Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Aw, c'mon mnem. It's only a little bit of flour, sugar and egg with soft and crispy layers separated with creamy French butter. No need to go overboard about it. 

Yes... yes you are.

And I did not go overboard... that was exactly the correct amount of friendly "fuck you". 

mnem

[bd139]

I have to do something to get off my fat, lazy butt. It might as well be directed at something I can later enjoy while sitting on my fat, lazy butt.

Yeah that’s a good point. I tried exercise and that didn’t cut it later 

[Cerebus]

And I did not go overboard... that was exactly the correct amount of friendly "fuck you". 

That was just a rhetorical device. Truthfully, given the obvious mischievous intent, perhaps you didn't offer up quite enough "fuck you".



"What's that left-shoulder-kitten?".
"I should tell him about the fat BLT on crispy malted toast I'm planning to have for supper?"

[Cerebus]

I have to do something to get off my fat, lazy butt. It might as well be directed at something I can later enjoy while sitting on my fat, lazy butt.

Yeah that’s a good point. I tried exercise and that didn’t cut it later 

I have, in all seriousness, proposed to myself a "You can't eat anything you didn't make from scratch" diet. Want crisps? You have to make them. Want sweets? You have to make them. And so on.

Either it works as a diet, or, you get very good at making junk food from scratch quickly with minimum [caloric] effort. I can't decide which is the more likely realistic outcome.

[BU508A]

Late 2nd breakfast:

Ladies and Gentleman, here we are having another fan of the famous Biegelehre.      

[Cerebus]

Yeah, and the junk on the table genuinely is the junk on the table too, nothing was placed for effect.

And for those who don't know (I had to look it up) "Biegelehre" is not a German pastry even though it sounds like it, but is the name for the component lead bender in the background.

[Ice-Tea]

Yup. Checked. I do a rough cleanup, I don't detail devices.

EDIT: was getting ready to take it apart; but no need for that. It turns out to be some kind of quick-change BNC.

Thickens the plot; eh? 

It is also a fuseholder. The green thing is the fuse.

Mind: blown.

[mnementh]

And I did not go overboard... that was exactly the correct amount of friendly "fuck you". 

That was just a rhetorical device. Truthfully, given the obvious mischievous intent, perhaps you didn't offer up quite enough "fuck you".



"What's that left-shoulder-kitten?" "I should tell him about the fat BLT on crispy malted toast I'm planning to have for supper?"

Fuck you very much. 

mnem

[Cerebus]

A reminder for those of us in BST/GMT land (and probably all the EU countries on the same coordinated cycle for summer time changes), today's one of the days you need to reset your forum profile if you want to see the right time on messages.

[Saskia]

I have to do something to get off my fat, lazy butt. It might as well be directed at something I can later enjoy while sitting on my fat, lazy butt.

Yeah that’s a good point. I tried exercise and that didn’t cut it later 

I have, in all seriousness, proposed to myself a "You can't eat anything you didn't make from scratch" diet. Want crisps? You have to make them. Want sweets? You have to make them. And so on.

Either it works as a diet, or, you get very good at making junk food from scratch quickly with minimum [caloric] effort. I can't decide which is the more likely realistic outcome.

Here's the recipe for my cleansing chili. Not quite authentic, but should be good against flulike symptoms due to raising body temperature.
2 lbs of ground meat (pork, beef or mixture)
2 habaneros. 2 jalapenos, 2 thai chilis (fresh).
1 lbs chopped tomatoes
handful of fresh indian black pepper (grind when preparing)
2 lbs of chili beans (I use the canned ones, I don't have time to farm the beans)
assorted bell peppers, onions, salt, cayenne pepper
add some Oregano / Basil if you want
if you want to tone it down: add feta cheese

take a rather large frying pan (don't have space for dutch oven, sorry) and cook the beef in the proper amount of oil.
dice habaneros, jalapenos, thai chilis, onions,  and add to beef.
put in hungarian bell pepper spice. cut bell peppers to proper bits and pieces, throw into pan. Add spices to taste. if too bland, throw in another habanero (jolokia or trinidad scorpion work as well).
Add tomatoes, stir, then add beans and let simmer for 30 minutes.
If need to tone down: add mushrooms or some feta cheese.

Very simple. Quickly prepared. Have plenty of stuff to drink.

[mansaxel]

A reminder for those of us in BST/GMT land (and probably all the EU countries on the same coordinated cycle for summer time changes), today's one of the days you need to reset your forum profile if you want to see the right time on messages.

I raise a toast to the complete, utter, boundless incompetence of the general PHP devloper (sic) collective.

Hell, getting timezones right is hard even in proper programming languages. So how can we expect people that willingly adapt a tool set that requires a full frontal lobotomy to cope with it?

[mnementh]

Uggghhh. Had to fall back on Plan B: 3DP reinforcement angles and epoxy in place, then grind down as needed with Dremel.

Bondene did not do the job either.   

It did the "deconstruction" part well, but the joined pieces did not recompose as they should; rather turning chalky and crumbly the same way as the parts I tried to fix with CA earlier.

Makes me wonder howinnaHell did they get the ABS and polycarbonate to blend in the first place...

I'm going out to do some grocery shopping; take my mind off it before I do sumt'in stoopit.

mnem

[bd139]

I have, in all seriousness, proposed to myself a "You can't eat anything you didn't make from scratch" diet. Want crisps? You have to make them. Want sweets? You have to make them. And so on.

Either it works as a diet, or, you get very good at making junk food from scratch quickly with minimum [caloric] effort. I can't decide which is the more likely realistic outcome.

I have actually independently tested that. It resulted in me almost immediately buying a deep fat fryer and some lard in an attempt to reproduce my grandmother's chips. What happened was I put on 6kg of weight, mostly in the form of atherosclerosis.

This fine evening my sustenance is in the form of what I can only describe as "half of China, delivered". I am currently in the regret phase 

A reminder for those of us in BST/GMT land (and probably all the EU countries on the same coordinated cycle for summer time changes), today's one of the days you need to reset your forum profile if you want to see the right time on messages.

I raise a toast to the complete, utter, boundless incompetence of the general PHP devloper (sic) collective.

Hell, getting timezones right is hard even in proper programming languages. So how can we expect people that willingly adapt a tool set that requires a full frontal lobotomy to cope with it?

Gah I'd forgotten to apply that change to the world of hell I'm going to enter tomorrow. Is it going to be collapsed appointment schedules, unit test suites pissing errors, log offsets being completely fucked up or will replication just fail suddenly somewhere. Perhaps I should go sick 

[mnementh]

Here u go bd...

mnem
 

[25 CPS]

I'm wiped.  The last several weeks of shiftwork has burned me out and I've been having trouble getting out of bed before noon.  I had a beautiful fall drive yesterday afternoon and evening to do a test equipment pickup but I got home late and slept in again this morning.

I exchanged messages with the two guys I usually do the Sunday evening post-football barbecue with and we've kicked it to tomorrow because none of us is feeling it today and if I light the smoker now, we'd be eating a bit after midnight.  So I'm sitting in a comfy chair finishing a cup of coffee and planning out a couple of minor test equipment projects I want to get done since I've got the evening free.

[Cerebus]

I have actually independently tested that. It resulted in me almost immediately buying a deep fat fryer and some lard in an attempt to reproduce my grandmother's chips. What happened was I put on 6kg of weight, mostly in the form of atherosclerosis.

I just found this and immediately thought back to your comment.

[Wolfgang]

Uggghhh. Had to fall back on Plan B: 3DP reinforcement angles and epoxy in place, then grind down as needed with Dremel.

Bondene did not do the job either.   

It did the "deconstruction" part well, but the joined pieces did not recompose as they should; rather turning chalky and crumbly the same way as the parts I tried to fix with CA earlier.

Makes me wonder howinnaHell did they get the ABS and polycarbonate to blend in the first place...

I'm going out to do some grocery shopping; take my mind off it before I do sumt'in stoopit.

mnem

What about buying a parts mule and cannibalize the front bezel ?

[bd139]

It's usually the broken bit on those scopes

[Microdoser]

I have to do something to get off my fat, lazy butt. It might as well be directed at something I can later enjoy while sitting on my fat, lazy butt.

Yeah that’s a good point. I tried exercise and that didn’t cut it later 

I have, in all seriousness, proposed to myself a "You can't eat anything you didn't make from scratch" diet. Want crisps? You have to make them. Want sweets? You have to make them. And so on.

Either it works as a diet, or, you get very good at making junk food from scratch quickly with minimum [caloric] effort. I can't decide which is the more likely realistic outcome.

Yeah, I tried that. I can now make very good steak slices, ketchup, sun dried tomatoes, pasta, meatballs, curries, croissants, ice cream, cakes, jam, bread, custards (real custard with egg yolk, milk, and vanilla pods), sauerkraut, kimchi and when I want coleslaw I get the carrots, onions, and white cabbage I grew at the allotment and make my own mayo to put in it. We make elderflower wine, cherry wine, apple cider vinegar for cooking, and lately I have been making apple wine which I will turn into white wine vinegar for pickling the garlic I am growing. It also pickles eggs very well.

We mostly just buy spices, meat, wheat (in various forms), eggs and dairy.

Needless to say, I am still unable to lose weight. But we eat very well and I know everything that is in all our meals.

[Specmaster]

The Avo 8 is all finished and checks out OK so far, need to work some more on the movement though  to give it full deflection, but checked the resistance range and the 2nd range is not responding, whip the case off again and there it was, don't know why I never spotted it earlier but look at the photo and the one on the right that I repaired last time has an 18.4 printed resistor on the right next to the switch, which is missing from the left one. My guess is that it switched on to the  \$\Omega\$x100 range and then whacked across 230V AC or similar and caused the burnt out tracks and that resistor was removed because it had its arse blown out, seems plausible to me, no 

So now the hunt is on for a donor resistor or maybe I should just replace it with a fixed resistor and maybe a small trimmer in parallel to fine tune it?

I can see that the one on the right has had very little use compared to the other, the switch tracks hardly show any wear but the other one it is very visible on the switch tracks.

[Specmaster]

Uggghhh. Had to fall back on Plan B: 3DP reinforcement angles and epoxy in place, then grind down as needed with Dremel.

Bondene did not do the job either.   

It did the "deconstruction" part well, but the joined pieces did not recompose as they should; rather turning chalky and crumbly the same way as the parts I tried to fix with CA earlier.

Makes me wonder howinnaHell did they get the ABS and polycarbonate to blend in the first place...

I'm going out to do some grocery shopping; take my mind off it before I do sumt'in stoopit.

mnem

Here is a suggestion, possibly a stupid one, who knows, but why not hot glue it together, looks like you have the space to possibly fill the cavity in the corner with hot snot?

[bd139]

Diary of a stupid project I wish I didn't start:

So I started with a project to get a z80 "quidboard" off the ground so I have a Z80 box lying around, just because why the hell not (and they were basically free + postage). I wrote a simple "hello world" program that'll poke the CTC and SIO into the right shape (I hope). So next thing was get it on an EPROM. Now I've only got a couple of 2716's and a Willem programmer which won't program 25V EPROMs. Grr. So I found a 27C64 in an old board and pulled it. I fired up my UV PCB box to erase it as I don't have an eraser and the tube is gone. Grr! So I dig around further and find an AT28C64. So I go to program that and then find I don't have a parallel port for the programmer. Fuuuuuu. Roll on digging in the junk box I found a couple of Amazon finest 328p based Arduino Pro Minis. Figured I could hack something together to blast some code onto one of them and patch it into the EPROM socket. So I tried to program one of them with a USBasp. Oh no can't get the fucking toolchain working in windows (yes i did use winusb). Doesn't want to talk to the infernal bastard thing properly. So an hour later I've installed debian on my junker HP Elite 8100, which now contains an old xbox 360 hard disk I had to extract from the deceased 360. I'm now SSH'ing into that and doing all the work with vim and avr-gcc/avrdude. Managed to get some code onto the AVR and use an FT232RL to receive a hello world from the AVR finally! Now to write an interpreter to get it to write EEPROMs and a program to parse intel-hex and send to the AVR as write commands.

Now what was the original problem?

 

[Specmaster]

Still not sure just why you would want to write "Hello World" onto a EPROM in the first instance, the purpose is for what other than to say you can do it? I could, if I could also find  all the other bits and bobs to with my old Spectrum, write that easily in a couple of lines of BASIC 

[tggzzz]

Now what was the original problem?

Windows. You've got to be clever to use Windows.

[bd139]

Still not sure just why you would want to write "Hello World" onto a EPROM in the first instance, the purpose is for what other than to say you can do it? I could, if I could also find  all the other bits and bobs to with my old Spectrum, write that easily in a couple of lines of BASIC 

Why the hell do it the easy way when you can do it the hard way?  . This thing has a hole where the software needs to go. It is useless without it. No BASIC, nothing.

This is what I'm hoping will work

Code: [Select]

;
; hello world
;

        org 0                   ; 2716 ic2

ram:    equ 2000h               ; 6116 sram
ctc0:   equ 3000h               ; ctc0 base
sioac:  equ 4002h               ; sioa control
sioad:  equ 4000h               ; sioa data

;
; entry point
;
entry:  ld sp, ram+700h         ; set up stack
        call setsio             ; set up sio0
        ld hl, shello           ; print shello
        call prn
loop:   jp loop                 ; stop

;
; print string to sio0
;
prn:    ld a,(hl)               ; get l
        or a                    ; last char?
        ret z                   ; yes, we're done
        call prnc               ; send char
        inc hl                  ; next char
        jr prn                  ; loop until 0

;
; print char to sioa
;
prnc:   ld (sioad),a            ; send char
prnc2:  ld a,(sioac)            ; check status
        and 4                   ; tx buf empty?
        jr z,prnc2              ; loop until s
        ret
;
; setsio - set up sioa
;
setsio: ld de,sioac             ; sioa control ptr
        ld hl,tab               ; register table
        ld b, 11                ; 11 bytes
lset:   ld a,(hl)               ; get value
        ld (de),a               ; write out byte
        inc hl                  ; next value
        djnz lset               ; count b down to zero
        ret                     ; done

;
; sio config table
;
tab:    db 18h,1,0,2,0,3,0c1h
        db 4,44h,5,68h

;
; set up ctc
;
setctc: ld a,7
        ld (ctc0),a
        ld a,31
        ld (ctc0),a
        ret

;
; strings
;
shello: db 'hello, world\n', 0

Compare to the AVR version

Code: [Select]

#define F_CPU 16000000UL

#include <avr/io.h>
#include <avr/sfr_defs.h>

#define UART_BAUD 9600

char *hello = "hello, world\n";

/* set up uart */
void uart_init() {
        UBRR0L = (uint8_t)(((F_CPU / (8UL * UART_BAUD)) - 1) & 0xff);
        UBRR0H = (uint8_t)(((F_CPU / (8UL * UART_BAUD)) - 1) >> 8);
        UCSR0B |= (1 << RXEN0) | (1 << TXEN0);
}

/* write character to uart */
void uart_putc(char c) {
        while (!(UCSR0A & (1 >> UDRE0)));
        UDR0 = c;
}

/* write null terminated string to uart */
void uart_puts(char *s) {
        while (*s != '\0')
                uart_putc(*s++);
}

int main(void) {
        uart_puts(hello);
        for (;;);
}

And that's enough headache for the day