Products > Test Equipment
HP 8594E Spectrum Analyzer. At last I own a decent Spec An.
<< < (6/9) > >>
T3sl4co1l:
Nice!  I got an 8590W some years ago, for... I don't even remember what, probably around 500 USD?  Contemporary to yours, quite useful indeed. :-+

Tim
tkamiya:
If they had their way, all error messages will be "fatal error:  Err: 1-800-new-scpe"

At my place of employment, my boss wanted an error message that everyone will instantly know it's fake.  This is a diagnostic  program to fake a message.  "Error:  Flux capacitor empty"

Except, he didn't count for cultural factor.  We still got calls from non-English speaking countries.  Our QA is India.  They didn't think it was funny at all.
kirill_ka:

--- Quote from: TerraHertz on January 24, 2019, 10:49:45 am ---But that's not very direct. Why not "CAL DATA LOST. Replace battery"  The machine knows when it's lost the cal data (presumably via a block checksum fail) because it switches to using a default set of cal data. But does it give you a simple, to the point warning about that? Apparently not.

--- End quote ---
I don't think that particular message was thoughtfully made hard to understand. Programmers usually think in terms of their code. So you normally end up with "error: loop cnt > MAX_LOOP_CNT" instead of "error: input frequency exceeds 1GHz". QA will pass on messages which are not too extreme.
0culus:

--- Quote from: kirill_ka on January 25, 2019, 09:36:35 am ---
--- Quote from: TerraHertz on January 24, 2019, 10:49:45 am ---But that's not very direct. Why not "CAL DATA LOST. Replace battery"  The machine knows when it's lost the cal data (presumably via a block checksum fail) because it switches to using a default set of cal data. But does it give you a simple, to the point warning about that? Apparently not.

--- End quote ---
I don't think that particular message was thoughtfully made hard to understand. Programmers usually think in terms of their code. So you normally end up with "error: loop cnt > MAX_LOOP_CNT" instead of "error: input frequency exceeds 1GHz". QA will pass on messages which are not too extreme.

--- End quote ---

Can confirm from experience. And the more sinister problem is that even the programmer probably won't have the foggiest about what they meant by the message in 6 months.

Relevant:

https://i.redd.it/btd5aebzr5h01.jpg
TerraHertz:
An update and question.
No progress yet on repairing the 8594E, due to other time demands.
But the missing User Guide issue has been resolved. A rather long story, with the ebay seller's performance being the worst I've ever seen. It's all online here:

  http://everist.org/NobLog/20190223_full_spectrum.htm
  http://everist.org/NobLog/20190223_full_spectrum.htm#sum        Brief summary
  http://everist.org/NobLog/20190223_full_spectrum.htm#refund    Getting a refund (sort of)

My question:
There's still the question of what ebay feedback I give this seller, for the original purchase and the manual 're-buy'. I'm torn between 'giving a cheat and liar what they deserve', and 'sympathy for a possibly struggling business having a hard time.'  I find it hard to imagine such behavior from anyone unless they were desperately scraping for income.

What do you think? I'd be happy to hear opinions.

I'm inclined to give them two negatives, but maybe I'm just pissed off about something others would consider minor? Who thinks their partial refund amount is reasonable, as opposed to a minimal token gesture?
Navigation
Message Index
Next page
Previous page
There was an error while thanking
Thanking...

Go to full version
Powered by SMFPacks Advanced Attachments Uploader Mod