Author Topic: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread  (Read 14550949 times)

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Offline AVGresponding

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48125 on: January 28, 2020, 06:44:48 pm »
Well I voted for Brexit, and I'm neither stupid, nor a racist bigot, nor do I hate anyone.

I wanted to leave for much the same reasons as Jeremy Corbyn did.

I've heard a lot of debate on the subject over the last 4 years or so, and I have to say that most of it (on both sides) is ill informed bollocks.

I'd add that it would probably have been beneficial to have a proper national discussion on the issue before any talk of a referendum; that just reduced the whole thing to a series of sound-bites and slogans like the arrant nonsense emblazoned on the "Boris Bus", "taking back our sovereignty", "EU outlaws straight bananas/full English breakfasts/other red-top headline fodder", "we'll lose all our human rights", "the NHS will collapse because no immigrants will be able to come here", "the EU is responsible for bringing peace to Europe" and other such drivel.

It's sad that (most) people (seem to) believe and endlessly regurgitate this propaganda instead of going to the trouble of doing a little research and discovering some actual facts.

Saddest of all is I personally know a few lifetime Labour voters that voted Tory because of this. I voted Labour; I couldn't have looked in the mirror otherwise, and I think it's more important to try and protect what's left of our public services like the NHS etc. than pushing Brexit through in the half-assed manner it was happening. Oh well...
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48126 on: January 28, 2020, 06:58:53 pm »
Wow, that's called "Bend over because here it comes and you are gonna like it"  :o :palm:

Not really. The reasoning is simple and fair. Imagine a good with an intrinsic value of 100$. In the EU, before you can buy it, VAT is applied so it costs 120$ or so to the customer. Now, if you can just buy it outside the EU without VAT, that means that any local bussiness has a 20% disadvantage over foreign competitors. So, the VAT is applied to imports, just like it is on local transactions.

Yeah, it really only sounds bad to those of us from the Privileged States of America, who think that all taxes (especially income taxes) are unfair. Just because we're fucking rich, why should we have to PAY for our nonessential stuff AND the infrastructure (this includes all the little people, and their children, BTW) that GETS IT TO US...? How DARE the government single us out so harshly just because we have money?  :palm:

mnem


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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48127 on: January 28, 2020, 07:11:34 pm »
Geez, just submitted an order for just the tantalums for the 485 plus a few more electrolytics for the 535A and it STILL came to $60 USD with shipping.


47uf/25V tants....cheapest price is $3.06/ea. Needed 9.  :palm:

You could try subbing an equivalent electrolytic, paralleled with a .1-1uF MLCC of 2-3X working voltage. Common practice in audio electronics rework; proponents claim the practice is cheaper AND holds up better long-term.

Looks like 1uF-50V are readily available for approx 17 cents in small quantities, just as an example: https://www.jameco.com/shop/keyword=1uf-Ceramic-Capacitor

mnem
 :-//
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Offline AVGresponding

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48128 on: January 28, 2020, 07:16:39 pm »
Yeah, it really only sounds bad to those of us from the Privileged States of America, who think that all taxes (especially income taxes) are unfair. Just because we're fucking rich, why should we have to PAY for our nonessential stuff AND the infrastructure (this includes all the little people, and their children, BTW) that GETS IT TO US...? How DARE the government single us out so harshly just because we have money?  :palm:

mnem


Now go Google, class. ;) that's Veil of Ignorance / John Rawls

The really weird thing is that afaik the tax burden in the US is actually higher than the UK and EU. Certainly the reported figures for health spending bear that out.

Given the levels of government inefficiency (which I have personal experience and knowledge of) here, it makes me wonder just how inefficient it must be there...
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Offline tggzzz

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48129 on: January 28, 2020, 07:26:09 pm »
Geez, just submitted an order for just the tantalums for the 485 plus a few more electrolytics for the 535A and it STILL came to $60 USD with shipping.


47uf/25V tants....cheapest price is $3.06/ea. Needed 9.  :palm:

That seems excessive. Sometimes CPC is good, bd139 :)
https://cpc.farnell.com/search/prl/results?st=Tantalum%2025v&sort=P_ATT_BASE_VALUE_1000002_EN_GB|1
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Offline tggzzz

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48130 on: January 28, 2020, 07:27:45 pm »
Politics is politics, whatever the font style and colour
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48131 on: January 28, 2020, 07:46:04 pm »
The really weird thing is that afaik the tax burden in the US is actually higher than the UK and EU. Certainly the reported figures for health spending bear that out.

Given the levels of government inefficiency (which I have personal experience and knowledge of) here, it makes me wonder just how inefficient it must be there...

It has nothing to do with inefficiency; it's entirely deliberate corruption of a once nearly equitable system that encouraged what we still wistfully call the "American Dream" of home ownership, a safe retirement and a better life for our offspring.

Health Care (and especially EOL Care) laws in conjunction with Banking and Real Estate laws have been made so bizarrely corrupt it is impossible for it to be accidental. These fundamental systems have been turned into a bureaucratic machine for moving all the once pretty-broadly distributed real property in America into the hands of the wealthy few. It is no accident the way these seemingly unrelated aspects of government and business have conspired to put the average citizen in a stranglehold of debt and poverty; it is nearly a century of the Good Ol' Boy Network and deals in smoke-filled rooms behind closed doors, ever since we started recovering from the last Great Depression.

The deliberate strangulation of our once world-class public education system has made even the basic knowledge of civics and politics and the electoral system and how money works a mystery to the average man; knowledge we took for granted in the high schools of the '50s.  :palm:  This well-crafted ignorance is what makes it possible for people to believe they somehow CHOSE the cycle of corruption for themselves, rather than being forced into it.

So now you again have the same disparity between the many and the few which birthed the American Revolution. It wasn't JUST the fact of taxation; it was the fact of NOT HAVING A SEAT AT THE TABLE when that taxation and distribution thereof was decided. Our founders weren't saints; they were wealthy folks in their own right or they'd never have gotten here. They saw everything they'd risked everything to get being siphoned off across the ocean, and saw an opportunity to cut that flow. So of course they took it.

Identical forces of corruption drove BREXIT; and identical well-crafted ignorance is what keeps it afloat. The Golden Rule, man.

mnem
Or maybe y'all just couldn't let the unparalleled stupidity of allowing Chump in the White House go unanswered... :-//



« Last Edit: January 28, 2020, 08:05:26 pm by mnementh »
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Offline grizewald

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48132 on: January 28, 2020, 07:48:28 pm »
Oh well, the 34401A finally went for £191, which is probably insane for a broken meter.
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Offline grizewald

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48133 on: January 28, 2020, 07:49:50 pm »
Politics is politics, whatever the font style and colour

Indeed.

I'm currently shutting my gob about Brexit. It may be a good idea if we all agreed to do the same.
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Offline bd139

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48134 on: January 28, 2020, 07:51:23 pm »
Geez, just submitted an order for just the tantalums for the 485 plus a few more electrolytics for the 535A and it STILL came to $60 USD with shipping.


47uf/25V tants....cheapest price is $3.06/ea. Needed 9.  :palm:

That seems excessive. Sometimes CPC is good, bd139 :)
https://cpc.farnell.com/search/prl/results?st=Tantalum%2025v&sort=P_ATT_BASE_VALUE_1000002_EN_GB|1

CPC can die in a fucking fire as far as I’m concerned as per my thread here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/chat/cpc-in-the-uk-are-a-disaster-of-a-company/

As for tants, I just use low ESR electrolytics now. If it looks particularly dodgy it gets a 100n X7R ceramic across it.

Oh well, the 34401A finally went for £191, which is probably insane for a broken meter.

What dumbass paid that?!? There is a local company to me called TICS who sold one £50 buy it now duff. I missed it though  :--
 
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48135 on: January 28, 2020, 08:01:10 pm »
Changing the Subject:

I guffawed at this response to that thread...

Worst company ever. This is about the 5th problem I've had with them in the last year over trivial things. One order they shipped me a box of gloves and someone else's SSD when I ordered some resistors. I'm done. Added to my shitlist.
:-DD  Order 25p worth of resistors every week and see what comes in the mail, cheaper and more fun than buying lottery tickets. Arrow is pretty good, but maybe shipping cost and time might be prohibitive.

I'd actually be tempted if they were up here...  >:D

mnem
 :-/O
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Offline bd139

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48136 on: January 28, 2020, 08:02:56 pm »
RS are good at that too. And delivery is free. I ordered some 1.8M MRS25 resistors once and got a £50 bag of MOVs  :-DD

Also if you want a real lottery buy some RS Pro stuff. 50% is total shit. 50% excellent. Latest one was shit. Cutting board A3. Literally cut straight through it with a Stanley knife  :palm:
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48137 on: January 28, 2020, 08:08:12 pm »
Also if you want a real lottery buy some RS Pro stuff. 50% is total shit. 50% excellent. Latest one was shit. Cutting board A3. Literally cut straight through it with a Stanley knife  :palm:

That's been RS' modus operandi since the 70s (if not earlier)! It was one reason I prefer(red) Farnell.
 
The joke was that RS brand 741s had a bimodal input offset voltage distribution, with two peaks just inside the +ve and -ve maximums. Clearly they bought up the manufacturer's "edge of bin" products cheaply.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
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Offline grizewald

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48138 on: January 28, 2020, 08:09:40 pm »
What dumbass paid that?!? There is a local company to me called TICS who sold one £50 buy it now duff. I missed it though  :--

It was described as "working the first time I sold it but was DOA when it arrived with the first buyer". Seeing as it also needed a new display, £191 is just stupid when you can get a fully working one for close to the same price. I thought it would be a good "last purchase" from the UK if I could get it for less than £120, but the final price started climbing very quickly in the last three minutes.

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Offline bd139

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48139 on: January 28, 2020, 08:14:09 pm »
Also if you want a real lottery buy some RS Pro stuff. 50% is total shit. 50% excellent. Latest one was shit. Cutting board A3. Literally cut straight through it with a Stanley knife  :palm:

That's been RS' modus operandi since the 70s (if not earlier)! It was one reason I prefer(red) Farnell.
 
The joke was that RS brand 741s had a bimodal input offset voltage distribution, with two peaks just inside the +ve and -ve maximums. Clearly they bought up the manufacturer's "edge of bin" products cheaply.

Urgh RS one brand ICs were cancer. Also you had to buy their data books to work out what the hell the parts are. Come across a few over the years. The usual pain being voltage regulators.

What dumbass paid that?!? There is a local company to me called TICS who sold one £50 buy it now duff. I missed it though  :--

It was described as "working the first time I sold it but was DOA when it arrived with the first buyer". Seeing as it also needed a new display, £191 is just stupid when you can get a fully working one for close to the same price. I thought it would be a good "last purchase" from the UK if I could get it for less than £120, but the final price started climbing very quickly in the last three minutes.

I think some chancer is hoping something simple is up and wants to try and bounce it for 400 smackers afterwards.
 

Offline grizewald

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48140 on: January 28, 2020, 08:17:32 pm »
Maybe one of you eBay experts can explain this bidding history for me?



How does a bid for £191 appear to be made on the 27th without actually appearing in the bidding history until the end of the auction?
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Offline worsthorse

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48141 on: January 28, 2020, 08:26:43 pm »
Mic&Key

I'm the guy with the anemometers

I will have a table there this year. I'll be the guy with the random collection of RTTY gear, piles of test equipment, and hunks of old coax. Yes, I will look exactly like thirty or forty other old white guys there.  ;D

You been to the M&K before?  more like 300-400 old white guys.  You loading in Friday night or Saturday morning?

This my first M&K. I am loading in on Friday so I have more time to wander around and people watch.  I am going to Rickreall the month before, too. Hoping to clear out some of the odder gear like the Spectracom WWVB radios and Dovetron RTTY terminals, along with a collection of scopes and such that I will never get around to working on.
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48142 on: January 28, 2020, 08:28:46 pm »
I really don't understand "early bidders". What do they expect will happen when they put in a low bid a whole week before the auction ends??

In the event of a tie between bidders the bidder who started bidding earliest wins, so even if you intend to snipe it can be worth being the first bidder on an item.
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Online edavid

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48143 on: January 28, 2020, 08:46:55 pm »
Geez, just submitted an order for just the tantalums for the 485 plus a few more electrolytics for the 535A and it STILL came to $60 USD with shipping.


47uf/25V tants....cheapest price is $3.06/ea. Needed 9.  :palm:

I guess you didn't check Arrow (Kemet @ $1.29): https://www.arrow.com/en/products/t356k476k025attr/kemet-corporation
 

Offline BU508A

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48144 on: January 28, 2020, 09:10:31 pm »
Ambassador Kosh: “Understanding is a three-edged sword: your side, their side, and the truth.”
“Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, because it is better organized.”            - Terry Pratchett -
 
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Offline Specmaster

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48145 on: January 28, 2020, 09:18:10 pm »
I really don't understand "early bidders". What do they expect will happen when they put in a low bid a whole week before the auction ends??

In the event of a tie between bidders the bidder who started bidding earliest wins, so even if you intend to snipe it can be worth being the first bidder on an item.
I think you have this backwards, in the event of a tie, it is the bidder who placed their bid first that wins, not the first ever bidder.
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Offline Specmaster

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48146 on: January 28, 2020, 09:19:30 pm »
Maybe one of you eBay experts can explain this bidding history for me?



How does a bid for £191 appear to be made on the 27th without actually appearing in the bidding history until the end of the auction?
Interesting point, lets see if anyone can answer that one. Did you have the automatic bidding history turned ON or OFF?
Who let Murphy in?

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Offline BU508A

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48147 on: January 28, 2020, 09:22:01 pm »
Geez, just submitted an order for just the tantalums for the 485 plus a few more electrolytics for the 535A and it STILL came to $60 USD with shipping.


47uf/25V tants....cheapest price is $3.06/ea. Needed 9.  :palm:

What about these? Approx. 7 USD for 6 Kemet branded tants plus shipping.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/123777724196

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Offline bd139

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48148 on: January 28, 2020, 09:45:36 pm »
Check the SMD ones. Most of them can be soldered across two TH pads.

I buy part reels of them off eBay. Usually costs 3-5 quid for 300 or so then  :-DD
 
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Offline bsudbrink

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #48149 on: January 28, 2020, 09:54:35 pm »
Maybe one of you eBay experts can explain this bidding history for me?



How does a bid for £191 appear to be made on the 27th without actually appearing in the bidding history until the end of the auction?
Interesting point, lets see if anyone can answer that one. Did you have the automatic bidding history turned ON or OFF?


The bidder who placed the bid on the 27th placed it for some large maximum amount (certainly in excess of 190 pounds).  ebay does not show this maximum amount, to do so would be a disservice to that bidder.  As other bidders place bids that do not exceed the "27 bidder" maximum, his "apparent bid" automatically increases.  The automatic increase follows some step pattern that I can't remember at the moment.  Evidently, at the 180 pound level, the step is 5 pounds.  For the sake of simplicity, all of "27 bidder" bids are not shown, but you can assume them to exist between all of the other bids in the list.
 
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