What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[rdl]

Quake 2 engine was much improved over Quake, but there are some bad bugs ("Function Pointers Have Moved", which causes save loading to fail). I can't imagine even trying to play Quake with the original executable.

Also, F12 is screenshot. It will be .tga format.

[Mortymore]

I just had to buy a box of "food" for my "babies".



Though I have a few "babies", it's actually my daughter that seems to "devour" graphite. She must be eating the leads with cereals for breakfast or something. 

[bitseeker]

As this thingy is diminishing and its getting harder to find, spotted at an old brick & mortar shop, guess they must be really old stock, grabbed the complete wattage series with 2 pieces at each value, all just 5 bucks. 

Nice catch.

When it comes to AC dummy load with pure power factor at 1 (pure one), and can shine too, compared to dumb power resistor, now I'm ready. 

and AC current limiter, too.

[SeanB]

As this thingy is diminishing and its getting harder to find, spotted at an old brick & mortar shop, guess they must be really old stock, grabbed the complete wattage series with 2 pieces at each value, all just 5 bucks. 

Nice catch.

When it comes to AC dummy load with pure power factor at 1 (pure one), and can shine too, compared to dumb power resistor, now I'm ready. 

and AC current limiter, too.

Careful with those, they do have a short life, and tend to fail short circuit briefly when they fail. I also have a lifetime supply, though in my case I chose ones made in the EU, so have a collection of Polish, Hungarian and even French and Netherlands made lamps, plus a good number of pre war German made Siemens lamps, in both frosted and clear forms, with tungsten and tantalum filaments.

With incandescent lamps recent ones are pretty much junk, never meeting the rated lifetime, and often failing within 100 hours. You cannot blame the manufacturers though, as often the machinery they are using is the old EU equipment, shipped over complete to the cheaper labour regions, and the lamp quality is as good, just that to compete on a cost basis they cut cost by reducing the most expensive item in the lamp, the actual tungsten filament length, so that the lamp runs hotter and brighter, but with a shorter life.

[BravoV]

As this thingy is diminishing and its getting harder to find, spotted at an old brick & mortar shop, guess they must be really old stock, grabbed the complete wattage series with 2 pieces at each value, all just 5 bucks. 

Nice catch.

When it comes to AC dummy load with pure power factor at 1 (pure one), and can shine too, compared to dumb power resistor, now I'm ready. 

and AC current limiter, too.

Careful with those, they do have a short life, and tend to fail short circuit briefly when they fail. I also have a lifetime supply, though in my case I chose ones made in the EU, so have a collection of Polish, Hungarian and even French and Netherlands made lamps, plus a good number of pre war German made Siemens lamps, in both frosted and clear forms, with tungsten and tantalum filaments.

With incandescent lamps recent ones are pretty much junk, never meeting the rated lifetime, and often failing within 100 hours. You cannot blame the manufacturers though, as often the machinery they are using is the old EU equipment, shipped over complete to the cheaper labour regions, and the lamp quality is as good, just that to compete on a cost basis they cut cost by reducing the most expensive item in the lamp, the actual tungsten filament length, so that the lamp runs hotter and brighter, but with a shorter life.

Noted, also these will be used just in short run as dummy load or current limiter, don't think I will be using them for days.

Not even single incandescence lamps in my house used as lighting, an exception, only the one in the microwave oven.

Agree, I noticed the filament looks really flimsy and weak even cold/off, and when turned on, its gets softened, dangling and looks like the swinging weak hot filament will break at any time. 

[lukego]

Levoit 133 air purifier.

I have a smoke extractor that sits on the bench and takes in the main smoke but since I'm soldering in an apartment, and can't open the windows in winter here in Sweden, I'm thinking a general sir filter will help me avoid poisoning my family with gradually accumulating flux particles etc.

[beanflying]

Sorry world I brought Torx security screws for a personal project today.  Bunnings we went metric before I was born 50+ years ago and this is the only 8mm countersunk screw you carry I didn't need Stainless either but that was it or nothing

[Marck]

That’s why I miss Masters their choice of fasteners made sense.  Bunnings is odd it’s like they think that their market is old British guys building bird houses and restoring and endless supply of English lawn mowers.

M

[TERRA Operative]

I just won an auction for a Tek 2467. Like the venerable 2465, but with the special CRT that shows fast pulses much brighter.
Hopefully it all works properly, although the fun is in the restoration anyway.  
Been chasing one of these for months now, should make for a good 'forever' analogue scope to keep on the shelf for when the need arises.

Picture from auction (I only won it a few hours ago. )

[BigBoss]

I have recently purchased for my new mini-lab First two, both are highly recommended..
Designed and Engineered in Germany, Manufactured in Poland by STAMOS Soldering.
Nothing to say for HAKKO..

[Mortymore]

Finally the TL-22 leads for the DE-5000 arrived.

In order to make the polarity easily identifiable, used red and black heat shrink tube.
The + and - marking on the TL-22 would eventually be easy to miss. 

[TERRA Operative]

Oh, that's a good idea with the heat shrink. I might do that with mine.

Also, peel that plastic layer off the screen!

[donghyeon0224]

HP3478A DMM.
I just finished checking RIFA capacitors, and found some cracks on them (as expected). I'll gonna buy replacements tomorrow. Hope this thing could last another 30 years...

[thm_w]

Finally the TL-22 leads for the DE-5000 arrived.

In order to make the polarity easily identifiable, used red and black heat shrink tube.
The + and - marking on the TL-22 would eventually be easy to miss. 

Curious, what are you measuring with an LCR meter where polarity would matter?

[djos]

Finally the TL-22 leads for the DE-5000 arrived.

In order to make the polarity easily identifiable, used red and black heat shrink tube.
The + and - marking on the TL-22 would eventually be easy to miss. 

Curious, what are you measuring with an LCR meter where polarity would matter?

Caps or diodes?

[thm_w]

Caps or diodes?

I'm not sure about the DE5000 but usually an LCR meter uses an AC waveform to measure components, unless it is advanced enough to offer DC bias options.
Multimeters with cap modes are slightly different, may use a DC pulse. But even then, I'm not sure you'll see much variance (unless it were a diode like you say, and the voltage was high enough to turn it on). DE5000 states a 0.5Vrms output signal.

[Mortymore]

As far as I can tell for now, only when measuring in DCR mode (DC resistance) I can see that polarity matters, since the DE-5000 outputs an (almost) DC voltage of about 750mV. Haven't done an extensive check, I'd say that for all other measurements the DE-5000 seems to output a sinusoidal signal of almost 2Vpp for all the selectable frequencies (100Hz, 120Hz, 1kHz, 10kHz and 100kHz).

Since one can cycle through all sort of measurement modes, I think it's preferable to respect the component polarity.
Though, only because of thm_w question, I checked this. My feeling was that, by "instinct" the polarity was to be respected. 

Maybe there's other implications that I can't think about right now. If something else, let me/us know, please.

[lukego]

Xilinx Kintex UltraScale+ XCKU15P-FFVE1517-2-i  FPGAs for $250 each on Ebay. List price $3500. Should be capable of 8x100G Ethernet.

Sold as salvageable components on Mellanox Innova-2 Flex MNV303212A-ADLT cards i.e. PCIe "accelerators" featuring the FPGA and a ConnectX-5 ASIC.

Hoping to desolder the FPGAs and rework them onto a custom PCB to use for development. Just one such board would save thousands of dollars - my rework station would have paid for itself!

Hope there are no nasty surprises... the Mellanox marketing literature always says UltraScale rather than UltraScale+... but the part number looks spot on.

Ebay listing at https://www.ebay.com/itm/274145389372

[thm_w]

Xilinx Kintex UltraScale+ XCKU15P-FFVE1517-2-i  FPGAs for $250 each on Ebay. List price $3500. Should be capable of 8x100G Ethernet.

Sold as salvageable components on Mellanox Innova-2 Flex MNV303212A-ADLT cards i.e. PCIe "accelerators" featuring the FPGA and a ConnectX-5 ASIC.

Hoping to desolder the FPGAs and rework them onto a custom PCB to use for development. Just one such board would save thousands of dollars - my rework station would have paid for itself!

That would definitely deserve a thread once you get these things.
U8 and U9 have underfill for some reason, but don't see it on the other IC's.

Even the card itself is impressive, 8GB DDR4: https://www.mellanox.com/related-docs/prod_adapter_cards/PB_Innova-2_Flex.pdf

[Mortymore]

After missing for 2 or 3 times the opportunity to grab a bench pillar drill from Lidl, I finally got one. This time they had an electronic speed control model Parkside PTBMOD-710-A1 for €79.99

I'm no pro needing this stuff, so knowing that I could get one 500w bench pillar drill from Lidl costing €75, when I saw 350W models on other stores costing more than €100, I just told to myself that the best deal for my limited needs was to grab one from Lidl. Well, they weren't selling a 500w belt driven this time, but a 710W electronic controlled instead. So I grab what they had.

The first impression is... well the laser is far from accurate. The old models didn't had one, so I supposed that if I "memorise" the displacement, it could be of some use anyway. The accuracy of the drill along the column itself seem very good, with no noticeable wobbling. The handle on the other side, could be better. Gets a bit stuck when returns up, and I'd prefer the old style with 3 handles 120º apart.

Haven't done more than a few holes on wood, I can't say much more. There's videos on YouTube with some detail, though some are not in English.

For casual works, and for the price, it sure will be an improvement over my drill on a column, with not much precision, speed control or accuracy.

[beanflying]

My recent Bosch PDP40 pedestal drill runs Lasers alignment but so far I have found it more or less useless as it can't be seen in sunlight and if you use larger than about 6mm drill bits the beams hit the bit not where you want to drill.

It is nice to be able to drill vertical holes through stuff if you haven't had one before 

[purfield]

I got a brand new LPKF ProtoPrint S RP on ePay for a fraction of the original price.  It's truly the Rolls Royce of manual stencil printers.  I feel spoiled!

[edy]

i7s TWS EarPods....  Well I didn't really buy it but I was GOING to buy it but I received it for free anyways. My wife has been asking me to look for a set of AirPod-like earphones for her for several months now. It just happened that we were at a function and in the "loot bag" given to all the guests was the i7s TWS EarPods BlueTooth (Apple AirPod clones)! Everyone got all excited but given that it is in a loot-bag how much could it possibly be? My wife got a pair and so did I, so I had 2 sets to compare. And so the fun began...  .



As a result I am STILL looking for a decent set of AirPod-like headphones that I can order reliably. Anyways, here's the video in case anyone wanted to see how bad these things are:



To summarize:

1. audio horribly out of sync with video (huge lag)
2. sound quality is "meh"
3. dodgy connectors
4. out-of-the-box defects - base doesn't charge (50% failure rate based on my experience of having 2 of them)
5. limited functionality (deal-breaker for me)
  - Only 5 functions: (1) play (2) pause (3) redial (4) answer call (5) ignore call
  - This means you CANNOT activate Siri or Voice Assist in your phone to do anything else
6. no volume control

The whole point of Bluetooth ear buds is to avoid having to take the phone out of the pocket. Due lack of features in #5 and #6 above it basically is just barely useful for listening on your computer, or listening to voice podcasts. Don't bother trying to watch a video with these... the lag is so bad that it can be 1-2 seconds out of sync with the video. Music sound quality will be a disgrace to the artist you are trying to listen to. Then again, for $5 you get what you pay for! But I know that they have these same pieces of turd selling for $20-30 and you don't know what you are buying because there are so many versions and clones out there.

[unknownparticle]

Check it out! Very high tech in it's day!  I have a decent array of Avo's in my collection (who said hoard??!!) and have been after one of these at a reasonable price for ages, usually they go for much more than my mental limit. This one answered my chantings as it's in really good nick and with it's carry case, leads etc.

[CalMachine]

Finally got me a semi-decent current probe!  HP 1146A

$150 + tax and shipping