Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

Yeah... seriously. The page loaded so slow I actually plugged in a hardline, thinking I'd messed something up and my WiFi had gone wonky cuz first powerup since I'd just been inside my laptop... 'strewth!!! 

mnem
 

[mnementh]

...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
 

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.

Ya jinxed me, ya bastahd! Got me crowing about my Lenovo, and the moment I took it across the living room to set up for another schooling session with my daughter, dead as a fucking dork-nob! 

Turns out it was nothing more than the LiPo cable unplugged internally; I noticed as I was taking it apart that every screw in the thing was loose, so I expect chassis flex allowed it to work loose.

But, as others have commented; another device built to a price, not to a spec... inside, the thing is built like a iPad. Integrated flat LiPo battery (I knew this) and while I like the backlit KB, it is integrated into the inner cover with melt-swaged peg assembly. 

Amazing actually, how solid & rigid they managed to make this thing feel with just a layer of anodized aluminum sheetmetal over the plastic fantastic chassis; I didn't realize how floppy it had gotten since I bought it. 

Guess that means I need to make dusting it out and tightening screws a slightly more regular service, lest brass screw inserts start to break loose from excessive flex.

I still like it... it fits nicely in that notch between ultralight laptop you'd normally think about swapping for a iPad vs business-class or .edu fleet models built like a battleship. Since I started actually using it in tablet mode, I really don't miss my iPad most of the time.

mnem
 

[AVGresponding]

Current probe arrived, and seems functional. Can't really test the bandwidth as my Black Star sig gen runs out of puff at 2.2MHz, and I can't find where I put the Thandar found it, will post more pics later.

[Robert763]

Drove down to pick up the HP 8920B radio test set today, Two hours each way but worth it. It's in very clean condition, seems hardly used with no connector wear visible. All working OK. I'm very pleased. Just wating for a £1 max fee offer and I'll put the 8924C on ebay. Unles any on on here is interested.

[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.

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
 

You may have mis-understood the point I was trying to get across. I agree 100% with everything you say, I was just trying to point out that there are reasons why these things have happened and they were not done to make the car unrepairable for the end user nor for any other "evil industry" reasons. They were done to satisfy legal requirements and market requirements. I have worked in the automotive electric/electronic industry for over 27 years, going from schematic design right up to strategic planning, so I have seen the changes first hand. I haven't always agreed with where things were going, neither for the end user, nor for the industry, but I understand why they had to happen anyway.

McBryce.

[AVGresponding]

Noticed the last pic the scope was in ET, no idea why at 2MHz   

Thandar goes up to 20MHz, but it's unstable af, reinforcing the fact I need a decent AFG.



Channel 1 is current probe set at 2mA/mV, 2 is x10 normal probe, signal is 13VAC according to the TDS420 (15 according to the Thandar display) across a 470R carbon comp 1W 10% resistor.

I'll leave you to argue about the maths, but just to muddy the waters a bit first, I tested the resistor with the LCR 819, and it tested out at XXX.XX ohms, and for a sanity check with the 7075: XXX.XXX ohms, and the Fluke 289: XXX.X ohms... I think this resistor might be out of spec...   

Note 1: I put the values in, but then decided it might be more fun for you to try and work it out. I'll post them at the weekend.
Note 2: Nothing was allowed to warm up first, I am not a voltnut!


PS: If any of you lot were bidding on the HP 66311 from anglia474747, sorry...

[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
 

You may have mis-understood the point I was trying to get across. I agree 100% with everything you say, I was just trying to point out that there are reasons why these things have happened and they were not done to make the car unrepairable for the end user nor for any other "evil industry" reasons. They were done to satisfy legal requirements and market requirements. I have worked in the automotive electric/electronic industry for over 27 years, going from schematic design right up to strategic planning, so I have seen the changes first hand. I haven't always agreed with where things were going, neither for the end user, nor for the industry, but I understand why they had to happen anyway.

McBryce.

Yeah, okay... but remember that the reason for those laws is because the car companies themselves wrote half of them that way, and the other half of the laws some other corporation wrote to take advantage of them. We're at a point now where their lobbyists literally present the laws in session, FFS. 

The only reason those laws are so convoluted is because THEY make them so, so they can try and make some end-run around some one of the few actually good laws that manages to get put in place, or so they can use them to screw the competition.

The laws are too complicated...? Then they should try just fucking living up to their own hype and actually MEETING some minimal standards instead of getting laws passed so they don't have to. 

Laws are complicated because it benefits corporations, NOT because it benefits PEOPLE or for the good of mankind.

mnem
     

"She only wants rules so she can break 'em!"

[bd139]

Ya jinxed me, ya bastahd! Got me crowing about my Lenovo, and the moment I took it across the living room to set up for another schooling session with my daughter, dead as a fucking dork-nob! 

Turns out it was nothing more than the LiPo cable unplugged internally; I noticed as I was taking it apart that every screw in the thing was loose, so I expect chassis flex allowed it to work loose.

But, as others have commented; another device built to a price, not to a spec... inside, the thing is built like a iPad. Integrated flat LiPo battery (I knew this) and while I like the backlit KB, it is integrated into the inner cover with melt-swaged peg assembly. 

Amazing actually, how solid & rigid they managed to make this thing feel with just a layer of anodized aluminum sheetmetal over the plastic fantastic chassis; I didn't realize how floppy it had gotten since I bought it. 

Guess that means I need to make dusting it out and tightening screws a slightly more regular service, lest brass screw inserts start to break loose from excessive flex.

I still like it... it fits nicely in that notch between ultralight laptop you'd normally think about swapping for a iPad vs business-class or .edu fleet models built like a battleship. Since I started actually using it in tablet mode, I really don't miss my iPad most of the time.

mnem
 

  That reminds me of my spare HP EliteBook which periodically requires "some reassembly". I dug it out to compare it... fuck me I'd forgotten how heavy it was.



iPad I didn't get on with. It's gone. Thinkpad T-series from now one.

Noticed the last pic the scope was in ET, no idea why at 2MHz   

Thandar goes up to 20MHz, but it's unstable af, reinforcing the fact I need a decent AFG.



Channel 1 is current probe set at 2mA/mV, 2 is x10 normal probe, signal is 13VAC according to the TDS420 (15 according to the Thandar display) across a 470R carbon comp 1W 10% resistor.

I'll leave you to argue about the maths, but just to muddy the waters a bit first, I tested the resistor with the LCR 819, and it tested out at XXX.XX ohms, and for a sanity check with the 7075: XXX.XXX ohms, and the Fluke 289: XXX.X ohms... I think this resistor might be out of spec...   

Note 1: I put the values in, but then decided it might be more fun for you to try and work it out. I'll post them at the weekend.
Note 2: Nothing was allowed to warm up first, I am not a voltnut!


PS: If any of you lot were bidding on the HP 66311 from anglia474747, sorry...

Grab an ass end Rigol DG811 and crack it to 100MHz dual channel if you want a decent AWG. Can't beat them for the cash.

[tautech]

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.

And then the bastards included EGR. 
Did they have shares in oil companies or something ?

Disabled on all my vehicles.

[tautech]

Current probe arrived, and seems functional. Can't really test the bandwidth as my Black Star sig gen runs out of puff at 2.2MHz, and I can't find where I put the Thandar found it, will post more pics later.

Now you need build one of these:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/scope-probe-deskew-fixture-pcb-project/

[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.

And then the bastards included EGR. 
Did they have shares in oil companies or something ?

Disabled on all my vehicles.

Does EGR decrease fuel economy?

[tautech]

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.

And then the bastards included EGR. 
Did they have shares in oil companies or something ?

Disabled on all my vehicles.

Does EGR decrease fuel economy?

Yes over time as the intake manifold gets clogged but its impact on oil life is the bigger issue.
Affects different motors in different ways, particularly diesel turbos as exhaust soot and turbo oil seal leakage create a paste that coats the insides of intake manifolds.

[0culus]

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.

And then the bastards included EGR. 
Did they have shares in oil companies or something ?

Disabled on all my vehicles.

The modern stuff works fine on engines that are designed from the ground up for it. Bolting all these emissions things into older engines doesn't work. Case in point the International/Navistar 6.0L turbodiesel that Ford put in their heavy duty pickups for a few years after discontinuing the excellent 7.3L International/Navistar turbodiesel. The 6.0L was intended for medium duty truck and school bus applications where (at the time) the emissions regs were far less restrictive. However, to put it in a passenger vehicle, modifications were required which basically lead to things running hotter than they were supposed to. Not to mention catastrophic failures of the variable geometry turbocharger. Later engines were also problematic, but I think the issues are mostly ironed out now that Ford is running an in-house diesel that was designed for modern emissions standards from day 0.

[Specmaster]

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 really do think that part of the problem (living in the past) is that our memory plays tricks on us and we think that everything was so much better, more fun, more reliable etc back then. I know, I to often keep thinking back and think that maybe I should grab this or that, like some Heathkit stuff etc. When you fall for the illusion and do it, thats when the reality actually hits you that you have been looking through rose-coloured glasses and things weren't fantastic back then because everything was less complicated then. Game playing for instance, back in the day Chuckie Egg was a big hit but today I seriously doubt that that game would satisfy anyone for long when compared to lets say Grand Theft Auto on a modern computer with its superior graphics capability and general performance. The world moves on and yet we humans still very much seem to be routed misguidedly, on the past 

[Robert763]

Yes EGR decreases fuel economy but reduces NOx emissions. It can also lead to unreiliabilty. It's illegal to disable it in most countries.

[tautech]

Yes EGR decreases fuel economy but reduces NOx emissions. It can also lead to unreiliabilty. It's illegal to disable it in most countries.

That's only if they can detect its not working. 

[bd139]

As a former owner of a Fiat, you can tell if it's a Fiat and the EGR is disabled because the engine still work. If the EGR is enabled, the driver will be lurching along slowly in limp mode with black smoke pissing out of the exhaust while on the way to the garage. Fucking hated that piece of shit 

[GreyWoolfe]

On other notes:

Happy Birthday Windows ME!

Never had the dis-pleasure of using it. I went directly from WIN95 to XP.

I had a Compaq laptop to point the dishes for the AOL Powered by Direct PC satellite internet.  It sucked balls.  Couldn't wait for the warranty to run out to replace the OS.  It ran much better after the change.

That reminds me of my spare HP EliteBook which periodically requires "some reassembly". I dug it out to compare it... fuck me I'd forgotten how heavy it was.



iPad I didn't get on with. It's gone. Thinkpad T-series from now one.

I have one myself running Win10.  Obviously not the fastest but it keeps me on one OS for all the computers which is good for my old semi-senile pea sized brain.

[tautech]

As a former owner of a Fiat, you can tell if it's a Fiat and the EGR is disabled because the engine still work. If the EGR is enabled, the driver will be lurching along slowly in limp mode with black smoke pissing out of the exhaust while on the way to the garage. Fucking hated that piece of shit 

If the ECU can sense it's disabled, that's a whole other level of pain. 

[bd139]

I really do think that part of the problem (living in the past) is that our memory plays tricks on us and we think that everything was so much better, more fun, more reliable etc back then. I know, I to often keep thinking back and think that maybe I should grab this or that, like some Heathkit stuff etc. When you fall for the illusion and do it, thats when the reality actually hits you that you have been looking through rose-coloured glasses and things weren't fantastic back then because everything was less complicated then. Game playing for instance, back in the day Chuckie Egg was a big hit but today I seriously doubt that that game would satisfy anyone for long when compared to lets say Grand Theft Auto on a modern computer with its superior graphics capability and general performance. The world moves on and yet we humans still very much seem to be routed misguidedly, on the past 

Some interesting points there. I don't think it was even better or more reliable to be honest. I remember a childhood which was filled with distortion, scratchy pots, no deoxit, tape jams and broken trays, dodgy connectors and trying to solder with an iron which could be confused easily with a scaffolding pole  .

Perhaps that was just familiar and a deep-set memory that we enjoy looking back at. But if we recreate it, it's a living nightmare. Like as you mention when you get a Heathkit off ebay that looks pretty tidy and when Hermes turf it over the back fence and you peel the packaging off and realised it was assembled with flux made from satan's bollock sweat by a blind dwarf with a plasma torch on "annihilate" mode. You are left hollowed and betrayed by those memories.

I think I'm done repairing shit after writing that 

On chuckie egg, yes. I remember paying £6 for that I think it was in about 1985. Equivalent of £18 today. I'd be pissed if I'd put £18 into that today. Actually my mother was pissed that I bought that and suggested I should have "gone in smiths and bought a history book instead of another wretched computer thing".

[nfmax]

Actually my mother was pissed that I bought that and suggested I should have "gone in smiths and bought a history book instead of another wretched computer thing".

Looks around the house...

...full of wretched computer things...

...also full of history books

[Robert763]

As a former owner of a Fiat, you can tell if it's a Fiat and the EGR is disabled because the engine still work. If the EGR is enabled, the driver will be lurching along slowly in limp mode with black smoke pissing out of the exhaust while on the way to the garage. Fucking hated that piece of shit 

That's odd I ran a 1.9l 150hp multijet engined Fiat for 5 years and 60,000 miles (most of that was 11 mile each way commute and it had 50,000 miles on it when I bought it) without any EGR or DPF troubles. I did install the Fiat approved restrictor plate on the EGR valve just after I bought it.

Not being caught doing something illegal does not make it legal

[bd139]

As a former owner of a Fiat, you can tell if it's a Fiat and the EGR is disabled because the engine still work. If the EGR is enabled, the driver will be lurching along slowly in limp mode with black smoke pissing out of the exhaust while on the way to the garage. Fucking hated that piece of shit 

That's odd I ran a 1.9l 150hp multijet engined Fiat for 5 years and 60,000 miles (most of that was 11 mile each way commute and it had 50,000 miles on it when I bought it) without any EGR or DPF troubles. I did install the Fiat approved restrictor plate on the EGR valve just after I bought it.

Not being caught doing something illegal does not make it legal

Interesting. I should have done that. I lost 2 EGRs. Then the DPF went at 70k miles. Also lost two suspension arms, various bushes, joints, a side window, the side of it entirely (some twat took the side off while it was parked somewhere) both the rear windows stopped opening and my personal dignity crawled away. This was a multijet engine albeit a 1.3.

Going to be honest, I didn't pay for the Fiat. I didn't need a car at the time or want one with the obligations it comes with but my father turned up with it one day as a thinly veiled gift gesture which turned into a tool to manipulate me into his errand boy after they took his driving license away because he was a liability (cancer + aneurysm). The previous owner was a horsey woman who had used it to tow boxes so the engine, gearbox and suspension were all completely fucked and it was full of dog hair but the sales snake saw him as an easy target which he was because he was a prize idiot. So I suffered that for I think 6 years, in the middle of which he dropped dead. The fucking thing was a ball and chain which ate stacks of cash and I celebrated the day it went so I may have a disproportionate hate for Fiats and Multijets after that  .

I now drive a pissy little 1.0L Citroen C3. It can get enough test gear in it for me. Oh look and a reference back to nostalgia and Heathkit again 



Edit: I'm now missing radio rallies after seeing that picture again . Think it was the first one I went to that everything worked from!

[tautech]

A D83 if I'm not mistaken. 

[bd139]

A D83 if I'm not mistaken. 

You are mistaken. But close-ish



Still can't believe I got that for 50 quid. I walked away from that hamfest with change from 100 quid (!)