Author Topic: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!  (Read 2754672 times)

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Offline Ribster

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #175 on: July 03, 2015, 02:26:23 pm »
Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 3rd gen
8GB RAM, i5-5300U, 512GB PCIe x4 SSD, 2.9 lbs and 11 hour battery life  :D



Now I just have to wait for them to build it...

I've got a thinkpad at work. Does your trackpad suck as much as mine ?
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Offline suicidaleggroll

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #176 on: July 03, 2015, 03:25:59 pm »
I've got a thinkpad at work. Does your trackpad suck as much as mine ?

I have a T420s at home and the trackpad is perfectly fine.  Some coworkers at work have a T430, T530, and first get X1 carbon, all have decent trackpads.  I did get a T440 at work though with the unholy "clickpad" abomination they introduced last year...that thing is the worst pointing device I have ever used on a computer.  Apparently they received so many complaints that for 2015 they reverted the entire product line back to the traditional trackpad, so I don't expect any problems with this one.
 

Offline Deathwish

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #177 on: July 03, 2015, 08:55:47 pm »
Having had no income for 8 weeks now I have been unable to buy anything new, I did get given a intel D915G motherboard in a complete pc though for nothing, it seems the old owner couldnt get it to run, however when i ran it up and shoved spyhunter on it it found some 1018 infected files ... Oh well. I now have an old P4 machine that has a parallel and serial port so that was a bonus for some old hardware I wanted to build. I also now have a spare ATX psu for conversion.
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Offline Len

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #178 on: July 03, 2015, 09:15:50 pm »
Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 3rd gen
8GB RAM, i5-5300U, 512GB PCIe x4 SSD, 2.9 lbs and 11 hour battery life  :D



Now I just have to wait for them to build it...

I got one of those recently. I like it a lot.

I've got a thinkpad at work. Does your trackpad suck as much as mine ?

Mine works great. Better than the one on my old HP laptop.
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Offline HighVoltage

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #179 on: July 03, 2015, 09:25:33 pm »
Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon 3rd gen
8GB RAM, i5-5300U, 512GB PCIe x4 SSD, 2.9 lbs and 11 hour battery life  :D

Now I just have to wait for them to build it...
I just love Lenovo Notebooks for my engineering stuff.
Some CAD programs run faster on my W520 than on big tower workstations.
They are just amazing.

But I never owned an X1 Carbon
Will you be running it for engineering purposes?
May be you can share your experiences
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Online Circlotron

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #180 on: July 05, 2015, 01:35:16 pm »
Got a set of six 350 Farad 2.7V ultracapacitors to attach across the car battery to give the 5 litre V8 a bit more of a shove when starting, particularly on cold mornings. You can even start the car without a battery, just using the caps only, but a battery + cap combo is the ideal setup. Even if the battery is so cold, old or sad that the starter solenoid just chatters, one of these fitted will make it crank over like a new battery.
« Last Edit: July 06, 2015, 06:06:57 am by Circlotron »
 

Offline suicidaleggroll

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #181 on: July 05, 2015, 09:00:36 pm »
Will you be running it for engineering purposes?
May be you can share your experiences
It will be used for general purpose everything.

My current "lab machine/server" will be moved to dedicated server-only duty, my current general purpose T420s will move to lab duty, and the X1 Carbon will take the place of the T420s.  It'll mostly be kicad, programming, general on-site equipment testing/debugging, etc.  The first thing I'm going to do when I get it is wipe it and install OpenSUSE Tumbleweed, then I'll probably stick Windows 10 in a VM for the tasks that still require Windows.

Unfortunately Lenovo just pushed the estimated ship date back 10 days to July 17, so who knows when it'll get here.  Hopefully it shows up before my trip to Peru in August, I could use it on that long flight.
 

Offline ketil b

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #182 on: July 06, 2015, 05:49:21 am »
Hi

I got the R6144 two weeks ago, seller said it was noisy and it is, the LT1021-7 is giving up the ghost, waiting for a replacement.

The 199 I got today, apparently powers up but not tested, but it didn't. One of the primary side coils on the main transformer was open, where the PCB pin meets the wire. Fixed that and now it just reads garbage. Probably sumpthing in the ADC.

Bonus the longest boge wire I have seen
 

Offline AudioplatinumService

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #183 on: July 06, 2015, 07:11:46 am »
Hi,

I also get few UV LEDs from Ian. Maybe we can use them for an small PCB UV exposure box?

Cheers,
Damir


Well, microscope is right next to me, so a quickie for this then.

Thanks Ian, one of the nicest looking LED dies I have seen for a while.
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Offline Whales

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #184 on: July 06, 2015, 11:10:27 am »
Got a set of six 350 Farad 2.7V ultracapacitors to attach across the car battery to give the 5 litre V8 a bit more of a shove when starting, particularly on cold mornings. You can even start the car without a battery, just using the caps only, but a battery + cap combo is the ideal setup. Even if the battery is so cold, old or sad that the starter solenoid just chatters, one of these fitted will make it crank over like a new battery.

Would these outlast the battery if permanently attached or would you have to keep them separate and only use when necessary?

Offline HighVoltage

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #185 on: July 06, 2015, 11:19:18 am »
Got a set of six 350 Farad 2.7V ultracapacitors to attach across the car battery to give the 5 litre V8 a bit more of a shove when starting, particularly on cold mornings. You can even start the car without a battery, just using the caps only, but a battery + cap combo is the ideal setup. Even if the battery is so cold, old or sad that the starter solenoid just chatters, one of these fitted will make it crank over like a new battery.
Interesting....
Can you show a picture of the other side with the balancing circuit?
How is the balancing solved for these Maxwell capacitors?
Where did you buy the unit of the PCB?
How did you interface the heavy cables to the PCB?

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Offline Artlav

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #186 on: July 06, 2015, 09:57:51 pm »
A box of NOS adjustable 15W power resistors.
1984 vintage, look nice...
And that's all they do, unfortunately.

Specced at 1.5Ohm, +-5% they actually read 5.1 Ohm.
Also, the tweaker does not really work - there is no contact most of the time even after cleaning the resistive wire of corrosion.
They seem to all have about the same wrong resistance, so either i understand the labelling wrong (1.5 Ohm resistor. How can it mean 5.1 Ohm? Did they print the digits in the wrong order?), or they have degraded over time.

Well, back to looking for a tweakable 0.41 Ohm sense resistor in the 5W range...



 

Online Circlotron

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #187 on: July 07, 2015, 02:23:33 am »
Got a set of six 350 Farad 2.7V ultracapacitors to attach across the car battery to give the 5 litre V8 a bit more of a shove when starting, particularly on cold mornings. You can even start the car without a battery, just using the caps only, but a battery + cap combo is the ideal setup. Even if the battery is so cold, old or sad that the starter solenoid just chatters, one of these fitted will make it crank over like a new battery.

Would these outlast the battery if permanently attached or would you have to keep them separate and only use when necessary?
I'd expect them to last for many years provided you don't let them get way too hot. Keep them across the battery permanently. Have a search on YouTube.
 

Online Circlotron

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #188 on: July 07, 2015, 02:26:50 am »
Got a set of six 350 Farad 2.7V ultracapacitors to attach across the car battery to give the 5 litre V8 a bit more of a shove when starting, particularly on cold mornings. You can even start the car without a battery, just using the caps only, but a battery + cap combo is the ideal setup. Even if the battery is so cold, old or sad that the starter solenoid just chatters, one of these fitted will make it crank over like a new battery.
Interesting....
Can you show a picture of the other side with the balancing circuit?
How is the balancing solved for these Maxwell capacitors?
Where did you buy the unit of the PCB?
How did you interface the heavy cables to the PCB?

It's all here -> http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Ultracapacitor-Module-Battery-Eliminator-Car-Audio-Starting-Remote-Power-Solar-/111699706891?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1a01d2440b
 

Offline HighVoltage

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Offline Whales

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #190 on: July 07, 2015, 09:29:03 am »
It's all here -> http://www.ebay.com.au/itm/Ultracapacitor-Module-Battery-Eliminator-Car-Audio-Starting-Remote-Power-Solar-/111699706891?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1a01d2440b
Thanks, will be interesting to see, how the balancing was solved on this PCB.

If you scroll down there is a full schematic.  It looks like they have used a combination of light emitting and normal diodes to get something a little below the 2.7V max of each cap.

Offline free_electron

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #191 on: July 07, 2015, 03:46:25 pm »
Just scored three 3457  7-1/2 digit meters for 165$ each ...
i also acquired 7 ( yes SEVEN ) U8001 power supplies for a ridiculous price....
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Offline HighVoltage

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #192 on: July 07, 2015, 04:20:02 pm »
Just scored three 3457  7-1/2 digit meters for 165$ each ...
i also acquired 7 ( yes SEVEN ) U8001 power supplies for a ridiculous price....
It seems you have been at the right spot at the right time again!
Pictures?
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Offline ketil b

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #193 on: July 08, 2015, 03:34:11 am »
Some new keycaps for my das and Nextion came today
 

Offline KJDS

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #194 on: July 08, 2015, 07:32:09 am »
I've just bought another incomplete HP8510B 20GHz VNA.

Offline suicidaleggroll

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #195 on: July 16, 2015, 10:29:11 pm »
But I never owned an X1 Carbon
Will you be running it for engineering purposes?
May be you can share your experiences

It arrived today.  It feels very well built, small, and incredibly light.  First thing I did when I got it was backup the restore partition and then wipe the drive and install Linux, then install Windows 7 in a VM.  Everything is working out of the box, no hiccups.  The processor is nothing to write home about, Intel hasn't really improved processing power versus the standard notebook processors from 3 years ago, but what they have done is cut the power requirements of the processor in half and improved the graphics capabilities.  So same processing power as a few years ago, but better graphics and significantly lower power.  In addition to the improved battery life this gives, it also means the machine runs cool and quiet regardless of what you're doing on it.  It's spent the last 2 hours with the CPU running 100% (Windows updates) and you can hardly hear the fan and it's barely warm to the touch.

The PCIe x4 drive is SUPER fast  too, I got an average of 1.3 GB/s write and 1.1 GB/s read on a 50 GB dd dump, WHILE simultaneously installing a program on Linux, doing system updates on the Win 7 VM, and installing two programs on the Win 7 VM.

I'm happy with it, it should be a very nice machine for my uses.  I just wish they offered a 16 GB RAM option for it...
« Last Edit: July 16, 2015, 10:33:56 pm by suicidaleggroll »
 

Offline GreyWoolfe

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #196 on: July 16, 2015, 10:57:44 pm »
I bought a Hakko FX-951, some cartridges and cartridge sleeves and an extra brass curl from TEquipment.net.  The order is marked ship complete only.  I have a cartridge arriving tomorrow that shipped on the 14th when I ordered everything.  Supposedly 4 more pieces were to have shipped yesterday.  6 pieces are shipping tomorrow and the final cartridge will be shipped on the 22nd.  Methinks they are losing money here on the shipping.

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Offline nanofrog

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #197 on: July 16, 2015, 11:41:29 pm »
I bought a Hakko FX-951, some cartridges and cartridge sleeves and an extra brass curl from TEquipment.net.  The order is marked ship complete only.  I have a cartridge arriving tomorrow that shipped on the 14th when I ordered everything.  Supposedly 4 more pieces were to have shipped yesterday.  6 pieces are shipping tomorrow and the final cartridge will be shipped on the 22nd.  Methinks they are losing money here on the shipping.
They have multiple warehouses, so if the order has to be filled from more than one, your order will show up in multiple packages (and don't always arrive on the same day). Ordering something not in stock can cause this as well.

FWIW, I ran into both situations. 8)
 

Offline alank2

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #198 on: July 18, 2015, 01:08:46 am »
I got me a BK 2120 today for $40!  I've got a couple of Rigol scopes, but I've always wanted an analog one to mess around with.  This one is super clean, I even did the Dave "take it apart" to see if it needed a blow out with compressed air and it looks super clean on the inside too.

 

Offline GreyWoolfe

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Re: What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!
« Reply #199 on: July 18, 2015, 03:25:49 am »
That takes me back to my ITT Technical Institute days.  We used BK 20 MHz scopes, I don't remember the model number but yours looks just like what I used.  Enjoy your find.
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