What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[tooki]

Once they get fiber in my neighborhood, and thus have really high upload speeds, I may consider an online backup, too.

Be careful with your online backup providers though.

What hazards are you thinking of specifically?

[knapik]

I picked up a Sun Netra 544 I found! I'm not very familiar with Sun workstations/servers but it looks like to me its basically just a Sun SPARCstation 5, but without a frame buffer card, keyboard or mouse. This one has a CD & Floppy drive which is apparently quite rare, and a 110MHz MicroSPARC II 

[odessa]

An Agilent DSO2004A ... which is now 200MHz and fully unlocked

[GreyWoolfe]

Bought these 2 off of evilBay.  I am out of outlets on my workbench and the PDU will let me connect my network hardware directly to my UPS and will sit under my switch for neatness.  The weedwacker line for my Craftsman weedwacker as I do not want to go through the hassle to find what other shaft/head will fit it and I like the .110 inch line.  Regardless of what people think of Sears, having a small independent (I think) Sears store 5 minutes from the house was very convenient.  It was sad to see the store empty.

[electromotive]

An Agilent DSO2004A ... which is now 200MHz and fully unlocked

That started off at 70 mhz, right?

[Mortymore]

Bought from Ebay a Hantek T3100 (2KV 100MHz) oscilloscope probe to measure some things that may go over voltage for my regular 300Vrms probes, like the output of some CCFL power supplys, with working frequency in the KHz range.

Image 1: probe measuring a sinusoidal with aprox. 730Vpp, 260Vrms, 35KHz
(EDIT) Image 3: hardcopy from scope

With the probe calibrated with the traditional 1KHz signal from scope, as the frequency measured rises, an undershoot slowly increases.  Attached a screen capture (image 2) with the above yellow trace from a TEK P2220 and the lower blue one, from the Hantek T3100, measuring a 4Vpp 1MHz square wave. For what I intend to use it, and for the price (€17), the T3100 is suitable. I'm just not a fan of the "unclipping" clip, but otherwise the probe seems well built.

I know the Testec are somewhat appreciated in the community, but they are more expensive and to spend more on a reasonable better probe, I had to put more thought on that. But if someone as any suggestion I'm always glad to ear it.

[odessa]

An Agilent DSO2004A ... which is now 200MHz and fully unlocked

That started off at 70 mhz, right?

Yep   

[tsman]

Yep   

Kerry doesn't look impressed with that

[beanflying]

Broke my cherry and Brought my first App today in 7 or 8 years of Droid use Anyone with a Tello Drone highly recommend this one by heaps over the stock Ryze app 3 batteries back on charge for round two in the backyard.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.volatello.tellofpv&hl=en_AU

[rsjsouza]

A companion to my programming gigs... In pristine condition!

I love these LEDs...

(TI Programmer calculator)

[rdl]

I've also got one of those TI Programmers. My first calculator was a regular TI-30 back in the late seventies.

[technix]

It is a bunch of used computer parts today: a Colorful C.P45K motherboard, a Gigabyte GA-Z97P-D3 motherboard, a 500W ATX power supply unit, and a NVMe riser card.

The Colorful motherboard and the 500W PSU completes the machine for my mom, with a bunch of spare parts from my junk bin: a Core 2 Quad processor, four sticks of 2GB DDR2-800 memory, a spare SSD and a GTX 1060 graphics card.

The Gigabyte motherboard and the NVMe riser is an at-grade replacement for the current motherboard in my Hackintosh, allowing my to put my (currently spare) Samsung 960 Pro 512GB NVMe SSD into it.

[electromotive]

Finally installed my $2.39 wrist strap ground thing to my work bench.

[technix]

A 7.5 digit DMM, with a twist.

DMM on PCIe card?

[legacy]

Two weeks ago my partner bought these two cards. They arrived yesterday and they are interesting because there are four Tulip chip on each board 

[beanflying]

I blame TEA for deviating the conversation to RF. Caused me to NEED a small dose of retail therapy. Must go back and corrupt the perpetrators with talk of 3D printers and Calibration gear in response

Baofeng BF-F8HP as an upgrade from a couple of very average 70cm ones eBay auction: #163543014955

NESDR SMArt XTR Dongle and Aerial to play with and see if I need to add a Discone to next weeks shopping  eBay auction: #172813499296

[Specmaster]

I blame TEA for deviating the conversation to RF. Caused me to NEED a small dose of retail therapy. Must go back and corrupt the perpetrators with talk of 3D printers and Calibration gear in response

Baofeng BF-F8HP as an upgrade from a couple of very average 70cm ones eBay auction: #163543014955

NESDR SMArt XTR Dongle and Aerial to play with and see if I need to add a Discone to next weeks shopping  eBay auction: #172813499296

Yep, if only we had the time to read everything in TEA, we'd know bucket loads about everything. I doubt that there's a topic that hasn't been covered [emoji6] and it's all done with such good humour too, long live TEA.

[aargee]

Not really a purchase but gifted by my fire fighting brother... two C02 extinguishers for the workshop. 

[technix]

DMM on PCIe card?

DMM on PXIe card. PXIe is PCIe*1 in Eurocard form factor with Compact PCIe connectors designed for PC-based instruments.
Unlike PCIe cards which terminate on bottom side, they terminate on back side. See attached pictures for how the chassis connector looks like.

That has to cost an arm and a leg... I wonder if such cards has regular PCIe versions? If so a PC-based DSO That also has a good graphics card would be interesting (high sample rate near real time spectrum analyzing using the GPU for FFT?)

[TheSteve]

A 7.5 digit DMM, with a twist.

So much goodness there - LTZ1000 volt ref!

[technix]

That has to cost an arm and a leg... I wonder if such cards has regular PCIe versions? If so a PC-based DSO That also has a good graphics card would be interesting (high sample rate near real time spectrum analyzing using the GPU for FFT?)

The card has an MSRP of over $3700, but there's no way I paid anywhere near that, despite being brand new. I paid $1400 for it, which is actually considerably cheaper than a standalone 7.5 digit DMM. The performance of this card is better than 34470A, on par with DMM7510, with digitizer option (the combo would be in north of $4000).

For what you are asking, a PXI system is the answer.
A PXI system can have an embedded controller, which is basically a computer with PCIe brought to the backplane (or an interface card that plugs into another computer through an MXI cable or Thunderbolt 3 cable), a bunch of test & measurement cards, and a switching backplane.

NI used to make PCI/PCIe-based DAQ cards, but those were phased out over the years for whatever reasons.

For your FFT question, yes, there are GPGPU or FPGA accelerators for PXI as well, just cost over $10k. Anything PXI will be more expensive than their standalone counterparts, mostly due to the added value from automation and equipment virtualization.

Remember, for high profit businesses, cost isn't essentially the dictating factor of price. Created value is.

I have a video tour of my PXI dream box coming soon, I'll post a video once it's uploaded.

What I am wondering is that whether I can plug a non-embedded-controller PXI unit to an existing gaming PC or graphics workstation that already has a good GPU in it.

Also I wonder if there is PXI-to-PCIe adapter cards, that takes one or two PCIe slots in an regular PC to create one PXIe slot.

[technix]

What I am wondering is that whether I can plug a non-embedded-controller PXI unit to an existing gaming PC or graphics workstation that already has a good GPU in it.

Also I wonder if there is PXI-to-PCIe adapter cards, that takes one or two PCIe slots in an regular PC to create one PXIe slot.

1. Yes. NI has an PXIe-8301 card that allows bridging between Thunderbolt 3 and PXIe, thus allowing PXI/PXIe cards to plugged into a PXI chassis, then connected to a computer at PCIe level.
2. A PXIe slot can accommodate PCIe cards with an adapter, not the other way around. PXI is taller than PCI, thus a PXI card won't fit in a standard ATX chassis. A PCI card is longer than a PXI one, so with an adapter, a PCI card inserted in a PXI chassis will protrude by about an inch.

I wonder if there are PXIe to PCIe adapters that accepts a dual slot PCIe card. If so it might be cheaper to buy that plus a gaming graphics card like RTX 2070 or RX 580 than that GPGPU module, while achieving a similar if not better GPGPU performance.

How much would a non-embedded-controller PXIe chassis plus that Thunderbolt 3 card cost? If it is cheaper than an embedded controller one it can be cheaper to add PXIe to an existing lab PC.

[technix]

I wonder if there are PXIe to PCIe adapters that accepts a dual slot PCIe card. If so it might be cheaper to buy that plus a gaming graphics card like RTX 2070 or RX 580 than that GPGPU module, while achieving a similar if not better GPGPU performance.

How much would a non-embedded-controller PXIe chassis plus that Thunderbolt 3 card cost? If it is cheaper than an embedded controller one it can be cheaper to add PXIe to an existing lab PC.

A low power PXIe slot can consume and dissipate no more than 38W, and a normal one is not much higher than that. Also, PXI is 100% backplane powered, so there's no 6P/8P connectors provided by the chassis, not the cable management space for you to run the cable. Also, PXI is passively cooled and it expects no fans on its cards in order not to mess with air flow of adjacent cards.

I bought my box for $450 as "for parts not working". It turned to be a minor dust accumulation problem compounded by a dead fan. When the problems were fixed, it went back to life.

A brand new PXIe-8301 would cost $999 from NI, which seems to be high, but is probably the cheapest card you can buy in the PXI world. Getting into the PXI land would need a lot of commitment.

Let's just say it this way. I traded my 6GHz scope with all options for a PXI box made with almost 100% used junk. Only the NI DMM is new. And I ended up spending a few k$ in between.

Sheeeeeesh.

I wonder if there is a USB-based alternative for this? Microsoft has published the USB HID Sensors v2 specification for sending readings back and configuring the modes, but AFAIK few people is using it.

USB based everything is generally cheaper than PCIe too.

[Specmaster]

I got this pair of beauties last week in a fairly local auction (4 hours round trip to collect them) and I have before and after clean up pictures. Made in 1988 these are 6.5 digit meters with good specs apart from their speed, they are slow but reliable.





I also purchased today 2 of these filters, 1 for each meter as last night, one of them let out the magic smoke.

[splin]

A 7.5 digit DMM, with a twist.

Hey you know the rules - don't plug it in - take it apa-r-r-r-t! And post some piccies 

Seriously though it would be interesting to see what's inside as they are pretty small compared to a conventional DMM - the power supply is external but it will still need an internal isolated DC - DC convertor.

On which point the documentation keeps referring to the 'Isolated Digitizer' which seems odd as the DVM has to be isolated surely - the spec says 1000V max voltage from Hi terminal to ground? Is it simply trying to distinguish itself from typical DAQ/digitizers which aren't isolated perhaps?

The documentation seems very poor, or at least I couldn't find a proper reference manual, only the datasheet and a getting started user manual.