Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Kosmic]

Med, I got 2 x 26-159-16 and 2 x 26-190-16 I'm never going to use.

They are yours if you want them.

If only you had chimed in sooner. The order I placed earlier is already prepping to ship and can't be cancelled. Oh well. 

Yeah well I'm living in the past of the TEA thread 

I catch up sometimes.

[mnementh]

...I found the AWOL 12AU7 tube under the chassis.  Why and how did it get there? 

If it can't fit through any hole in the chassis, I would suspect there was some problem with the calibrator that affected use of the scope otherwise, and removing the tube allowed some prior owner to continue using the scope, so they stashed it underneath so it didn't get lost.

At least, that's prolly what I'd have done, if I needed the scope instead of it being a toy.

mnem
 

[Specmaster]

Hopefully I will be on discord tonight, having got discord set up on the Linux PC, in fact I'm writing this now on that pc as well 

[mnementh]

https://youtu.be/2vuMzGhc1cg

This channel opened my eyes     I literally woke up 

Yes, the triumph of  over reason. It is the only thing that makes shit like this megalomaniac possible.

In a sane world, this guy would have been locked up decades ago as a danger to himself and others. Instead, we put him on a pedestal because he's able to shovel the fast enough that the cash flow from a planet-full of suckers never stops.

mnem
It's no surprise "mental health" is not an "issue" in the Western World. We've closed down almost all the asylums and put the sociopaths into government and boardrooms.

[med6753]

Resistance checks OK. Gave it the beans and we have power up with a bright trace. Which is surprising because it's not all roses. The PSU checks out except the +350V supply. It's sitting at +294V. And given that the HV oscillator relies upon the unregulated portion of the +350V supply it's a wonder that I have a trace at all. So this guy will need some troubleshooting. But not today. Today was simply clean up and overall assessment. Troubleshoot another day.

[Ice-Tea]

Thinking about bidding on this Racal-Dana 2101 counter --> https://www.ebay.com/itm/224710802719?

Only Option 04C which is the base 'just a crystal'  frequency standard.   Missing an important button.    Manual is hard to find.

Will go for a stupid high price?


also watching this one --> https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284553818401

If you do: same buttons as the 1991 and 1998. I can set you up with a spare.

[SingleBitError]

I picked a up 2101 at the local Hamfest a couple weeks ago. Haven't had time to do anything with it yet.

Operation and service manuals are available here.

http://www.ko4bb.com/getsimple/index.php?id=manuals&dir=Racal/Racal_Dana_2101

[tautech]

Welcome SBE.
Crazy place here and other than what gear you have we also need to know if you lube wheel nuts ! 

[tautech]

Resistance checks OK. Gave it the beans and we have power up with a bright trace. Which is surprising because it's not all roses. The PSU checks out except the +350V supply. It's sitting at +294V. And given that the HV oscillator relies upon the unregulated portion of the +350V supply it's a wonder that I have a trace at all. So this guy will need some troubleshooting. But not today. Today was simply clean up and overall assessment. Troubleshoot another day.

Nice Med. 
I had this feeling Dusty wouldn't bee too bad. Fingers crossed it's only caps.

[mnementh]

   Urrrghhh... my son just discovered Knight Rider.  Of course I watched it with him. 

OMG... 1982. The Gipper was in the White House, the internet barely existed (but not the dub-dub-dub), Silicon Valley sounded so futuristic, and we were still impressed by huge walls of blinkenlichten and reel-to-reel tapes as representing computational power. Marty Cooper had made the first call from a brick phone, but they still had yet to be released as an actual product.

And the big hair... good lord, the hair spray must've been measured in gigatons back then... 

EDIT: OMG... NOOOO!!! A frrrking GREMLIN just drove past... I haven't even THOUGHT about that horror show of a vehicle in decades...

mnem
*suddenly feeling so very, very old...*

[m k]

Can't quite read all the info of the reference section, there should be three lines on the graph. 

I'd guess the light gray continues on zero.

[Vince]

OH, a nice glowing Tek I contemplate... a lovely type 502A, in good nick, not a rust bucket, local pickup only but "only" 200kms from me, mostly highway so still kinda reasonable. My own 502A is not in as good a shape, and suffered massive damage at the back of the cabinet, it fell on the ground I am sure, rear top left corner of the cabinet took a bit hit, it's bent. Fixable I reckon, but still it's work... this other one is much better...

https://www.leboncoin.fr/equipements_industriels/2082756903.htm

Problem : guy wants 100 Euros for it (120 USD or something). Not through the roof, but still a bit high especially as I don't even know if it works, and need to pay for the trip...
Would offer the guy 75 Euros but I won't bother because... that's the problem here.... he writes :

" COMPLETE, for parts only, because I know the main transformer is used as an output transformer on tube audio amplifiers "

WTF ?! 

So basically he is hoping some audiophool will give him the 100 Euros no question asked, just to rip the transformer off of it....
That means he will never accept to lower the price nor try to power it up to see if it works. He is hoping to get 100 Euros, no offers, and won't bother trying to power it up.

I hate people. I am starting to understand Papy Smurf... people are ugly, worthless, they should not be allowed to be born to begin with, too much trouble afterward....

[Ice-Tea]

   Urrrghhh... my son just discovered Knight Rider.  Of course I watched it with him. 

I set my girls on BattleBots. I think I'm a better parent.   

On some entirely unrelated news: finally managed to get the eBay shop back up. They suspended it some time ago because of a mismatch in data. After a lot of back and forth, it turned out the lifted the suspension some time ago but did not restore the shop. I assumed I was still suspended because the shop was still down. Which is not the case, but I had to relist all items manually. Which is just dumb. Really dumb.

Wanted to copy all listings to eBid while I was at it, but their bulk import tool can't handle site besides eBay.com. Gets confused with ebay.de. 

[srb1954]

Possibly, but even so, these IDC plugs feel very cheap and flimsy to me. That would also beg the question of why they would make such a basic error in an otherwise quite well designed and constructed item.

Errors like that happen all the time in development and production of electronics, even with the higher end manufacturers.

• The design engineer might have been behind schedule and skipped over checking the connector and cable compatibility details - 'it's only a piece of wire, what can go wrong'
  
• The cable might have been correctly specified by engineering but was out of stock and purchasing accepted a substitute offered by the supplier without properly checking the specifications - 'the supplier said it was an perfect substitute'
• Production staff might have picked the wrong reel of cable off the shelf  - ' those reels of cable all look the same to me'
• Final inspection might not have picked up the manufacturing error- 'there was a wire where it should have been'

[Specmaster]

   Urrrghhh... my son just discovered Knight Rider.  Of course I watched it with him. 

OMG... 1982. The Gipper was in the White House, the internet barely existed (but not the dub-dub-dub), Silicon Valley sounded so futuristic, and we were still impressed by huge walls of blinkenlichten and reel-to-reel tapes as representing computational power. Marty Cooper had made the first call from a brick phone, but they still had yet to be released as an actual product.

And the big hair... good lord, the hair spray must've been measured in gigatons back then... 

EDIT: OMG... NOOOO!!! A frrrking GREMLIN just drove past... I haven't even THOUGHT about that horror show of a vehicle in decades...

mnem
*suddenly feeling so very, very old...*

My 3 boys are all Knight Rider fans and all have models of it complete with the working scanner, one of them knows a person who actually has a Knight Rider, well a Transam that externally has turned into a KR clone and is now tackling the interior. One day I might get some photos of said car when its completed.

[mnementh]

Bet you a dollar the interior (at least the original one I'm looking at now) was largely done by the same crew that did the Lagonda, on loan from Sinclair...

mnem
Maybe we should set him on Magnum PI next... No, all that big hair would reach critical mass; make his head asplote... 

[med6753]

OH, a nice glowing Tek I contemplate... a lovely type 502A, in good nick, not a rust bucket, local pickup only but "only" 200kms from me, mostly highway so still kinda reasonable. My own 502A is not in as good a shape, and suffered massive damaged at the back of the cabinet, it fell on the ground I am sure, it's bent. Fixable I reckon, but still it's work... this other one is much better...

https://www.leboncoin.fr/equipements_industriels/2082756903.htm

Problem : guy wants 100 Euros for it (120 USD or something). Not through the roof, but still a bit high especially as I don't even know if it works, and need to pay for the trip...
Would offer the guy 75 Euros but I won't bother because... that's the problem here.... he writes :

" COMPLETE, for parts only, because I know the main transformer is used as an output transformer on tube audio amplifiers "

WTF ?! 

So basically he is hoping some audiophool will give him the 100 Euros no question asked, just to rip the transformer off of it....
That means he will never accept to lower the price nor try to power it up to see if it works. He is hoping to get 100 Euros, no offers, and won't bother trying to power it up.

I hate people. I am starting to understand Papy Smurf... people are ugly, worthless, they should not be allowed to be born to begin with, too much trouble afterward....

I don't see how the power transformer could easily be used as an audio output transformer for a tube amplifier. And you would need 2 of them if you wanted stereo. Sounds very inefficient to me. He might actually mean power transformer. That would make more sense.

Anywho.....Type 502A's do demand a higher price since they are true dual beam. But yes, low bandwidth. $120 USD is not unreasonable. I've seen them go for much more. I'd like to find one myself.

And yes, people suck.       

[factory]

Yes just noticed that and added another picture to correct it, no doubt some older posts will be screwed because of it. 

It's currently a no-wiggle meter. 

David

Yeah, I found from my own adventures here that it helps if you leave the borked pic attached and just add a corrected replacement, then point the inline link towards that. Not 100% sure, but it seemed after I started doing that, the serial post-borkage like falling Dominoes did stop.

I'm not worried about the T2900 in the least bit; quite confident you'll have it up and wiggling its waggle in no time. 

mnem
Ω

Well that was a difficult repair, turns out you need the meter connected to get it wiggling. 
That does explain why the seals were broken on the case screws.




Also vandalized the EverDeady PP9 that came with it and wired up a AA holder to the top of the PP9*.


Few pictures of the meter scale, there's no doubt this was made after Sullivan was taken over by the AVO/Megger group.



*Dura-leaks were removed after testing,

David

[Vince]

OH, a nice glowing Tek I contemplate... a lovely type 502A, in good nick, not a rust bucket, local pickup only but "only" 200kms from me, mostly highway so still kinda reasonable. My own 502A is not in as good a shape, and suffered massive damaged at the back of the cabinet, it fell on the ground I am sure, it's bent. Fixable I reckon, but still it's work... this other one is much better...

https://www.leboncoin.fr/equipements_industriels/2082756903.htm

Problem : guy wants 100 Euros for it (120 USD or something). Not through the roof, but still a bit high especially as I don't even know if it works, and need to pay for the trip...
Would offer the guy 75 Euros but I won't bother because... that's the problem here.... he writes :

" COMPLETE, for parts only, because I know the main transformer is used as an output transformer on tube audio amplifiers "

WTF ?! 

So basically he is hoping some audiophool will give him the 100 Euros no question asked, just to rip the transformer off of it....
That means he will never accept to lower the price nor try to power it up to see if it works. He is hoping to get 100 Euros, no offers, and won't bother trying to power it up.

I hate people. I am starting to understand Papy Smurf... people are ugly, worthless, they should not be allowed to be born to begin with, too much trouble afterward....

I don't see how the power transformer could easily be used as an audio output transformer for a tube amplifier. And you would need 2 of them if you wanted stereo. Sounds very inefficient to me. He might actually mean power transformer. That would make more sense.

Anywho.....Type 502A's do demand a higher price since they are true dual beam. But yes, low bandwidth. $120 USD is not unreasonable. I've seen them go for much more. I'd like to find one myself.

My bad, you were right.... he never wrote "output" transformer, just "transformer"... I think I got carried away because recently I DID see someone selling an old Tek transformer (just the part alone, he had already pulled it from whatever glowing Tek scope) explicitly selling it for output / speaker tube amp purposes.

I thought you already had a 502A ! I thought I saw one in your living room somewhere... guess must have been someone else's living room  then ! 
You living in Tek land, I don't think it should be difficult for you to get any old Tek you might want ?!    I do remember though, looking at Ebay ads in the USA some time ago, that the 502A tended to sell for silly prices... like 200 or 300 or 500 bucks ! In this case yeah, I can understand you not wanting to pay that much for one !   

My personal rule is : between 50 to 100 Euros tops, depending on condition (both cosmetic and electrical), and the technical merits/appeal/rarity of the model. So in the case of this 502A, it ticks 2 boxes out of 3 : interesting model, good cosmetic condition, but unknown electrical condition (transformer and/or CRT might be defective, and I would be screwed), so I give it a mid-range score. Not good enough to warrant 100 Euros, good enough to warrant more than 50 Euros so.... yeah, I think 75 would make sense.

I love this 502A too much, I am weak... I messaged the seller anyway !    Long winded message, to make myself clear. Let's see if he replies anything at all... My reasoning is : I HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE ! So might as well message him  ?!

[factory]

Can't quite read all the info of the reference section, there should be three lines on the graph. 

You could try taking photos in near-IR and near-UV, easily and cheaply done. It might show details that aren't visible/are swamped under normal lighting conditions.

I've got a near UV lamp somewhere, will have to give that a try, nothing for near-IR though.

Time to give it a quick try, hp 34401A is giving strange & incorrect readings on all ranges, but the Wavetek DMM seems to give a more sensible result, frequency not verified but should be around 1.65kHz if the dial is correct.
Also the 10V range is borked, overload light comes on with no load.


David

Maybe there's some harmonics present that shouldn't be there, that are confusing the 34401A but which the Wavetek doesn't see/doesn't care. Or a big-ass DC offset?   

Time to break out the Tek THS I'd say...

It's currently stacked with the 8640A, 5340A and 181T ATM, had to clear the the small workbench last night, as it's shared with my Dad.
When my shoulder recovers I'll have another look with the scope as a third opinion, the 34401A was working OK on AC volts with the 6920B calibrator, when last checked.
Also need to change the filter foam, deal with the corroded tant capacitors (listed as Sprague 109D in the manual, but marked 69F), correct the fan bodge to how it's wired in the in that awful manual scanned by Agilent (sadly the Artek manual is for an older version).
And I want to remove the top of the front panel trim, to see if any of the spare lamps & the tool are still present.

David

[med6753]

My bad, you were right.... he never wrote "output" transformer, just "transformer"... I think I got carried away because recently I DID see someone selling an old Tek transformer (just the part alone, he had already pulled it from whatever glowing Tek scope) explicitly selling it for output / speaker tube amp purposes.

I thought you already had a 502A ! I thought I saw one in your living room somewhere... guess must have been someone else's living room  then ! 
You living in Tek land, I don't think it should be difficult for you to get any old Tek you might want ?!    I do remember though, looking at Ebay ads in the USA some time ago, that the 502A tended to sell for silly prices... like 200 or 300 or 500 bucks ! In this case yeah, I can understand you not wanting to pay that much for one !   

My personal rule is : between 50 to 100 Euros tops, depending on condition (both cosmetic and electrical), and the technical merits/appeal/rarity of the model. So in the case of this 502A, it ticks 2 boxes out of 3 : interesting model, good cosmetic condition, but unknown electrical condition (transformer and/or CRT might be defective, and I would be screwed), so I give it a mid-range score. Not good enough to warrant 100 Euros, good enough to warrant more than 50 Euros so.... yeah, I think 75 would make sense.

I love this 502A too much, I am weak... I messaged the seller anyway !    Long winded message, to make myself clear. Let's see if he replies anything at all... My reasoning is : I HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE ! So might as well message him  ?!

Nope, don't have a 502. You are probably thinking of my Type 503. It's a single beam differential scope.

[mnementh]

   Urrrghhh... my son just discovered Knight Rider.  Of course I watched it with him. 

I set my girls on BattleBots. I think I'm a better parent.   

On some entirely unrelated news: finally managed to get the eBay shop back up. They suspended it some time ago because of a mismatch in data. After a lot of back and forth, it turned out the lifted the suspension some time ago but did not restore the shop. I assumed I was still suspended because the shop was still down. Which is not the case, but I had to relist all items manually. Which is just dumb. Really dumb.

Wanted to copy all listings to eBid while I was at it, but their bulk import tool can't handle site besides eBay.com. Gets confused with ebay.de. 

Both mine started out with PowerPuff Girllzz and Wubbzy. Then MLP and Adventure Time.

Hope yer able to get eBid sorted with a minimum of assache; I hate writing auction listings.

mnem
Then Venture Brothers and Lower Decks... 

[Vince]

Nope, don't have a 502. You are probably thinking of my Type 503. It's a single beam differential scope.

Ah yes I must have been mistaken indeed...

The 503 is lovely too. Single beam but differential inputs and XY mode as well possible if I am not mistaken, which was rare among Tek scopes of that era. Even the super duper 585 or 547 didn't have XY. Well I mean of course like any scope you could hack it into XY using the external horizontal input I guess, but that's a poor man's XY...

I see yours has a blue CRT... AGAIN ! You appear to have a talent to find these rare beauties...

I almost got my hands onto a 503 a couple months back ! Untested, no pics of the interior, just one single pic, of the front, but looked fine, and only 50 Euros and guy was willing to ship, so I thought well nothing to lose, worst case it's still a good deal just for the parts.
Paid the guy and never got the scope !!   

Luckily I didn't give the money directly to him. Instead we used the payment system offered by the website, which also handles the shipping.  So I could easily prove using the tracking system, that he never sent the bloody scope to me !  So I quickly got a total refund without any hassle, phew ! 

[Specmaster]

Yes just noticed that and added another picture to correct it, no doubt some older posts will be screwed because of it. 

It's currently a no-wiggle meter. 

David

Yeah, I found from my own adventures here that it helps if you leave the borked pic attached and just add a corrected replacement, then point the inline link towards that. Not 100% sure, but it seemed after I started doing that, the serial post-borkage like falling Dominoes did stop.

I'm not worried about the T2900 in the least bit; quite confident you'll have it up and wiggling its waggle in no time. 

mnem
Ω

Well that was a difficult repair, turns out you need the meter connected to get it wiggling. 
That does explain why the seals were broken on the case screws.




Also vandalized the EverDeady PP9 that came with it and wired up a AA holder to the top of the PP9*.


Few pictures of the meter scale, there's no doubt this was made after Sullivan was taken over by the AVO/Megger group.



*Dura-leaks were removed after testing,

David

There is still a bug in the system somewhere, when clicking on the last photo of the meter dial to see the AVO logo, I get a portion of the bottom right hand section of the photo blanked out 

Anyone else getting the same?

[med6753]

I see yours has a blue CRT... AGAIN ! You appear to have a talent to find these rare beauties...

That's not a blue CRT. It's a blue filter. I've since taken that filter and put it on the Type 547. I wish I could find another one. Plenty of grey and green filters but blue ones are rare.