Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Cerebus]

.. I get from Virgin Media ... Last time I checked Richard Branson was nowhere Jeff Bezos ...

Branson (aka the Virgin Group) have had nothing to do with Virgin Media since 2006 when NTL bought them from the same. Nowadays they're owned by Liberty Global.

[Saskia]

just trying to get stuff outta the way (meaning: sell it off) so that I can free up the space under the roof that I have usurped before my landlord goes ballistic. I have about 100 sqm to clean out ...
Bloody hell.

And of course to raise money to buy a fucking house before hyper inflation gets rid of my savings.
Which is about as certain as death to hit us ...

I only understood that really when reading it again: would that make you a squatter-hoarder?

I don't think so. I will however get rid of a lot of stuff I need to get rid of.

Owning too much stuff is just a burden. Anybody interested in a couple of motorbikes, stereo sets, pinballs or my husband's knife collection 

[Specmaster]

.. I get from Virgin Media ... Last time I checked Richard Branson was nowhere Jeff Bezos ...

Branson (aka the Virgin Group) have had nothing to do with Virgin Media since 2006 when NTL bought them from the same. Nowadays they're owned by Liberty Global.

I never knew that, thanks for putting me straight

[Specmaster]

Labour sold them out under PFI. Conservatives are just finishing the job. Have Bupa free at work 

Edit: Just a moan as well about some of the shit out there and how it works. People bitch about amazon and say "hey it's unfair with local shops".

Amazon supply chain vs other retailers:

Supplier -> Amazon logistics -> you .... pay £74.99
Supplier -> local distributor -> retailer -> logistics -> you .... pay £109.99

Which is the issue with this case I'm looking at. The price differential comes from a more efficient supply chain which has environmental, pricing and support benefits. I stand by efficiency over job creation which is what we are really doing.

If only people stopped fucking. That'd solve all the problems 

Totally agree, but you would think that local distributors that are a large national chain like Currys for instance should be able to compete. I would imagine that their buying power in the UK would similar to that of Amazon for dedicated UK market only products. All their large white goods come from a few national depots and dedicated trucks as does the other gear. Local branches carry very little stock apart from items that are easy to carry out for obvious reasons.

[bd139]

Currys is a bit of a joke TBH. Their entire retail network barely makes any money. If they close it, people will forget they even exist in a week because they price higher than AO and Amazon etc. If they reduce prices, they can't operate the stores which barely break even. They should just close down.  My nearest one is about 500m away from me and like fuck I ever buy anything in it. I went in there to buy an ink cartridge, found it was £30 and just bought one from amazon for £13 and waited until end of day  .

Edit: actually the only thing I ever bought in there was some Apple earphones after I dropped mine down the toilet and didn't fancy waiting 2 days for Apple to send some more out. Only went there because the Apple price fixing and they still tried to sell me some insurance, get my email address and send me junk mail for a £29 product?!?!?! Fuckers.

Search for "Dixons carphone profit" lol.

Oh and another reason to "fuck off retail": https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2019/03/dixons-carphone-slugged-with-29-1m-fine-for-mis-selling-mobile-insurance/

[Specmaster]

It's not just orders for ref. I use Prime Video as well and share it with my eldest (you can share prime with one other person).

Edit: oh and Prime Reading. Get a fairly large chunk of books on that for nothing. Great for reading while you're having a shit. (I own a kindle paperwhite as well)

Yeah, I have used the video service for about 4 films this year, I don't have a kindle, SWMBO does. I have the Alexa which uses prime but for what little I use it, it could just as easily be used as a Bluetooth speaker. Now that have got the remote devices setup, I don't need to access the prime account to operate them. Just did a little test to prove that, works great.

The tumble drier I got recently during the lockdown I could have got from Amazon for the same money, free delivery (but not prime) but they do not take away the old one. I'm unable to take the old one to the local tip/recycle centre as it was shutdown but AO could for a small fee which was considerably less than the City Council would charge me and delivery was quicker and for £30, the next day was possible. So you do still need to be picky about you get from Amazon as there are other parameters that come into play, including a frustrated SWMBO who wants her washing to be dried 

[bd139]

Yeah taking away the old one is why I use AO even if you do get dumb and dumber delivering it 

Just tripped over this elsewhere. LiPoly motorcycle battery explosion  https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/gpt900/motorcycle_battery_randomly_explodes_while/ (turn sound on)

[mansaxel]

Vishay make just the tool:

When I started out in broadcast engineering some 22 years ago, I was given, somewhat ceremonially, a Spectrol trimmer just like that one. This was in the still all-analog times, so a lot of distribution amps, meter bridges, oscillators, et al. needed copious adjusting. Therefore, carrying the trimmer was part of the tools of the trade.  Had it been 20 years earlier, I'd stuck it in my pocket protector on the lab coat, but as this was in the late 90s, I merely kept it between two buttons of my polo shirt.

I lost my original one in a tool case theft, but as that was on the job, I got funds to get all new tools. I now have two, for good measure, in the heavily expanded iFixit Pro Tech Toolkit I carry mostly for its tweezers and the insane screwdriver bit kit. Expansions are another screwdriver kit, F Dick jewellers files, pin chuck, some wire-wrap tools, small hand vice, cable marker fitting tool, et c. It all goes, together with lots of other tools, in a leather tool case from Canford. Very BBC-y.

Tool collection completeness is a complementary disease to TEA.

[Specmaster]

Currys is a bit of a joke TBH. Their entire retail network barely makes any money. If they close it, people will forget they even exist in a week because they price higher than AO and Amazon etc. If they reduce prices, they can't operate the stores which barely break even. They should just close down.  My nearest one is about 500m away from me and like fuck I ever buy anything in it. I went in there to buy an ink cartridge, found it was £30 and just bought one from amazon for £13 and waited until end of day  .

Edit: actually the only thing I ever bought in there was some Apple earphones after I dropped mine down the toilet and didn't fancy waiting 2 days for Apple to send some more out. Only went there because the Apple price fixing and they still tried to sell me some insurance, get my email address and send me junk mail for a £29 product?!?!?! Fuckers.

Search for "Dixons carphone profit" lol.

Oh and another reason to "fuck off retail": https://www.retailgazette.co.uk/blog/2019/03/dixons-carphone-slugged-with-29-1m-fine-for-mis-selling-mobile-insurance/

Yep, likewise I tend to use them as a place that I can go and look at the item before buying on line somewhere else. Would have thought that Currys would have learned by now that they need to be a bit keener in their pricing having seen many of their competitors go to the wall like, Comet, Tempo, Bennets etc. But they just carry on once the older folks have departed this world, they will be faced with a new type of older generation who are more tech-savvy and well able to shop on line. Hell, I remember my Mum who even struggled to use a cordless phone and could never use a mobile. I did try to teach her to use a computer but it was pulling hens teeth. Mother-in Law is just the same, happy with a phone that you have to pick up to answer a call or to make one and then put down again to end a call. So when that generation have gone, how will Curry's cope

I never buy any off their insurance, my eldest son worked there for a short while and I know that it is scam and most things last at least 3 to 4 years on average and in that you have almost paid for new replacement anyway and if it lasts 5 to 6 years then you're going to be £'s in pocket anyway.

[Specmaster]

Yeah taking away the old one is why I use AO even if you do get dumb and dumber delivering it 

Just tripped over this elsewhere. LiPoly motorcycle battery explosion  https://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/gpt900/motorcycle_battery_randomly_explodes_while/ (turn sound on)

Shit thats scary, just imagine that was a car, Tesla or similar. Before they make electric cars compulsory they have to make them a lot safer and far more efficient than they currently are I think.

[Saskia]

A friend's house almost burned down because of an exploding lipo.
In other news some asshole at Mediamarkt ( German equivalent to bestbuy) tried to sell me insurance for an LED panel citing that the flyback transformer driving the LCD tube would often burn out. Unfortunately I did not react fast enough, he should have eaten that monitor. That kind of fraud should be prosecuted under RICO

[mansaxel]

@mnementh oh, we do not have free health care. I am paying 10 grand for health insurance right now, and it will be going up considerably.

I had a medical bill for 38625 USD for 2 days of hospital in California. Took out a mortgage to pay for that, and the health insurance thingie is the reason we are still here.

We have free health care, or almost. And it works across Europe too; I had an incident involving a canal bridge and my head that resulted in 27 stitches and some superglue being required to patch me up.

This happened in southern France, and it cost me all of 37€ to visit the ER, which included being driven there by the nice pompiers in the red taxi with the funny lights and the stuck-on horn. (The nurse who started looking at me lifted the bandages for 1 second, said "oh-lalaa!" and promptly put them back again, calling for the doctor.)

The lack of properly funded health care for all is a sure sign of a perverse society. You can call it freedom and choice all you want, but if society is not caring for its people in need, especially now, it ends up being a cruel shit show of epic proportions.

[Neomys Sapiens]

As some of you are a lot more versed in computer matters, maybe someone can help:
- my T60 does have a headphone jack and an external mic jack. Does that mean that it will not take those headsets with a 4-circuit tip-and-ring connector?
- Can a computer headset have a PTT key?
- I'm looking for a lightweight headset, with minimal pressure. I would like it to have a volume control, and, if that exists, a PTT. But it should be able to work without PTT too. Should be good/premium quality. No gaming headset, no closed ones.

[mansaxel]

Edit: oh and Prime Reading. Get a fairly large chunk of books on that for nothing. Great for reading while you're having a shit. (I own a kindle paperwhite as well)

When they erased 1984 from peoples Kindles I swore to only read paper books and unencumbered e-books, and never on Kindles. When you're blundering about enough to (or trust public relations to a stupid computer) misjudge (or ignore) the cultural implication of revoking a book dealing with the subversion of history for control of the masses, you deserve none of my money.

[bd139]

http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks01/0100021.txt

Kindle is electric paper, nothing more. Data cannot be controlled or stopped really. Merely paying for some convenience over the top is fine. I usually pull books off library genesis and shove them in it

As for the issue you might want to look into copyright law which is where that went wrong, not the device.

And let’s not forget the 80s where publishers were burning books returned to keep new book sale prices high.

[mansaxel]

As some of you are a lot more versed in computer matters, maybe someone can help:
- my T60 does have a headphone jack and an external mic jack. Does that mean that it will not take those headsets with a 4-circuit tip-and-ring connector?
- Can a computer headset have a PTT key?
- I'm looking for a lightweight headset, with minimal pressure. I would like it to have a volume control, and, if that exists, a PTT. But it should be able to work without PTT too. Should be good/premium quality. No gaming headset, no closed ones.

I have a Sennheiser Communications CC520 headset with USB connection. I recommend going that route. (based on your needs as dictated above, I'm assuming this is for audio/video conferencing) In my humble opinion, USB outperforms analog here; you get a dedicated sound device that can be reserved for the conference media, and in the Sennheiser case, the mute button on the USB dongle is teamed with the on-screen mute button in more than one conferencing app, so I can mute/unmute (no ptt, but a hardwire button is pretty close, especially if you get state replication on-screen) from the cable or by toggling in the user interface of for instance M$ Teams.

[mansaxel]

As for the issue you might want to look into copyright law which is where that went wrong, not the device.

Oh, I know why it happened, and I am the first to declare "Copyright law, or why Steamboat Willie will never go into Public Domain" a complete and utter fuckery.   

That is one problem worthy of consideration in and of itself, but the sheer ignorance in purging Orwell was enough to put me off that side of the corporation, for ever.

On a related note: E-books, in swedish public libraries, while technically possible to lend in near infinite parallel, actually can't be, because the fucking greedy cunts in the publishing business bought legislation (as Disney allegedly did in the case cited above) to be able to set the reimbursement higher for a digital lend than a physical.  If the libraries do what they're supposed to do, spread the word, they'll go broke in no time.  In contrast, for paper books, there is a set fee, with a weak (gain less than 1) connection to lending frequency.

So, I'm firmly on unencumbered files or paper books. The notion that with better technology (and essentially free copying from a technical stand point), my access to information shall be more limited, is perverse to the extreme.

[syau]

TEA day, as seen on discord earlier. Very nice shape Tek Type 184. There's one problem. The seller listed as tested and working, but the fuse and fuse holder are missing! Looking back, they were missing in the listing pics too, so I messaged them. They said they'll look for it on Tuesday.  And I don't have a .6A slowblow on hand either, so I can't even scrounge a fuze cap to test it out. 

Scored one recently, most output spotted on except those below 50ns. Carried out adjustment all fixed except the 2ns  The 2ns output never make a stable waveform except when my adjustment tool (esd safe plastic) touch the C70 

I changed the input voltage to 220V as I am living in 220v area, the 10MHz oven started giving out smell and blow the fuse (0.3A) after around 1 hr  Disconnect the heater as temporary fix.

Any chance to help me to measure the resistance between pin 1 to 5, 2 to 5, 1 to 2 on the 10 Mhz crystal after removing it from socket ?

Pin 1 to 5: 3.9K
Pin 2 to 5: 1.4K
Pin 1 to 2: 5.3K

Thanks 

[Specmaster]

As for the issue you might want to look into copyright law which is where that went wrong, not the device.

Oh, I know why it happened, and I am the first to declare "Copyright law, or why Steamboat Willie will never go into Public Domain" a complete and utter fuckery.   

That is one problem worthy of consideration in and of itself, but the sheer ignorance in purging Orwell was enough to put me off that side of the corporation, for ever.

On a related note: E-books, in swedish public libraries, while technically possible to lend in near infinite parallel, actually can't be, because the fucking greedy cunts in the publishing business bought legislation (as Disney allegedly did in the case cited above) to be able to set the reimbursement higher for a digital lend than a physical.  If the libraries do what they're supposed to do, spread the word, they'll go broke in no time.  In contrast, for paper books, there is a set fee, with a weak (gain less than 1) connection to lending frequency.

So, I'm firmly on unencumbered files or paper books. The notion that with better technology (and essentially free copying from a technical stand point), my access to information shall be more limited, is perverse to the extreme.

Equally, there also exists the technology to photocopy the pages of a book, OCR them into a word document, convert that into a book sized electronic format and the convert that into a PDF version and then it can be shared in secret, so they can't stop it being circulated. There already exists several site on the web where it is possible to obtain many books in PDF format free of charge  and can be further shared time and time again.

[jxjbsd]

Tool collection completeness is a complementary disease to TEA.

Dtotally agree
Often in order to repair an instrument bought for 50 yuan, it will often cost 200 yuan to buy accessories.Then, I spent 2,000 yuan to buy all of this series.

[med6753]

Tool collection completeness is a complementary disease to TEA.

Dtotally agree
Often in order to repair an instrument bought for 50 yuan, it will often cost 200 yuan to buy accessories.Then, I spent 2,000 yuan to buy all of this series.

And having TEA disease is a lesson in piss poor economics. Buy a basket case piece of equipment real cheap. Marvel at the bargain you got. Dump replacement parts into it that cost more than the original purchase price. Get equipment running. More parts to tweak to perfection. Then the required accessories. Before you know it you don't have enough money left to eat for the rest of the month. 

But knowing that you saved it from the scrap heap......priceless. 

[jxjbsd]

SG3501 voltage regulator IC is in hand, go back at noon to continue repairing SG502 signal generator
By the way, what is TEA?

[Brumby]

By the way, what is TEA?

See the very first post of this thread.....

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/test-equipment-anonymous-(tea)-group-therapy-thread/

[Mr. Scram]

Labour sold them out under PFI. Conservatives are just finishing the job. Have Bupa free at work 

Edit: Just a moan as well about some of the shit out there and how it works. People bitch about amazon and say "hey it's unfair with local shops".

Amazon supply chain vs other retailers:

Supplier -> Amazon logistics -> you .... pay £74.99
Supplier -> local distributor -> retailer -> logistics -> you .... pay £109.99

Which is the issue with this case I'm looking at. The price differential comes from a more efficient supply chain which has environmental, pricing and support benefits. I stand by efficiency over job creation which is what we are really doing.

If only people stopped fucking. That'd solve all the problems 

In the long run monopolists owning the market and deciding how things go for everyone is never a good idea.

[beanflying]

20 F'ing days from landing in Sydney two inquiries from me to finally get here. UPS Australia you SUCK dog balls The suck worse than Amazon in Oz and they are really crap 

On a much much more positive note Rail in a sleeve wrapped in bubblewrap in a tube then wrapped in bubblewrap in an outer carton    to the seller https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33056324293.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4dFjNLzq

Cable ties securely in place lest I drop my balls all over the place, Rail/Bearing with a quick wipe over was free moving but felt really well fitted. Back in the packaging until I give it a proper clean prior to fitting.