Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[neo]

Going through my hamfest finds,
The Mena tube tester has a sticky meter, which i didn't see at first because it was the ride home that put it at 60, it got jostled and somehow landed there only to stay, if i tap on it it goes down.
The Joplin tube tester is in better shape in some areas worse in others, for example the hardware is rusty but all the meters work. Not much to say on this one.
B&K 440 CRT Rejuvenator, Missing the B adapter, leads not in the best shape, meter currently loose and will have to completely disassemble the unit to fix. Oh well gives me a chance to change caps before i put it on the shelf.
The Heathkit TV Alignement Generator is NOT an ig-52, that was a guess based on appearance. It is actual a TS-4A from the eleventh week of 1956. It was someones project before mine and there are a couple of odd things inside so it likely is going to live at the bottom of my repair que. For example of what i mean when i say odd, there are two extra tubes not on the schematic.
Heathkit IB-5281, Works though by design has no internal power supply, intend to build one for it.
Heathkit IM-8 & IM-5228 Both have more reason to work than not, going to replace capacitors in them andgo from there. OF course giving the IM-8 a new paint job in the long run.
Heathkit IO-4540, I know, i know a piece of junk with a plastic case and no shielding to speak of. Though mine is unique on two counts Bell and Howell name on the front and serial #551. Mine has a metal shield over the crt and if nothing else should be fun to screw around with.
Heathkit ETI-7010, works though will probably do a tear down just for fun and to go through it to be sure all is right in there. Have not fully tested.
Heathkit ETI-7040, see above.
HP 608C, not opened it but i already know exactly what to do with it.  Going to change all capacitors and go from there depending on state of operation.
HP 8405A, Not sure on this one... if a probe is broke is that a game ender?
HP 1654B, No manual and difficult to repair power supply, typical 80s fun.
Paco C25, Not my holy grail by any stretch of the imagination, that honor is reserved for the heathkit IT-11, this is a very nice fine for me, so nice i didn't try too hard to haggle on the price. Nothing much to say here, give it a better set of leads change the single capacitor which is inside and it's golden... provided the magic eye works.

Minus the random bits thats it for now, still got Nixa in November to go to before i'm done for the year.

[VK5RC]

Pat - what a haul!
Both metaphorically and physically!
Lots of TEA heaviness there.
I am thinking I need to move to the USA - they might stop me at the border as the reason for migration is an addiction (TEA)! HiHi
Rob

[Berni]

I'm joining the club with 14 HP8568B, R&S SMIQ 03, and a set of mystery piece that is supposed to be an automated VNA.  Got them on a pallet sale from a local business.

I've already gone through all 8568Bs, and 12 out of 14 appears to resemble working.  I will still have to go through them the second time.  Rest, I have no clue of condition.

I wonder where all the display section go, and more importantly, cables??

Dang that's a lot of SAs. Don't stack these boatnachors so close together, putting that much mass in one place might create a black hole

The display sections on these do die overtime. They don't get burn in but instead something in the electron gun slowly deteriorates and makes the picture more and more blurry as they start to go.

And yes cables for these are really rare while so many people are selling these without any cables.

[Drewbie]

HP 8405A, Not sure on this one... if a probe is broke is that a game ender?

Not necessarily...

http://www.peakbagging.com/Electronic/HP8405A%20repair.pdf

The 8405A is a great instrument.

[mnementh]

In Other News...

   Found an iPwn X in the street yesterday; smashed AF. Refused to light up or talk to PC even after plugging in with genuine fApple Lighting cable/charger overnight; found one dead cell in the battery when I opened it up. Gonna take a $28 gamble and see if it'll do anything.

mnem
"Coffee someone else made is like manna from heaven." ~me, just now. Bless you, wife.

[Specmaster]

Assuming the new battery pays off, how much more is it going to cost for the front and back covers? If the screen also has to be replaced than Apple will block it at the next OS update as part of their campaign to keep 3rd party repairs out of doing anything with their products, knowing how anal they are about it.

Once they have sold the item, then the buyer should be able to do whatever they want with it , even as extreme as what Jeremy Clarkson on BBC Top Gear is demonstrating in this clip.   

[mnementh]

Not sure if I'm going to bother rebuilding it or just hope I can get it to light up and put it on fleaBay for the wolves to tear at the carcass. 

The glass itself is, to my knowledge, replaceable on these; though I think it requires special tools that incorporate a IR oven and press. Alternately, the tertiary "jailbroken iPwn" market still thrives; those folks might be interested.

I suppose the right thing to do would be to try & return it... but doubtful its owner would be willing to pay for it to be fixed, even if I had a clue who they might be without even being able to read a serial to know where it came from. Even the fApple store wouldn't be able to ID it if it doesn't respond to a Lightning cable.

Jeremy should have sprung for the full tank of petrol, though; just for the ending bit. 

mnem
The Devil's hands are idle playthings.

[Specmaster]

Well a tank full of petrol would have made a bigger bang at the end 

[mnementh]

My point precisely.       

mnem
*Now with twice the caffeine*

[mnementh]

Apothic Brew coffee-infused Wine

I just stumbled across this, and thought to myself..."This is effing BRILLIANT!!! FINALLY somebody did it!"

And then I read this: "actually has less caffeine per cup than your average decaf coffee..."

        WHAT IS THE EFFING POINT?!?

mnem
https://youtu.be/h3wVPBLb2oY

[neo]

If anyone would be interested in seeing pictures of the mountains, that is to say where i went, you can find pictures here; https://imgur.com/a/VlQpUTw

[mnementh]

Mmmhmmm... 'bout 8 hours away. Grand-dad had family in Little Rock; used to drive down every summer to visit.

I remember going with him when I was wee little... hot & sticky like here in Houston all the time. Had the greatest time in a little creek with some of the other kids; red mud squishing between our toes and digging out freshwater clams as big as my feet.

Over the day we took them by baseball-cap and scooped-up-shirt-fulls back to his mother; who was thin as a fencepost and so old her face looked like a saddlebag with eyes squinting out from under hair that was still abyssal black down to the middle of her back. She made the BEST lemonade, which she made sure we had plenty of while we foraged.    She'd rinse them off with a garden hose as we brought them and threw them in a washtub full of water, then poured in some oatmeal. Next day the women of the family prepared them and breaded them and we had a huge cram-fly with 'tater salad and hushpuppies.

Evidently we'd made a good haul, as there were more than enough for all and to send some home with folks; when we were back on the road in his old Ford station wagon, my grand-dad just said to me in his soft gravelly growl of a voice: "You did good, boy."

mnem
*mnemories*

[bd139]

Assuming the new battery pays off, how much more is it going to cost for the front and back covers? If the screen also has to be replaced than Apple will block it at the next OS update as part of their campaign to keep 3rd party repairs out of doing anything with their products, knowing how anal they are about it.

Once they have sold the item, then the buyer should be able to do whatever they want with it

Let’s be fair here. It’s not a third party repairer issue this one. It can’t be because Apple have a massive third party repairer service. I mean huge. I can actually go and buy official tools and training from them if I want to go and repair their devices. Shock horror, something Rossmann fails to mention regularly.

What happened with the bricking was that the Chinese fulfilled a demand for cheap replacements because cackhanded idiots without insurance or a repair plan smashed their phone and couldn’t afford genuine parts or service. So they take their three month old X which they haven’t even started paying off yet (because they took the finance break) to Muhammad down the market who tuts a few times and orders some shit from the lowest bidder because once the job is done he gives no fuck about you or your life again. Apple didn’t test their software against that half arsed Chinese rip off part and why should they? Also if you fuck around with the Secure Enclave then it’ll brick itself intentionally. That’s a security feature. If my phone gets nicked, I don’t want some numpty with a DS1054Z to be able to rip off my keychain and get to my data.

Rossmann is Muhammad down the market. But with a YouTube channel, a soldering iron and an Alex Jones like following. Strong groups of ideologies stick together. Nazis, North Korean dictators, trump supporters. Etc etc.

Sooooo much unjust Apple hate.

@mnem: good plan. They’ll still go for cash if it’s dead. There’s still good parts in there!

Edit: go look at a device driver. Look for FreeBSD Realtek drivers in particular. Look at the rants in there. Hardware and software integration is hard!

[neo]

Mmmhmmm... 'bout 8 hours away. Grand-dad had family in Little Rock; used to drive down every summer to visit.

I remember going with him when I was wee little... hot & sticky like here in Houston all the time. Had the greatest time in a little creek with some of the other kids; red mud squishing between our toes and digging out freshwater clams as big as my feet.

Over the day we took them by baseball-cap and scooped-up-shirt-fulls back to his mother; who was thin as a fencepost and so old her face looked like a saddlebag with eyes squinting out from under hair that was still abyssal black down to the middle of her back. She made the BEST lemonade, which she made sure we had plenty of while we foraged.    She'd rinse them off with a garden hose as we brought them and threw them in a washtub full of water, then poured in some oatmeal. Next day the women of the family prepared them and breaded them and we had a huge cram-fly with 'tater salad and hushpuppies.

Evidently we'd made a good haul, as there were more than enough for all and to send some home with folks; when we were back on the road in his old Ford station wagon, my grand-dad just said to me in his soft gravelly growl of a voice: "You did good, boy."

mnem
*mnemories*

Little Rock? What a coincidence, my mom was born there. Dad is from Oklahoma and so on the way back the trip took a detour though Sallisaw, there exists quite possibly the last surviving AW restaurant and because of it i went about an hour out of my way just to stop there. Bought a mug while i was there.

[Specmaster]

Assuming the new battery pays off, how much more is it going to cost for the front and back covers? If the screen also has to be replaced than Apple will block it at the next OS update as part of their campaign to keep 3rd party repairs out of doing anything with their products, knowing how anal they are about it.

Once they have sold the item, then the buyer should be able to do whatever they want with it

Let’s be fair here. It’s not a third party repairer issue this one. It can’t be because Apple have a massive third party repairer service. I mean huge. I can actually go and buy official tools and training from them if I want to go and repair their devices. Shock horror, something Rossmann fails to mention regularly.

What happened with the bricking was that the Chinese fulfilled a demand for cheap replacements because cackhanded idiots without insurance or a repair plan smashed their phone and couldn’t afford genuine parts or service. So they take their three month old X which they haven’t even started paying off yet (because they took the finance break) to Muhammad down the market who tuts a few times and orders some shit from the lowest bidder because once the job is done he gives no fuck about you or your life again. Apple didn’t test their software against that half arsed Chinese rip off part and why should they? Also if you fuck around with the Secure Enclave then it’ll brick itself intentionally. That’s a security feature. If my phone gets nicked, I don’t want some numpty with a DS1054Z to be able to rip off my keychain and get to my data.

Rossmann is Muhammad down the market. But with a YouTube channel, a soldering iron and an Alex Jones like following. Strong groups of ideologies stick together. Nazis, North Korean dictators, trump supporters. Etc etc.

Sooooo much unjust Apple hate.

@mnem: good plan. They’ll still go for cash if it’s dead. There’s still good parts in there!

Edit: go look at a device driver. Look for FreeBSD Realtek drivers in particular. Look at the rants in there. Hardware and software integration is hard!

I don't hate Apple at all, but there's no smoke without fire so they say, but let's take Rossmann out of the equation here is another video without an axe to grind as there is no service on offer from Linus Tech Tips.



To balance the thing and show neither I or Linus are anti Apple, here's another Linus Tech Tips about Samsung Android battery issues. Which is something that I have just experienced with my Samsung Galaxy J5 (2016) phone and have fitted a new battery 

[Specmaster]

Here is a follow up on Linus Tech Tips.

[AF6LJ]

Apple cheaply built and overpriced.

[Specmaster]

Apple cheaply built and overpriced.

That may be so, I don't know, but let's not start a Apple bashing debate because that was not not my intention, I think that they are one of many companies with a dubious ethic code, take Tektronix for instance, you try and get a proper workshop manual complete with schematics etc for a product such as a TDS210, which has been out of production for some years now and I fully expect that you will hit a brick wall at 100 mph because they just don't exist, or so I'm told. I smell a whole load of BS here and it kinda sounds familiar don't it.

Anyway I could go on but I won't because we will all get dragged off down some deep rabbit hole that will serve no useful purpose at all.

[bd139]

There is an SMM for the TDS210. Bit it’s an FRU replacement one. Which is how we roll in 2018. Costs more time and money to fix something rather than replace the bits because the bits are cheaper than the person.

Same with nearly all things now. It’s cheaper to recycle it than fix it.  I’m actually mostly ok with that if I’m honest.

TBH both my Yaesu radios have full service manuals but they’re a different class of device.

[Specmaster]

What actually does SMM mean? I have never come across that term before.

[mnementh]

Apple cheaply built and overpriced.

We've been over this ground ad-nauseum; both points are patently false. Apple does in fact spend a lot of time developing new and exciting products, and even Rossman admits their stuff is well-made in terms of initial quality. It's the fact that they've institutionalized the "disposable economy" that Americans take for granted by way of deliberately sealing up their products and making them easy to exchange but hard to repair that he has issue with. Fair dinkum, says I.

Overpriced? No. What they're selling is TIME; time not wasted in messing with it. 

Time is a man's most precious resource; the one thing that money cannot buy. The best you can do is to buy the privilege of not wasting the time you do have. Set a price on that; go ahead. Yeah... Apple is CHEAP by that standard.

If you buy into their ecology, all any failure costs you is the time to trade it out/trade it up at the fApple bar. They'll restore it from your automagic backups to the new machine while you eat dinner or shop and at worst you're out a day or two of your e-life. But you HAVE TO buy into the ecology for that to work.

These guys are by definition the opposite of that; they are DIYers. They did NOT buy into the ecology, so they're getting the WORST of both worlds. They deserve what they get; it's like being pissed off that a Testarossa is no good at hauling concrete or that no matter how fast it goes, it still can't drive on open water.

Personally, I think Rossman is a bit of a jackhole. BUTT... he is taking point on the very important issue of Right-to-Repair. For that, we should all be thankful. Hopefully with the help of noisy jackholes like him we the consumer can force manufacturers to return to some sane middle ground on this issue.

mnem
*Un-holey*

[Specmaster]

Yep that pretty much sums it up apart from the slowing down of older devices to the point where in some cases, it becomes almost unusable as a phone, ignoring all the other things a smartphone  can do.

Yes I've heard arguments before about Android phones doing the same but I have to say I have not experienced that. Today I pulled my 2 early HTC phones, both of them will now no longer connect to play store as the browser etc is no longer supported so the worst case is that the phone will still function perfectly happy as a normal phone mobile phone, without the "smart" part being the apps etc, missing.  The same cannot be said about the early iPhones, the phone with each software update renders the phone part slower as well. 

[djos]

The right to repair issue is really an American issue, here in Australia apple is legally not allowed to void your warranty if you use a 3rd party repairer.

Your time argument is a good one, I buy some phones and computers because they support them properly and for double or even triple the length of time that other OEM's do. My previous iPad was a great example, if was fully supported for 5 years, my old white plastic MacBook was supported by something like 4 major OS releases.

So yeah you pay a bit more up front, but your device is supported properly and for longer than competitors.

[bd139]

Yep that pretty much sums it up apart from the slowing down of older devices to the point where in some cases, it becomes almost unusable as a phone, ignoring all the other things a smartphone  can do.

I'm 18 months into mine and it's fine. I'll probably buy a new one in a month or two and pocket £300 from selling this one...

Yes I've heard arguments before about Android phones doing the same but I have to say I have not experienced that. Today I pulled my 2 early HTC phones, both of them will now no longer connect to play store as the browser etc is no longer supported so the worst case is that the phone will still function perfectly happy as a normal phone mobile phone, without the "smart" part being the apps etc, missing.  The same cannot be said about the early iPhones, the phone with each software update renders the phone part slower as well. 

Software gets heavier over time. Go install Windows NT on a modern PC. It boots in 4 seconds and everything is instant.

What actually does SMM mean? I have never come across that term before.

Service / Maintenance Manual

Overpriced? No. What they're selling is TIME; time not wasted in messing with it. 

Time is a man's most precious resource; the one thing that money cannot buy. The best you can do is to buy the privilege of not wasting the time you do have. Set a price on that; go ahead. Yeah... Apple is CHEAP by that standard.

Exactly. Generally the cheapest when it comes to liability too. Also the TCO over the lifespan of 18 months is bugger all. I spend 3x as much on curry!

[tautech]

Apple cheaply built and overpriced.

We've been over this ground ad-nauseum; both points are patently false. Apple does in fact spend a lot of time developing new and exciting products, and even Rossman admits their stuff is well-made in terms of initial quality. It's the fact that they've institutionalized the "disposable economy" that Americans take for granted by way of deliberately sealing up their products and making them easy to exchange but hard to repair that he has issue with. Fair dinkum, says I.

Overpriced? No. What they're selling is TIME; time not wasted in messing with it. 

Time is a man's most precious resource; the one thing that money cannot buy. The best you can do is to buy the privilege of not wasting the time you do have. Set a price on that; go ahead. Yeah... Apple is CHEAP by that standard.

If you buy into their ecology, all any failure costs you is the time to trade it out/trade it up at the fApple bar. They'll restore it from your automagic backups to the new machine while you eat dinner or shop and at worst you're out a day or two of your e-life. But you HAVE TO buy into the ecology for that to work.

mnem
*Un-holey*

Yeah that gets up my goat too !
And it's one of the reasons I won't buy their latest phones instead battling on with a now old 4S bought from Aliexpress for far less cost than locally and a stockplie of old family 4S's to keep it going.
I first switched to a 3S that my daughter had grown out of and even that was a step above what was available without spending $$$ at the time.
While I don't like all the Apple 'culture' features (hobbling battery performance etc), bits are cheap and it's simple to repair.
...................
Cheap !