Author Topic: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread  (Read 14556287 times)

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Offline BravoV

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6425 on: January 16, 2018, 01:58:57 am »
Guys, let's keep this on test gear, can we?  Don't want to see it get locked on the eve of its anniversary.

-Pat

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Online beanflying

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6426 on: January 16, 2018, 02:00:42 am »
On the bench today. Test gear support. 700W APC ups with a double load of new batteries.

4 7.2Ah AGM 12V batteries.
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Offline neo

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6427 on: January 16, 2018, 02:03:43 am »
If i may chime in to the social/political rant.

I honestly thing the entire system is a joke, the rich get richer where as death is the poor man's doctor. Everything exists in a state of social and political decay, i for example  have personally witnessed several occurrences of outright failure in the system.

   Leaving a few details out for obvious reasons,
1) I had a tooth go bad, nearly died 3 times, and due to their bureaucracy i had it rot in my mouth for 7 years until i had my wisdom teeth out and the kind doctor removed it and made the government accept the bill.
2) In another insurance instance, i have a (undisclosed) problem i need help, they actually bribed a doctor to change his report to make it less urgent, still have said problem going on a year and a half now.  :palm: :bullshit:
3) A great example, my dad just about had a heart attack, needed a chopper ride to the hospital you see, and they tried to charge him 20 grand for it. Within two years he had that near heart attack as well as a broken neck, total medical bills came to just under a quarter mil. Luckily emergency aid kicked in due to his age but that hardly subtracts from the point of just how much the bill was.
4) I live in what could be called the country, i have to put up with 1 Mbps internet. Why? Because the company which is actually meant to deliver service out here can't be arsed to do it and any company that MIGHT could provide service are trapped in a perpetual legal issue that equates to big dick waving contest.

Those things are just what personally happened to me. What is the big deal to get one tooth out you ask? I needed anesthesia to have anything done, way back in my mouth, and HAD they fixed it in a timely manner they could of saved the tooth. Instead i lost two teeth and had to get 14 fillings due to the pain of brushing my teeth.

Expanding my rant, freedom isn't free. It is a very much pay to play society, if you have money you can damn well do whatever the hell you want whenever the hell it suits you. If you don't? BACK OF THE LINE!

America, the greatest nation in the world, if you consider liars, hypocrites, politicians, idiots and ridiculous policy great!

Rant over resume normal operation following the period.
A hopeless addict (and slave) to TEA and a firm believer that high frequency is little more than modern hoodoo.
 
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Offline neo

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6428 on: January 16, 2018, 02:12:47 am »
Back to TEA, I've decided to bid on a poorly listed fluke 8020A just to see what i get.
A hopeless addict (and slave) to TEA and a firm believer that high frequency is little more than modern hoodoo.
 

Offline Cerebus

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6429 on: January 16, 2018, 02:13:38 am »
All my friends are in low places.  :P

Certainly where you'll find me ...
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Offline Specmaster

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6430 on: January 16, 2018, 02:23:53 am »
All my friends are in low places.  :P

Certainly where you'll find me ...
And me, along with just about most of us, otherwise we wouldn't be scouring eBay for test gear, we'd be peeling the protective plastic off the screen of new shiny items  :popcorn:
Who let Murphy in?

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Offline Carl_Smith

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6431 on: January 16, 2018, 02:56:39 am »
So, my contribution to get back on test equipment.  I had a bit of a scare with my favorite multimeter recently.  It's a Protek 506 that I've had for somewhere around 20 years.  It's a great meter, but it's one fault is that it eats batteries really fast.  When changing the battery the battery snap connector broke in half.  No problem, I've got a parts drawer full of them and I'll just take it apart and solder in a new one.

The procedure seemed to go without any issues. Got it back together, turned it on and measured some DC volts and it worked.  Note my lack of testing the other dozen functions of the meter.

A week later I fired it up to test continuity of the wires on a set of earbud headphones and I find that the resistance measurement doesn't work.  It flashes as fast as it can back and forth between OL and zero and won't actually measure anything.  Hmmm...  Well, now I have something more to fix.  The meter.  But maybe I can flip it to the signal generator function and test the earbuds by hearing the tone.   Nope, no tone. 

I start checking the other functions of the meter and I find that it appears to select each function OK but many of them don't work.

After another hour of taking the meter apart looking for the problem I found that the problem was me.  This meter is built with two circuit boards and the rotary selector contact wheel between the two boards, with wiper contacts on both sides of the wheel, one side contacting the top of the bottom board and the other side of the wheel contacting the bottom of the upper board.  The disk has one wiper contact on one side and two contacts on the other.  And I installed it upside down, with the one contact side against the board with two rings of contacts.  Apparently that one contact was the one that set the microcontroller to select the function, but the other contact, which was now missing because it was on the other side of the wheel, selected the analog circuitry to provide the right input to the microcontroller.  So it selected the right function but the function didn't work. Except for DC volts, the one thing I tested after changing the battery snap connector.

So I used up more than an hour with nothing to show for it other than the lesson to make sure you put selector disks back in the right way if they are reversible.
 |O

Offline Cubdriver

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6432 on: January 16, 2018, 02:59:56 am »
So I used up more than an hour with nothing to show for it other than the lesson to make sure you put selector disks back in the right way if they are reversible.
 |O

And those are the lessons that stay with us.   |O

Bet you never do that again.   ;D

-Pat
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Offline djos

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6433 on: January 16, 2018, 03:06:42 am »

Ouch!  >:(

Unfortunately our Aussie conservatives think the US system is fantastic and are continually trying to erode it and return to the system we had in the 60's were private organisations and their shareholders use ppls poor health to make huge profits.  |O

Hmm, I thought you Aussies were much more civilised then that, so you have to have personal health insurance as well, and if you don't, what happens then?

It would not surprise me to find that we adopt that scheme here before too long as well as all our leaders seem to care about is extracting as much of our money, over and above what we already pay in direct taxation and it seems we get nothing back. Our roads are national disgrace with huge potholes on them, even on some of our motorways, there are potholes, pretty bad ones as well. Hitting them at 70mph in a car is bad enough to damage the tyres and can do mechanical damage to the cars structure as well, and if you was unlucky enough to hit one while riding a motorbike, you could be thrown all the road, even thrown of your bike and that could end with some dire consequences.

It never used to be this way at all, yes there is a thing called inflation, but we all are paying more and more of our earnings to the government in one form or other of taxation, so where does all that tax go to???

I guess we had better change the topic, as this is an electronics forum not a political debating society, before we get told off.

Depends on your earnings, I'm fortunate enough to make a great living and so If I dont fork over $300 a month for private health insurance I get belted by the tax man at the end of the financial year. I can still use public services (and frequently that's the best option unless I want to take out a loan) but they have been so eroded over the last 20 years that there are big waits for "elective surgery" and to see specialists.

lol, too true.  :-DD

Offline bitseekerTopic starter

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6434 on: January 16, 2018, 03:35:53 am »
All my friends are in low places.  :P

Certainly where you'll find me ...
And me, along with just about most of us, otherwise we wouldn't be scouring eBay for test gear, we'd be peeling the protective plastic off the screen of new shiny items  :popcorn:

True, although I'm not sure I'd want to spend big $$$ on some of the new(er) stuff. More complicated, harder to fix, slower to boot, etc. I'm quite happy with the bang-for-buck I've gotten thus far. :-+
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Online beanflying

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6435 on: January 16, 2018, 05:11:01 am »
My 3458a budget keeps getting plundered for other gear  :palm:

Only 2000 more Doughnuts and 1000 Coffees to make unless I buy something before  :scared:

Best part of a rebuild. Smoke remains where it should be and the lights are in the happy place  :-/O
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6436 on: January 16, 2018, 05:39:49 am »

There is a HUGE difference, I'm afraid.

Medical Care in the US has been turned into a tool for the transfer of wealth upwards; it is so insanely expensive to get any care in a hospital that the average person can't afford routine maintenance, much less an ER visit. I'm over 40 and haven't had a colonoscopy in over 4 years due to no insurance; any hospital visit of any sort starts at $3500 and counts by the minute in hundreds.

(SNIP)

Cheers, and be glad you still know where both your kidneys are,


mnem
Ow, my spleen!

I thought Obama had put in place a sort of NHS system that the current Chump is trying to undo?The picture you paint is disgusting and the politicians ought to be shot for their lack of care towards the people that they are supposed to be representing, its inhuman to watch your fellow man suffer like that. So what happens if your involved in a RTA and an ambulance is called, do they check if you have the means to pay for any treatment and if you don't, do they leave you at the roadside, or in your car to die?

At least you have a military so you could defend yourselves if you had to. We have a Navy that is shrinking and a aircraft carrier with nothing to fly from it. Army has out dated weaponry and dwindled numbers and our Airforce, well, your 2 bases over here Mildenhall and Lakenheath between them probably have as many planes stationed there as we have in total.

First off, I would jump for joy if I could get real health insurance for $300/month. Try more like US$400. PER WEEK.

Well, the GOP (Tories for you who speak the Queen's English or Francais) have been deliberately sabotaging everything Obama since the day he was elected. They managed to sabotage the ACA (ObamaCare) by making all administration of the program handled by the individual states, and so all the GOP states refused the MedicAid expansion (raising of the artificially lowered maximum income levels and standardization of eligibility requirements) and rigged the enrollment to be as hard as possible for the poor who needed it most.

These states, ironically, were almost to a man the states that needed the expansion most; and even here in Texas where they adopted some of the most draconian measures to sabotage the ACA it has by all measures been a rousing success and has saved the state billions per year. But between us my wife and I barely make enough to pay for the house and feed the kids, so we make too much to have either of us or the kids on MedicAid, even though we can barely afford to keep two 10 year old vehicles afloat.

The system is rigged to box the average worker into this very tight hole; keep you scrambling from paycheck to paycheck until you're used up, and then they can steal everything you worked for all your life with this predatory medical care system because only the wealthy deserve to pass on their wealth to their children. They've turned the entire economy of a nation into that of an 1890s mining town, and WalMart is the Company Store.



Oh, and to keep it TEA related... look what I unearthed this afternoon, in the bottom of a box of Christmas ornaments I was packing up. I made this simple curve tracer when I was a teenager, taking my first courses in Electronics while still in high school.


mnem
I suddenly feel very, very old.  :palm:
« Last Edit: January 16, 2018, 05:43:50 am by mnementh »
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Online beanflying

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6437 on: January 16, 2018, 05:55:39 am »
I have 'worked' the last two days in bare feet and shorts pretending I am not old  ;D  *** Not recommended for those from the Northern Hemisphere at present  :-DD

Working with angle grinders and metalworking tools tomorrow to fit out the rack case might risk it all and do that without footwear too. Irresponsible bloody grownups .........
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Offline bitseekerTopic starter

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6438 on: January 16, 2018, 06:13:25 am »
Yeah, I was wondering about the bear foot in the photo for a moment, then I remembered where you were. ^-^
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Offline djos

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6439 on: January 16, 2018, 06:31:05 am »
First off, I would jump for joy if I could get real health insurance for $300/month. Try more like US$400. PER WEEK.

Well, the GOP (Tories for you who speak the Queen's English or Francais) have been deliberately sabotaging everything Obama since the day he was elected. They managed to sabotage the ACA (ObamaCare) by making all administration of the program handled by the individual states, and so all the GOP states refused the MedicAid expansion (raising of the artificially lowered maximum income levels and standardization of eligibility requirements) and rigged the enrollment to be as hard as possible for the poor who needed it most.

These states, ironically, were almost to a man the states that needed the expansion most; and even here in Texas where they adopted some of the most draconian measures to sabotage the ACA it has by all measures been a rousing success and has saved the state billions per year. But between us my wife and I barely make enough to pay for the house and feed the kids, so we make too much to have either of us or the kids on MedicAid, even though we can barely afford to keep two 10 year old vehicles afloat.

The system is rigged to box the average worker into this very tight hole; keep you scrambling from paycheck to paycheck until you're used up, and then they can steal everything you worked for all your life with this predatory medical care system because only the wealthy deserve to pass on their wealth to their children. They've turned the entire economy of a nation into that of an 1890s mining town, and WalMart is the Company Store.



Oh, and to keep it TEA related... look what I unearthed this afternoon, in the bottom of a box of Christmas ornaments I was packing up. I made this simple curve tracer when I was a teenager, taking my first courses in Electronics while still in high school.


mnem
I suddenly feel very, very old.  :palm:

They call themselves "liberals" here in Aus but it's meant in the economic sense, as in neo-liberal economics. I call them Conservatives (because that's more accurate) and when im being less charitable, RWFW's (Right wing F wits) because they are so out of touch with most Australians (Murdoch's lying news papers are the only reason they keep winning elections).

$400 a week  :wtf:  :scared:

anyhoo, not quite TEA but I just ordered some 12v 50cm LED strip lights for my electronics workbench as my old mini-fluro has died. Turns out none of the light shops sell the tubes anymore - this solution has the added bonus of not getting in the way of me seeing my wall mounted monitor when I'm standing at the bench.


Offline bitseekerTopic starter

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6440 on: January 16, 2018, 06:38:08 am »
Happy TEAnniversary, everyone! May all your acquisitions be free of BISCUITS (unless you were in the mood for some soldering, of course).
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Offline Cubdriver

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6441 on: January 16, 2018, 07:01:27 am »
I think something may be arriving tomorrow (well, technically, later today).  It left Keasby, NJ a few hours ago.  Fingers crossed.  And I took some pics of another recent acquisition, but am too wiped to post them now.  More by the light of day; time to hit the sack now.

Happy TEAnniversary, all.

-Pat
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Online beanflying

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6442 on: January 16, 2018, 07:35:27 am »
My New Scope is in the country and cleared customs, not quite anniversary material but as I have said before collecting 'stuff' has no start middle and end >:D
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Offline Mr. Scram

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6443 on: January 16, 2018, 07:46:41 am »
First off, I would jump for joy if I could get real health insurance for $300/month. Try more like US$400. PER WEEK.

Well, the GOP (Tories for you who speak the Queen's English or Francais) have been deliberately sabotaging everything Obama since the day he was elected. They managed to sabotage the ACA (ObamaCare) by making all administration of the program handled by the individual states, and so all the GOP states refused the MedicAid expansion (raising of the artificially lowered maximum income levels and standardization of eligibility requirements) and rigged the enrollment to be as hard as possible for the poor who needed it most.

These states, ironically, were almost to a man the states that needed the expansion most; and even here in Texas where they adopted some of the most draconian measures to sabotage the ACA it has by all measures been a rousing success and has saved the state billions per year. But between us my wife and I barely make enough to pay for the house and feed the kids, so we make too much to have either of us or the kids on MedicAid, even though we can barely afford to keep two 10 year old vehicles afloat.

The system is rigged to box the average worker into this very tight hole; keep you scrambling from paycheck to paycheck until you're used up, and then they can steal everything you worked for all your life with this predatory medical care system because only the wealthy deserve to pass on their wealth to their children. They've turned the entire economy of a nation into that of an 1890s mining town, and WalMart is the Company Store.



Oh, and to keep it TEA related... look what I unearthed this afternoon, in the bottom of a box of Christmas ornaments I was packing up. I made this simple curve tracer when I was a teenager, taking my first courses in Electronics while still in high school.


mnem
I suddenly feel very, very old.  :palm:
I can't understand why people are so abhorred by universal healthcare or affordable schooling in the US. It's not just the fat cats either, lots of people on lower incomes fervently opposed any changes that would better them. Better red than dead was a bit silly in the 80's, but this persistent fear of anything remotely reminiscent of socialism seems to be slowly tearing the country apart. You can't simply refuse to make improvements because it reminds you of a long defeated regime. Well, I guess you can.

One freighting view might be that many people are in such a daily struggle that they cannot stand the idea of paying for someone else. They need every last bit for themselves to survive after all, even though they might actually benefit from the situation when all is said and done.

Is it $400 a person a week, or for the whole family?
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6444 on: January 16, 2018, 08:12:05 am »
Guys, let's keep this on test gear, can we?  Don't want to see it get locked on the eve of its anniversary.

-Pat

+1 .... the TEA party is becoming ANAL ... Any New Acquisition Lair

Just so.

That's a shame because some of the information and opinions on the ANAL stuff might well be useful in its own right. Unfortunately nobody else will ever notice it or find it in the middle of this thread.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
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Offline djos

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6445 on: January 16, 2018, 08:48:35 am »
Guys, let's keep this on test gear, can we?  Don't want to see it get locked on the eve of its anniversary.

-Pat

+1 .... the TEA party is becoming ANAL ... Any New Acquisition Lair

Just so.

That's a shame because some of the information and opinions on the ANAL stuff might well be useful in its own right. Unfortunately nobody else will ever notice it or find it in the middle of this thread.

I thought members attending group therapy were concerned about each others welfare and circumstances too?

 :-+

Offline Specmaster

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6446 on: January 16, 2018, 09:04:34 am »
Guys, let's keep this on test gear, can we?  Don't want to see it get locked on the eve of its anniversary.

-Pat

+1 .... the TEA party is becoming ANAL ... Any New Acquisition Lair

Just so.

That's a shame because some of the information and opinions on the ANAL stuff might well be useful in its own right. Unfortunately nobody else will ever notice it or find it in the middle of this thread.
Well its nice to get to hear a bit about other peoples problems as much of the news that we get fed these days is orchestrated.

Moving on and back to TEA related items on our TEAnniversary (Happy Anniversary everyone), in a couple of hours I shall be making a 20 mile trip to personally collect my latest addition to my bench, a 10MHz pulse generator, never had one of these before but I figure that it might be useful in setting up and repairing old analogue scopes at least. The bandwidth is perhaps a little limited but all to often in some of the service manuals it asks for some frequencies and amplitudes that my Heathkit calibrator cannot provide, usually somewhere in between two set frequencies as they assume that everyone has access to the list of equipment that they specify.

Regarding the 10MHz limit of the generator, thinking about it a bit more, I don't think thats going to be an issue as so far I have not seen any tests / calibration steps that exceed 1MHz, so it may be perfectly ok for my intended purpose, not long to find out what it its like. If its anything like the other items I have purchased from this seller, it will be working right out of the box. More on this later today.
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Offline bd139

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6447 on: January 16, 2018, 09:35:52 am »
That TG110 has a rise time of 10ns so bandwidth is a little higher than the "10MHz faceplate" mark which is the pulse repetition rate on PGs. Bandwidth is roughly defined as:

0.35 / risetime(ns) = bandwidth (GHz)

So 35MHz in this case.

However I wouldn't use a pulse generator to calibrate a scope. The main thing with the PG is that it has defined rise and fall times and rough high and low times rather than regular precise events or stable amplitude. It's usually used to inject stimulus into a system or to react to another stimulus on a trigger. Something crystal controlled is far more accurate as that has leading and trailing edges or pulses derived are derived from a stable ridiculously high Q oscillator, usually run through some TTL flip-flop chains to derive lower frequencies.

Amplitude is a different matter though. That's really complicated. Much more than it looks. That's a complicated combination of the distributed capacitance of the system, the transmission line between the finals in the pulse generator and the input of the scope, the slew rate of the final amplifier etc. And then there's the aggregate bandwidth of the whole system to consider. How do you, for example, calibrate a 100MHz oscilloscope's amplitude at 100MHz when it won't read full amplitude there?

This was a difficult problem and even Tektronix gave up on it for a long time and kicked out separate marker generators for horizontal calibration and constant amplitude generators for vertical cal. Look up Tektronix Type 184 and 191. Both marvelous bits of engineering.

However very useful to have around. Great for clocking TTL circuits, doing TDR and numerous other things.
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6448 on: January 16, 2018, 09:56:22 am »
Guys, let's keep this on test gear, can we?  Don't want to see it get locked on the eve of its anniversary.

-Pat

+1 .... the TEA party is becoming ANAL ... Any New Acquisition Lair

Just so.

That's a shame because some of the information and opinions on the ANAL stuff might well be useful in its own right. Unfortunately nobody else will ever notice it or find it in the middle of this thread.
Well its nice to get to hear a bit about other peoples problems as much of the news that we get fed these days is orchestrated.

Just so. But a separate thread would be appropriate so that more people can benefit.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
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Having fun doing more, with less
 

Offline Specmaster

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #6449 on: January 16, 2018, 10:01:35 am »
Well thats the TEA effect for you right there, I had this overwhelming urge to get this PG, something kept niggling at me to buy it so I did and now I'm off to collect it, at least I got a really good price on it so it can sit in my stack of gear and if it doesn't get used that much, not much damage done to the budget for other items.

Speaking of good prices, I got a remote for that Bose SoundDock on fleabay the person was selling his remote as the dock had stopped working. He emailed me directly and thanked me for buying his remote (unusual but there you go, it takes all sorts) so I replied and just asked what he did with the dock, turned out that he had done nothing with it and was going to dump it, so for the cost of a few extra £ on postage, I'm now getting a remote and a non working dock which may turn out like the one I was given last week, which was supposed to be nonworking but works perfectly. They were using it as speaker system for a laptop via the 3.5mm jack socket so the fault must have been in the lead or laptop so they gave the dock away  :palm: I'm not complaining though  :-/O
Who let Murphy in?

Brymen-Fluke-HP-Thurlby-Thander-Tek-Extech-Black Star-GW-Avo-Kyoritsu-Amprobe-ITT-Robin-TTi
 


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