What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[nanofrog]

My friend poo poo'd the ESD claim, need to be black coated not stainless steel. I guess wrist strap required.

The resistive epoxy paint will slow the drain rate if you have a charge built up, and use the tweezers without strapping in first. BTW, that stuff comes in colors too.

But so long as you resistively ground yourself first, any strictly metal object in your hands will be ESD compliant*.   

* Metal handled brushes, such as an acid brush, require a liquid on the bristles to complete the path to ground as it's not metal all the way to the business end (no conductive strands added to the animal hair as they do with the black plastic handled ESD brushes that aren't 100% synthetic fibers).

[Falkra]

I just bought this air compressor.

8 bar, 2L tank (no oil), 1100W, 1,5 hp, 195 l/min.
It is really loud, but useful when I need to remove dust from some old dirty, dusty and sometimes crusty boards, fans, computer cases.
I paid around 120 euros, it may be a lot, but now I don't need all tiny - and too expensive - air dusters (aerosol sprays).

It's not that expensive if you consider that a can of Air-duster will cost about €10, so 12 cans (a years worth in my world) costs the same. So after 12 months you're saving money.

McBryce.

Exactly ! 

[BFX]

Some goods arrived today:) HP 34401 for 210EUR and something for my cnc mill. 

[Artlav]

I recently did some math on how much modern computers cost, and the conclusion was kinda absurd.
Supposedly, i could get a computer than would be 0.75x as fast as my current $2000 rig from 2009 for just 0.02x the cost.
Naturally, i couldn't quite believe it and went looking for a catch.

Didn't find any, and ended up with 4 computers' worth of cheapest second hand components i could find, and some spare cash missing.
Ended up making a nice box for them, which triples the computing power i have at home.



It's really bizarre to look at one of these boards with a meter showing 1.7A (at 12V) doing in near silence almost as good as the roaring monster nearby taking about 150W.
F-ing Moore's law.

[bitseeker]

Nice compute-cluster-in-a-box.

[electricar]

Some goods arrived today:) HP 34401 for 180EUR and something for my cnc mill. 

Wow, from where did you get that 34401A for 180€?

[lukier]

I recently did some math on how much modern computers cost, and the conclusion was kinda absurd.
Supposedly, i could get a computer than would be 0.75x as fast as my current $2000 rig from 2009 for just 0.02x the cost.
Naturally, i couldn't quite believe it and went looking for a catch.

Didn't find any, and ended up with 4 computers' worth of cheapest second hand components i could find, and some spare cash missing.
Ended up making a nice box for them, which triples the computing power i have at home.

Where did you get LGA1155 mini-ITX for $40 ($2000 * 0.02) with some sensible IvyBridge CPU?, RAM and so on?

I could believe that even an old SandyBridge (2011) could be almost as fast as a top machine from 2009. Unfortunately, not anymore. Moore's law grinds to a halt when it comes to CPUs so current top of the line Skylake is not massively faster than top of the line SandyBridge or IvyBridge? Skylake is likely to be more power efficient though.

I wouldn't expect much raw computing power from your setup. It is cluster like, IO severely limited by the gigabit ethernet (!= InfiniBand) and it is CPU only. Good for some specific workloads, distributed systems, but not real GFLOPs. If you want real performance the code needs the fastest possible access to data (caches, local SRAM, DDR memory worst case) and preferably a GPU. For example if you want to do deep learning training then there is not much point of having anything else than a couple of nVidia GTX980 or Titan.

[BFX]

Some goods arrived today:) HP 34401 for 180EUR and something for my cnc mill. 

Wow, from where did you get that 34401A for 180€?

I'm sorry small mistake it was for 210eur and it was from France but still very good price for fully working I think.
I bought two pieces one also for my friend.

[AF6LJ]

I recently did some math on how much modern computers cost, and the conclusion was kinda absurd.
Supposedly, i could get a computer than would be 0.75x as fast as my current $2000 rig from 2009 for just 0.02x the cost.
Naturally, i couldn't quite believe it and went looking for a catch.

Didn't find any, and ended up with 4 computers' worth of cheapest second hand components i could find, and some spare cash missing.
Ended up making a nice box for them, which triples the computing power i have at home.



It's really bizarre to look at one of these boards with a meter showing 1.7A (at 12V) doing in near silence almost as good as the roaring monster nearby taking about 150W.
F-ing Moore's law.

This is really cool If I might ask where did the boards come from?

[gamalot]

Hioki RM3545 resistance meter 

[Richard Head]

That's a nice looking instrument and being Japanese you can rest assured that the quality will be good. Perfect for finding short circuits on PC boards etc.

[lukier]

Nice meter. It looks brand new, so I suppose no mini-teardown to look under the cover? 

I'm looking on ebay for Keithley 580, but somehow these things go for crazy prices. This Hioki looks nice, but it is even more expensive

[Artlav]

Where did you get LGA1155 mini-ITX for $40 ($2000 * 0.02) with some sensible IvyBridge CPU?, RAM and so on?

The nice thing about second hand computer parts is that they work exactly as good, but cost a half to a third of the new one.

The new price came out to something about $80, the second hand price was between $30 and $50 per board (CPU, board, Fan, RAM)
I already had a bunch of PicoPSUs and DC-DC converters (the whole thing runs off a 24V bus i have) laying around, so that trims the cost as well.

CPUs are G1610, G2020, G2030, G1620 - low-end Celerons and Pentiums with 2 cores each and 2.6 to 3.0 GHz.
Core to core they are 1.5 times as fast as an i7 920 running at 2.6GHz, but the latter got 4 cores and HT, putting it ahead.

I wouldn't expect much raw computing power from your setup. It is cluster like, IO severely limited by the gigabit ethernet (!= InfiniBand) and it is CPU only.

Depends on the task. Right now i do raytracing experiments on it, which needs about zero communications, and the speedup is 3.75x the i7 alone.
Another thing i tried is magnetic field computation, which is also a zero-communication task.

Naturally, such tasks can run a thousand times faster on a GPU, but the GPUs are somewhat awkward to program, have limits in complexity and data size, and don't come in small, low power consumption and low cost packages.

In the end, it's not intended to be something practical, but just a for fun experiment driven randomly.

If I might ask where did the boards come from?

A variety of local sources of the "garage sale" and "direct advertisement" kind.
The nettop is an unrelated thing i had for a while, which just fit neatly in the spare space.

[McBryce]

The nice thing about second hand computer parts is that they work exactly as good, but cost a half to a third of the new one.

Not always. You need to be careful with gaming hardware. If the mainboard of CPU was aggressively overclocked by the previous owner, it may not last as long as you expect.

McBryce.

[McBryce]

Actually that's a typo, I meant "mainboard or CPU".

Eitherway, my main worry is that many OCers raise the voltages to get the CPU to run stable at higher frequencies. This can cause all sorts of problems that only become obvious later. I've also seen CPUs that were brown on top because they had been running extremely hot for the majority of their life. How much life is left in a CPU after that?

McBryce.

[McBryce]

Mobos are a safer bet, although I've seen some very questionable methods being used to overclock these too.

McBryce.

[gamalot]

That's a nice looking instrument and being Japanese you can rest assured that the quality will be good. Perfect for finding short circuits on PC boards etc.

Yes, most time Made in Japan means high quality, but also means you will never find their schematics 

[gamalot]

Nice meter. It looks brand new, so I suppose no mini-teardown to look under the cover? 

I'm looking on ebay for Keithley 580, but somehow these things go for crazy prices. This Hioki looks nice, but it is even more expensive

Why not? I will do the mini teardown.

BTW, this meter is not that expensive as you think, it took me 83,000JPY, cuz it had been listed as "for parts or repair" 

[HighVoltage]

BTW, this meter is not that expensive as you think, it took me 83,000JPY, cuz it had been listed as "for parts or repair" 

You got a really good deal on this meter.
It has some amazing specs:

0.01 µ? to 1.200 G?. RS-232C, RS-232C Printer, USB, and GPIB interfaces.

Can perform resistance measurement with a 6.5-digit, 1,200,000-count display at a maximum resolution of 0.01 ??. It delivers more than enough capabilities to be used in applications requiring high-resolution resistance measurement, for example in testing inverter motor windings.

High-resistance materials such as conductive sheets and conductive rubber are often used in electronic components. The RM3545 can measure resistance values of up to 1,200 M?. It also delivers maximum accuracy of 0.006%, enabling researchers to test state-of-the-art current sensing resistors.

Auto-scanning and step scanning
When using the Multiplexer Unit Z3003 to perform scanning measurement, you can select either step scanning or auto scanning depending on the test conditions. Auto scanning is convenient when you require only an overall judgment result at the completion of scanning, while step scanning is convenient when you wish to generate judgments in real time using the instrument’s EXT I/O interface.


Congratulations.

[gamalot]

BTW, this meter is not that expensive as you think, it took me 83,000JPY, cuz it had been listed as "for parts or repair" 

You got a really good deal on this meter.
It has some amazing specs:

0.01 µ? to 1.200 G?. RS-232C, RS-232C Printer, USB, and GPIB interfaces.

Can perform resistance measurement with a 6.5-digit, 1,200,000-count display at a maximum resolution of 0.01 ??. It delivers more than enough capabilities to be used in applications requiring high-resolution resistance measurement, for example in testing inverter motor windings.

High-resistance materials such as conductive sheets and conductive rubber are often used in electronic components. The RM3545 can measure resistance values of up to 1,200 M?. It also delivers maximum accuracy of 0.006%, enabling researchers to test state-of-the-art current sensing resistors.

Auto-scanning and step scanning
When using the Multiplexer Unit Z3003 to perform scanning measurement, you can select either step scanning or auto scanning depending on the test conditions. Auto scanning is convenient when you require only an overall judgment result at the completion of scanning, while step scanning is convenient when you wish to generate judgments in real time using the instrument’s EXT I/O interface.


Congratulations.

Thank you very much! I have just post some teardown pictures here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/hioki-rm3545-mini-teardown/

[nowlan]

83000 Japanese Yen equals 1047.929 Australian Dollar.
And you bought for parts at that price?

[gamalot]

83000 Japanese Yen equals 1047.929 Australian Dollar.
And you bought for parts at that price?

Yes, the seller's has listed all his item as "for parts or repair", but this one he put "maybe new" in the title, and there were pictures shown it's new and working great 

[bitseeker]

"for parts or repair" is the new "as is"

I've seen some other sellers do this as well. They just don't want to spend any time on the items and don't want them back, so they list everything "for parts".

[japasetelagoas]

Picked up two packages from Aliexpress today (import taxes destroyed my wallet this time, Brazil)
A ceramic and electrolytic capacitor kit, lil trimmer kit and a rip-off Mastech multimeter.



For those interested on the DMM, there are several review videos including this one.

[mtdoc]

Picked up two packages from Aliexpress today (import taxes destroyed my wallet this time, Brazil)
A ceramic and electrolytic capacitor kit, lil trimmer kit and a rip-off Mastech multimeter.

Nice skull-camo precision trimming tool!