/discon/pdf/multi/3207_08.pdf
http://tindie.com/stores/Pieco
http://tindie.com/UnaClocker
http://www.tokyoflash.com/en/watches/kisai/upload/

[retiredcaps]

The Hioki auction.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/151162131921

The description.

This Hioki model 3208 Calculator and DMM combination was sold around 1980. It's a unique combination of a calculator and Digital Multi-Meter (DMM) in one hand held unit. Not just both in the same package, the reading from the DMM will transfer to the calculator by pressing the shift key which allows formulas to be calculated using the readings directly from DMM.

The DMM section has ranges for AC/DC Volts, Ohms, and two milli-amp ranges. The DMM can be set to auto range and also has a zero adjust.

It's been labeled by some as "The Best Multi-meter Ever!" (referring to the combination of a calculator and handheld DMM in one package).

[daqq]

On the topic of Soviet manufacturing:

In Czechoslovakia (not Soviet, but still eastern block) there was a state company called Tesla ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_%28company%29 ) that manufactured most electronic devices - it was a big thing, that made pretty much everything, from semi conductors, through resistors to consumer electronics. There were other manufacturers (state owned), but this far outshined them all.

After communism fell in Czechoslovakia, the markets were open and a whole lot of competition led to the fall of many divisions, their remnants being either downsized, privatized (this happened to the prosperous parts as well), stolen (this happened to the prosperous parts as well) or just simply died.

A few divisions remained as individual companies in various forms of ownership (some transformations were done through means of dubious legality, as with many other state owned companies  ... another topic entirely). Some still remain and make/sell stuff under their own brands, such as:

http://www.jj-electronic.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
http://www.sev-litovel.cz/en/
http://www.tesla.cz/en/domu/
http://www.semikron.com/skcompub/en/slovensko-1845.htm

I'm guessing that Soviet manufacturers had a similar fate, although more of them might have survived.

[peter.mitchell]

"This video is unlisted. Only those with the link can see it."

[Fagear]

About soviet parts.
I'm also from Russia so I can help you with this.
Don't know how old parts smell in other parts of the world, but I really like smell of old USSR capacitors. I have a big box of them.
In USSR all parts were standardized, everything must be within standards.

Manufacturers marked all the parts with its type, basic parameters and date code. No their own partnumbers. Nothing like, for example, TL494 = DBL474 = KA7500 that are part numbers from manufacturers. The only thing manufacturer could do - leave its small logo on the device.

Type of device is marked in cyrillic. So "K" in "K 50-16" is in cyrillic. This is the type of the device, not manufacturer's name or part number. Manufacturer's logo is often near the device type. Here are some examples of logos.

"K50" are electrolytic aluminium capacitors.
"K51" are electrolytic tantalum capacitors.
"K73" are metallized film capacitors with polyester isolator.
"K71" are metallized film capacitors with polystyrene isolator.
"K78" are metallized film capacitors with polypropylene isolator.
And so on. All types are standardized, you can see some types here (Russian language, probably Google translator will help).
"-16" or "-9" is model number of capacitor.
So "K50-16" equals to "electrolytic aluminium capacitor model numer 16" ("K50-16" and "K50-6" were hugely widespread within USSR).
"K50-7" also electrolytic aluminium capacitor but model number 7. And yes, bottom connector is positive and can is negative. There many types of capacitors with negative on their cans: K50-3, K50-12, K50-20
"K73-9" equals to "metallized film capacitors with polyester isolator model number 9" ("K73-9" and "K73-17" are also well know in USSR/Russia).

"MLT-2" is somewhat similar. "MLT" is type of resistor ("metal film resistors", this is old type of marking, not used now, now "MLT" is something like "C2") but "-2" is its power dissipation, not number. So it is capable to dissipate 2 watts of power.
"PP3-43": "PP3" is wirewound one-turn variable resistor with power dissipation up to 3 watts. Yeah, "-43" is not a power dissipation here, it is a model number again.
"CP-5M" is wirewound multi-turn resistor for PCB mounting.

Parameters are sometimes in cyrillic but sometimes not. So "1R5" is 1.5 ohm. But it could be "1.5 Om" as it is on "CP-5M". Capacitance and voltage the same: sometimes in cyrillic, sometimes not. So, yeah, your "K50-16" is 100 uF 50 V cap and your "K73-9" is 100 nF 630 V.

Date code on USSR/Russian parts is not "year/week" it is "year/month".

Btw, soviet electrolytic aluminium caps are crap. They died almost when left the production line. If you got old soviet device first you should do - replace all "silver cans", all of these "K50-6" and "K50-16". They dry out very quickly. But other types are pretty useful.

I don't know about all soviet electronic parts manufacturers, I think many of them closed after USSR fell apart. But I found that manufaturers of parts from your video are still alive!
"MLT-2" resistor made by "ERKON" (Russia, Nizhny Novgorod).
"PP3-43" resistor made by "LTAVA" (Ukraine, Poltava).
"K73-9" capacitor made by "Polycond" (Russia, Ryazan).
"K50-7" capacitor made by "Novosibirsk components plant 'Oksid'" (Russia, Novosibirsk).

I'm thinking about sending you some components as well, but with descriptions in the note and maybe some beauties as well (military-spec old devices, ICs...).

[TacticalCode]

My guess on the LCD is has been squished. Ben Krasnow explained in one of his Homemade-LCD videos that the liquid crystals have to be aligned the proper way for that polarization-magic to work. That's done by creating a pattern on both glass sufaces that encapsulate the liquid crystals. So I think the upper glass was pushed down so far,  this pattern vanished. At about 8:30 Dave rotates the display and some parts become visible, exactly these parts stay visible as the other parts dim as the display is rotated further.

[c4757p]

"They're not really practical, they're ahhhhhhrt"

[Stonent]

"They're not really practical, they're ahhhhhhrt"

Ars gratia artis!

[opablo]

wow Fagear... you got me hooked on your writing...

Maybe you can post some photos of interesting-looking components ? I would really enjoy that kind of stuff

[Fagear]

Maybe you can post some photos of interesting-looking components ? I would really enjoy that kind of stuff

Maybe there is thread about photos of interesting components here somewhere... I need to search.
I'm have no any of my component boxes now near me, but I have some old photos of some IC, some of them I want to send to Dave.

[WattSekunde]

Here are my beautiful aluminum Tokyoflash watches. Both are not community driven watches.

The first one (KISAI Denshoku) is easy to read. Only 12 orange LED stripes shows first the hour then 10th and then 1th minutes. No date. Not in bright sunlight readable.

The second one (KISAI Tenmetsu) needs a bit calculation ;-). It's the nice nerdy one that refreshes your brain on every reading. If you have some practice it's not to hard to read.
The color code is green=1, yellow=5, red=15, light up from bottom to top. On the picture you can read minute 39. This watch has time and date in 4 display steps. First hour, second minute, third month, fourthly day.

From my third KISAI watch I have no picture yet. It's the really nerdy KISAI Sensai. My three models where made from aluminum and they have a very good build quality.

I have to take some pictures of the inside of these three watches and post them later. ;-)

[tszaboo]

At some point at the 80s the USSR was producing 50 times less ICs than the USA. There was the CoCom list, to prevent anything too useful to be exported to the east block. So the USSR had to produce it's own missile guidance systems, while in the 80's east Europe consumer products are full with Philips and National semiconductor ICs. But there were Z80 computers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TVC_(computer) or multimeters like this: http://oldradio.tesla.hu/szetszedtem/051oroszmultimeter/mmc-03.htm Input protection, anyone?

[Frantone]

I am not surprised that the LCD display is compromised - I have found with my stuff that the normal operational lifespan of LCDs is somewhere between 10-15 years, anything beyond that is geriatric.  Many of my prized LCD watches and calculators have gone unexpectedly extinct over the decades - with the exception of one TI calculator that I have used since the mid-80's, but that calc has a clamshell case that I keep closed, which considering how LCDs work with polarized light would seem to suggest UV exposure as one possible culprit.  With some displays that fail you'll also find that ambient temperature has an effect on LCD's, usually cooling the display down it will function more normally.

[SeanB]

The way that calculator eners the DVM data is simple, it reads the LCD digital data by using the backplane to Xor the data back to single segments on or off, then looks up the digits in an internal table then simply emulates the keypresses needed to input that data into the calculator chipset. Easy to see by half the pins on the IC being attached to the keyboard matrix and the other half being on the LCD pins including backplane. Also you can see the ditits being shifted in by the display ripple as it is entered.

[nova1200]

I was about to say the same thing, that you can see it just typing the keys.

Calculator chips were such irresistibly cheap packages of computational power back then. I recall building a "floating point coprocessor" for the S-100 bus using one of the National chips in a similar way. Not a commercial success; the calculator chip was so slow it made an 8080A seem like a Cray-1.

In the early 70's HP put a calculator into a scope, the HP-1722A. Of course just the HP-35 chipset and display, with new firmware and fully integrated, not an HP-35 glued on the front like this DMM!

[crisr]

Am I missing something or does the watch itself does not use the micro-SD card in any way? If it is the latter, in order to get any functionality out of the micro-SD card which is located inside the watch you need to use a proprietary cable (or unscrew the watch cover, in which case you would need to carry a screwdriver anyway)... that seems pretty dumb... if you have to carry a cable, why not just carry the micro-SD inside a thumb-drive-type USB adapter, or simply a USB thumb drive? Or maybe they could make a USB thumb drive that you could just slide off the watch's bracelet or from the watch itself.

[mikeselectricstuff]

The way that calculator eners the DVM data is simple, it reads the LCD digital data by using the backplane to Xor the data back to single segments on or off, then looks up the digits in an internal table then simply emulates the keypresses needed to input that data into the calculator chipset. Easy to see by half the pins on the IC being attached to the keyboard matrix and the other half being on the LCD pins including backplane. Also you can see the ditits being shifted in by the display ripple as it is entered.

I suspect it's more likely it's a standard calculator chip, and the other chip is something like a multiplexer or maybe an MCU that fakes keypresses to the calc chip.
Even the keypad looks like it was an existing calculator pad.
I was expecting it wowork by faking keypresses, but was expecting to to see something rather less well integrated - discrete logic or 4000 series analogue switches etc. to do the interfacing. 
They must have spent quite a lot on this though - custom LCD, at least one mask-rom device. I wonder how many they sold.

[mrkev]

On the topic of Soviet manufacturing:

In Czechoslovakia (not Soviet, but still eastern block) there was a state company called Tesla ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_%28company%29 ) that manufactured most electronic devices - it was a big thing, that made pretty much everything, from semi conductors, through resistors to consumer electronics. There were other manufacturers (state owned), but this far outshined them all.

After communism fell in Czechoslovakia, the markets were open and a whole lot of competition led to the fall of many divisions, their remnants being either downsized, privatized (this happened to the prosperous parts as well), stolen (this happened to the prosperous parts as well) or just simply died.

A few divisions remained as individual companies in various forms of ownership (some transformations were done through means of dubious legality, as with many other state owned companies  ... another topic entirely). Some still remain and make/sell stuff under their own brands, such as:

http://www.jj-electronic.com/index.php?option=com_frontpage&Itemid=1
http://www.sev-litovel.cz/en/
http://www.tesla.cz/en/domu/
http://www.semikron.com/skcompub/en/slovensko-1845.htm

I'm guessing that Soviet manufacturers had a similar fate, although more of them might have survived.

Well it wasn't really simple. Ppl in Tesla made a lot of knock-offs, kind of like China now. There were wery old technologies (somethimes) together with absolutely crazy technological proces. One of the biggest factories in USSR that made IOs and transistors was located in my area, and I know a few people that were quite high in hierarchy. Where the precision of process wasn't meeting the standards, they used to measure every piece selecting the better ones and selling them by different code.
Big part of Tesla in Rožnov p. R. was f.e. bought by ON-semi, they are now designing and producing switch-control devices for power sources. But the investment to new technologies was, as far as I heard, about the same as whole company was worth...

[ttp]

They must have spent quite a lot on this though - custom LCD, at least one mask-rom device. I wonder how many they sold.

Hioki seems to like combining things - a day or two ago bumped into their analog charting multimeter on Ebay. Never suspected such a beast would exist.

http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/HIOKI-8202-MICRO-HI-CORDER-/181278536149?pt=AU_B_I_Electrical_Test_Equipment&hash=item2a350af1d5

[djlorenz]

what a bad looking watch... why this shitty lcd? you cant read anything! maybe almon-eyed guys from japan can see that better?