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Test Equipment / Re: TinySA Ultra launched
« Last post by shapirus on Today at 07:04:58 am »
I vote @shapirus reports the bug, he found it, I was just confirming it.
Not via google groups, sorry. Not gonna go through the associated setup hassle.

But since the author is registered on this forum, let's mention him.

@erikka , do you consider this one a bug, a glitch, or a feature? :)
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Microcontrollers / Re: SD Card reliability in SPI mode
« Last post by abyrvalg on Today at 07:04:07 am »
Also, check “industrial grade” sd cards. “Industrial” in their case is not just about wider operating temperature range, but also adds more robust internal algos and better memory types (MLC or even SLC in some smaller models).
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Test Equipment / Re: Hacking the Rigol DHO800/900 Scope
« Last post by ebastler on Today at 07:03:55 am »
BTW, it's better to keep decompiled sources in git rather than an assembled .apk

It's an interesting question what Rigol will think and possibly do about this. Hosting copies of their copyrighted binaries on a public server is probably violating license terms already. Hosting and sharing decompiled sources might be beyond their pain threshold?

Or maybe they don't care. Who is brave enough to run the experiment?  ::)
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Beginners / Re: Checking for noise in resistors
« Last post by Vovk_Z on Today at 07:00:11 am »
Who said that noise is a good thing in tube amps?
You are probably confused by advocates of single-ended amplifiers who like the even-order distortion from the circuit.
Noise is like a natural disering to digital signal. With added some grain of noise and some grain of even harmonics makes tube sound what it is.
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Repair / Re: Desoldering advice
« Last post by shapirus on Today at 06:59:36 am »
Given my next attempt will be with a much larger soldering tip and using preheating, what would be better, adding regular solder to transfer and hold the heat or trying more low MP alloy?
It depends if anything in that area of the board is expected to get hot during normal operation. If it is so, then I would only use low-melt solder when there's still not enough heat transfer for the regular solder to melt. The remaining traces of bismuth can potentially lower the melting point of the post-repair joints enough to cause reliability issues if they get hot enough.
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Test Equipment / Re: Hacking the Rigol DHO800/900 Scope
« Last post by shapirus on Today at 06:54:10 am »
Damn that's great. It will be a crime not to share :)

BTW, it's better to keep decompiled sources in git rather than an assembled .apk -- for the very purpose of VCS, that is, to keep history, to be able to see diffs, to be able to cooperate with others via forks and pull requests.

Please consider this.
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Airgaps are very important in ferrite transformers.

The ferrite saturates much faster than classical iron lamination while having a high permeability. So airgaps have a larger effect on the behavior of a transformer.

Transformers designed for forwards converters or gate drive and similar typically have no air gap as they are not meant to store energy, just pass it on instantly. So for these transformers it is important to assemble them as tightly as possible to avoid creating an unnecessary airgap, otherwise the transformer might not reach the designed inductance.

Transformers designed for flyback converters and similar do tend to have a precisely designed intentional airgap. They are designed for storing energy between switching cycles, but ferrite is fairly bad at this, so they introduce an airgap to provide a place to store the energy. While this does reduce the inductance, it also increases the saturation current by a lot. The size of this airgap is carefully designed to make a good compromise of both. If you remove the carefully designed in air gap then the transformer might just saturate when used in a flyback topology.
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Test Equipment / Re: Choosing between entry-level 12-bit DSOs
« Last post by Fungus on Today at 06:47:13 am »
Since we are so far off topic, I guess it's okay for me to ask an incidental question. While all this conversation is quite interesting and instructive, I'm curious how many people actually use or need bandwidth or sampling beyond 100 MHz and 312.5 S/s?

This is a very good question.

Even at 100Mhz the probing method and all those little cables on your breadboard will dominate any measurement and you need knowledge/experience to interpret what's on the screen.

Presumably, anyone working in comms, but who else? My thought process when buying the DHO800 was that even with 4 channels operating, I still have enough sampling to adequately cover the 100 MHz capability of the scope with the 150 MHz probes being well clear of having any attenuation effect at 100 MHz.

You have to be slightly careful here because the measured bandwidth of the Rigols is much higher than what the label says.

In reality the "70Mhz" model has 125Mhz bandwidth and the "100Mhz" model has 200Mhz bandwidth.

The probes have also been tested and are good for both.


My $0.02:

You could easily argue that "125Mhz" is the optimum configuration for a DHO800 and that it's as much as a hobbyist needs.

I wouldn't disagree.

As noted above: Probing dominates, even at these "low" frequencies.

eg. The difference between "probes" and "springs" is huge and I hardly ever use the springs :-// (they're a pain in the ass).

I admit I usually have my DHO804 set to "200Mhz" because ... well ... I'm not sure. It's a head thing, I don't believe there's a practical difference for me in my "Arduino" work. The difference on screen is tiny and mostly swamped by probing (see above).

I'm not saying that nobody needs the extra 75MHz but you have to be into coax cables and 50 Ohm terminators to take advantage of it. If that's your case then fine. People who poke handheld probes at circuits? Not so much.

(I also think "200Mhz" is a very arbitrary number - why does no Siglent owner ever need 300Mhz?)
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Soft ferrites are not permanently effected by heat (unless you go to the extremes near 1000 C). They however have a relatively low curie temperature and thus don't work as long as they are hot (e.g. > 150 C). This effect is however reversible. The air gap can be a big issue - there would have been a spacer that is not much different from the glue.

In therory there could be flybacl transformers with a permanent magnet premagnetization, that could be effected by heat. However I have not seen such a thing, except for linearity correction with CRTs. So I doubt one would find it in more normal PC supply - though they would do all kind of tricks to save a few cents.
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Beginners / Re: Why are thermal jumpers so expensive?
« Last post by dietert1 on Today at 06:14:23 am »
Somewhat similar and a possible replacement could be a high resistance SMD resistor, like this: https://www.digikey.de/de/products/detail/vishay-beyschlag-draloric-bc-components/MCA1206MD1005BP100/11196602.
Price is similar, too: 33 cents in 1000s.

Regards, Dieter
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