Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

@Vince, Thanks for your feedback, however, I'm a little confused by some of what you say, the AMD 9650 is better than a Intel Pentium 4 running @ 3.2GHz even though the AMD is running @ 2.3GHz re this comparison site. https://cpu.userbenchmark.com/Compare/Intel-Pentium-4-320GHz-vs-AMD-Phenom-9650/m7095vsm5238

8088 processors were the original type that IBM used in the early PC's with a max speed of around 8MHz and were only 16bit CPUs whereas the AMD9650 is a 64bit CPU running @ 2.3GHz.

You also said about the AMD 9650, "Stop right there, that's 8088 territory, you need at least a Pentium / 586 !!" 

You forget that a 586 is only a 32bit device against the 9650 being a 64bit CPU.

The 900GB drive is actually a 1TB drive thats been formatted, so that will eat the Linux OS for breakfast many times over, I think your confusing it as a 90GB drive, but that confuses me as the Linux site claims that it will install as little as 4GB.

I think your calculator needs a new battery as the 4Gigs of RAM is actually 4096Mb and not 400Mb as you claimed 

Oh no don't  worry I was simply being naughty, I was just picking on your typos for a bit of fun that's all ! I apologize !!!! 

You said your CPU was running at 2+  MEGA Hertz not GIGA ! 

Also you kept using "bits" (lower case ) instead of "bytes" (upper case), so since we had a discussion recently about the misuse of units in old gear, where they used capital 'S' for "seconds"... I just could not resist jumping on your lower case 's', which means bits not bytes ! 

I am sorry  !!!!    

Oops, you correct young sir about the typo's well nearly anyway. I didn't type that, I copied and pasted what the person who is gifting me the PC wrote, and knowing about Phonoms because I already have had 2, I never checked his figures 

[TAMHAN]

Went shopping with the wife recently.

Haul A:
part of a coffeeshop. No joke.

Haul B;
Wayne Kerr 3245 precision inductance analyser (R47) 86 105.00
Wayne Kerr 3245 precision inductance analyser (R46) 87 105.00
Telquipment CT71 curve tracer with mains lead & manual, 2x test fixtures (R386) 191 76.00
HP 5005B signature multimeter with timing pod (R342) 236 95.00
HP 5004A signature analyser with pod & probe (R365) 250 20.00
Roland Piano Plus 11 electronic keyboard in carry case (R203) 330 56.00
Solartron / Schlumberger 7151 computing digital multimeter (R555) 407 26.00
Solartron / Schlumberger 7151 computing digital multimeter (R560) 408 27.00
Solartron / Schlumberger 7151 computing digital multimeter (R559)

[Specmaster]

Keep doing that Vince as we all need pulling into line when laziness rears its head.

Oh and how's your garage coming along ?

Yeh, my fault for copying and pasting what the donar sent me as the specification. 

[tautech]

Keep doing that Vince as we all need pulling into line when laziness rears its head.

Oh and how's your garage coming along ?

Yeh, my fault for copying and pasting what the donar sent me as the specification. 

Yeah but a bit of gentle ribbing keeps us all on our toes, don't it ?

[cyclin_al]

I want my BSD/OS back. CBA to write device drivers even tho I have the source.

@Zucca your poster was way incomplete. The entire Bell labs unix line was left out ...

There was also no mention of IBM's OS/2 

[Kosmic]

Quite fortunate here with our Mom and Pop ISP to be supplying a few of their customers from our 5 GHz 10km p-p link to fiber that as these customers are on different mains supply circuits to us he's installed a nice UPS to keep all his stuff alive over power outages and also our WiFi router.   
Outage = grab iPad like nothing has happened.   

Ditto here for at least a decade; both in metro US and Canada. Honestly, having to wait for everything to reconnect when there's a random hiccup or flicker of the lights is the main reason I keep gateway/WiFi router on a cheap underdesk UPS.

mnem
*toddles off to make a bagel for daughter*

When I relocated the router I decided to do the same thing over here. Hooked the router/wifi to a UPS.

And since I use a laptop, it means I can continue working while the power is gone. I'm not losing power really often but it happen the other day. Was pretty cool my plan worked perfectly. I was on a vidcon meeting and it didn't even hitch

[Zucca]

One thing, beginners (Linux) with lots of experience in the Windows world are having trouble to understand the organisation how things are stored under Linux.
First: there is NO such thing as drive A:\ C:\ or something.
It is only a directory structure, starting with root (root direcotry), represented by the / (slash).
All your personal files and documents are usually stored in /home/specmaster (if you choose specmaster as your username)
This is your personal directory, like the user directory in Windows.
If you'd like to explore the file structure, there is this program which is called "Dolphin" (KDE Linux equivalent to the Explorer).
Another important thing is: Upper and lower case matters!
And a pro-tipp from my side: don't use spaces in file names. Just don't. Use instead underscores.

Edit: mixed up (as usual) slash and backslash...  - fixed

Believe it or not all those sado maso concepts for windows users are explained in details in the FreeBSD Handbook.
Besides that it was the only place where I finally understood how a firewall, IP/network and security works....

I was reading it during my flights from europe-US in 2011-2014. It was a long ride but dude I learned a lot.

[Zucca]

I want my BSD/OS back. CBA to write device drivers even tho I have the source.

@Zucca your poster was way incomplete. The entire Bell labs unix line was left out ...

Interesting, I just picked up the first I found. Do you have a better one? 

[Zucca]

Went shopping with the wife recently.

In my next life I will marry a TEA wife too.

@Saskia can you clone yourself?

[Zucca]

looking an endoscope in chinesium from china...

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000093988184.html

damm TEA...

[med6753]

I want my BSD/OS back. CBA to write device drivers even tho I have the source.

@Zucca your poster was way incomplete. The entire Bell labs unix line was left out ...

There was also no mention of IBM's OS/2 

And was a damn good O/S that Itty Bitty Morons fumbled. By the time it was perfected and actively marketed MS was in firm control.

[vk6zgo]

Oh, fuck... those symbols are positively demonic! It's like they're trying to deliberately make the elements as ambiguous as possible!   

Whoever thought that was a good idea needs to be strung up by 'is nutsack... 

I haven't seen that symbold for a PNP transistor before. But it is a bog standard circuit, one of the first you learn, so it isn't difficult to work out what the symbols mean.

Quite franky I see far worse every day, with signals flowing from right to left, nets named rather than drawn, and schematic design patterns ignored. At least back then they had the excuse that the design patterns hadn't really been established.

I shoulda known you ( and/or C ) would be right be along to bust my chops...

no, I'm not talking aboot the circuit. I'm talking about changing what is already a well-designed, high-clarity and established universal symbol (which, from what I can see, does predate this device by at least a decade), which denotes all the pertinent information about the device's elements so they are obvious at a glance, and replacing it with this stupidity which, especially if used in an unfamiliar circuit, will do nothing but cause confusion.

It's like they're deliberately obfuscating the elements of the device with that horrid thing; that is just plain bad engineering.

EDIT: Ehh, okay... counter made in 1965; I guess maybe not that well-established  , but still a horrible choice given that the standardized symbols we use now were already in common use.

mnem

Rather like the attempt to just make logic symbols into a rectangle with "&" or "OR" written inside.
At the time, I received the impression that both ideas were driven by groups in Europe, although they were never mainstream there, either.

Another "World's Best Practice?"

[vk6zgo]

*toddles off to make a bagel for daughter*

Yep, minimum one hour bagel-imposed downtime right there.

Please at least get the quotes correct. Too much trouble ? Then delete the post and try again.

Awwww.... cut him a break... he's Canadian. 

mnem
 

Ya gotta make allowances---just like we do for Kiwis in Oz!

[mnementh]

Finally, I'm in the process of moving onto experimenting with Linux,

What, I thought I managed to put you weeeell off Linux the other day  ?! 

I have just been gifted a tower PC

Ah yes that's what I advised... experiment on a spare PC, progressively.. don't wipe your main system...

with the following specs:-
- processor - AMD Phenom 9650 quad core 2.3MHz

Stop right there, that's 8088 territory, you need at least a Pentium / 586 !! 

- RAM - 4Gb DIMM

That's 400MB or so, not gonna cut it either ! 

- hard drive -- Seagate 900Gb

That's 90GB... that should be plenty enough just to experiment...

I'm given to to understand that it has a 100% MS Office compatible office suit as well.

Well that's marketing of course...there is "OpenOffice" installed by default usually, but its import filter is never going to be 100% ... hell even MS Office is not even compatible with itself, so can't blame others can you ! 
... Just like MS Windows isn't even compatible with itself either... 100% is always just marketing, it just means "good enough most of the time for most of the people"... in reality, just try it and see how it goes with your own files and usage.... only real life examples can tell you how good or bad it is...


As for the choice of distro, since PCLinuxOS is already installed well have fun with that to begin with, but once you hit your first roadblock or get frustrated by this or that, might be time to install Ubuntu, simply because it's by far the most popular distro for the average joe, so has a tremendous amount of support on forums. There are also lots of Ubuntu derivatives, mainly to give you an alternative choice of desktop user interface/environment.
For example I use Xubunbu, ie Ubuntu with XFCE as a desktop environment, because it's simple like old computers used to be, no non-sense smartphone-tabletty-like interface, these drive me nuts, confuse me, waste lots of time and screen real estate. So you can choose something you like, whatever that might be.

At the end of the day all distros suck big time, because the real problems in Linux have nothing to do with the distros themselves... you can try a million different distros, it's not gonna solve anything. That's why I settled for Ubuntu, with XFCE, so that at least if I need help, I know there is a strong support in forums. Also Ubuntu has lots of money behind it, so there are actually a lot of people working full time on it, not just a couple plumbers working part time.

Also, to reduce the amount of trouble, you can go for their " LTS " ( = Long Term Support) releases, as they tend (are meant) to be more polished/tested than the regular 6 months apart releases.  There is an LTS every 2 or 3 years IIRC, no more than 3 years for sure. Not much (that pertains to the end user anyway...) if anything happens in Linux land in 3 years so you won't be missing on anything don't worry.
For example I am using version 16.04, so 5 and half years out of date, 11 releases behind... but I tired the very latest the other day and after 5 minutes playing with it and seeing it was worse not better, I moved back to my 5+ year old release.

Unless you need the latest driver of something and you don't know how to retro-fit it to your current release, then of course upgrading the entire system is the easiest way to get the driver you need.

Just my two cents/pennies after 20 years using the Penguin on my desktop ! 

Have fun with the Penguin !

The penguin's name is Tux, BTW.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Went shopping with the wife recently.

Haul A:
part of a coffeeshop. No joke.

Haul B;
Wayne Kerr 3245 precision inductance analyser (R47) 86 105.00
Wayne Kerr 3245 precision inductance analyser (R46) 87 105.00
Telquipment CT71 curve tracer with mains lead & manual, 2x test fixtures (R386) 191 76.00
HP 5005B signature multimeter with timing pod (R342) 236 95.00
HP 5004A signature analyser with pod & probe (R365) 250 20.00
Roland Piano Plus 11 electronic keyboard in carry case (R203) 330 56.00
Solartron / Schlumberger 7151 computing digital multimeter (R555) 407 26.00
Solartron / Schlumberger 7151 computing digital multimeter (R560) 408 27.00
Solartron / Schlumberger 7151 computing digital multimeter (R559)

Fuuuuck... Can I go shopping with your wife next time...?

Oh, and here's your , BTW! 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

Evil.   

What do you want? With such a small number of pins there are only a finite number of permutations. 

I think he's referring to the "transparent top view" designation of the SOT1061 package. That is slightly perverse. 

mnem
 

Well, it's two things. The inconsistency of the mechanical representation (one labelled transparent top view, the other suggesting top view by the dotted lines, the other one... I don't know? Guess which one it is? Know from previous experience it's probably top view and hope for the best?) The other things is the randomisation of the pinning. That's just bad. And awaiting havoc somewhere down the line in some CAD library.

The SOT223 is TOP view, the SOT89 is BOTTOM view - in both cases it's convention to have the collector on the tab and centre pin on those packages. When those packages are used for regulators the tab and centre pin are normally the output.

Nope, the SOT223 and SOT89 are both top view and BCE from left to right; the actual pinout is the same and correct to the conventions you just described.

Just for some perverse reason, in that diagram they reversed the numbering AND the pin order on the SOT89, so the pinout actually doesn't change. I've seen similar before often enough that sadly, it didn't even ping my RADAR this time; I only noticed the new & different perversity of the SOT1061.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

In short; they don't. Some have GSM/3G/4G backup, though. Then it depends on the resiliency of the local cell net.   Our broadband lastmile provider (which is opto transmission) has about 2h UPS on their active gear. This, sadly enough, has been verified by yours truly.

Edit: I've looked at the genset that powers the cell site we have about 500m from home. There are preparations being enforced and somewhat financed by the regulator. 

Probably still better than GorillaServers' DataCenter. 

mnem
 

It's a good genset, not a cheapo. Providing there's funding and incentive, we're pretty good at building resilient telecoms here.

So no incendiary failover protocols built-in then...? 

mnem

[mnementh]

I want my BSD/OS back. CBA to write device drivers even tho I have the source.

@Zucca your poster was way incomplete. The entire Bell labs unix line was left out ...

There was also no mention of IBM's OS/2 

And was a damn good O/S that Itty Bitty Morons fumbled. By the time it was perfected and actively marketed MS was in firm control.

I was OS/2 Warped as a youth. 

mnem
and I may have kept a wee tetch o' the Warped as an adult... 

[tautech]

*toddles off to make a bagel for daughter*

Yep, minimum one hour bagel-imposed downtime right there.

Please at least get the quotes correct. Too much trouble ? Then delete the post and try again.

Awwww.... cut him a break... he's Canadian. 

mnem
 

Ya gotta make allowances---just like we do for Kiwis in Oz!

Reciprocal for you guys too, spare warm coats and Wellys always kept handy. 

[mansaxel]

... Just like MS Windows isn't even compatible with itself either...

I have a friend who once went through the "open" MS Office file format specification when it was released. He found such gems like:

"The handling of this function shall be as it was in Word 6."  Full stop. No explanation. In the released documentation. No surprise then that Word is as buggy and inconsistent as it is..

[mansaxel]

Ah yes that's what I advised... experiment on a spare PC, progressively.. don't wipe your main system...

Dual booting is a way of avoiding that issue.

Dual booting is a good way to wipe your main system.

[ch_scr]

Ah yes that's what I advised... experiment on a spare PC, progressively.. don't wipe your main system...

Dual booting is a way of avoiding that issue.

Dual booting is a good way to wipe your main system.

All I can say, the Linux way... "Works for me" 

[tautech]

Ah yes that's what I advised... experiment on a spare PC, progressively.. don't wipe your main system...

Dual booting is a way of avoiding that issue.

Dual booting is a good way to wipe your main system.

Done dual boots a couple of times over the years without issue and last was a W7/W8.2 before I went to W10.
However for some years have run the OS on a SSD and data on a HD and only the processor hungry programs on the SSD for snappy launching.

[mansaxel]

When I relocated the router I decided to do the same thing over here. Hooked the router/wifi to a UPS.

And since I use a laptop, it means I can continue working while the power is gone. I'm not losing power really often but it happen the other day. Was pretty cool my plan worked perfectly. I was on a vidcon meeting and it didn't even hitch

I've got a UPS for the router, the switches in the garage where the router is, and my servers and some of the ATA boxes for telephony. I still need to hook one up for my core switch in the house. If I can power that, I'll have power for most wifi, and the IP telephones on the bottom floor and so on. I have one brutal 500W UPS w/o batteries that I can use. Will look into it.  Today, if I need to work during an outage, I'll switch to 4G tethered from the phone, which works pretty well. There is one access point in the garage too, powered from the UPS, so that might be an option if there's reach. Might work.

[mansaxel]

Dual booting is a good way to wipe your main system.

All I can say, the Linux way... "Works for me" 

Yes, I've had dual booting machines too, in the past. There's always that little uncertainty, though. Especially since Microsoft have a tendency to want to be alone and in control. 

Anyway, if dual-booting had worked for me, the way I want my computers to work, I'd probably run it a bit more. As it is, I tend to value continued access a bit too much. If I must reboot I can't be arsed. It's too much of a workflow reset, as I always found myself wanting something from the other OS. Emulation and structured access to data is a much better option, if I can't find a way to do things in the main OS.