What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[Mr. Scram]

It’s a lovely quality thing and some superb operator and service manuals all available online.

Blood pressure, blood oxygen, breath C02, temperature, ECG (3-12 lead) all monitored and logged automatically. Internal (chest open!) and external defib paddles, normal disposable defib pads. Bluetooth, ethernet and RS232 interfaces, 2 lithium battery packs with calibration function, continuous background self checks and results logging. Voice recording, voice prompts for AED mode, pacemaking, manual defib. Built in printer...

Astonishing things!
Boots up ready for use in less than 2 seconds, non of that Linux/Windows nonsense in these!

Boot times have rarely mattered more. 

[TerraHertz]

A box of fragments.

HP 66312A 0-20V/0-2A DYNAMIC MEASUREMENT DC SOURCE
Basically a DC power supply with lots of dynamic monitoring features.
Won for US $21.50 but it's heavy so the shipping (via ebay Global Shipping Program) was costly:
  Domestic leg         $65.45
  International leg   $61.28
  Import charges     $19.41

And then... it arrived massively smashed.



More pics: http://everist.org/pics/smashed/smashed.htm

It could be worse. According to ebay on the phone just now, they are going to refund in full. Item plus shipping.
This means I get a free jig saw puzzle to try and piece together. Visually it appears all the electronics survived, amazingly. But powering it up will be the test. Most lucky: the VFD is intact.  In fact the whole front display board seems undamaged, apart from some bent tabs on the spinner wheel sensor. So the thing may be salvageable. Though it's never going to look pretty.

[Ed.Kloonk]

Don't turn it on, smash it apart!

[bitseeker]

Woah! That's a lot of pieces. It really is amazing that the VFD survived that shake-n-bake. I hope it runs OK and you're able to snag a deal on a dead one for a face transplant.

[TerraHertz]

... and you're able to snag a deal on a dead one for a face transplant.

Heh. Someone has never tried living in Australia and paying US to Oz shipping costs. In US dollars times 1.5 (USD to AUD exchange rate) plus our lovely 10% tax on the purchase PLUS the shipping. And if I ship via my reshipper in CA, ALSO the commie-fornia tax on everything passing through.

No, this one is living with it's scarred face, and liking it.

Update: Ebay did indeed refund both item cost and shipping. So the lesson is, if you receive something via ebay Global Shipping Program, and when you receive the parcel it looks even slightly like the contents may be damaged, take lots of photos of the process of opening it and checking the contents. I've not used GSP much yet, and the few previous times I did were OK. But it seems the system may have a black spot or two.

[bitseeker]

Yeah, even if the chances are remote, still wanted to offer well wishes. Rough week at work thus far, so trying to generate some positive vibes.

[McBryce]

A box of fragments.

HP 66312A 0-20V/0-2A DYNAMIC MEASUREMENT DC SOURCE
Basically a DC power supply with lots of dynamic monitoring features.
Won for US $21.50 but it's heavy so the shipping (via ebay Global Shipping Program) was costly:
  Domestic leg         $65.45
  International leg   $61.28
  Import charges     $19.41

And then... it arrived massively smashed.

More pics: http://everist.org/pics/smashed/smashed.htm

It could be worse. According to ebay on the phone just now, they are going to refund in full. Item plus shipping.
This means I get a free jig saw puzzle to try and piece together. Visually it appears all the electronics survived, amazingly. But powering it up will be the test. Most lucky: the VFD is intact.  In fact the whole front display board seems undamaged, apart from some bent tabs on the spinner wheel sensor. So the thing may be salvageable. Though it's never going to look pretty.

3D printer job!

McBryce.

[beanflying]

A box of fragments.

HP 66312A 0-20V/0-2A DYNAMIC MEASUREMENT DC SOURCE
Basically a DC power supply with lots of dynamic monitoring features.
Won for US $21.50 but it's heavy so the shipping (via ebay Global Shipping Program) was costly:
  Domestic leg         $65.45
  International leg   $61.28
  Import charges     $19.41

And then... it arrived massively smashed.

More pics: http://everist.org/pics/smashed/smashed.htm

It could be worse. According to ebay on the phone just now, they are going to refund in full. Item plus shipping.
This means I get a free jig saw puzzle to try and piece together. Visually it appears all the electronics survived, amazingly. But powering it up will be the test. Most lucky: the VFD is intact.  In fact the whole front display board seems undamaged, apart from some bent tabs on the spinner wheel sensor. So the thing may be salvageable. Though it's never going to look pretty.

3D printer job!

McBryce.

Ouchy  There is only a rear end for that case series available https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2186112 so it could be adapted to take either a Laser Cut insert panel for the buttons and bits might work better than all 3D printed. Or from scratch not that hard to make one up but I would still favour a Laser cut panel inside a housing.

At least it works and the price is minimal I guess 

[McBryce]

I'd just make a clean cut, 3D print the end section and bond them together.

Oh, and I should mention, today I bought 100x KM4164 64Kx1 NMOS DRAM. I do a lot of retro computer repairs and go through a massive amount of these.

McBryce.

[BigBoss]

I have tested the Noise Level of my TDS3034 using all 4Chs with ;
Time Base : 2ns/sec ( min )
Vertical :1mV/div (min)
Acquisition : Envelope
Trigger Source : CH1
Trigger Coupling : DC
No Probe Connected
All CHs are GND'd
Is that Noise Level normal for this type of oscilloscope ??

 

[Helix70]

... and you're able to snag a deal on a dead one for a face transplant.

Heh. Someone has never tried living in Australia and paying US to Oz shipping costs. In US dollars times 1.5 (USD to AUD exchange rate) plus our lovely 10% tax on the purchase PLUS the shipping. And if I ship via my reshipper in CA, ALSO the commie-fornia tax on everything passing through.

No, this one is living with it's scarred face, and liking it.

Update: Ebay did indeed refund both item cost and shipping. So the lesson is, if you receive something via ebay Global Shipping Program, and when you receive the parcel it looks even slightly like the contents may be damaged, take lots of photos of the process of opening it and checking the contents. I've not used GSP much yet, and the few previous times I did were OK. But it seems the system may have a black spot or two.

It is all so random. I just received my 6612C, also using GSP, and it was USD47 for shipping from the US to Brisbane, plus USD28 import charges (although I paid USD179 buy it now). I believe mine weighs a little less, but still. Luckily mine arrived in great shape. Only complaint is my VFD is no great. It will do, but watching for a cheap replacement.

[WattsThat]

TerraHertz: putting the bits back together will go reasonably well if you use the liquid styrene plastic model cement from a hobby shop. It’s typically methyl ethyl ketone or trichloroethylene, if it is available in Oz. MEK works best but it’s not available worldwide these days.

Had a similar problem on an HP E3640A, not as smashed as yours but it did go back together with minimal scaring.

[Nominal Animal]

For ABS plastic stuff, you can make a slurry out of ABS shavings and a little bit of pure acetone, and use it to cover any small holes, or to weld two ABS edges together.  It'll leave a bump and a visible scar, but it does fuse the ABS together and leaves a stronger joint than any glue.

MEK does the exact same thing, and is also called butanone.  They're neither cements nor glue, really; they dissolve some of the material, so are basically welding agents.  If used in the right amount (not much; just enough to fully weld the mating surfaces), the join has the same properties as the original plastic.

[deadlylover]

Bought this a few months back but forgot to share, it's the FY6900 signal generator that you can find rebranded everywhere. It was about 80 dollarydoos.

It came DOA and yet suspiciously plastered in QC Pass stickers with a birth certificate only a few weeks prior. Of course as an Eevblog member I could not just return it to the seller so I promptly destroyed some 'warranty void if removed' stickers and took it apart.

Oh there's your problem... the main PCB wasn't connected to the power supply.   

It takes a bit of faffing about in the menus but you can change it from Chinese to English in case anyone wanted to buy it cheaper through Taobao or the like.

[MarkL]

I have tested the Noise Level of my TDS3034 using all 4Chs with ;
Time Base : 2ns/sec ( min )
Vertical :1mV/div (min)
Acquisition : Envelope
Trigger Source : CH1
Trigger Coupling : DC
No Probe Connected
All CHs are GND'd
Is that Noise Level normal for this type of oscilloscope ??

Yes.  I get the same thing on a TDS3054.  These scopes use CCDs for their acquisition which are inherently noisy, and also experience a lot of drift.

You are using infinite envelope mode, which is essentially doing a peak detect over the run time with infinite persistence, plus full bandwidth.  You are going to see the worst of the worst.

[rsjsouza]

I got a few THS3091EVMs on the cheap from Newark. Pretty cool little dudes to play with CFB and high speed. Not bad for $7 a pop.

[thm_w]

I got a few THS3091EVMs on the cheap from Newark. Pretty cool little dudes to play with CFB and high speed. Not bad for $7 a pop.

So that was you. Had to call them and get my 1pc removed to get it out of limbo. Their ordering system is total garbage

[TerraHertz]

It works!


Mostly anyway. There seem to be some rather weird/confusing custom configs. Need to read the manual, set it back to defaults.
Not easy to use like this, the buttons keep creeping off center.

TerraHertz: putting the bits back together will go reasonably well if you use the liquid styrene plastic model cement from a hobby shop. It’s typically methyl ethyl ketone or trichloroethylene, if it is available in Oz. MEK works best but it’s not available worldwide these days.

Had a similar problem on an HP E3640A, not as smashed as yours but it did go back together with minimal scaring.

MEK not available you say? Here's my plastics repair kit:



4 L of MEK and  glass syringe with fine needle. And G-clamps, tape, etc.
The supplier was out of stock of screw-top tins when I bought that, darnit. So paint tin it was. I must find a screw top tin, that thing is a pain to open. And wow, the evaporation rate! On the plus side, bulk MEK is remarkably _pretty_. Hard to describe, but it is.

The bent metalwork is all straightened out now. It remains to be seen how many plastic fragments are missing.

Edit to add: A couple more things arrived. After the box of fragments, I've got a box of air, and a box of nCoV.
The first is a module extender for a HP 83480 scope. Yes I finally bought some actual plugins for this - http://everist.org/NobLog/20141029_HP83480A_teardown.htm, on their way now. Only took 6 years before I could afford them.  The extender pretty much is a 'box of air.' Quite expensive air.



The second is one of those fake Agilent USB HP-IB interfaces, from China.

[exe]

I'm in the business of seeking/making an ideal bridge rectifier (this is my weird hobby, like some people do volt-nutting). Thanks to AoE I got to know about FERD diodes. Now I got some.

0.25V dropout at 1A, 0.28V@2A dropout (went down to 0.27V after self-heating) at "room temperature"... Not ideal, but good-enough so I can ditch lt4320 in favor FERD in my designs. Here is the datasheet if someone interested: https://www.st.com/resource/en/datasheet/ferd40u50c.pdf . Didn't measure reverse current, it's probably very high (esp. at elevated temperatures), but that's not a concern for me.

[edy]

I promised my wife I would stop buying cheap watches... as I went on a bit of a rampage over the past few months once I discovered a bunch of very interesting-looking options on eBay. Hey at least they didn't cost that much... unlike some other hobbies people can get into. And I made the excuse that I was getting them only so I could do YouTube video reviews (although she caught on to that lie pretty quick).   

Anyways, my latest purchase is the Jaragar A034 (far left in the video screenshot below) which just came from China (hopefully not laden with coronavirus although if you see me stop posting in a month, you'll know why). Still fresh from my watch-binge (buying 3 oversize watches) I found this $18 automatic skeleton watch with a slide rule bezel which I really enjoy having. You will see by my video below that I already owned an older automatic Citizen handed down (although I can't tell you the year it was made... maybe one of you knows) and a slide rule Seiko Flightmaster which is much more expensive that I didn't want to wear daily. This Jaragar is cheap enough but still looks sophisticated with the skeleton and slide rule, and is automatic. Here it is compared to the other 2 watches I just mentioned:



I know how to use the outer 2 rings of the slide rule... but I have not figured out what to do with the inner rings. The inner-most starts at 0 (or 30) at the 12 o'clock position and goes 0-30 evenly. The next-most ring has 120 at the 12 o'clock and increments non-linearly but going counter-clockwise with 160 at the 9 o'clock, and 240 at the 6 o'clock. Somewhere around 4 o'clock is says BASE 1000 M and then the first number at 3 o'clock is 55. Any ideas? See this photo:



And in case you haven't seen my other 3 cheap eBay watches which I bought (the Jaragar above would be my 4th.... the other 3 were composed of 2 SKMEI's and 1 no-name Diesel knock-off), the video is shown below. Remember these were all under $20, some were under $10. I bought them to have a little different variety during the week and they look interesting but they are HUGE. I guess I was rebelling since I have been wearing this pinsky little Garmin vivofit4 for the past year. I have a few digitals but few analog watches and the ones I do are more expensive that I would want to only wear to events and formal situations, not as daily beaters or for casual outings. Therefore, to go the other extreme from my vivofit4 I decided to find the BIGGEST GAWKIEST oversized monstrosities I could find just to have a laugh at the entire style but not break the bank. Obviously my wife did not agree with my humor. 

[bitseeker]

It works!

Mostly anyway. There seem to be some rather weird/confusing custom configs. Need to read the manual, set it back to defaults.
Not easy to use like this, the buttons keep creeping off center.

Well, that's some good news. I'm still amazed it survived that.

The second is one of those fake Agilent USB HP-IB interfaces, from China.

I'm curious if they've changed at all, especially with regard to the RF shielding inside the enclosure.

[digsys]

... Not ideal, but good-enough so I can ditch lt4320 in favor FERD in my designs. Here is the datasheet if someone interested: https://www.st.com/resource/en/datasheet/ferd40u50c.pdf ....

Just curious .. what don't you like about the LT4320 approach? I've made 100s devices over many years without ever an issue? Even up to 50A bridges

[Helix70]

The second is one of those fake Agilent USB HP-IB interfaces, from China.

(Attachment Link)

Does it work well? I am looking at getting one of these and am a little gun shy.

[Mr. Scram]

Does it work well? I am looking at getting one of these and am a little gun shy.

As far as I know they tend to work well initially but don't always last. That was a while back though, I'm not sure about current versions.

[beanflying]

The second is one of those fake Agilent USB HP-IB interfaces, from China.

(Attachment Link)

Does it work well? I am looking at getting one of these and am a little gun shy.

I have had mine for a while and it does what I need. @bitseeker no they are not internally shielded like the real deal.

Given the price disparity and the totally OTT premium Agilent and now Keysight charge for them worth the small risk in particular with Paypal as a DOA warranty.