Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tonyalbus]

i just love it when TE smiles at you. 

I've made a picture holding up my Avo8 upside down decorated with a headset, in front of my head, that I'm using for profile pic in some work related things, like Active Directory catalogue and Slack.

 

[tonyalbus]

This AVO was owned by Philips telecom, and came with a Philips badge... talking about cutomizing...
but it is a AVO LTD

[edit]  i see now the badge is glued on....

[Specmaster]

OK, then I'm back with the meter, hell its had a hard life, the photos never showed that up because they were shitty photos TBH. The leather case I'm going to chuck out, its all in one piece but its really rank and smelly. Case is OK but the overload cutout appears to be welded up and the rubber boot perished, the meter reverse button boot has also perished, not sure if it works even TBH.

Have given the entire thing a good wipe over with some IPA sprayed over it, hopefully to kill off anything nasty like Covid-19, that bastard can fuck right off 

Battery terminals are OK, no corrosion, powered from bench supply,  \$\Omega\$X1 works OK,  \$\Omega\$X100 dead and  \$\Omega\$X10K working OK. Meter movement sticky around the normal resting position, suspect foreign matter in the suspension system, one common track on the blue ribbon cable has been vaporised so has been used incorrectly and explains why I think the cutout has welded closed. That means by default that the model is a model 8 Mk5 as its the only one that has that horrible blue plastic ribbon cable with the printed tracks in it.

So early indications are that its repairable at least for bench use if not to a standard that would allow me to flip it on  but it means a complete strip down as per last one and the blue plastic ribbon cable shit, ripped out and rewired with the multicoloured ribbon cable again.

I'm going to grab a bite to eat now and I will if people really want to see them, take a few photos of the meter inside etc and post them.

As to why people like them, its because they are not only iconic, but they were quite essential meter back in the day and were the universal standard for British meters, much the same as Simpsons were in the USA market and both are still very capable of doing a job of work today, but most of the younger bods struggle to understand them. Anything that is not autoranging and has a digital display is bin fodder in lots of peoples eye, and they are really missing out big time.

[bd139]

i just love it when TE smiles at you. 

I've made a picture holding up my Avo8 upside down decorated with a headset, in front of my head, that I'm using for profile pic in some work related things, like Active Directory catalogue and Slack.

Looks like a black and white minstrel 

Just finished putting my daughter’s new PC together. It’s her 17th birthday present. Ryzen 5 3400G/16Gb RAM and MSI B550M board. My that one was a dick. Firstly green garbled junk out due to dodgy HDMI cable. Then wouldn’t detect SSD until I’d done a BIOS update. Then WiFi drop outs until drivers updated. Nice and stable now. 

[Specmaster]

Nice and the OS is?

[mansaxel]

This AVO was owned by Philips telecom, and came with a Philips badge... talking about cutomizing...
but it is a AVO LTD

[edit]  i see now the badge is glued on....

In Sweden they were imported by Svenska Radioaktiebolaget, SRA, and came with swedish instruction plates on the back. All mine are either imported by me or earlier than SRA representation, so have UK back plates.

SRA was later partially merged with SRT (ITT-owned) and the defense electronics parts of that later merged with PEAB, owned by Philips and source of among others the Philips frequency counters, and now is a part of SAAB, doing battle management systems and ATC systems.  Other parts of SRA built the Ericsson mobile phones when those parts had been fully absorbed by the sausage factory. (The Ericsson logo, ///, led them to be called the Sausage Factory in Sweden, also internally.)

[tonyalbus]

Like this?

[tggzzz]

funny... just in today....

i just love it when TE smiles at you. 

Like this? Yours for £110, apparently. That bright spark has been trying to sell it for a long time.

[tonyalbus]

funny... just in today....

i just love it when TE smiles at you. 

Like this? Yours for £110, apparently. That bright spark has been trying to sell it for a long time.

Why 

[tggzzz]

i just love it when TE smiles at you. 

I've made a picture holding up my Avo8 upside down decorated with a headset, in front of my head, that I'm using for profile pic in some work related things, like Active Directory catalogue and Slack.

Would the ammo and hard hat be of use to you? Yours for "£250.00 From £12 per month for 24 months", apparently.

[mansaxel]

Like this?

Just so.

[tggzzz]

Where do you stick the caged incandescent lamp on one of them?

Are you still hungry, or have my last two posts sated your appetite?

[bd139]

Nice and the OS is?

windows 10 of course

Where do you stick the caged incandescent lamp on one of them?

Are you still hungry, or have my last two posts sated your appetite?

Glorious 


Just managed to land two z80 based single board computers for under a tenner on another forum with reverse engineering notes and sample code. This should be  fun. They have three serial ports. I'm wondering if I can cram in a FORTH:



Need to dig out the EPROM programmer and buy some EPROMs.

[Cerebus]

Just managed to land two z80 based single board computers for under a tenner on another forum with reverse engineering notes and sample code. This should be  fun. They have three serial ports. I'm wondering if I can cram in a FORTH:

Just you wait until I get my big boots back from the German Customs.

[Specmaster]

funny... just in today....

i just love it when TE smiles at you. 

Like this? Yours for £110, apparently. That bright spark has been trying to sell it for a long time.

Serves him right, hopefully he can't sell it 

[25 CPS]

I am now accepting offers.

*Spare incandescent bulbs not included.

[Specmaster]

i just love it when TE smiles at you. 

I've made a picture holding up my Avo8 upside down decorated with a headset, in front of my head, that I'm using for profile pic in some work related things, like Active Directory catalogue and Slack.

Would the ammo and hard hat be of use to you? Yours for "£250.00 From £12 per month for 24 months", apparently.

there really should be a law against this sort of thing 

[bd139]

Indeed.

The problem with this sort of stuff is that it only works if the item is greater in some way than the sum of its parts, not less. It takes some savvy to know the difference and that ability is rather lacking. I think the underlying part of Yeat's poem "Byzantium" says it nicely, suggesting that art gives meaning to human existence. These abominations detract from our existence instead.

[Cerebus]

I am now accepting offers.

*Spare incandescent bulbs not included.

Waits for the inevitable version with a Pickelhaube to turn up from one of our German contributors...

[Kosmic]

Where do you stick the caged incandescent lamp on one of them?

 

[SilverSolder]

Indeed.

The problem with this sort of stuff is that it only works if the item is greater in some way than the sum of its parts, not less. It takes some savvy to know the difference and that ability is rather lacking. I think the underlying part of Yeat's poem "Byzantium" says it nicely, suggesting that art gives meaning to human existence. These abominations detract from our existence instead.

^This.^

There are definitely "bad" artists as well as "good" ones.   It isn't just that you don't understand the artist! 

[tggzzz]

i just love it when TE smiles at you. 

I've made a picture holding up my Avo8 upside down decorated with a headset, in front of my head, that I'm using for profile pic in some work related things, like Active Directory catalogue and Slack.

Would the ammo and hard hat be of use to you? Yours for "£250.00 From £12 per month for 24 months", apparently.

there really should be a law against this sort of thing 

There are several, but the police/CPS think the probability of conviction is too low.

[Cerebus]

Indeed.

The problem with this sort of stuff is that it only works if the item is greater in some way than the sum of its parts, not less. It takes some savvy to know the difference and that ability is rather lacking. I think the underlying part of Yeat's poem "Byzantium" says it nicely, suggesting that art gives meaning to human existence. These abominations detract from our existence instead.

^This.^

There are definitely "bad" artists as well as "good" ones.   It isn't just that you don't understand the artist! 

Yes, unfortunately Britain's art schools managed to turn out almost a complete two generations of the former as the "YBAs".

[Ice-Tea]

Working on a TDS784D. Decently bright display (sucks by modern day standards but for the series and the age not terrible...). All channels work. Off course, SPC doesn't. Not the first time I tangoed with these so I proceed with all haste to excavate the hybrids. Which are, I'm sure, marvels of black magic RF engineering but they also suck donkey balls to work on. Sure enough, one cracks while getting it out. Measuring relays yields at least one dud (4 ohm resistance) and a few doubtfulls.

Now the fun really starts. I have attempted to repair these in the past, with limited success. Long story short: some of the pins are not accesible by soldering iron. Using the hot air gun has, thus far, always resulted in the relay and its neighbours melting before I could make it "stick". The plan was to make an attempt with a hotplate and/or chipquick low temp solder. As I don't have a hotplate (yet): chipquick + hot air it is.



Removing the relay is not the issue (cut the legs). Cleaned the pads of old solder after that. Applied some of the special flux to the pads; applied the solder. Observation: it doens't flow nearly as nice as normal paste. Has a tendency to "tear". Wetted the relay as well for good measure, more flux applied.

First attempt: as the solder offers less visual clues versus normal, I pick up the board and the relay slides off the board. Not yet cured.

Second attempt: better. But the least accesible leg is up in the air.



Pressing the relay down a bit while applying hot air seems to have done the trick:



Pretty it ain't but it'll do...

Update: now it won't boot. Because off course it won't boot. It's 2020 after all.

[bd139]

Yes, unfortunately Britain's art schools managed to turn out almost a complete two generations of the former as the "YBAs".

Ah yes I got a photo of one of those artists at work at Colchester Zoo about a decade ago: