Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[BU508A]

not directly TEA, but I've bought today this nice printer:   Brother MFC L8690CDW       https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/283773255940

I needed a printer with scan / copy functionality, because my old beloved HP LaserJet 4000N doesn't have this.   And, as a bonus: I can print now colours

Nice Brother, brother! 

Should be really good for hammering in fence posts when you get sick of Brother's Toner Cartridge Counter BS. 

mnem

Fortunately, I do not print that much. And I've found on Amazon a cheap source for replacement toner.

https://www.amazon.de/dp/B073W8X84M/

[mnementh]

Gee, we go from keyboards, to VPN's, to hammers. What's next? Which loo's flush better? 

bean's, definitely. 

mnem

[Specmaster]

@mnem, Here a little something that may be of interest to you on the UK eBay site https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fiery-Youngbloods-Singe-Hamilton-collection-figurine-Of-Dragon-Guitarist/153894843547

[tonyalbus]

As promised a review of my today arrived NanoVNA H4

[mnementh]

@mnem, Here a little something that may be of interest to you on the UK eBay site https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fiery-Youngbloods-Singe-Hamilton-collection-figurine-Of-Dragon-Guitarist/153894843547

      

Thanks, Spec... I actually like him, but of course shipping brings him right up to double the retail price for such collectibles.

And just to add insult to injury, there's a seller in the US with 4 of the 7 pieces from this collection at a semi-reasonable price, but they DON'T ship to the GWN.

mnem
I know... cast resin figurines...    Being a dragon grunge band IS somehow better than sad-eyed kittens, right...?

[Specmaster]

As promised a review of my today arrived NanoVNA H4

Great video, but would be a little better if you could nudge the recording volume up a bit, please.

[tonyalbus]

As promised a review of my today arrived NanoVNA H4

Great video, but would be a little better if you could nudge the recording volume up a bit, please.

Thanks, yes just using my iphone,  i do have an external  microphone, butnot using it ).   

[worsthorse]

For people in the Seattle area, this seems an interesting opportunity. Two identical HP 3225a in what looks like very good conditions. No ideas of what options are installed, the pictures are rather poor

https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/ele/d/allyn-hp-agilent-3325a-synthesizer/7131694521.html

(I'm not the one selling those, just have an automatic search for signal generator and these popped up)

Yeah, those have been on CL for, literally, months. I am not sure why other than folks in these parts (of which I am one) that buy such stuff are cheap bastards for the most part. 

[Ice-Tea]

In case you're following the LeCroy story: got an OK-ish logistics offer. In case someone local or more or less local is interested in keeping it for a very nice price, I guess I'll have it tossed over the pond...

[worsthorse]

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10000199637975.html

Ummm... oklay... so this isn't the correct vendor on AliEx anymore...? Or is the difference that the ones being sold on the Tindie Store have been "calibrated"...?

Kindof discouraging, especially since they're now showing 144 pieces in stock with delivery by end of June...   

mnem
 

Crab.... there is a V2 ??   

There is a V2 Nanovna. There is also an H4. And a fork focused on higher frequency performance (don't remember the name). There is a lot of discussion about clones, fakes, etc, too.  If you are wanting to follow the drama that is nanovna, join the group over on groups.io... 

 

Ummm.... yeah. In general, I'd rather set foot in a tub full of piranhas than anywhere over there... that's why I asked in here.

I figured I MIGHT get a answer from somebody who knows their arse from a onion bagel, instead of being dogpiled just for asking and a few random clopper links thrown in for seasoning.

mnem
...or worse; did somebody mention crabs...?

Was not making fun of you...its just that i bought a H4, and now i here there is a V2... just arrived today and its old allready....

Hmmm... okay. Buy a nanovna from hugen on his aliexpress page. That's the real deal and there are two screen sizes, the bigger of them is 4".  There's a designer here  (OW something or other), Gabriel, who designed another version for a client. I think he was focused on improving its high frequency end performance.

I have both the small and larger versions of the Hugen nanovna and an SDR-KITs VNWA 3 and have used each side-by-side. The nanovna is a good rough and ready VNA, at least below 100MHz. It has lots of flaws... cheap connectors, limited number of data points, weird little measurement inconsistencies. That said, for fifty bucks or whatever it costs now it is a serious bargain, especially if you are just learning about VNAs, want a VNA that you don't have to worry about blowing up, or are doing hobbyist level measurements, especially below 100MHz.

If you are a measurement nut you will hate it. If you want to figure out whether the filter you just built meets spec, it's valuable.

EDIT: Disclaimer: I love weird little cheap test equipment. I have a stack of stuff from Autek, Palomar Engineers, etc that are a lot like the nanovna... kinda good at one thing, not very expensive, often exasperating, and yeah cute as a button small. So my thoughts might be biased.

[Neomys Sapiens]

After a nice long warm up, alignment, and much control exercising, the 184 is 95% working. The other 5% is the H.F. sine marker function, which appears to be dead as a doornail. 

Also, FWIW, the power supply is completely in spec. All three rails are correct voltages and ripple is better than specified.

Deoxit and IPA wash on the RF selector get back the 5ns but the 2ns output level still noisy and below the required level on my unit.

What's your scope+probe/cable's bandwidth? Even my 350MHz Tek485 won't show the 2ns at full amplitude.

The 184 works by "stealing" power from the 10MHz crystal and amplifying the 50th harmonic. It is easy to not have enough input power or gain.

Don't forget that the 184 is designed to set the horizontal scale, so the amplitude isn't that important.

I don’t know whether you were talking to me or syau, but I’m testing mine with both 7a29 amplifiers in my 7104 and a 7a19 amp in my 7904A, both with direct coax connections.

This one I saw coming!

[mansaxel]

Hopefully this isn't true any more,

I'd consider anything that has both of its something in such proximity as a sitting duck.

Over here, the commercial structure of FTTH and similar (we don't do any FTTC to speak of, and DSL is mostly being phased out for fibre, but it is dealt with similarly in what follows.)  is that we've got a number of fibre communication operators that own the plant and light it up. They then let people choose their ISP on top via some portal thingy. For smaller, regional  operators the ISP's sometimes meet them locally, and do handover, but for a number of the bigger fiber providers, that are present all over the country, they aggregate their handover a bit more, especially for smaller ISP's... One such handover facility was originally intended more as a passive fibre cross-connect site, and the rentable racks there were not dimensioned for anything power-hungry. Which people ignored and if they ran out of power in one rack, they bought another and strung an extension over.

Anyway, the telecoms regulator has rules in place, such that if your stuff is important stuff for more than a few people, you have to have redundancy for anything central, like interconnects. Which people ignored. Because such things are expensive and complicated. Tears into the revenue, it does.

Then the fibre company responsible for the cross-connect site had to perform planned work in the power plant. Which they did, and messed up. As people sometimes do. You can imagine the rest, a lot of residential stuff went dark.

Took no more than one hour to get things up again, but it woke people up properly and Words were had. Wonder if it helps.

[mnementh]

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/10000199637975.html

Ummm... oklay... so this isn't the correct vendor on AliEx anymore...? Or is the difference that the ones being sold on the Tindie Store have been "calibrated"...?

Kindof discouraging, especially since they're now showing 144 pieces in stock with delivery by end of June...   

mnem
 

Hmmm... okay. Buy a nanovna from hugen on his aliexpress page. That's the real deal and there are two screen sizes, the bigger of them is 4".  There's a designer here  (OW something or other), Gabriel, who designed another version for a client. I think he was focused on improving its high frequency end performance.

I have both the small and larger versions of the Hugen nanovna and an SDR-KITs VNWA 3 and have used each side-by-side. The nanovna is a good rough and ready VNA, at least below 100MHz. It has lots of flaws... cheap connectors, limited number of data points, weird little measurement inconsistencies. That said, for fifty bucks or whatever it costs now it is a serious bargain, especially if you are just learning about VNAs, want a VNA that you don't have to worry about blowing up, or are doing hobbyist level measurements, especially below 100MHz.

If you are a measurement nut you will hate it. If you want to figure out whether the filter you just built meets spec, it's valuable.

EDIT: Disclaimer: I love weird little cheap test equipment. I have a stack of stuff from Autek, Palomar Engineers, etc that are a lot like the nanovna... kinda good at one thing, not very expensive, often exasperating, and yeah cute as a button small. So my thoughts might be biased.

Yeah, okay. Now we've come back full-circle to my original post asking if that was the correct vendor on AliEx.  There are several vendors supposedly selling the V2, and several supposedly selling the Hugen NanoVNA.   

The one above supposedly has the V2 IN STOCK now, while the Tindie Store listing I saw in here says out of stock for the last 6 weeks and months of delay before they get to you: https://www.tindie.com/products/hcxqsgroup/nanovna-v2/

mnem
 

[robca]

For people in the Seattle area, this seems an interesting opportunity. Two identical HP 3225a in what looks like very good conditions. No ideas of what options are installed, the pictures are rather poor

https://seattle.craigslist.org/see/ele/d/allyn-hp-agilent-3325a-synthesizer/7131694521.html

(I'm not the one selling those, just have an automatic search for signal generator and these popped up)

Yeah, those have been on CL for, literally, months. I am not sure why other than folks in these parts (of which I am one) that buy such stuff are cheap bastards for the most part. 

I sure am one of the cheap bastards I recently landed a mint DS2072A for $275, as I could never justify paying a fair price for a DSO. And by mint I mean that even if the scope is from 2014, the probes were never used and the trial licenses still had 1580 minutes left... It's now a fully optioned DS2302A. That's when I started looking for a better function generator than the hacks I was using with my 1980's era Hitachi  V-1065 dual 100MHz oscilloscope. More than anything, I wanted the bench space back, that 100MHz workhorse is still more than good enough for me.

I didn't realize those HP had been there for a long time (new saved search in CL). And I'm looking for a low end function generator, since I lived 25 years without one and I mostly work on logic boards with logic analyzers (cheap USB logic analyzers, it goes without saying)

Do you happen to have a cheap function generator to sell, local pickup, by chance? 

[BU508A]

Hi Wolfgang,

... just a question: Does you omnibus also contain vintage transistors (TO-18) ? I am working on some esoteric oscillator project where I need *old* parts that have not been made using modern production processes.

I've checked and this is what I've found:

R&S parts:
- 2N2222A Philips
- 2N2219A Philips
- BFW16A
- BCY59C
- 2N2907A

other:
- BC107C  CDIL
- 2N917  Motorola

If you are interested, let me know. I'll send them to you.

[mansaxel]

Interesting point. I think you'd have to be insane to put all your eggs in the Telehouse / LINX basket in this day and age for exactly that reason anyway regardless of diverse connectivity. If someone took out one core LINX or LONAP router or took out a physical site, which is honestly a pretty large and obvious target you'd be up shit creek anyway. TH North lost just a single floor about 5 years ago and took out half the UK's internet in one go[1]. you can't test this either without actually turning shit off which is a risk. I'll be happy when all this is in AWS. The whole VPC and availability zone model makes this entirely someone else's shit show to manage. They have better peering and redundancy that we can ever approach with DC cages even if they are disparate providers and peering. AZ goes down? Latency increases / capacity reduces and that's it. I am sceptical AWS can handle an instance count ramp through autoscaling if this happens though. Azure hit a wall when covid hit for example.

I happen to know people both at LINX and Amazon. What they've told me, publicly, is impressive stuff, especially the book store. 

But I'd never trust one of something to be a working something. Because even if I'm in several AZs in the book store, I need to get to them. So, while my front ends work, I'd be running blind. And since my users are defining "it works" as "I can publish a new article and video clip on the web", we must keep the entire production pipeline running. Fortunately, we have a doubled-up Internet exchange here, done pretty right, so if I've got double routers with some geographical diversity, AND my transits are doubled and diverse, I can build something that's pretty stable. It mostly works. But there is some luck involved.

[mansaxel]

That's all well and good... but they need to be able to SEE their work to suffer from it. Perhaps an iPad behind a glass window in a locked room two buildings away, that refreshes on a random 20-200 minute timer...? 

mnem

I'd be fine with them having a graphic console near by, but operated by a tester from QA, not by the programmer... I'm not evil, just metering out proper corrective action for all the flash-infested shite webs ever made.

[mnementh]

You, sir, are entirely too forgiving. I thought I WAS being progressive; after all, we HAVE retired the electro-shock programmer's chair...

mnem

[mnementh]

Hopefully this isn't true any more,

I'd consider anything that has both of its something in such proximity as a sitting duck.

Over here, the commercial structure of FTTH and similar (we don't do any FTTC to speak of, and DSL is mostly being phased out for fibre, but it is dealt with similarly in what follows.)  is that we've got a number of fibre communication operators that own the plant and light it up. They then let people choose their ISP on top via some portal thingy. For smaller, regional  operators the ISP's sometimes meet them locally, and do handover, but for a number of the bigger fiber providers, that are present all over the country, they aggregate their handover a bit more, especially for smaller ISP's... One such handover facility was originally intended more as a passive fibre cross-connect site, and the rentable racks there were not dimensioned for anything power-hungry. Which people ignored and if they ran out of power in one rack, they bought another and strung an extension over.

Anyway, the telecoms regulator has rules in place, such that if your stuff is important stuff for more than a few people, you have to have redundancy for anything central, like interconnects. Which people ignored. Because such things are expensive and complicated. Tears into the revenue, it does.

Then the fibre company responsible for the cross-connect site had to perform planned work in the power plant. Which they did, and messed up. As people sometimes do. You can imagine the rest, a lot of residential stuff went dark.

Took no more than one hour to get things up again, but it woke people up properly and Words were had. Wonder if it helps.

I fear that like most catastrophes which don't wipe out half the planet, the decision will be made to treat further such problems as a matter for politics to handle rather than having actual people do anything, because money.    Certainly, much noise and lip service will be paid very publicly... but a few days into the next news cycle there will be something much more important to worry about. 

It's the connected-age equivalent to swapping one battery between an assortment of SEP Field generators rather than actually stopping the blood loss. 

mnem

[Specmaster]

Here are just a few photos of my trip to Lakenheath and Mildenhall on Tuesday, this being the first opportunity with the easing of the lockdown, to get my camera out for a day shooting some interesting aircraft with everyone strictly observing the 2-metre rule. Spent the morning at Lakenheath catching the F15s as they came in to land at the end of runway 24 with something in the realm of 24 launches and recoveries. About halfway down the airbase I spotted a C5 that come in and loaded with some ground support equipment brought back from an overseas deployment of some F15's from a base in the USA. The first wave of these F15's were to be flown back to Lakenheath on Wednesday with balance on Thursday.  Around 1pm the sun moves round making the F15's tricky to capture nicely because they become more backlit so we moved onto Mildenhall, roughly 10 miles South West from Lakenheath to a spot just adjacent to the threshold of runway 11 and wait for the base to finish their lunch before operations resume.

After lunch a chartered 747 flew in to collect some F15 ground crew and their families who had returned from an overseas tour of duty, and fly them back to the USA. Unfortunately, landings were on Runway 29 so it turned off before it reached the end of the runway. Then we treated to a whole series circuits by 2 of the resident refuelling tankers and then just before we left a special operations Hercules joined in on the action. While at Mildenhall, there was a further launch of 13 F15's from Lakenheath that were both visible from where we were, but also very audible, those things are so noisy.

[mnementh]

Okies... show of hands.

April 15, I ordered a 10-piece lot of my favorite D-Sun MP1584EN buck converter boards for... stuff. Vendor shows 2-5 week delivery time, but updates in a few days with a Tracking number. Well, FF to this morning, I notice the delivery is now a week past the latest delivery date in the listing, and the tracking still shows as "en route to carrier". So they created a shipment, but either never shipped or more likely are just using that number to satisfy eBay requirements to be able to mark as "SHIPPED" and actually sent it some manner that isn't tracked.

I start a resolution, asking for a refund as I figure after 6 weeks I've been reasonably patient already; the vendor replies crying COVID delays and asking that I wait another 2 weeks. Since I already have a resolution process open, do I give the guy a break, or is 3 weeks late just unreasonable, even with COVID delays...?

mnem
 

[Cerebus]

Took no more than one hour to get things up again, but it woke people up properly and Words were had. Wonder if it helps.

The point where we discovered that the problem was already apparent was when we started talking to the official Critical National Infrastructure people at the Cabinet Office in our preparation for Y2K (yes, that long ago). So in this particular case the people who could have 'had words', or even ultimately got new laws passed if necessary were already in the loop.

The UK, then and still, has rather a laissez-faire attitude to these things and, although there were civil servants who were concerned and active in trying to get fragilities weeded out of the system, there wasn't any apparent political will to press the point. The attitude seemed to be "Let's try and coordinate, foster cooperation, but basically leave these good 'dot com' people to carry on with the business of making money as fast as possible". Let me be clear, there was good stuff came out of our discussions - had some disaster befallen us in the future I could get engineering staff through police cordons, we had critical people's mobile numbers put on the list of magic numbers that still worked when the plebs got locked out and so on - but I never got the feeling that any progress was made towards the sort of coordination that was needed while the UK's communications infrastructure was being completely reshaped by a bunch of companies all essentially working independently and in competition with each other.

[Specmaster]

@mnem I vote, give him a bit longer, his excuse is valid after all, there are far fewer flights these days. The vast majority of those that you can see flying overhead are freighters and I think that China Post uses spare capacity on passenger flights to keep postage costs to a minimum.

[robca]

Okies... show of hands.

April 15, I ordered a 10-piece lot of my favorite D-Sun MP1584EN buck converter boards for... stuff. Vendor shows 2-5 week delivery time, but updates in a few days with a Tracking number. Well, FF to this morning, I notice the delivery is now a week past the latest delivery date in the listing, and the tracking still shows as "en route to carrier". So they created a shipment, but either never shipped or more likely are just using that number to satisfy eBay requirements to be able to mark as "SHIPPED" and actually sent it some manner that isn't tracked.

I start a resolution, asking for a refund as I figure after 6 weeks I've been reasonably patient already; the vendor replies crying COVID delays and asking that I wait another 2 weeks. Since I already have a resolution process open, do I give the guy a break, or is 3 weeks late just unreasonable, even with COVID delays...?

mnem
 

I ordered 4 items from the usual Chinese sources at the beginning of April (2 Ebay, one Banggood, one Aliexpress). The two eBay arrived (one recently), two are still on the slow boat to who-knows-where. I have no reason to believe they are lost. The only ones I got were tiny items (plugs, jacks), slightly bigger boxes (i.e. a 5 face mask box) are still in transit

I sent a parcel from Seattle to Milan USPS in early March. According to tracking it landed in Milano Malpensa yesterday (original shipping estimate 10 working days, real time close to 3 months)

Most of the cheap shipments during normal times were hitchhiking in standard commercial flights, and those are just about stopped. 3 weeks late is pretty normal for Covid19-impacted travel, unless you go with UPS/FedEx/DHL (and $$$)

[Cerebus]

Well, I made a useful discovery.

My recent eBay score E3610A turned up today and it turned out that some bastard had written their name on it in marker pen on the back edge of the (polystyrene?) case. We've all been through this one before, and much has been written on ways that work for some of the people, some of the time, to remove said desecration.

Well, I've got a new one. I'd got a fair bit off with IPA and kitchen paper, but a significant shit-stain remained. I noticed that most of the removal that had happened seemed to be more mechanical, although it needed the presence of solvent. This was interesting, so I tried scrubbing off the remains with a melamine sponge sprayed with some IPA. Bingo! Five seconds later, not a trace remained.

I'll do the whole condition report and photos thing tomorrow or Saturday - couldn't be arsed today - but I thought my success with the marker pen was worth reporting.