Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tggzzz]

Edit: also a couple of RIFA X2’s lurking on the power switch need swapping out.

My Solartron 7081 had those smoke generators in the combined socket+switch+voltage selector. Oh gawd, I thought, but amazingly it was still available - but it increased the price of the meter by 50%

Decided not to afford the Fischer input lead connectors, though; I made my own. Ugly but functional.

[bd139]

Yes they’re not cheap. Annoyingly sometimes you have to replace the RIFAs with the same devices due to the odd lead pitch. Kemet still sell new ones. I print out a label for them with “replace X2 capacitors on date XXXX” which is now plus ten years.

[tautech]

Found these Kelvin leads on the 'Bay, are they OK or crap ?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/LCR-Meter-Test-Leads-Lead-Clip-Cable-Terminal-Kelvin-Probe-Wires-4-Banana-US-/312008567361?hash=item48a528ea41

Certainly priced not too bad.

They're the same cheap clips as the ones I buy for $2-3 a pair; .............

mnem
Urrrgghh... must have coffee... so I can move to go make coffee-eee...

Where, if you don't mind me asking ?
Or PM if you want to keep it private. 

[xrunner]

Well I took a break from test equipment to upgrade my main PC (which was long overdue it was 7 years old). I got an MSI MOBO and a Ryzen 7 1700, and I added an SSD for the main drive. I wasn't familiar with the new UEFI BIOS replacement system so that was quite nice. All is well! 

[mnementh]

Quick! EVERYBODY go add it to your watch list right away so he gets dozens of watchers ALL AT ONCE to really fu** with his head!!! 

Done!

I love the picture!

(I hope he considers shipping to the US   )

FNAAARRRFFF!

What monster did I create? 

Found these Kelvin leads on the 'Bay, are they OK or crap ?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/LCR-Meter-Test-Leads-Lead-Clip-Cable-Terminal-Kelvin-Probe-Wires-4-Banana-US-/312008567361?hash=item48a528ea41

Certainly priced not too bad.

They're the same cheap clips as the ones I buy for $2-3 a pair; .............

mnem
Urrrgghh... must have coffee... so I can move to go make coffee-eee...

Where, if you don't mind me asking ?
Or PM if you want to keep it private. 

Underneath the shrink wrap, those "Kelvin Leads" are just a set of cheap Chinese test leads soldered to these cheap Chinese clips; look for the ones with a slotted plastic pivot pin like this one. They come in red, black, blue & grey (probably other colors too, but that's what I've seen a lot of) and you can get the clips for $3-4 each or 2/$5 pretty much all the time.

Be mindful of the caveats I mentioned in my related post a couple weeks ago:

I've got some of these in grey that I've been using on my cheap 128-64 Component testers; they work well once you spend a little time fiddling with the jaws so they align right to get good bite, and the jaws are gold-plated brass/bronze, NOT ferrous. I'm using them with short silicone wires in the 18-20ga range. I did make some strips of unplated PCB to insert under the spring where those strips of 'glas mat are on the contacts; that spring lying right on that thin matting struck me as a very likely source of unintended coupling between the two sides.

I see the ones AdaFruit sells all over fleaBay for similar prices China-direct.

mnem
*Fulminating at the mind*

mnem
Intelligence is knowing the monster wasn't Frankenstein; wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein was the monster.

[bd139]

Well I took a break from test equipment to upgrade my main PC (which was long overdue it was 7 years old). I got an MSI MOBO and a Ryzen 7 1700, and I added an SSD for the main drive. I wasn't familiar with the new UEFI BIOS replacement system so that was quite nice. All is well! 

Congratulations. Upgrading PCs these days scares me.

I’ve actually moved to a shitty old desktop PC for a bit. Keeping it TEA, this thing is running xubuntu and I got all of my kit talking to it last night. The best was the Keysight DMM. Plug in, comes up as a serial port and you just fart SCPI over it. TTi counter needed some frigging of VID PID codes but works. GDM-8341 was a bitch. It has a cypress USB serial bridge that wouldn’t play so I had to compile a custom driver forked from the chipset. I had to take it to bits first to find which chipset it was.

Got a new bench/desk on the eBay watch list at the moment as well so I can get somewhere reasonable to work as well. Fingers crossed.

[Specmaster]

Quick! EVERYBODY go add it to your watch list right away so he gets dozens of watchers ALL AT ONCE to really fu** with his head!!! 

Done!

I love the picture!

(I hope he considers shipping to the US   )

FNAAARRRFFF!

What monster did I create? 

Found these Kelvin leads on the 'Bay, are they OK or crap ?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/LCR-Meter-Test-Leads-Lead-Clip-Cable-Terminal-Kelvin-Probe-Wires-4-Banana-US-/312008567361?hash=item48a528ea41

Certainly priced not too bad.

They're the same cheap clips as the ones I buy for $2-3 a pair; .............

mnem
Urrrgghh... must have coffee... so I can move to go make coffee-eee...

Where, if you don't mind me asking ?
Or PM if you want to keep it private. 

Underneath the shrink wrap, those "Kelvin Leads" are just a set of cheap Chinese test leads soldered to these cheap Chinese clips; look for the ones with a slotted plastic pivot pin like this one. They come in red, black, blue & grey (probably other colors too, but that's what I've seen a lot of) and you can get the clips for $3-4 each or 2/$5 pretty much all the time.

Be mindful of the caveats I mentioned in my related post a couple weeks ago:

I've got some of these in grey that I've been using on my cheap 128-64 Component testers; they work well once you spend a little time fiddling with the jaws so they align right to get good bite, and the jaws are gold-plated brass/bronze, NOT ferrous. I'm using them with short silicone wires in the 18-20ga range. I did make some strips of unplated PCB to insert under the spring where those strips of 'glas mat are on the contacts; that spring lying right on that thin matting struck me as a very likely source of unintended coupling between the two sides.

I see the ones AdaFruit sells all over fleaBay for similar prices China-direct.

mnem
*Fulminating at the mind*

mnem
Intelligence is knowing the monster wasn't Frankenstein; wisdom is knowing that Frankenstein was the monster.

Agreed, those kelvin clips with the slotted plastic hinge pin are awesome, I have those on my LCR meter and always have a good grip and connection. They came as standard issue with meter which is a really good one and I'm surprised that more don't get them.

From mobile device so predictive text might have struck again [emoji83]

[Specmaster]

Well I took a break from test equipment to upgrade my main PC (which was long overdue it was 7 years old). I got an MSI MOBO and a Ryzen 7 1700, and I added an SSD for the main drive. I wasn't familiar with the new UEFI BIOS replacement system so that was quite nice. All is well! 

Congratulations. Upgrading PCs these days scares me.

I’ve actually moved to a shitty old desktop PC for a bit. Keeping it TEA, this thing is running xubuntu and I got all of my kit talking to it last night. The best was the Keysight DMM. Plug in, comes up as a serial port and you just fart SCPI over it. TTi counter needed some frigging of VID PID codes but works. GDM-8341 was a bitch. It has a cypress USB serial bridge that wouldn’t play so I had to compile a custom driver forked from the chipset. I had to take it to bits first to find which chipset it was.

Got a new bench/desk on the eBay watch list at the moment as well so I can get somewhere reasonable to work as well. Fingers crossed.

Upgrading a PC is a walk in the park, as long as you match the CPU to the MOBO and check the other items carefully for suitability before ordering. Writing software on the other hand.....

From mobile device so predictive text might have struck again [emoji83]

[mnementh]

Well I took a break from test equipment to upgrade my main PC (which was long overdue it was 7 years old). I got an MSI MOBO and a Ryzen 7 1700, and I added an SSD for the main drive. I wasn't familiar with the new UEFI BIOS replacement system so that was quite nice. All is well! 

Congratulations. Upgrading PCs these days scares me.

I’ve actually moved to a shitty old desktop PC for a bit. Keeping it TEA, this thing is running xubuntu and I got all of my kit talking to it last night. The best was the Keysight DMM. Plug in, comes up as a serial port and you just fart SCPI over it. TTi counter needed some frigging of VID PID codes but works. GDM-8341 was a bitch. It has a cypress USB serial bridge that wouldn’t play so I had to compile a custom driver forked from the chipset. I had to take it to bits first to find which chipset it was.

Got a new bench/desk on the eBay watch list at the moment as well so I can get somewhere reasonable to work as well. Fingers crossed.

Upgrading a PC is a walk in the park, as long as you match the CPU to the MOBO and check the other items carefully for suitability before ordering. Writing software on the other hand.....

From mobile device so predictive text might have struck again [emoji83]

I suddenly feel VERY, VERY old...

It seems like just yesterday I was first building this PC with 16GB of Crucial PC3-10600 BallistiX RAM and a DamifICanRememberNow ASUS MB and ATi's hottest 1.5GB video card at the time; it was 10 years ago. The MB and video card have been upgraded a few times; it went from Windoze XP/64 to Windoze7/64 to Windoze10 a couple years ago (hence the current NVidia GT640/2GB) with almost zero fuss, and the whole mess has been Ghosted over onto at least 6 different replacement HDDs.

It has been nothing but a workhorse in all that time; from running EAGLE to my trials of Altium and finally KiCad, to my experimentation with the Oculus DK2 and 3DP, and all manner of flight simulators and VMware.

*Sigh*

Dammit... that reminds me; time to do a backup. 


mnem
*crawls back into his hole and pulls the dirt in behind himself*

[bd139]

That's pretty scary that Ryzen. Here's my main windows desktop machine as a comparison. CPU in that is about the same unit cost as the Ryzen!

[bitseeker]

I don't know if it counts as woodworking, but ship modelling needs a lathe and a 3 inch long plane so I sort of think it does count.
Took me about 2 years - working 1-2 hrs 3-4x/week (while the kids were asleep). Hardest parts are planking the hull (each plank laid individually & boring) and the knot tying (so many knots and fiddly). Completed in about 2003. It is one of the few hobbies where drinking alcohol actually helps (reduces tremor)
Dimensions L~700mm, H~500mm, W~250mm, Wt ~1kg
Apologies for the photo - but it is in a glass case and hard to get out.

Rob, that's awesome! I've got a model plane in my queue that I haven't yet started, but it's nowhere near that level of detail.

[bitseeker]

This is probably the most involved woodworking I've ever done; you start with a pile of sticks and cut miniature plywood and plastic sheet and it eventually turns into this.
Dammit, I ran out of sky before I ran out of mistakes!

Nice plane. Piper Cub?

[bd139]

Only wood work I did on my short RC flight career was tree surgery 

[BillB]

...Apologies for the photo - but it is in a glass case and hard to get out.

Rob, that's awesome! I've got a model plane in my queue that I haven't yet started, but it's nowhere near that level of detail.

I've got a ship still in the box as well, I've been putting it off since it's going to be a real bear...

[Specmaster]

That's pretty scary that Ryzen. Here's my main windows desktop machine as a comparison. CPU in that is about the same unit cost as the Ryzen!

I concur with you, that is scary and the CPU race jumps all over the place one minute Intel are the leaders, then its AMD, like a game of leap frog.

I built my system up about 5 years ago now and its already looking a bit long in the tooth but I'll carry on with it for a few more years and then upgrade the parts to what would be the a system somewhere near the top but the very top as thats a foolish waste of money and that will give me a good solid platform for a few more years.

Heres my ratings.



CPU is £99 as opposed to £249 for the Ryzen, so it represented a really bang per buck at the time.

[bitseeker]

I've got a ship still in the box as well, I've been putting it off since it's going to be a real bear...

Nice. I've got one of these still in the box.

[bd139]

I concur with you, that is scary and the CPU race jumps all over the place one minute Intel are the leaders, then its AMD, like a game of leap frog.

I built my system up about 5 years ago now and its already looking a bit long in the tooth but I'll carry on with it for a few more years and then upgrade the parts to what would be the a system somewhere near the top but the very top as thats a foolish waste of money and that will give me a good solid platform for a few more years.

Heres my ratings.

... removed image ...

CPU is £99 as opposed to £249 for the Ryzen, so it represented a really bang per buck at the time.

That's pretty good even now I reckon. My (ThinkPad) laptop is considerably worse. Still a very productive machine however. Here's the shameful report:




On the subject of Lego, the last thing I ever got Lego-wise was this bad boy: http://www.technicopedia.com/8865.html

[nidlaX]

Anybody here picked up that Tektronix TDS 3000 series prototype on eBay? I was considering it, but decided it cost too much.

[mnementh]

This is probably the most involved woodworking I've ever done; you start with a pile of sticks and cut miniature plywood and plastic sheet and it eventually turns into this.


mnem
Dammit, I ran out of sky before I ran out of mistakes!

Nice plane. Piper Cub?

Of course... to choose anything less for one's first stick-built (even a kit) would be unthinkable.

Only wood work I did on my short RC flight career was tree surgery 

Oh, I trim the trees all the time flying my acro quads; I keep building them tougher and tougher so they survive my horrible piloting. Mostly. 

I've got a ship still in the box as well, I've been putting it off since it's going to be a real bear...

My son has one of those... of course, it's been built, tore apart and back in the the Lego bin for years, but he has it. 


mnem

[xrunner]

Upgrading a PC is a walk in the park, as long as you match the CPU to the MOBO and check the other items carefully for suitability before ordering. Writing software on the other hand.....

Right - I wasn't worried at all about the hardware working, I was worried about Windoze 10. Specifically whether and /or how much it would balk at an entire new system thrown at it all at once.

Well (and I know Microsoft deserves bashing sometimes) it didn't even cause the slightest problem at all. In fact the system - and I'm not kidding - came up all good to go within 30 seconds of auto reconfiguration. 

Of course I had to do an activation, but I knew that was coming, but it wasn't a big deal at all - I just re-entered my Windoze 7 activation code off the original package and it accepted it. 

[Berni]

Well most of the time Windows 10 works fine, still an occasional compatibility hickup if you run any more specialized software but reasonably rare.

Its actually getting a brand new PC to run Windows 7 that's becoming a challenge already.

I tried to install Windows 7 on a new NAS server i built just to test things out. Its usually a really quick and easy process off a USB drive. Well... not really. First of all i used a M.2 NVME SSD as the boot drive. Turns out the windows installer does not even regonise these drives, after a ton of messing around i managed to add the NVME drivers into the windows installer and that got it to detect the drive and install it just fine. However once it was done and it was time to reboot into the fresh windows install it just bluescreened, safe mode also bluescreened. Messed around with it and in the end just hooked up a old SATA HDD and installed windows 7 onto that. That went a lot smoother this time around, i finally get to see the desktop for the first time. And ahh yes typical the network card drivers are missing. I go to the motherboard manufacturers website download them, put them on a USB drive and plug it in....and... nothing. I try a diferent port, still nothing. Okay all the USB ports on the back are USB 3.0 maybe thats the problem. So i get a USB 2.0 pin header to USB-A adapter and plug that onto the internal USB headers and still nothing shows up. Turns out Windows 7 can't even get USB 2.0 to work on this motherboard. Okay so how do i get them on now. So i boot up the windows installation again so that i can get a working CMD window and it was seeing my USB thumb drive just fine so i used the command prompt to copy the drivers on to the C drive so that i could boot into windows, install the drivers and FINALY the damn thing is on the internet so that i can download all the rest. Everything goes rather smoothly now, except when i try to install the intel integrated graphics drivers. They simply refuse to install, leading me later on to find out that Intel only supports the GPU found in KabbyLake and CofeeLake and newer CPUs on Windows 8 and newer. More googling lead me to find a version of the installer that had this windows 8 and up check removed from it so that it does actually install and now finally i had a working windows instance running.

Had i known how much trouble this is going to be i wouldn't have done it. It just seamed perpetually like i just need to fix this 1 thing to get it working, but getting that 1 thing working just shown up the next problem. How is this happening Windows 7 is not THAT old.

[Specmaster]

Well most of the time Windows 10 works fine, still an occasional compatibility hickup if you run any more specialized software but reasonably rare.

Its actually getting a brand new PC to run Windows 7 that's becoming a challenge already.

I tried to install Windows 7 on a new NAS server i built just to test things out. Its usually a really quick and easy process off a USB drive. Well... not really. First of all i used a M.2 NVME SSD as the boot drive. Turns out the windows installer does not even regonise these drives, after a ton of messing around i managed to add the NVME drivers into the windows installer and that got it to detect the drive and install it just fine. However once it was done and it was time to reboot into the fresh windows install it just bluescreened, safe mode also bluescreened. Messed around with it and in the end just hooked up a old SATA HDD and installed windows 7 onto that. That went a lot smoother this time around, i finally get to see the desktop for the first time. And ahh yes typical the network card drivers are missing. I go to the motherboard manufacturers website download them, put them on a USB drive and plug it in....and... nothing. I try a diferent port, still nothing. Okay all the USB ports on the back are USB 3.0 maybe thats the problem. So i get a USB 2.0 pin header to USB-A adapter and plug that onto the internal USB headers and still nothing shows up. Turns out Windows 7 can't even get USB 2.0 to work on this motherboard. Okay so how do i get them on now. So i boot up the windows installation again so that i can get a working CMD window and it was seeing my USB thumb drive just fine so i used the command prompt to copy the drivers on to the C drive so that i could boot into windows, install the drivers and FINALY the damn thing is on the internet so that i can download all the rest. Everything goes rather smoothly now, except when i try to install the intel integrated graphics drivers. They simply refuse to install, leading me later on to find out that Intel only supports the GPU found in KabbyLake and CofeeLake and newer CPUs on Windows 8 and newer. More googling lead me to find a version of the installer that had this windows 8 and up check removed from it so that it does actually install and now finally i had a working windows instance running.

Had i known how much trouble this is going to be i wouldn't have done it. It just seamed perpetually like i just need to fix this 1 thing to get it working, but getting that 1 thing working just shown up the next problem. How is this happening Windows 7 is not THAT old.

The thing with Win7 is that it takes some time to get it working correctly. If you'd opened Device Manager you'd have seen load of questions marks and yellow highlights IIRC. The trick here is to open the properties tab for each of and "disable" them all apart from 1. Do a reboot and give it a few minutes and check Device Manager again and normally the device has been installed correctly if the right driver exists on the PC. Then repeat for other problems and you'd expect to see most of them install perfectly except for the ones like graphic drivers because your device is newer so Win7 could not possibly have the drivers built in. It is normally as simple as that, too many devices to install at once confuses it, but even then if your patient with it and allow it some time, it will sort most out for you after a few reboots.

From mobile device so predictive text might have struck again [emoji83]

[bd139]

Interestingly when I was provisioning my test desktop last week, I tried chucking windows 10 on it but it got it's ass in a knot and refused to run updates in. It just sat at downloading 8% complete. Decided to reboot the infernal turd. That didn't make any difference for it just hung on shutdown. Sat and thought for a minute and loaded the following personality:



Ergo, I just chucked xubuntu on it. Used it as my main workstation desktop for the week and it was marvelous. I spent most of my time connected to Linux machines you see. Faster than all my other workstations running windows, even though the thing is an ancient Core 2 E7500 with only 4Gb of RAM plus a Samsung 750 SSD.

Got all my test gear talking to it as well with minimal hassle. Bar the GDM-8341 which was a dick and I had to crack it open and find out the IC it had as it has a weird cypress USB/serial bridge built in with a custom VID/UID in it.

Getting an Ikea Fredrik today as a workstation desk (£10 off ebay) so will be arranging that and all my TEA acquisitions on it this afternoon

[Specmaster]

Interestingly when I was provisioning my test desktop last week, I tried chucking windows 10 on it but it got it's ass in a knot and refused to run updates in. It just sat at downloading 8% complete. Decided to reboot the infernal turd. That didn't make any difference for it just hung on shutdown. Sat and thought for a minute and loaded the following personality:



Ergo, I just chucked xubuntu on it. Used it as my main workstation desktop for the week and it was marvelous. I spent most of my time connected to Linux machines you see. Faster than all my other workstations running windows, even though the thing is an ancient Core 2 E7500 with only 4Gb of RAM plus a Samsung 750 SSD.

Got all my test gear talking to it as well with minimal hassle. Bar the GDM-8341 which was a dick and I had to crack it open and find out the IC it had as it has a weird cypress USB/serial bridge built in with a custom VID/UID in it.

Getting an Ikea Fredrik today as a workstation desk (£10 off ebay) so will be arranging that and all my TEA acquisitions on it this afternoon

Yes, Win10 does not like old PCs even though it is supposed to be able to work. I would never dream of going back in time past 5 years on the CPU with it.

From mobile device so predictive text might have struck again [emoji83]

[bd139]

CPU shouldn't matter. I had that on my Z620 in the office as well which is a relatively new 16 core E5 Xeon...

Windows of all varieties just randomly hates people with no root cause or determinism.