Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Ero-Shan]

What the hell, I'll post the pictures anyway.

2013 Honda CR-V. 42K miles (68Km)

Nitpick: 42 k miles ought to be 68 Mm. And kilo as a prefix must be written in lower case, else it is Kelvin (now what's a kelvin meter?). The US tradition to write prefixes and units in all caps is just plain wrong. M and m are not the same, the first is 10⁶, the second is 10^-3.

[BU508A]

In other news.....the grab bag of Tek probes recently won on Ebay should be delivered Saturday. Coming FedEx from Portland, Oregon. 

Good luck with that, I've been waiting for a battery to arrive, dispatched by 48 hour courier on the 1st and I'm still waiting for and the seller says I have to wait for 10 days before he can chase them on it, its only coming from 166 miles away 

I just went thru that with the 8505A. Took 6 days to go 120 miles. 

TEA teaches us patience and humbleness.

 

[tautech]

Unlike most typical V-6 engines where you can't access anything until you remove the stupid covers which serve no function other than to look "pretty"

So you might think until you run a motor with the trim removed.
They dampen the injector clatter substantially.....at least in my Buick based 3.8L V6 Holden.

[Cerebus]

Dinner, finally:

[Saskia]

very nice. Just prepared some scrambled eggs with baconized Serrano ham and found out that my last name isn't Ramsey. Still, not too bad.

[URI]

Now look what followed me home today ...

Nice, I've got one too (followed me home in a similar way as yours). Service manual with schematics can be found on the net. It has a nice sharp trace, but one thing I really dislike: All the settings are lost on power down, the scope always starts to the same defaults (no battery inside to replace that could backup the settings). And if the LCD backlight is burned out (it's incandescent), the LCD is hard to read.

Oh, wait a moment - mine has more buttons, indeed it's a PM3055. Looks quite similar otherwise.

I know that behaviour of settings memory loss over powercycle from my PM3065, too.
I came across a little extension that plugs in to a 9 pin SUB-D port on the back of the unit that looks like a RS232-connector (in fact I don't know if it is one).
This extension contains a RAM buffered by a rechargeable battery.
With this hooked on, the oscilloscope remembers its last settings and restores them after powering on.
In fact it looses memory again if I don't use the oscilloscope over a longer period of time. Haven't researched that really so I can't give you a number of days.
I got it from a local surplus dealer, Helmut Singer but I'm nearly confident he doesn't sell them any more because the company closed and is currently in liquidation (sells rests of their stock though).

If you are interested I'll crawl behind my PM 3065 and have a look if I can find out it's name or number -perhaps I can take a look into it.

[Neomys Sapiens]

in unrelated news, the new Dacia Sandero ...

nope.
Made progress with that Willem eprom burner.
Received a care package today from one of my friends containing loads of adapters.
Hooked up the parallel cable to that pin changer thingie and to the freshly installed WinXP computer
Ran the 5.5 program version, checked hw -> all present and accounted for
read a pinball eprom -> read ok, however could not make any sense of the data
read a c64 diag test cartridge eprom -> read ok, binary data readable and resembles 6502/6510 machine code (ok)
put in a new 27c256, blank test -> ok
programmed diag test rom into blank eprom -> ok
verify -> ok
manual check if data present -> ok
so, it seems to work.

Thanks to everyone who helped out.

And besides the normal application of burning µC code, you have the possibility of easy made special function and staircase generators or code converters at your fingertips. Are you in need of EPROMS?

[Saskia]

I have 27c256 and 512, would be in need of smaller and larger ones, esp. 2001/4001 and the old 24pin buddies (25xx)

If you have some to throw out, gladly.
In the mean time I'll probably try to virtualize the burner software and get a parallel port up and running in my Win7 office PC ...
(one less computer to f..k around with. Desk/bench space is precious ...

[bd139]

Hmm that was interesting. I just blew up a Meanwell power supply. A genuine RS sourced one as well 

Nothing exciting. Was attempting to characterise power up overshoot on a dummy load resistor with the Siglent. There was no overshoot. Then there was suddenly no volts. Whole unit is completely dead. No sign of any damage at all. Primary side has DC at the controller. No component damage I can measure. Diode and switching transistor fine. PTCs aren't doing anything exciting. Secondary is dead. No switching happening on power up. No limping, nothing. Can only suggest it's the controller IC is duff. 

Edit: going to bed. Had enough lol 

[tautech]

Hmm that was interesting. I just blew up a Meanwell power supply. A genuine RS sourced one as well 

Nothing exciting. Was attempting to characterise power up overshoot on a dummy load resistor with the Siglent. There was no overshoot. Then there was suddenly no volts. Whole unit is completely dead. No sign of any damage at all. Primary side has DC at the controller. No component damage I can measure. Diode and switching transistor fine. PTCs aren't doing anything exciting. Secondary is dead. No switching happening on power up. No limping, nothing. Can only suggest it's the controller IC is duff. 

Edit: going to bed. Had enough lol 

Check the HV DC dropper resistor chain that provides controller IC VCC for SMPS startup.
The VCC supply bulk cap 22-47 uF can go leaky or diminish in value also that won't provide sufficient current to exceed UVLO until they get the feedback current from the primary.

[bd139]

Could be that. I'm not taking it to bits too much as it's only a couple of weeks old so I will just RMA it. But fucking annoying. First one I've had drop dead on me in 30 years probably!

It's got what look like genuine Rubycon caps date coded 2019 so I doubt its a wear failure as it has about 4-5 hours of run time in total 

Perhaps I buy TDK Lambda next time 

Edit: this is a Meanwell LRS-150-24 unit for future reference.

[Specmaster]

What was the load current you were pulling from it? I reckon power supply units tremble with fear when they cross the threshold of your house  I seem to recall some of other failures a couple of years back 

[bd139]

About 3A (~75W 50% load). Nothing major. Dumped into 5x 15W arcol alu flange resistors. The ones I blew up earlier were cheap shitty ebay no branders if I remember correctly which were marginal design for the power rating.

[tautech]

Could be that. I'm not taking it to bits too much as it's only a couple of weeks old so I will just RMA it. But fucking annoying. First one I've had drop dead on me in 30 years probably!

It's got what look like genuine Rubycon caps date coded 2019 so I doubt its a wear failure as it has about 4-5 hours of run time in total 

Perhaps I buy TDK Lambda next time 

Edit: this is a Meanwell LRS-150-24 unit for future reference.

https://www.siglenteu.com/power-supplies/spd1000x-series-programmable-dc-power-supply/
 

[bd139]

Hahaha.

That's "overkill" for this use. The project is to use a couple of zoned PIR detectors, 24V LED floodlights and a cheap Chinese PLC to "strobe" the local scum in the garden as they've started using it to cut through again.

[Specmaster]

@bd, why were you using a meanwell unit and not the TTi one?

[Specmaster]

Hahaha.

That's "overkill" for this use. The project is to use a couple of zoned PIR detectors, 24V LED floodlights and a cheap Chinese PLC to "strobe" the local scum in the garden as they've started using it to cut through again.

Cut through to where, I imagined that the river was just behind your house, no?

[nixiefreqq]

How's this for a disturbing TEA listing pic?



It seems this seller likes livin' on the edge.

does he do this on purpose?   its driving my blood pressure to the point it makes me wanna' scratch my head with a banana.


https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-5350B-Microwave-Frequency-Counter-10-Hz-to-20-GHz-Powers-On-Option-001/124143559453?hash=item1ce788631d:g:jo8AAOSwGF5eG4VS

[bd139]

@bd, why were you using a meanwell unit and not the TTi one?

That's charging up a battery at the moment and didn't want to disturb it. Plus I was interested to see if it overshot or not.

Cut through to where, I imagined that the river was just behind your house, no?

No I'm close to the river but not that close. We've got an alley behind the house and gardens and I'm on the end of the block. So what happens is people wander out of the alley and up the path that runs through the back of all of our gardens because it's shorter and then get to mine at the end which has an inconvenient gate. The nicer bastards open the gate and just leave. The idiots will quite happily ninja kick their way through the gate (we're on the third gate now)  . I don't want to leave the gate open as it'll encourage people to use it and tramp through the garden. So this is an experiment to attempt to screw up their eyes a bit. If you shine a torch on them through the window they usually leg it so this may work. I suspect it's 2-3 usuals and the occasional wanderer.

[Kosmic]

How's this for a disturbing TEA listing pic?



It seems this seller likes livin' on the edge.

does he do this on purpose?   its driving my blood pressure to the point it makes me wanna' scratch my head with a banana.


https://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-5350B-Microwave-Frequency-Counter-10-Hz-to-20-GHz-Powers-On-Option-001/124143559453?hash=item1ce788631d:g:jo8AAOSwGF5eG4VS

What kind of person do that ? threatening to physically abuse those poor little TE just to encourage us to buy them.

[Kosmic]

@bd, why were you using a meanwell unit and not the TTi one?

That's charging up a battery at the moment and didn't want to disturb it. Plus I was interested to see if it overshot or not.

Cut through to where, I imagined that the river was just behind your house, no?

No I'm close to the river but not that close. We've got an alley behind the house and gardens and I'm on the end of the block. So what happens is people wander out of the alley and up the path that runs through the back of all of our gardens because it's shorter and then get to mine at the end which has an inconvenient gate. The nicer bastards open the gate and just leave. The idiots will quite happily ninja kick their way through the gate (we're on the third gate now)  . I don't want to leave the gate open as it'll encourage people to use it and tramp through the garden. So this is an experiment to attempt to screw up their eyes a bit. If you shine a torch on them through the window they usually leg it so this may work. I suspect it's 2-3 usuals and the occasional wanderer.

The sprinkler with a movement detector would probably work too 

[Cerebus]

I think I have discovered my spirit animal:

[Specmaster]

:bd139, that scarecrow sprinkler system looks good for real animals that it, but your sort of animals would take delight in kicking the shit out of it so you'd need an endless supply of them, ouch, your strobe idea sounds like a good bet, you mount the strobe high on the house? out of reach but the blinding effect would disorientate them for sure 

[Kosmic]

Strobe light AND sprinkler ? 

[Kosmic]

I was trying similar strategies against squirrels couple years ago. I ended up using a cage, was working quite nicely. I reckon, in your case, you would probably need to increase the size of the cage and that would probably attract neighbours attention.

* For the record, I relocated all the squirrels I caught in a park far far away.