Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[AF6LJ]

HF: HAM Feline

Yes and she loves to chew the rag on seventy five and forty.

[AF6LJ]

Trying to decide if I should try to get myself a working Tek 7000-series sampling setup amongst all the broken mechanical parts I seem to keep encountering, or just go for a relatively modern 11800-series.

You have to like the Post-Boatanchor Tek gear, Someday I will own a Tek 7K series scope.
Meanwhile the 466 and the 475 (with two for spare parts) will get me by. (I have four more scopes just in case)

The Tek 7000 stuff is at least kinda boatanchory.   My 7904 (which needs some work) is up on a high shelf, and I'm a bit scared of getting it down safely.
But all the 7000-series stuff is just not as mechanically-solid as the 500 series. Lots more tiny mechanical stuff in the plugins.

Anyway, I have this existing 'investment' in 7000 series scopes (not-quite working 7904 and working 7613, and some awesome plugins like the 7A22 differential amplifier) and not enough space for gadgets.

Space is going to become a problem The Heath and Swan addiction is taking over, and I am looking for more... I am looking at different shelving solutions to aid in better utilizing space here. Before too much longer the repairs on the 8569s will be going full force.
They have their shortcomings and I will be getting into that in my soon to be started repair thread. 

The 7000 series has plenty of fragile parts, small doesn't intimidate me.
It's just...
Where do you find the plastic replacement parts??
I know that is a dumb question....

[Cubdriver]

HF: HAM Feline

Yes and she loves to chew the rag on seventy five and forty.

   Mine just like to chew on my test leads...   

(Actually they're not that bad, but do occasionally try to munch on things they shouldn't, and bat at those hanging down from the shelf or bench.)

-Pat

[AF6LJ]

HF: HAM Feline

Yes and she loves to chew the rag on seventy five and forty.

   Mine just like to chew on my test leads...   

(Actually they're not that bad, but do occasionally try to munch on things they shouldn't, and bat at those hanging down from the shelf or bench.)

-Pat

When my cat was in this plane of existence she loved the cord on the Weller soldering station. She had large pieces of the black outer covering missing off the hand piece cord. When that hand piece finally died it was because of the strain relief in the handle not because of the cord being Swiss Cheesed by thirteen years of being chewed on.

[Cubdriver]

Mine fortunately haven't discovered the sport of soldering iron cord chewing, but I'm sure you likely saw the link I posted a while back to Gilmore - the mischievous orange male (aka the Lab Cat) chewing on and batting at the BNC cables hanging from the cable organizer on my wire shelves.  Little twerp!   

-Pat

[AF6LJ]

Mine fortunately haven't discovered the sport of soldering iron cord chewing, but I'm sure you likely saw the link I posted a while back to Gilmore - the mischievous orange male (aka the Lab Cat) chewing on and batting at the BNC cables hanging from the cable organizer on my wire shelves.  Little twerp!   

-Pat

I did see that, it was cute...
Glad they were not my cables.

[tautech]

When my cat was in this plane of existence she loved .............

Noticed you were without him/her as your avatar for a while and did wonder.
Sorry to hear you lost her/him, we do get attached to them don't we. 

[mmagin]

One of our cats loves to bat his claws at long pieces of 24 AWG white teflon-insulated wire that's hanging down against the wall.  It's hard to see and springy, which I guess makes it fun.

Back on topic -- I was seriously thinking of trying to get a good deal on a Keithley 237 or a HP 4142B with 41423A for capacitor leakage testing.  It would truly solve that problem (and many more).   
I should probably just either get one of the Sencore testers that shows up on ebay or build something.  Don't really want to deal with an ancient Heathkit/Eico that uses a magic-eye tube, but I do want something usefully settable from say 3V to 500V, my improvised solution only goes to 100V.

[Housedad]

Sheesh, so even cats have their own form of TEA?  test lead fixation.   Our poor cats.  The more we have TEA, the more test leads we buy and the more mania we instill in them.  Our poor cats.  We are leading them to their doom.

[Cubdriver]

mmagin -

Still a magic eye, but why not look for a Sprague TO-3, 4, 5 or 6?  They're well built, and can do leakage testing at the rated voltages of most caps you're likely to encounter.  I haven't looked in a while, but they used to show up on the 'bay pretty regularly.

-Pat

[Cubdriver]

Sheesh, so even cats have their own form of TEA?  test lead fixation.   Our poor cats.  The more we have TEA, the more test leads we buy and the more mania we instill in them.  Our poor cats.  We are leading them to their doom.

Mine have great fun climbing on everything, so they seem to be ok with my gear acquisition.  If anything, they get upset when I get rid of the boxes it shipped in as there're then fewer things to jump up on.

-Pat

[TheSteve]

A new item arrived, as always HunkyBill was very happy with the box and paper - he loves it when new goodies come in as much as I do!

[Cubdriver]

HunkyBill blends in there nicely - good camouflage!  Make sure you don't accidentally toss him!

My TEA continues - I now have an HP 5004A Signature Analyzer on order from the Gulf of Evil.  I've no idea how much use it will get, but it was relatively inexpensive and seems to be listed in a lot of the manuals I have as a desired piece of troubleshooting equipment, so I figured what the heck.  If nothing else, it's smaller than most of what I buy...

-Pat

[mtdoc]

Oh no - the TEA thread has "jumped the shark".

It's come to this now, has it?  Discussing and posting pictures of cats....

(I do like cats and all but ....)

[Cubdriver]

Oh no - the TEA thread has "jumped the shark".

It's come to this now, has it?  Discussing and posting pictures of cats....

(I do like cats and all but ....)

Well, these ARE the interwebs, after all.  What would the WWW be without kittehs and pRon?   

And just to bring it full circle:




-Pat

[Brumby]

Just checked out the glossary and noticed there was nothing in the W-Z group - so I reviewed a few things and realised this was missing...

YAGI - Yet Another Gain for Inventory.  A term used to rationalise the typical consequences of GAS - especially when there is no immediate or prospective need for an item.

[Brumby]

Now I'm seeing several examples of WIFI - Whisker Intensive Fending Initiative.  A typical response to distract those critical of TEA affected persons with images and/or stories of their animal friends.  It is also used within TEA affected circles to redirect attention away from their addiction, while still feeling safe within that group of like minds.

[bitseeker]

Yes, W-Z was looking rather bare. Thanks, Brumby. I've added YAGI and WIFI.

And, yes, the TEA thread has jumped the shark. Planet of the Apes was wrong. It's the cats who will take over.

[rrinker]

 Yes, Andre Norton was the one who got it right. I can't for the life of me remember the title of the novel, but it was a young adult thing I remember reading when I was 9 or 10, effectively like Planet of the Apes except it was cats who were in charge of the future Earth.

[SingedFingers]

Am I the only one here that hates cats? They piss on your stuff, shit in your vegetable patch, scratch up the furniture and leave hair all over everything. Plus fleas. I don't want fleas or piss in my Tek kit

My neighbours cat has a black dot on it and as far as I'm concerned that's a target for the rocks I sling at it

[bitseeker]

LOL, that's why I don't own cats (plus I'm allergic to most). I just play with others' pets.

[AF6LJ]

Am I the only one here that hates cats? They piss on your stuff, shit in your vegetable patch, scratch up the furniture and leave hair all over everything. Plus fleas. I don't want fleas or piss in my Tek kit

My neighbours cat has a black dot on it and as far as I'm concerned that's a target for the rocks I sling at it

Some people and cats just don't get along, that is understandable.
Hardcore Dog People can't stand Cats because they will do whatever the hell they want.

I'm kind of a Cat Whisperer I understand them and can usually get them to behave, except for the most damaged among them.... Same with people the damaged ones don't play well with anybody.

The thing with my cat and the Weller soldering cord, I was always hoping she would find the 24VAC in the cord. I figure once she found it she would leave it alone...
Sometime before I moved to Texas she did find the 24VAC and left it alone.

The thing with cats is they understand force, they also will accept options.
I have a powder blue chair my cat clawed once....
After she realized I didn't want her clawing that chair, I offered her a cardboard box, and showed her what to do while making happy noises, she got the message.
Cleaning up scraps of cardboard is more desirable to the alternative.

Even after four months short of ten years I still miss her a lot.
We always knew what the other was doing and how we felt.
According to my roommates she would get up on my chair that sat next to the window right around a half hour before I would walk in the door and wait for me.
When I walked through the door she gave me that "Oh it's YOU look" and say hi....
My work schedule was such that I never came home at the same time every day.


Okay enough with that....
The Bristol wrenches arrived today.. The ones I needed to take the knobs off the 8569 front panel I have to rebuild.

[mmagin]

mmagin -

Still a magic eye, but why not look for a Sprague TO-3, 4, 5 or 6?  They're well built, and can do leakage testing at the rated voltages of most caps you're likely to encounter.  I haven't looked in a while, but they used to show up on the 'bay pretty regularly.

-Pat

Maybe, it's not so much the particular brand (though Heathkit stuff is too expensive these days due to nostalgia), but I would like a more quantitative measurement and nothing old to replace.
I think if I don't get this Sencore CA55, I'm going to build my own.  I was going to overengineer it with some fancy voltage generation scheme, but now that I think about it, I'm just going to take inspiration from the old ones and use a small power transformer as intended for tube equipment, use the filament winding for the low voltage meter-driving amplifier, and use the say 250V secondary plus a voltage multiplier and a string of zeners for crude regulation to 600V and drive a voltage divider made up of resistors and a surplus ceramic rotary switch.
A selection of 12 different voltages should be good enough.

HunkyBill blends in there nicely - good camouflage!  Make sure you don't accidentally toss him!

My TEA continues - I now have an HP 5004A Signature Analyzer on order from the Gulf of Evil.  I've no idea how much use it will get, but it was relatively inexpensive and seems to be listed in a lot of the manuals I have as a desired piece of troubleshooting equipment, so I figured what the heck.  If nothing else, it's smaller than most of what I buy...

-Pat

I almost went down that road for the same reasons, but I'm tight on space, and after reading the Emperor of Test Equipment's page, I concluded I didn't really need it.

[bitseeker]

My TEA continues - I now have an HP 5004A Signature Analyzer on order from the Gulf of Evil.  I've no idea how much use it will get, but it was relatively inexpensive and seems to be listed in a lot of the manuals I have as a desired piece of troubleshooting equipment, so I figured what the heck.

I've wondered about those. Is there an index of which HP gear provide signatures that can be decoded by it? No point in getting one (yet) if I don't (yet) have anything that I'd debug with it.

[Housedad]

BTW, my bench is nearing completion.   Still waiting on some stuff coming slow boat from China.   When it comes in is there a thread or somewhere to show it off display it and get it critiqued?  Or should I make another (oh, no, not another newbie bench thread) thread?