Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[beanflying]

So I was going down the path of adding a promicro and some WS2801's that I have and then had a daylight look 

8% Power is more or less a fine glass type etch and not recessed into the surface. The inside etched one might get turned into something else with lights yet.

Now I just need to find a source of short 6-32 UNC screws in a long metricated country.  PC screws are not going to do it F Units 

That looks great, bean! I guess the angle of the prior pics didn't do it justice.

Lots of visual difference between front and back side engraving in the earlier posts. The thing I was concerned about with front side is keeping it clean longer term. Keeping it really lightly engraved I hope will make it a fairly easy clean. Lots of variables to play without getting to the complexity of photo bitmap renders.

So my 3D printers don't get jealous maybe some more hybrid Laser fascias on 3DP bodied enclosures in future.

[beanflying]

Blimey that was good for £15. I would have nabbed that if I saw it.

Incidentally if you do go to Poole don’t hang around too long or you’ll come back to your car propped on bricks.

If I'd have seen it, I'd too would have nabbed it, even collected it because it sure would have been worth it I'm sure.

All that for $19 USD?  Almost worth the plane ticket to pick them up. 

That's for sure. How do you imagine someone came up with that price for that stuff? Seems, well, rather a random number.

What is the price of a bottle or box of their favourite booze? Clearly a cheap drunk

[tautech]

So I was going down the path of adding a promicro and some WS2801's that I have and then had a daylight look 

8% Power is more or less a fine glass type etch and not recessed into the surface. The inside etched one might get turned into something else with lights yet.

Now I just need to find a source of short 6-32 UNC screws in a long metricated country.  PC screws are not going to do it F Units 

That looks great, bean! I guess the angle of the prior pics didn't do it justice.

Lots of visual difference between front and back side engraving in the earlier posts. The thing I was concerned about with front side is keeping it clean longer term. Keeping it really lightly engraved I hope will make it a fairly easy clean. Lots of variables to play without getting to the complexity of photo bitmap renders.

So my 3D printers don't get jealous maybe some more hybrid Laser fascias on 3DP bodied enclosures in future.

All that stuff you've doing Bean is pretty cool. 

When did you say you were planning to move over here ? 

[bd139]

Carnage here. Relative in hospital last couple of days after a second fall so been taxi

Got home 8pm, ordered curry, hit the K2 hard. RF board done:



Load of stuff on the bottom as well including the PA transistors to be case mounted



On the TEA from I have after much thought decided to shift the Fluke 87V and keep the plain 87. It's a much better meter all round apart from the backlight which I can live with perfectly fine. AC response is flatter, bargraph is actually useful, display viewing angle is better and it's good enough TBH.

Now going to eat microwaved curry and go to bed 

[xrunner]

Lookin good - nice boards well marked.

[tautech]

Carnage here. Relative in hospital last couple of days after a second fall so been taxi

Got home 8pm, ordered curry, hit the K2 hard. RF board done:

And you gunna properly align all that ? 

But looks a really shit hot job BD. 

[bitseeker]

Carnage here. Relative in hospital last couple of days after a second fall so been taxi

Got home 8pm, ordered curry, hit the K2 hard. RF board done:



Load of stuff on the bottom as well including the PA transistors to be case mounted



On the TEA from I have after much thought decided to shift the Fluke 87V and keep the plain 87. It's a much better meter all round apart from the backlight which I can live with perfectly fine. AC response is flatter, bargraph is actually useful, display viewing angle is better and it's good enough TBH.

Now going to eat microwaved curry and go to bed 

Excellent work bd! So many parts, but all nicely placed, properly oriented, standing straight (on the top side at least), etc.

[beanflying]

So I was going down the path of adding a promicro and some WS2801's that I have and then had a daylight look 

8% Power is more or less a fine glass type etch and not recessed into the surface. The inside etched one might get turned into something else with lights yet.

Now I just need to find a source of short 6-32 UNC screws in a long metricated country.  PC screws are not going to do it F Units 

That looks great, bean! I guess the angle of the prior pics didn't do it justice.

Lots of visual difference between front and back side engraving in the earlier posts. The thing I was concerned about with front side is keeping it clean longer term. Keeping it really lightly engraved I hope will make it a fairly easy clean. Lots of variables to play without getting to the complexity of photo bitmap renders.

So my 3D printers don't get jealous maybe some more hybrid Laser fascias on 3DP bodied enclosures in future.

All that stuff you've doing Bean is pretty cool. 

When did you say you were planning to move over here ? 

The recent election result might see that sooner than later

Having a casual think about lasered panels they are fairly easy to post worldwide as they are thin. A4 sized panel shipped worldwide would go in a 20mm letter envelope for less than $10 AUD ($7 USD) so 2-5mm Acrylic with Cardboard either side for protection. Material is cheap and a bit on top to buy me a beer or replace a Laser tube over time I might hang out my shingle when I have some more practice up.

[worsthorse]

Carnage here. Relative in hospital last couple of days after a second fall so been taxi

Got home 8pm, ordered curry, hit the K2 hard. RF board done:

And you gunna properly align all that ? 

But looks a really shit hot job BD. 

I have to say, that is a fine piece of work so far. I'm guessing you've done this before. 

[Kosmic]

RF board done:



Load of stuff on the bottom as well including the PA transistors to be case mounted

So many parts! 

[beanflying]

So @BD will you be getting one of these for your next project  I am not a HAM and yet Youtube thionks I am 

https://youtu.be/LT6PGY5lOj4

[Kosmic]

Frankly I need to cull the heard.  As soon as I finish this clearing project and can start working on repairing gear again, I am going to inventory the ham radio pile and sell off all the stuff I am never going to use, like the RTTY gear, before the end of the year.

Thanks, Did not know about RTTY and PSK31. Along the same lines, Winlink (https://www.winlink.org/) seem interesting.

At the same time found an article for bd139

https://hackaday.com/2016/12/12/my-beef-with-ham-radio/

Quote "Because as it turns out, when you’re a ham you end up talking to other hams. And I don’t like talking to hams."

 

[Kosmic]

Finally received the "precision" (0.5%) capacitors I ordered from Russia. Digikey and the other online shops don't carries anything lower than 1%. The only place where I found some 0.5% cap was on ebay from Russia or some other Eastern Europe countries.



They are all polystyrene capacitors from 0.5 uF to 0.01uF. Also got a 158pF.

So after spending quite sometimes measuring each caps with my LCR meter, I decided to use them to build 2 decade box (158pF to 1uF). To avoid stray capacitance and hopefully keep precision, I did an extravagant usage of Teflon Teflon washer on the binding post, Teflon wire, Teflon heat shrink on the capacitor leads and a ceramic switch (did not find a switch made of Teflon ).






I just need to label the front panel "Wolfgang style" (mica sheet and spray adhesive) and I’m done!

[GregDunn]

At the same time found an article for bd139

https://hackaday.com/2016/12/12/my-beef-with-ham-radio/

Quote "Because as it turns out, when you’re a ham you end up talking to other hams. And I don’t like talking to hams."

 

Though I went to college with many ham radio operators, I found out pretty quickly that except for the engineers I knew, I didn't care much for a lot of the hams.  I prefer having conversations with other engineers/technicians.  The Dayton hamfest just reaffirmed my preferences there.   

[Kosmic]

At the same time found an article for bd139

https://hackaday.com/2016/12/12/my-beef-with-ham-radio/

Quote "Because as it turns out, when you’re a ham you end up talking to other hams. And I don’t like talking to hams."

 

Though I went to college with many ham radio operators, I found out pretty quickly that except for the engineers I knew, I didn't care much for a lot of the hams.  I prefer having conversations with other engineers/technicians.  The Dayton hamfest just reaffirmed my preferences there.   

Hehe will have to try one of those hamfest at some point 

[Kosmic]

The 2 capacitance decade box in action.












Conclusion:
The LCR meter seem accurate and on spec and I’m particularly happy with my 10nF and 1uF 

[xrunner]

That's some nice kit there Kosmic. I'd love to have one of those. 

[mnementh]

Soooo...

Installing Windoze on a EVO850 SSD I had lying around; I originally bought it for my XPS M1330 laptop but it is so old SSD didn’t make a noticeable improvement.   

(Snip)

See you all on the other side,

mnem
*sent by threatening an iPad with “further modifications” *

Oh, fuck me...  installing ShutUp10 and wondering why the hell this fresh install on a SSD is still soooo fucking slooooow...

I updated the firmware, and forgot to re-enable AHCI before the install. 

mnem
It’s kinda like deja vu’... kinda like deja vu’...

[beanflying]

Soooo...

Installing Windoze on a EVO850 SSD I had lying around; I originally bought it for my XPS M1330 laptop but it is so old SSD didn’t make a noticeable improvement.   

(Snip)

See you all on the other side,

mnem
*sent by threatening an iPad with “further modifications” *

Oh, fuck me...  installing ShutUp10 and wondering why the hell this fresh install on a SSD is still soooo fucking slooooow...

I updated the firmware, and forgot to re-enable AHCI before the install. 

mnem
It’s kinda like deja vu’... kinda like deja vu’...

When you sort out that mess let me know an easy non cloud way to do file sharing between Windoze 7 and 10 

[Kosmic]

Soooo...

Installing Windoze on a EVO850 SSD I had lying around; I originally bought it for my XPS M1330 laptop but it is so old SSD didn’t make a noticeable improvement.   

(Snip)

See you all on the other side,

mnem
*sent by threatening an iPad with “further modifications” *

Oh, fuck me...  installing ShutUp10 and wondering why the hell this fresh install on a SSD is still soooo fucking slooooow...

I updated the firmware, and forgot to re-enable AHCI before the install. 

mnem
It’s kinda like deja vu’... kinda like deja vu’...

When you sort out that mess let me know an easy non cloud way to do file sharing between Windoze 7 and 10 

File sharing (samba) is disabled by default in win10. Just need to reactivate the service though. I'm sharing between winNT4 and win10 here in LAN

[med6753]

Soooo...

Installing Windoze on a EVO850 SSD I had lying around; I originally bought it for my XPS M1330 laptop but it is so old SSD didn’t make a noticeable improvement.   

(Snip)

See you all on the other side,

mnem
*sent by threatening an iPad with “further modifications” *

Oh, fuck me...  installing ShutUp10 and wondering why the hell this fresh install on a SSD is still soooo fucking slooooow...

I updated the firmware, and forgot to re-enable AHCI before the install. 

mnem
It’s kinda like deja vu’... kinda like deja vu’...

When you sort out that mess let me know an easy non cloud way to do file sharing between Windoze 7 and 10 

File sharing (samba) is disabled by default in win10. Just need to reactivate the service though. I'm sharing between winNT4 and win10 here in LAN

I have seamless file sharing running between WIN7 and WIN10 but it took a lot of poking and prodding of WIN10 to make it work. Involves getting it to do Network Discovery and force it to join a Home Group. I don't recall exactly what I did but it involved tweaking Network settings in Services.msc. But also make sure if you are running wireless that in the WIN7 machine the wireless sharing is turned on in Wireless Network Connection Properties.

[med6753]

Soooo...

Installing Windoze on a EVO850 SSD I had lying around; I originally bought it for my XPS M1330 laptop but it is so old SSD didn’t make a noticeable improvement.   

(Snip)

See you all on the other side,

mnem
*sent by threatening an iPad with “further modifications” *

Oh, fuck me...  installing ShutUp10 and wondering why the hell this fresh install on a SSD is still soooo fucking slooooow...

I updated the firmware, and forgot to re-enable AHCI before the install. 

mnem
It’s kinda like deja vu’... kinda like deja vu’...

I'm surprised it worked at all. I was given an old Dell "All In One" computer that did not have AHCI in BIOS. I would not recognize the SSD as a bootable device even after doing an image.

[beanflying]

Yep it was a PITA getting my W10 machines to talk to each other after their 'upgrade' some months ago without adding W7 to it 

Might be time to go back to a NAS box again but without the proprietary BS of my old XP Netgear one with no modern drivers available

Or KISS and just keep using a USB stick on the Laser as needed......

[med6753]

My home network is both wireless and LAN. Once I got the file sharing sorted between WIN10 and WIN7 on the LAN I've had no issues with WIN10 updates screwing with it. Been fine for over a year. But when I attempted to add a WIN7 machine over the wireless that had me scratching my head for quite a while. The other WIN7 machines saw it and connected fine but the WIN10 machine absolutely refused to connect. That's when I found the sharing option in the Wireless Adapter Properties on the WIN7 machine. WIN10 needs that enabled or it won't connect.

[med6753]

And if you want to keep your files across computers sync'ed I found the free version of this program to work well...

https://allwaysync.com/

I have it set up where I do a sync manually when I feel the need....typically once a week.