Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

   eBay auction: #333406543805   

I'd love to have just eBay's cut of that summitch. 

mnem
*knocks self unconscious with a acquisition mallet*

I wonder if they also found it at the military dump.

Think the fee only applies to the first 1k slice? Not sure..

For that price it better clean the house, wash dishes, make sandwiches, and change the oil in the car. 

[BU508A]

Top side of the pcb:

Interesting, you got an original agilent 1822-0639 in there. When you leave it connected to your PC, does it become hot? Is it still working ?

I'll test this this evening and will let you know.

[Zucca]

Was scammed by a car sales shithead in Emden. They sold a RR Discovery with a broken air suspension (which would not have been the problem). The real problem was that some italian hot shot managed to put in an ECU which was not programmed to the car, meaning that there was a VIN mismatch in 4 ECUs (the RR Discovery 3 has 23 ECUs in total) and RR does not provide reprogramming. If you try to program in a spare suspension compressor, the ECU will crosscheck the VINs and, if it finds a mismatch, will brick the car by activating the anti theft instant boat anchor program.

RR offered to swap out ALL ECUs (at up to 2500 quid a piece, that would have been a real bargain). To get access to some specific programming options, I would have had to drive the car (with the defunct air suspension) to London to some special RR shop to get some dudes to reflash those microcontrollers with an in system programmer.

Great.
This was a total write off. Either would have been a no go as the costs far exceeded the value of the car.

I am praying to Thor to smite that Emden guy with his hammer (or throw a meteor onto Emden, which ever is easier).

So now I have this specific car tester (Autel MD806) https://www.ebay.de/itm/Autel-MD806-Pro-Profi-Diagnoseger%C3%A4t-f%C3%BCr-45-Fahrzeugmarken-ALLE-SYSTEM-OBD2-MD808/183843777999?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

which I am taking along to every used car I look at. Found a couple of used cars that would have been  real bad deals, so this thing has already paid for itself.

It does to crosschecking of error codes in all ECUs and is vendor specific and multi protocol. It also allows to reset oil change intervals and initiate catalytic converter cleaning cycles.

All in all, highly recommended for quick inspection of used cars and all those things you need advanced diag for. It does not do programming though, the programmers are ten times as expensive.

I feel for you, italians build cars with a lot of passion,way too much. Everybody knows what happens when you are wasted in love with somebody(thing).
I work for a big german car company. I quit the development job I hab because with all the security, anti theft, FUSI and so on it was impossible to bring a nice idea in production.
I am now happly a quality eng for prototypes, and I just have to bitch if I find errors.

Of course until a certain SOP was possible to diagnose the car, just send the right question on the OBD and you get the answer. In the future? Oh noo, we need to be secure. So only OEM tools will be albe to diagnose the car (after activating something). All the others will work just to fullfill the law (depends on the country). Complete access as before? #FORGETABOUTIT

Give me 5 years, I will drive only oldtimer and have a lift garage in my home. Problem solved.
Better, convert an old VW bus to E engine and use the solar panels at home.

So so sad.
#Right2Repair.

[McBryce]

I went from CP/M & DOS straight to Win98. Have never once regretted the "missed opportunity" of all the intervening versions that looked and ran like they were written in QBASIC.

There was a nicer version of QBASIC called PDS 7, then VB DOS. Those were pretty awesome. I actually had a load of shit wired up in VBDOS to do automated testing once. Gorilla.bas in QBASIC was an insult to the capability of the platform.

I have nothing against QBASIC... for what it was, and the time it was, it did a great many things (some of them it even did WELL) and some really ingenious people made it do a LOT more than it should have ever been able to do. It was when assholes started to EXPECT to do all that magical shit, and started demanding MORE, that things all turned pear-shaped.

A friend of mine as a teen was a software engineer whose entire business revolved around custom-written POS/Ledger software written in BBX/BBX2. Sortof the misbegotten lovechild of HTML, QBASIC & COBOL, it essentially put a shinier coat of varnish on top of both so the finished product didn't look out of place in a Windoze environment.

But it could run either locally in a Windoze client OR as a thin client over WYSE terminals, and BBX kept all the secret sauce that made both work functioning and up to date well into the WinXP years. No idea how.

I suspect that is what a lot of the dev platform for Android felt like for the first 10-15 years... 

mnem
*certified crusty old bastard-dwagon*

Oh fuck I jumped right into the android bandwagon when it first came out and it was much much much worse. Worst thing I ever worked on.

I still miss my BBC master. That thing was glorious. Tempted to buy another one but the prices are a little high now and no an emulator won’t cut it. You need the Alps keys.

If you're looking for a BBC, try the guys over at stardot.org.uk/forums . They trade at much more sensible prices, but make sure you buy a working one, because they were full of unobtainium custom IC's that are known to fail. I still have/use a BBC Master 128, the BUS access made them perfect for quick interfacing. I also still have an EPROM Burner for it.

McBryce.

[bd139]

If you're looking for a BBC, try the guys over at stardot.org.uk/forums . They trade at much more sensible prices, but make sure you buy a working one, because they were full of unobtainium custom IC's that are known to fail. I still have/use a BBC Master 128, the BUS access made them perfect for quick interfacing. I also still have an EPROM Burner for it.

McBryce.

Yeah well aware of the problems potentially. For a chunk of the mid to late 1990s I actually relieved schools of their kit here which was still stacked up, cleaned it up, repaired it and sold it on Yahoo Auctions and via Micro Mart magazine. Must have sold 100 units at least.

At peak I had a very nice mint condition Master 128 Turbo (65C102 coprocessor) setup with dual Cumana drives and Cub monitor. This was Econetted to my fairly hefty RiscPC.

Then I woke up one morning, realised this was a massive dead end, sold it all and went NT. Probably the best decision I made from a career perspective but not satisfaction! 

Edit: some days I wake up and tell myself not to live in the past so much. Other days I wake up and find the future I'm living in is terrible. Life's a bitch

[McBryce]

If you're looking for a BBC, try the guys over at stardot.org.uk/forums . They trade at much more sensible prices, but make sure you buy a working one, because they were full of unobtainium custom IC's that are known to fail. I still have/use a BBC Master 128, the BUS access made them perfect for quick interfacing. I also still have an EPROM Burner for it.

McBryce.

Yeah well aware of the problems potentially. For a chunk of the mid to late 1990s I actually relieved schools of their kit here which was still stacked up, cleaned it up, repaired it and sold it on Yahoo Auctions and via Micro Mart magazine. Must have sold 100 units at least.

At peak I had a very nice mint condition Master 128 Turbo (65C102 coprocessor) setup with dual Cumana drives and Cub monitor. This was Econetted to my fairly hefty RiscPC.

Then I woke up one morning, realised this was a massive dead end, sold it all and went NT. Probably the best decision I made from a career perspective but not satisfaction! 

Edit: some days I wake up and tell myself not to live in the past so much. Other days I wake up and find the future I'm living in is terrible. Life's a bitch

I know the feeling. Wake up, realise that Windows and Linux is todays reality, but lack that old experience. A few hours of CPM on my Amstrad CPC6128 usually sorts that out.

McBryce.

[bd139]

Indeed. I think that's why I end up with so much old test gear.

On a positive note, the Lenovo T495s arrived. New, factory sealed box. And you know what, it's actually a pretty nice machine so far after some tweaks and updates. I'm going to find it hard letting it go to a teenager 

[Zucca]

Lenovo FTW

[bd139]

Yup. This is a big winner this one as well. Paid £470 (after £50 paypal offer and £50 CC cash back) for this. Was new sealed box manufactured April 2020. Got quad core Ryzen 5 pro, 8Gb RAM (not upgradeable but meh - it's fine for her), Radeon vega 8 graphics, 256Gb SSD, 1080p IPS screen, 4G LTE card installed (!), fingerprint reader, 3 years NBD service.

[SilverSolder]

Was scammed by a car sales shithead in Emden. They sold a RR Discovery with a broken air suspension (which would not have been the problem). The real problem was that some italian hot shot managed to put in an ECU which was not programmed to the car, meaning that there was a VIN mismatch in 4 ECUs (the RR Discovery 3 has 23 ECUs in total) and RR does not provide reprogramming. If you try to program in a spare suspension compressor, the ECU will crosscheck the VINs and, if it finds a mismatch, will brick the car by activating the anti theft instant boat anchor program.

RR offered to swap out ALL ECUs (at up to 2500 quid a piece, that would have been a real bargain). To get access to some specific programming options, I would have had to drive the car (with the defunct air suspension) to London to some special RR shop to get some dudes to reflash those microcontrollers with an in system programmer.

Great.
This was a total write off. Either would have been a no go as the costs far exceeded the value of the car.

I am praying to Thor to smite that Emden guy with his hammer (or throw a meteor onto Emden, which ever is easier).

So now I have this specific car tester (Autel MD806) https://www.ebay.de/itm/Autel-MD806-Pro-Profi-Diagnoseger%C3%A4t-f%C3%BCr-45-Fahrzeugmarken-ALLE-SYSTEM-OBD2-MD808/183843777999?ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

which I am taking along to every used car I look at. Found a couple of used cars that would have been  real bad deals, so this thing has already paid for itself.

It does to crosschecking of error codes in all ECUs and is vendor specific and multi protocol. It also allows to reset oil change intervals and initiate catalytic converter cleaning cycles.

All in all, highly recommended for quick inspection of used cars and all those things you need advanced diag for. It does not do programming though, the programmers are ten times as expensive.

I feel for you, italians build cars with a lot of passion,way too much. Everybody knows what happens when you are wasted in love with somebody(thing).
I work for a big german car company. I quit the development job I hab because with all the security, anti theft, FUSI and so on it was impossible to bring a nice idea in production.
I am now happly a quality eng for prototypes, and I just have to bitch if I find errors.

Of course until a certain SOP was possible to diagnose the car, just send the right question on the OBD and you get the answer. In the future? Oh noo, we need to be secure. So only OEM tools will be albe to diagnose the car (after activating something). All the others will work just to fullfill the law (depends on the country). Complete access as before? #FORGETABOUTIT

Give me 5 years, I will drive only oldtimer and have a lift garage in my home. Problem solved.
Better, convert an old VW bus to E engine and use the solar panels at home.

So so sad.
#Right2Repair.

All this is part of how they justify the stupid high prices of cars -  in the USA, the average price of a new car is $36,000 this year.  Average! 

When cars reach the point where you can't repair them any longer, the manufacturers and banks will have reached their Nirvana...   people paying monthly forever, essentially subscribing to their car!

[McBryce]

It's not the manufacturers fault. The regulations on exhaust gas and fuel consumption is what forces the car companies to require so much monitoring, realtime engine adjustment and exhaust treatment systems. No car company wants a vehicle that has so much complexity that it keeps having issues. That just makes them look bad, even if they do profit from the repair.

McBryce.

[mnementh]

Yup. This is a big winner this one as well. Paid £470 (after £50 paypal offer and £50 CC cash back) for this. Was new sealed box manufactured April 2020. Got quad core Ryzen 5 pro, 8Gb RAM (not upgradeable but meh - it's fine for her), Radeon vega 8 graphics, 256Gb SSD, 1080p IPS screen, 4G LTE card installed (!), fingerprint reader, 3 years NBD service.

You do realize that's a Zen1 2500U (The only Ryzen5 with Vega 8; arguably a rebranded Ryzen3), right?

Every newer Ryzen5 had Vega 11, so there's a reason they were blowing them out... Ryzen, but not the Zen2 "secret sauce" Ryzen that has (shocking, even to me) actually lived up to the hype.

I mean, yeah, still a capable daily driver... but not sure I'd rather have it than my i7-6500U Lenovo Flex3-1580 for US$180 delivered a year ago.

Main difference I see is that my Flex3 was built when the processor was new, but yours was built when it was 3 years old. And the BL keyboard & touchscreen are sweet. I even like the "convertible" mode for certain things... like my daughter's school curriculum. BIG there.

mnem

[Zucca]

oh, even if I take the regulations on exhaust gas OBD away (and you are right), believe me the future looks very dark for us.
The concept a final product must be a sealed box where the final user can not do any repair at all, it spreading out like a virus.
Anyway I still believe there are always people outside any company who are smarter than the people inside the company, it's just a matter of time.

My dream? Strip all the ECU in a decent car and rebuild it open source. Surely not legal in some country, but sooo much fun.
Until someone will implement a systemd in a car ECU.

PS: That's why we need a forum like this one, we need to fight back 

[mnementh]

It's not the manufacturers fault. The regulations on exhaust gas and fuel consumption is what forces the car companies to require so much monitoring, realtime engine adjustment and exhaust treatment systems. No car company wants a vehicle that has so much complexity that it keeps having issues. That just makes them look bad, even if they do profit from the repair.

McBryce.

No. Just NO. I lived and worked as a mechanic through the smog-strangled 80s, and while that WAS a low point in automobile manufacture... modern closed-loop EFI engines are just plain hands-down better, in every way. More efficient, more power per kilo, and because they aren't running with a crankcase full of carbon coke blowby from running rich half the time, the engines last longer almost in every application. Oil changes are cleaner at 5 and 10k intervals than a carbureted V8 was at 3K, and all that not-wasted oil and carcinogenic blowby waste is better for the environment too, not JUST the cleaner air.

Say what you want about the cars themselves, but design life for a iron-cylinder-wall V8 was 80K miles before it started to burn oil, and it required carb/ignition tuneups during that usage and the timing chain was running on borrowed time. Nowadays, if we don't get twice that from a 4-banger with nothing but regular oil changes, there's something fucking WRONG. I've seen with my own eyes cars running well with 160,000 on the original spark plugs!

I agree that the car companies have managed to turn OBD into a clusterfuck of software obfuscation... but that does NOT mean that OBD/OBDII was a bad idea. It just means that these bastards are such utterly selfish greedy shitheads they could fuck up a wet dream.

mnem
 

[Zucca]

[bd139]

Yup. This is a big winner this one as well. Paid £470 (after £50 paypal offer and £50 CC cash back) for this. Was new sealed box manufactured April 2020. Got quad core Ryzen 5 pro, 8Gb RAM (not upgradeable but meh - it's fine for her), Radeon vega 8 graphics, 256Gb SSD, 1080p IPS screen, 4G LTE card installed (!), fingerprint reader, 3 years NBD service.

You do realize that's a Zen1 2500U (The only Ryzen5 with Vega 8; arguably a rebranded Ryzen3), right?

Every newer Ryzen5 had Vega 11, so there's a reason they were blowing them out... Ryzen, but not the Zen2 "secret sauce" Ryzen that has (shocking, even to me) actually lived up to the hype.

I mean, yeah, still a capable daily driver... but not sure I'd rather have it than my i7-6500U Lenovo Flex3-1580 for US$180 delivered a year ago.

Main difference I see is that my Flex3 was built when the processor was new, but yours was built when it was 3 year old. And the BL keyboard & touchscreen are sweet. I even like the "convertible" mode for certain things... like my daughter's school curriculum. BIG there.

mnem

Yeah aware it’s zen1. 3500U core. Key win is it has 4 cores rather than 2 on the ryzen 3 equivalent. And Vega 8 will actually run things like fortnite and sims acceptably unlike the laggy POS intel integrated shite. A reasonably balanced bit of kit for the right price is what I was after and appear to have won. I may grab another one yet at this price.

The key thing is the pricing. You can get a 3 year old second hand i5 T470 which has been beaten to shit for and needs a new battery or some no brand crapshoot for the same spend here at the moment which is not comparatively worth it.

[mnementh]

If it's Vega8 graphics, its a 2500U, not 3500U. No... wait... got that wrong. I was looking at desktop processors I guess, because the only ryzen5 I found with Vega8 was the 2500U. D'OH!!!

But other than that, yeah... I know I stole my Flex3... that was the only reason I bought it. 

And yeah, I get the value of new vs used; that warranty means a lot. Mine was less than half the price it cost new on clearance... so in my mind was the right price. If I'm giving up MFR warranty, it is instantly worth half. PERIOD.

mnem
 

[med6753]

Did you know that Tek made an Engine Analyzer? Well, you do now. From the 1969 catalog. I don't think they sold too many of them. Look at the prices on the last page. Remember, that's 1969 dollars. It cost a fortune.

I'm sure if you were to find one today complete and functional it would be worth a King's ransom.

[Robert763]

Yep, I do sometimes dig out more serious equipment, but it is surprising how often you can get away with nothing other than the scan tool and one of these lights...


Did you ever use one of those old Sun ignition scopes, where you could literally see the spark plug voltages?  Now that's a serious oscilloscope... [/quote]

LOL... I owned that very unit. Honestly, I used the gauges more than the scope; it was kewl to diag point ignition, and would help you identify a coil that's breaking down on a electronic ignition unit, but as a 'scope it was horrible. Their idea of precision cal'd was display voltage accurate within half a KV between 10-40KV. 

Also, not really a 'scope as we know it; just a yoke-deflection analog TV monitor with a lot of amplification on a inductive pickup with a very low, very narrow useful bandwidth. 

mnem
 
[/quote]

Haha that's funny, I only used one once or twice - once, I was able to correctly diagnose a worn timing chain, as you could see the timing jittering on the oscilloscope screen and I concluded that could probably only happen if there was a lot of play in the drive to the distributor...     It is also interesting how the voltage on the plugs go up when you load the engine (blip the throttle)...  so as a learning tool, it was definitely useful.  I'm not sure there are any modern equivalents -  with the advent of on-plug coils, where would you even connect the probes...  so this kind of stuff is probably only seen in research labs nowadays...

Re the little lightbulb probe - it was enough to trace the drive for the A/C clutch and verify that the relay was not working properly.  It is refreshing to work with such a simple tool, no computers, just a man and his light bulb! 
[/quote]

Yes Automotive 'scopes are still made. Pico Tecnology's Automotive range.
https://www.picoauto.com/

They are brilliant bits of kit. The even cover mechanical issues, noise and vibration. They do everthing the Tek kit did and more. I have a 4 channel one and a Panasonic CF19 toughbook. Cost me under £100 because it was in a make branded case and badly described on ebay.

[SilverSolder]

It's not the manufacturers fault. The regulations on exhaust gas and fuel consumption is what forces the car companies to require so much monitoring, realtime engine adjustment and exhaust treatment systems. No car company wants a vehicle that has so much complexity that it keeps having issues. That just makes them look bad, even if they do profit from the repair.

McBryce.

Emissions was just the first wave... in the 90's.   Today, cars are full of computers that control everything...  engine, transmission, brakes, suspension, safety equipment, and so on.

My complaint isn't that manufacturers put this kind of stuff in the cars - it is all cool and does useful stuff - but I strongly object to intentionally making it unrepairable by recycling working components from other cars, which is a big environmental benefit as much as an economical one.

[SilverSolder]

It's not the manufacturers fault. The regulations on exhaust gas and fuel consumption is what forces the car companies to require so much monitoring, realtime engine adjustment and exhaust treatment systems. No car company wants a vehicle that has so much complexity that it keeps having issues. That just makes them look bad, even if they do profit from the repair.

McBryce.

No. Just NO. I lived and worked as a mechanic through the smog-strangled 80s, and while that WAS a low point in automobile manufacture... modern closed-loop EFI engines are just plain hands-down better, in every way. More efficient, more power per kilo, and because they aren't running with a crankcase full of carbon coke blowby from running rich half the time, the engines last longer almost in every application. Oil changes are cleaner at 5 and 10k intervals than a carbureted V8 was at 3K, and all that not-wasted oil and carcinogenic blowby waste is better for the environment too, not JUST the cleaner air.

Say what you want about the cars themselves, but design life for a iron-cylinder-wall V8 was 80K miles before it started to burn oil, and it required carb/ignition tuneups during that usage and the timing chain was running on borrowed time. Nowadays, if we don't get twice that from a 4-banger with nothing but regular oil changes, there's something fucking WRONG. I've seen with my own eyes cars running well with 160,000 on the original spark plugs!

I agree that the car companies have managed to turn OBD into a clusterfuck of software obfuscation... but that does NOT mean that OBD/OBDII was a bad idea. It just means that these bastards are such utterly selfish greedy shitheads they could fuck up a wet dream.

mnem
 

Modern engines really are amazing.  I have a 15 year old Ford with the 2.3 four banger (hybrid) with 220K miles on it now.   Does not burn a drop of oil between changes (at the recommended 10K mile interval), has not lost compression (still beats its fuel economy rating), starts and runs smooth,  quite impressive really.  I did change the spark plugs at the recommended 100,000 mile intervals! 

[Cerebus]

Did you know that Tek made an Engine Analyzer? Well, you do now. From the 1969 catalog. I don't think they sold too many of them. Look at the prices on the last page. Remember, that's 1969 dollars. It cost a fortune.

I'm sure if you were to find one today complete and functional it would be worth a King's ransom.

Are you sure those images are big enough at 10Mb a piece? Mate please, downside them a bit before linking to 50Mb of images just for one post.

[bd139]

I feel privileged that I didn't even notice the size 

We have come so far 

[med6753]

Did you know that Tek made an Engine Analyzer? Well, you do now. From the 1969 catalog. I don't think they sold too many of them. Look at the prices on the last page. Remember, that's 1969 dollars. It cost a fortune.

I'm sure if you were to find one today complete and functional it would be worth a King's ransom.

Are you sure those images are big enough at 10Mb a piece? Mate please, downside them a bit before linking to 50Mb of images just for one post.

Fixed and re-linked.

[Cerebus]

Thank you.