A genuinely true anecdote...
When my wife was out one weekend I slept with my Marconi 2019A RF generator. Neither of them will forgive me.
Incidentally this was because the dining table, kitchen sides were covered wth crap, the kids had wrecked the living room sofas, it was 2AM and I'd spent 5 hours trying to get a Telequipment D83 to trigger and the sig gen was already in the bed because there was nowhere else to stick it so I thought what the hell.
A lesson was learned as indicated by the scar on my arse crack: Remove the rack handles before sleeping with your test gear.
I once had an affair with an Eico and an Identical TWIN PAIR of Tektronics at the same time. I was in my early twenties, but even then, it was hard keeping up, even at my young age. And you know? It just got to be too much for me to handle... I couldn't keep one set of leads from getting confused in the middle of a lab "session" with which scope I was courting at the time. I know it's disgusting now looking back at it all since I also had a Girlfriend, but my hands were ALL OVER these Scopes... Playing as I was with High Voltage Fire, I didn't even observe the "keep one hand in your pocket rule" . God, I guess we were ALL a bit wreckless back then, before we had to worry about CMOS Static and Viruses(!) We didn't worry that just ONE touch could ruin everything...I was one of those guys in my Wasted Youth... Long Hair, Polyester Pants static generating be damned, and All Caution to the wind, though I DID least have a Pen Pocket Protector. Here I was even putting my Girlfriend at risk, of losing her Boyfriend anyway, but I'm sure in hindsight, that even SHE would get over the shock. By the next weekend. Boyfriends like me were a dime a dozen. Especially the nonathletic types like me who spent sunny days in a dingy apartment electronics lab. After all, in those Heady GTO Days, I was driving an Oldsmobile Cutllass! Not an Oldsmobile Cutlass Deluxe. JUST an Oldsmobile Cutlass. With Massey Ferguson Tractor Red Paint over the Rusted and smashed back left quarter panel from where I had wrecked it on a Road Trip to pick up...YES! MORE Electronics Junque from Fair Radio Sales in Lima, Ohio! You get the picture.
You know, the "twins" were very Up Town and Sophisticated. But the Eico had such an alluring Vacuum tube Smell, even though she was a bit more of a Waterfront kind of painted "Lady", with a thicker green phosphor line and all. She lacked the Badge and the Window Dressing Makeup. But she knew what to do...
And then, it happened.
My Eico was left with one of her previous "suitors" with a replacement nonpolarized plug. Some guys are like that: They just USE a scope and then take the Cheap and Undignified way out: And there she sits at the Garage Sale...until finally she is reduced to the Landfill Status Discard..But a few LUCKY ONES are Rescued.
I had just switched apartments, trying to keep a low profile in my Obsessional Shame. Just after signing The Lease with The Landlord who bought my "cover story" of being a mere College Student who wouldn't convert the back open second story patio into an Antenna Farm resembling the roof of an Embassy and a SAM Site, I nonchalantly plugged her in at the new domicile, without checking which way the polarity was... I gently turned up her gain. The smell of vacuum tubes, capacitor wax, and dust was overpowering. I gently touched her with the back of my hand, and the sensation of warmth was indescribable! I hadn't plugged in the Tektronics Twins yet..they didn't need to know about THIS little Test Bench Romp! Yet their empty cold CRT's stared on in blank disgust at what was about to happen.
I was simultaneously annoyed with ANOTHER smell, namely the crappy "Cost Cutter" Generic Brand pizza in the Gas oven that was way past the 45 minute wind up timer bell ding that I had set to remind me that it was ready and I always forgot about in the middle of my experiments anyway. I couldn't afford a microwave back then. Few could. But then again, that wasn't the kind of microwaves I was interested in back in the day. So I ate lot of Burned Costcutter Pizza. There's nothing worse than Burned Costcutter Generic Pizza. Than not eating at all. Other than drinking Costcutter Generic Beer. Which is actually not better than not drinking at all. But not by much.
My Breadboard Experiment "Device Under Test" was all ready to go. This was hand carried from the "Old" apartment not disassembled and put back together at the new place...that would have been the LOGICAL way to move it: Instead, IT had made a separate and distinct trip in the Cutllass. And all the way up the steps. It was "ready", I told my Girlfriend. And would only take me a few minutes to complete. Of Course, that ACTUALLY meant three hours and fourty five minutes of futzing around with four dozen Alligator Clips, and one Frozen Pizza as I recall and reckon.
But it was ready.
You Christen a ship with a bottle of Champagne. Times being what they were, I popped the lid on a Generic can of warm beer. It was a white can, and it had a black label, that said "Beer". But it sure didn't taste like a Carling Black Label, no matter how good the price was. Somehow, it matched the Eico for the Moment of Truth.
So I plugged in my unprotected Male Banana Plug into the Eico's Female Jack, as I had so many times before. Just as my Girlfriend entered the room as she was saying: "What are you doing in there?" from behind the closed but unocked door. Since it didn't have a lock on it
And all Hell Broke loose in a flash and lightning ball that only Thor could deliver. Or, in this case? Abraham Lincoln. Yep, that's right! Old Honest Abe Himself. (Thor WOULD come to visit me a number of years later, and luckily I lived.)
Between the pizza and the electronics, the smoke was Tremendous. White and Black and thin and thick, all at the same time. The cooking sounds stopped first with the pizza, but the electronics were still sizzling. It's a bad sound, and it doesn't give the satisfaction of a sizzling steak on the grill. Not nearly. And you can't really stop the smell, but at least you can put out the fire with two boxes of Cost Cutter Generic Baking Soda.
After I got a hold of a flashlight, and turned the pizza off, since the Gas oven wasn't even mildly concerned that the electrons no longer want through our tungsten filaments or anything else for that matter, I located the breaker box. Which wasn't a breaker box.
It was a fuze box. There wasn't even a box of spare fuzes left be the previous occupant. Everybody always at least kept a couple of spares taped to the cover if not an entire box minus one replacement...after all, there were no twenty four hour Wally Worlds back then. So if you had a Sump Pump and it was Sunday, and you didn't have a spare fuze? Guess What? That meant that you were going Swimming, that's what!
So now I figure well I have to unscrew the Old Fuze anyway, and try to come up with a replacement of the same size. From somewhere. It was Sunday.
And then I figured it out: The previous Occupant had placed a penny in the fuze box in place of a fuze. Probably on a Sunday.
I'm Certain, that all the Power plants in North America placed their Entire Electrical Output through that ONE single phase 15 Amp A.C. Circuit.
My shock was Tremendous. My Tektronics Twins Stared on in Blank Disbelief. My Girlfriend ran down the steps. I was fairly certain that she wasn't going to be back with a fuze. Or ever. When she did came back, I was trying to put the smoke back into the Eico, but the Rescue Mission quickly became a Recovery Operation, and then an Autopsy. And my Girlfriend didn't have a fuze, but she DID blow a fuze when I asked her if she had one. We got married.
73 and All the Best!
DE W8LV Bill
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Topic: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread (Read 14823043 times)