Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

Nice radio. I'd probably go that direction if I didn't have the FT818.

Edit: on topic about wankers... this was seen in clapham high street in London:



Edit: And at the other end:



 

[mnementh]

8W eyeball toaster - no thanks!  ... Got a contact a few minutes ago on a radio check call through the repeater. Winner winner chicken dinner

Using an FT25 for ref which is Yaesu's baofeng clone (same chipset). They managed to make the software and interface less shit though. ML&S are selling them off cheap because they had an order cancelled

Now to try and get that VHF antenna up without anyone moaning.

This is all making me think I need a cheap VNA of some sort. There's an excuse for TEA in anything.

What diff does it make when you're using an external antenna? When you're rubber-ducking it, just turn it down. 

The FT25 has nice audio; but even on "Reduced for Quick sale" they gotta be at least twice what a UV-5R costs. And since you already have one, no harm in trying the BFP3-23 firmware to see if it does in fact boost the output all by itself.

mnem
*tinker-ily*

[bd139]

8W is overdriving the PA. Will last about two minutes doing that. I don't have a UV-5R anymore however.

They are 2x the price of a UV-5R but you get a few extras for your money: audio is excellent, menu system is excellent, the antenna that comes with it isn't crap, no intermod problems, no harmonics, actually delivers 5W out, connectors and headset isn't made of poo and has a resale value of more than a 'feng

[mnementh]

In Other News...



I'm fixing my wife's Glock.

mnem
Hope she doesn't shoot me with it... 

[mnementh]

8W is overdriving the PA. Will last about two minutes doing that. I don't have a UV-5R anymore however.

They are 2x the price of a UV-5R but you get a few extras for your money: audio is excellent, menu system is excellent, the antenna that comes with it isn't crap, no intermod problems, no harmonics, actually delivers 5W out, connectors and headset isn't made of poo and has a resale value of more than a 'feng

B-but... but... but... no purple backlight!!!   The horror!!! 

Interesting... I could've sworn I read that the finals on this were discrete. I doubt that Amazon vendor would be keeping their high ratings for long, or even making a profit if they were selling a self-detonating radio as they are offering warranty (of course, YMMV on that). We both know 'feng sells a modded version even they claim is 8W. Butt-ugly it is, too. 

Sure the UV-5R is a cheapie... but for $21, hardly worth getting rid of. Worth every penny if you just keep it as a spare for yourself or someone else to use. I'll keep mine.

mnem
 

[bd139]

LOL yeah it has a luxurious white backlight. FT818 backlight annoys me - that should be white

Yeah it's a discrete PA (Renesas RQA0009SXAQS) but on a ducky the SWR is pretty high and the thermals are shit which means the final runs hot. At 100oC the SOA ends at just over 5W and it gets that hot pretty quick. At 125oC it goes down to 2W so thermal runaway is pretty bad. Only takes a turn on a round table to let the magic smoke out. Mostly fine at 5W though although pushing it a bit if the antenna is crap.

They're good for the money though got to say. Just wanted some of the minor issues fixed and the FT25 does that (on the basis there's bugger all on 70cm around here so losing that isn't an issue).

If you put it into perspective, a new finals module for the FT818 costs more than the FT25, the rationale is clear

[capt bullshot]

Edit: on topic about wankers... this was seen in clapham high street in London:

The equivalent to wanker in German is "Wixer". Maybe a bit more leaned towards the masturbation related term, but also in general use for any annoying person. So imagine you live in a small town named "Wixhausen" - this is real, just use your favourite maps to find it near Darmstadt ("Darm" means bowel or gut).

[bd139]

Hahaha that’s hilarious.

[bitseeker]

I think the one I used at Uni was an Intel SDK-86. At least it looked pretty similar.

The project on the next bench to mine played with one of those c1980. Never liked the x86 family.

We had very little Intel anything at Uni, heavy on Motorola and HP Lab and mainframes/mini computer systems.

Our labs were all Intel: IBM XT, AT&T 6300 (8086), IBM AT, then IBM PS/2. The microprocessor control class was x86 assembly language. Fun! (sometimes yes, sometimes no)

[bitseeker]

I would go "full wanker".

1. Open a case with ebay against them, providing evidence.
2. Get full refund.
3. Spend the next 6 months reporting every one of their damn auctions as fraudulent

If something doesn't work, I will only accept full refund myself otherwise the seller still makes a profit.

Agree 100% but I'm not sure about the "wanker" part. I thought that was a British term for "self abuse"

As far as the "moral dilemma" part... since they only bothered to respond to you AFTER you posted feedback... I would file a dispute "Not As Described" (actually would have done so as soon as my second attempt at contact went unanswered) and carry through with it. MAKE THE SOB PAY for return shipping AND full refund.

THEN... and ONLY THEN... post negative feedback stating only the facts: 1/2 advertised capacity, no response from seller, had to file claim w/eBay.

DO NOT post anything even marginally abusive; calling the guy a scammer or anything worse than "non-responsive seller" is the surest way to get your feedback scrubbed.

Yep, putting negative statements in a positive feedback is a violation and eBay is more than happy to delete it. I received one from a stupid seller and eBay removed it when I reported it to them.

Additionally, in your own feedback, be sure not to include any specifics on how a case was resolved. You could say if it was or wasn't resolved, but that's about it. Otherwise, eBay may delete your feedback.

[0culus]

I think the one I used at Uni was an Intel SDK-86. At least it looked pretty similar.

The project on the next bench to mine played with one of those c1980. Never liked the x86 family.

We had very little Intel anything at Uni, heavy on Motorola and HP Lab and mainframes/mini computer systems.

Our labs were all Intel: IBM XT, AT&T 6300 (8086), IBM AT, then IBM PS/2. The microprocessor control class was x86 assembly language. Fun! (sometimes yes, sometimes no)

x86 is kind of nasty to be honest, and with modern Intel parts, it's not even close to the lowest layer in the stack either.

[bd139]

Yep. couple of beers here so rant time.

Intel's architecture at this point is a joke and a liability and needs to go away. x86-64 needs to go away really as well, including AMD's implementation. You take a pile of shit (segmented memory [remember near and far pointers], hackity hack, horrid non-orthogonal instruction set) then keep shoveling shit on top of it because your entire ecosystem is glued to the hardware so intimately that you're stuck. On goes floating point (which didn't work very well at least twice), memory protection, badly and rudimentary paging. On goes several bitness and operational modes trying to pretend it's not a 1970s relic. Then your ecosystem demands more juice so on goes shared caches, SMP, bus arbitration. Then a cheap ass vendor comes along and provides 64-bit extensions when you're digging in the pile of shit one day. You're then forced to implement this to be competitive, chuck on the fire a whole new memory model. At the same time this entire clump of turds is actually turning into a virtual machine sitting on top of a weird ass pipelined RISC core full of bugs from hell with several other CPUs that do god knows what the hell glued on the side. Eventually the cracks show (meltdown etc) and the whole house of cards collapses (happening in next two years).

And there you have a modern PC, server and every damn cloud computing provider on the planet: 1970s tech with a pile of turds on top of it floating on a sewage farm of an architecture. A rube goldberg machine from the depths of hell.

[kj7e]

Edit: on topic about wankers... this was seen in clapham high street in London:

The equivalent to wanker in German is "Wixer". Maybe a bit more leaned towards the masturbation related term, but also in general use for any annoying person. So imagine you live in a small town named "Wixhausen" - this is real, just use your favourite maps to find it near Darmstadt ("Darm" means bowel or gut).

Or live in Fuc$ing Austria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking,_Austria

[0culus]

Yep. couple of beers here so rant time.

Intel's architecture at this point is a joke and a liability and needs to go away. x86-64 needs to go away really as well, including AMD's implementation. You take a pile of shit (segmented memory [remember near and far pointers], hackity hack, horrid non-orthogonal instruction set) then keep shoveling shit on top of it because your entire ecosystem is glued to the hardware so intimately that you're stuck. On goes floating point (which didn't work very well at least twice), memory protection, badly and rudimentary paging. On goes several bitness and operational modes trying to pretend it's not a 1970s relic. Then your ecosystem demands more juice so on goes shared caches, SMP, bus arbitration. Then a cheap ass vendor comes along and provides 64-bit extensions when you're digging in the pile of shit one day. You're then forced to implement this to be competitive, chuck on the fire a whole new memory model. At the same time this entire clump of turds is actually turning into a virtual machine sitting on top of a weird ass pipelined RISC core full of bugs from hell with several other CPUs that do god knows what the hell glued on the side. Eventually the cracks show (meltdown etc) and the whole house of cards collapses (happening in next two years).

And there you have a modern PC, server and every damn cloud computing provider on the planet: 1970s tech with a pile of turds on top of it floating on a sewage farm of an architecture. A rube goldberg machine from the depths of hell.

Agreed. And then there's the built in backdoor (Intel Management Engine) that you cannot opt out of for consumer chips. Sure it's "off" unless you also license the management system that's intended for remote managing workstations and such in an enterprise environment, but you have zero assurance of that. Fun fact: the management engine runs Andy Tanenbaum's MINIX with Intel-proprietary modifications.

https://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/intel/

[bitseeker]

Yep. Bottom line: The best things don't necessarily win.

[bd139]

Yep. Windows, Intel, Trump, Fox cancelling Firefly 

[tggzzz]

Yep. Windows, Intel, Trump, Fox cancelling Firefly 

... Warners cancelling Crusade (after B5), Showcase(?) cancelling Continuum.

[med6753]

Edit: on topic about wankers... this was seen in clapham high street in London:

The equivalent to wanker in German is "Wixer". Maybe a bit more leaned towards the masturbation related term, but also in general use for any annoying person. So imagine you live in a small town named "Wixhausen" - this is real, just use your favourite maps to find it near Darmstadt ("Darm" means bowel or gut).

Or live in Fuc$ing Austria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking,_Austria

Well that certainly tops visiting or living in Intercourse, Pennsylvania. 

[0culus]

Edit: on topic about wankers... this was seen in clapham high street in London:

The equivalent to wanker in German is "Wixer". Maybe a bit more leaned towards the masturbation related term, but also in general use for any annoying person. So imagine you live in a small town named "Wixhausen" - this is real, just use your favourite maps to find it near Darmstadt ("Darm" means bowel or gut).

Or live in Fuc$ing Austria: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fucking,_Austria

Well that certainly tops visiting or living in Intercourse, Pennsylvania. 

Giggity.

 

[med6753]

Got the tantalums for the "parts" 465B and promptly replaced all on the vertical board and several on the main board. Results? No real change. The trace is still pretty ugly and lacks sharpness. The next step: resistance measurements in the CRT bias circuit and the focus divider circuit. I have the advantage of another 465B so I can do some comparative analysis and hopefully quickly track down the issue. The thought of the CRT itself being tired crossed my mind but have to eliminate everything else first. I do have a spare CRT just in case.

That's tomorrow's project.   

[bd139]

Try running it at 20MHz BW limit and see if it improves. If it does, clean the BW limit leaf switches.

... Warners cancelling Crusade (after B5), Showcase(?) cancelling Continuum.

Hmm not so sure about any Babylon 5 stuff. Controversial I'm sure


Minor 30 second TEA repair here. Proper neon obtained for the HP power supply:

[0culus]

Hmm, that reminds me. The 432A power meter I just got has that style of power switch. It does light up nicely. Bet it's a neon too.

[med6753]

Try running it at 20MHz BW limit and see if it improves. If it does, clean the BW limit leaf switches.

I'm way ahead of you with that. That's the first thing I checked when first got the scope and noticed the fuzzy trace.

[bd139]

How fuzzy is it? Some fuzzy is normal on the 465B when switched into 100MHz at least.

[med6753]

If it were your only scope you wouldn't really think there was an issue. But compared to the other 465B and the 475A it's definitely not as sharp as it should be. And I also found out that the bias pot is cranked all the way down. If you rotate it the trace gets even worse. So apparently someone else noticed the same thing and was in here fiddling with the CRT circuit. So it looks like it's gonna be an unfuck mission plus figure out what's wrong. I'm going to start with the manual and make sure the bias/geometry/Z-axis, etc is set up properly and go from there.