Author Topic: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread  (Read 14549381 times)

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Offline grizewald

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29450 on: April 16, 2019, 05:21:29 pm »

Yeah there's tonnes of it in circulation but you can't pick it up in consumer retail outfits now here at least. It's all lead free. Can still buy industrial but my suppliers are usually consumer faced (via ebay) because they are cheap as chips so stocks will disappear.

Just bought 1.1Kg of loctite multicore. That should do for a bit :D

I just checked the two retail chains here in Sweden which sell solder, and sure enough, the only thing they sell is nasty lead free stuff.

Thanks for the heads up, I'll get another couple of reels in. There's no way I'm going to try using lead free on any vintage equipment. Visions of component pads and tracks sliding around a PCB are enough to fill me with terror!

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Offline Specmaster

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29451 on: April 16, 2019, 07:00:32 pm »
I haven't soldered my fingers together yet  :-DD

Talking of which, I am considering making a massive bulk purchase of 60/40 solder. EU banned it last year and it's disappearing from retailers now.

Edit: trying to work out how long before I can't hold a soldering iron any more and how many rolls I get through.
Thanks for the heads up on the solder front, I think I may have enough, I have about 5 rolls of various sizes but I may grab another couple while I can.

In other news, trip to Aunby went OK, both meters came in leather cases albeit that the actual top of the cases are missing. Whipped the top off each one and inspected inside, all looks very good indeed, no signs of anybody ever been inside them before, no leaking / bulging caps etc. They look internally as if they have just rolled off the production line, both ex RAF with loads of past calibration stickers on them, last of which seems to be 2002. No power leads or test leads but that's par for the course. Powered both up and run some quick checks on them and early indications are that they still seem to be sticking very close to being in calibration and after running each for approx 15 minutes the mains filters are running cold so no signs of them becoming a pipe bomb in the near future. Later I'll take some photos of before and after clean up and post them here but currently busy setting up new mobile phone, so many new toys to play with and they all come at once.

Two things I have noticed with the meters is that only one has a handle / stand with it and they both have very dim screen illumination so will need to source some suitable LEDs replace the ones already installed.0

I didn't see any signs of the barn being unheated and it certainly wasen't cold when I was walking around inside it earlier today
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Offline bd139

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29452 on: April 16, 2019, 07:24:22 pm »
I just grabbed this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/312232426709 - only a quid more expensive than a 500g roll of the same stuff from RS.

Good news with the meters. We expect pictures of course :D
 

Offline tautech

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29453 on: April 16, 2019, 07:35:04 pm »
Anyone have an opinion on these replacement blue Tektronix filters?

https://www.ebay.com/itm/Tektronix-22xx-Oscilloscope-screen-filter-337-2775-00-Laser-cut-replacement/283438585153?epid=1392276479&hash=item41fe419541:g:or0AAOSwmLlX-VU4#rwid

I would like to find a nice, scratch free replacement blue filter for the 2245-2247 line, Tektronix PN: 337-2775-00

Edit, second thought, mine is really not that that bad, maybe I'll just try a plastic polish, light scratch compound then finish polish.

I also need one Gray push on knob/shaft for the illumination, Tektronix PN: 366-2089-00, looks like there is a seller in Greece, but I would like to find one locally.
Sphere ?
https://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/tekparts.html#catalog
Scroll down past half way and knobs and filters are there.
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Offline grizewald

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29454 on: April 16, 2019, 07:51:50 pm »
I just grabbed this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/312232426709 - only a quid more expensive than a 500g roll of the same stuff from RS.

Shame they only ship to the UK.

I just tried to add some of Elfa's leaded solder to my basket only to find that they will only sell it to business customers now.  |O This kind of bullshit really makes me mad! Last time I had this with Elfa, they wouldn't sell me a tube of UV curable solder resist because the Swedish government's "chemicals authority" had decided that it was not safe to sell to consumers.

Don't these morons understand that not everyone who fixes electronic equipment is a business and that we actually need to be able to buy these things and know that eating leaded solder is not a good idea?!! If there's one thing that will make me see red, it's being condescended to.



Given the chance, I know what I'd do with the people who create this kind of senseless bureaucracy...


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Online tggzzz

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29455 on: April 16, 2019, 08:28:35 pm »
I also noticed that it has an "A intensity" and "B intensity". That COULD mean it's a dual beam scope.....2 separate electron guns in the CRT. If that's true then that sweep circuit is working double overtime which could explain the flickering.

The A intensity is for the A s/div sweep speed, the B intensity is for the B s/div sweep speed. The usual way of using the B sweep is that it starts a fixed time after the A sweep starts, and since the sweep is faster it essentially zooms in on something visible in the A sweep.

The single beam has to do up to 5 things: each of the four channels, plus the alphanumeric readout.

The beams are the usual ALT/CHOP, but they are time-division multiplexed with the alphanumeric readout. At some sweep speeds (around 1ms/div) that leads to "intensity modulated" traces :(
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
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Online tggzzz

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29456 on: April 16, 2019, 08:42:26 pm »
I didn't see any signs of the barn being unheated and it certainly wasen't cold when I was walking around inside it earlier today

Glad the 7150s are OK.

It looks like some of the auction items were in reasonable storage conditions, others less so. For example, in the first picture you can see the open eaves in the background, and in the second picture the "anti-condensation" hessian sacking is visible.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
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Offline Specmaster

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29457 on: April 16, 2019, 09:21:56 pm »
There are huge doors at each end to allow the lorries in and out as well as the fork lift trucks and I'm pretty sure I saw big heaters at certain locations, they might have been there for the viewing days though, I can't say. But from my own personal experience, I'd certainly deal with them again, this is my 2nd transaction with them and so far they have been very professional with me. But to be totally fair, I have been to many other local auction houses and they are by far considerably worse than what I saw today. :popcorn:
« Last Edit: April 16, 2019, 09:25:01 pm by Specmaster »
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Online tggzzz

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29458 on: April 16, 2019, 09:38:38 pm »
There are huge doors at each end to allow the lorries in and out as well as the fork lift trucks and I'm pretty sure I saw big heaters at certain locations, they might have been there for the viewing days though, I can't say. But from my own personal experience, I'd certainly deal with them again, this is my 2nd transaction with them and so far they have been very professional with me. But to be totally fair, I have been to many other local auction houses and they are by far considerably worse than what I saw today. :popcorn:

I've bought from them half a dozen times. I've seen damp hessian sacking on a cold damp day; essentially there can be fog inside the barn. Today wasn't humid.

I have a humidity sensor in my loft (TEA, 'natch), and I've seen it at 95% on some days. Outside it was 100%, i.e. condensing.

The comment about other establishments is noted.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
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Offline worsthorse

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29459 on: April 16, 2019, 09:49:29 pm »
I haven't had bench time for a week because I am obsessively working my way through a backlog of accumulated parts and gear, including the two large boxes of probes, calibration fixtures and other oddities I recently acquired. I am pricing stuff that is, as ham radio folks say, excess to my needs and sort of amazed by ebay buyer/seller behavior.

Take probes, for example.  Not only is there no predictable dollar/megahertz metric but people pay roughly the same price for low bandwidth probes like the YT6050 (60 MHz) as they do for the P6122 (100 HMz) or the P6106 (250 MHz).  There are also outlier buyers paying three or four times the going price, as if they didn't do the simplest diligence before buying. I've run through a list of approximately two dozen probe models and both the bid and ask sides are completely wacky. 

Needless to say, this makes the price setting exercise more difficult than I imagined.

color /me confused   ???


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Offline Neomys Sapiens

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29460 on: April 16, 2019, 09:49:41 pm »
   (SNIP)   yep...….when CAD came around we thought it was for sissies. 
errmuhhgrrd!!! Is that the Tandy Leather Co Pocket Protector kit?!?

*sigh*

Remembering my Staedtler-Mars and Koh-I-Noor 2mm clutch pencils... and the cast-iron Bruning sharpener pointer in black crinkle-finish. Now THERE was a weapon.  >:D And I had one of the first NiCd (not "converted dry cell") Bruning erasers; everybody wanted to "borrow" it.  :palm:

How many pokes with a divider... how many halogen lamp burns?  :-DD

mnem
How many eraser shield cuts does it take to get to the Tootsie-Roll center of a prehistoric engineer-draughtsman?

not sure what happened to my sharpeners.  had a couple of the crap plastic ones but always lusted for one of those black crinkle finish iron monsters.  in the design division at the Philadelphia naval slipshod if you called a "lead holder" a "pencil" you would be the subject of scorn.  my curves were little baby things in that shop.  the real engineers had giant "ships curves" that were things of beauty.  you never ever borrowed one with out permission.  and god help you if some one saw you use a scale as a straight edge.....that's what triangles are for.

the first time I ever saw an electric eraser its owner told me to never touch it.  and threatened to kill me like a dog if he ever caught me sticking it down my pants.  (never would have occurred to me if he had not mentioned it first).

good times I tell ya' what.

edit  sharpener   you got it right, they were "pointers".
I have converted my clutch pen to neon text marker leads. What I totally do not miss is those thrice-blasted, always clogged, catastrophically leaking when it hurts most 'Rapidograph' contraptions and all their ink-filled evil brethren.
 

Offline nixiefreqq

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29461 on: April 16, 2019, 10:17:32 pm »

[/quote]
I have converted my clutch pen to neon text marker leads. What I totally do not miss is those thrice-blasted, always clogged, catastrophically leaking when it hurts most 'Rapidograph' contraptions and all their ink-filled evil brethren.
[/quote]

have only ever worked with pencil on vellum personally.   that was always good enough for project work since drawings went to the shops or the field as just blue prints or sepia anyhow.

anything requiring ink was turned over to someone with skill.  iirc "deb" and "tom" in tech support had both been to art school and did ink stuff.  but it was never for projects.  usually that was reserved for when some big cheese was retiring and the commander needed something fancy and artsy to give them before they got booted out the door.

and then we got hp color plotters and deb and tom stopped being artists and became drones like the rest of us.

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Offline Neomys Sapiens

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29462 on: April 16, 2019, 10:29:46 pm »
TEK-specific question:
Can anyone provide PICTURES of the plastic front covers of the TM504, the 2430A (243x/4x) and the TDS644?

There are some nitwits offering such parts, but giving neither a Tek number nor sufficiently exact measurements.

Also, did a cover exist for the TM503? The Army manual, which is the one that I as well as KO4BB and TekWiki have, does not show one. But that might be due to, well, Army.
 

Offline med6753

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29463 on: April 16, 2019, 11:18:14 pm »
TEK-specific question:
Can anyone provide PICTURES of the plastic front covers of the TM504, the 2430A (243x/4x) and the TDS644?

There are some nitwits offering such parts, but giving neither a Tek number nor sufficiently exact measurements.

Also, did a cover exist for the TM503? The Army manual, which is the one that I as well as KO4BB and TekWiki have, does not show one. But that might be due to, well, Army.

Sorry, don't have one for 2430A. But I do have one that fits 465/465B/475/475A and probably 466/468
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Offline SilverSolder

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29464 on: April 16, 2019, 11:56:13 pm »

Don't these morons understand that not everyone who fixes electronic equipment is a business


Is not possible register as a small business in Sweden, to get around this?

In the UK you can get set up with an officially registered company ID for almost no money. 

 

Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29465 on: April 17, 2019, 12:42:41 am »
I appear to be completely surrounded and out numbered here.  :scared: In my time I have met some brilliant engineers. I have also met some who were dumber than a box of rocks. But one thing seemed to be universal: hand them a soldering iron and they are a danger to everyone around them, including themselves.  :-DD I trust that is not the case with this group...at least I can hope.  >:D ;D

I consider myself a better than average mechanical engineer, occasionally a downright inspired empirical engineer, and a fair-at-best electronics engineer. ;)


While I too have met my share of "experts" who are as dumb as a sack of hammers, (somehow, they ALWAY seem to be the ones giving me orders...  >:D ) that is ONE thing nobody has ever legitimately accused me of. Crazy as a shithouse rat, yes.... and in some cases the best I can plead is nolo contender'e. But not stupid.    ::)

As I've demonstrated repeatedly, I'm no slouch with soldering... if anything, I take my skillz in that arena for granted, and sometimes engage in soldering practices that are not for the faint of heart. :o

As always, take anything I say with a pinch of salt big enough to pickle a whale, and call me anything you like, as long as it's not late to dinner.  ;D


In Other News...



TEA Moment # 7259:

Whilest I was out running down some musical instruments for my wife (because this is is a thing that I sometimes do); I happened upon a pawn shop I'd never seen before. Languishing on their shelves were these two little gems; $20 later and they're now on my workbench.

The Stanley screwdriver set was pretty much a no-brainer for a few dollars; given the function set, I'm pretty sure the Fieldpiece DMM is made for AC Tech service. You can see how they've evolved from my original modular Fieldpiece meter on the right.

As many of you know, AC Techs are generally one of two special breeds of a-hole; some of them are pretty smart and got into the biz for good pay & "work when you feel like it hours", while others belong to that universal subset of all technicians who could, if given the opportunity, break a fucking anvil.  :palm:

The Fieldpiece line of products has a rep for surviving even their tender mercies.:-DD We'll see how well it held up and how well it cleans up later; as I'm FINALLY finishing packing up my bitseeker's new 454 after having to buy a suitable box at Home Depot.

Cheers,

mnem
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« Last Edit: April 17, 2019, 12:45:59 am by mnementh »
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Offline Housedad

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29466 on: April 17, 2019, 12:55:48 am »
I wish I had the extra cash AND the room for this I found on craigslist.  It brings back a lot of memories and is in amazing shape. A Tek 585A with lots of OEM goodies.

Someone is gonna be a happy camper.

https://cnj.craigslist.org/ele/d/new-lisbon-tektronix-585a-80-mhz/6845807499.html

At least I'm still older than my test equipment
 
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Offline 0culus

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29467 on: April 17, 2019, 01:17:19 am »
Are you kidding? I would MAKE room for something like that!  :-DD Looks like it's been taken care of.


This listing here is one of the things I really really want to find in working condition though: eBay auction: #233191972558. Not only is it one of the finest things they ever made, it's perfect for heating the lab in the winter with all those umpteen tube filaments.  :-DD
« Last Edit: April 17, 2019, 01:20:42 am by 0culus »
 

Offline Specmaster

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29468 on: April 17, 2019, 01:25:55 am »
I just grabbed this: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/312232426709 - only a quid more expensive than a 500g roll of the same stuff from RS.

Good news with the meters. We expect pictures of course :D
Just made an offer on the solder....

Cleaned up one of the meters nicely, but forgot to take a before photo so will use the auction photo when I post them, it came up really nice. Plugged it in to do a check against my voltage reference and against my other meters and it was all going so nicely with it only being a handful of microvolts away from total agreeance with the other meters and I heard a muffled PFFFTT, yep the bastard Schaffner mains filter let the fecking magic smoke out so I sit in the lab, windows wide open fans on blowing the smoke and stench out the window to try and stop it permeating into the adjacent bedrooms where the rest of the family are sleeping.

Tomorrow I'll start hunting down replacements or I'll look at bypassing the filter and running them without a filter fitted because the bastard is always in circuit whether the meter is switched on or not, crappy design. |O :palm: :scared: :wtf:
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Offline med6753

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29469 on: April 17, 2019, 01:36:49 am »
I wish I had the extra cash AND the room for this I found on craigslist.  It brings back a lot of memories and is in amazing shape. A Tek 585A with lots of OEM goodies.

Someone is gonna be a happy camper.

https://cnj.craigslist.org/ele/d/new-lisbon-tektronix-585a-80-mhz/6845807499.html



If it were in North Jersey I'd be all over that like flies on poop. Alas, just a little too far from Mid Hudson Valley New York. Oh well.  ::)
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Offline Housedad

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29470 on: April 17, 2019, 01:40:46 am »
Yeah, it sucks.  I'm only about 45 min away.
At least I'm still older than my test equipment
 

Online beanflying

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29471 on: April 17, 2019, 01:50:29 am »
If I didn't already have plenty of projects lined up I might  ;) Plenty of other photos on evilbay eBay auction: #264282274352



Coffee, Food, R/C and electronics nerd in no particular order. Also CNC wannabe, 3D printer and Laser Cutter Junkie and just don't mention my TEA addiction....
 

Offline med6753

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29472 on: April 17, 2019, 02:08:05 am »
Cute little scope. But I see lots and lots of paper tubular capacitors that should be changed out but appear visually to be in damn good shape. :-+
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Offline worsthorse

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29473 on: April 17, 2019, 02:08:59 am »
After hours of looking for docs and pricing info for all these obscure Tek widgets, I decided to do something fun and set up the NI DC5-420TH microscope. One of their customer service reps sent me links to the application software, Windows driver, and a firmware update.

I got the driver installed, but the app software wouldn't run without the firmware update. So I ran the firmware update as instructed.

And it crashed, apparently bricking the microscope camera in the process.   |O   |O   |O

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Offline med6753

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #29474 on: April 17, 2019, 02:11:12 am »
After hours of looking for docs and pricing info for all these obscure Tek widgets, I decided to do something fun and set up the NI DC5-420TH microscope. One of their customer service reps sent me links to the application software, Windows driver, and a firmware update.

I got the driver installed, but the app software wouldn't run without the firmware update. So I ran the firmware update as instructed.

And it crashed, apparently bricking the microscope camera in the process.   |O   |O   |O

D'OH.  :palm:

Gonna be able to get it back?  :-//
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