Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mnementh]

On desk lamps, I have one of these which I thoroughly recommend:      https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M7YLKQ3/   Also RF silent!!!!

Lamp's too fukkin' smart; prolly cut my throat in my sleep when the robot revolt comes... 

mnem
 

[med6753]

I think your camera is bust. It's coming out a shade of green instead of blue 

I knew that was coming. 

[nfmax]

Just got myself a Digilent Digital Discovery: I needed the ability (here at home) to generate a timed pattern of logic-level signals, in response to a logic-level trigger input, to control the analogue board I'm currently working on. It does the job OK, but the software is not how I would have done it. OTOH the National Instrument PXI equivalent we were using yesterday in the lab wasn't any better.

Ordered last night from RS while eating supper after getting back from the lab, arrived first thing this morning. For this sort of purchase, I have taken to using RS. The same price as everywhere else (legit), but fast, free delivery and good after sales support in case of failures

[mnementh]

Making progress with the painting... It's actually a good thing that I have to pull out both benches. The AC mains wiring behind both has gotten out of hand and this will be a perfect opportunity to clean it up.

Where's med...?   

mnem
 

[mnementh]

https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/11/police-discover-worst-cable-management-situation-ever-following-sydney-marijuana-bust/

Meanwhile in Oz...

mnem
*agitating-ily*

[med6753]

Not that bad but close. 

[bd139]

Host Europe / 123-reg data centre looked like that circa 2003. No exaggeration. Had the misfortune of colo’ing in their facility.

[Saskia]

what an effing day, at least regarding internet.

Anyway, I also managed to do something productive. Here's my 100% decoupled soldering iron station. A bit of a Jerry rig, aka russian improvisation, but wtf, it worked.
In the background you can see the Altan speaker chassis w/o the woofer. I'll take them to this friend of mine and ask if they can be fixed. However, as the coil is already scratching on the housing I seriously doubt it.

Anyway, replacements waiting for pickup, which will make this speaker great again.

Rebuilt the stereo at my home location (small 1bdr appartment) with those Montans and the stereo gear I had collected.

Have a look.

for 50 sqm the power amp is more than sufficient.

[tggzzz]

Host Europe / 123-reg data centre looked like that circa 2003. No exaggeration. Had the misfortune of colo’ing in their facility.

So did Heathrow control tower,circa 1970, before ATC moved to West Drayton.

But that was more signal cables between racks than power cables.

[Zucca]

Vodafone cable internet shitshow today.
Technician came to install cable and found out that he could not route a cable from the central distribution point to my appartment. He wanted to drill into the outer wall twice, once from the house distribution to the outside (i.e. the basement, and where I live, we are about 3 m below the ocean water line ..., plus on the first floor (to you 'mericans: we start at 0 over here when counting floors ..)

Obviously you do need permission from the home owners association to do that, so no internet today.
They said: maybe we can try DSL, it's a lot slower, more expensive, and we need another 4 weeks to find out if we can get DSL hooked up for you.
 

Why don't I live in a decent country where they have a minimum of services. I mean, even Nigeria is ahead of Germany in terms of Internet. And then the frigging government is tawking about digital revolution and such crap.

Same to me, about 50 days to get DSL in this shit apartment in the middle of Munich.

[bd139]

I never thought I’d say this but clearly OpenReach rock 

[25 CPS]

I like boat anchors.  So I made a detour on my way home from the rotten midnight shift this morning to pick another one up to add to my collection.  I believe I can now confidently say that this is not a PH-163 power cord:



This is not a PH-163 power cord either:



This is also not a PH-163 power cord:



Now THIS IS A PH-163 power cord!



At least the cord isn’t built into the equipment and I can change it out since it’s detachable.  But holy crow...

[bd139]

On desk lamps, I have one of these which I thoroughly recommend:      https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B01M7YLKQ3/   Also RF silent!!!!

Lamp's too fukkin' smart; prolly cut my throat in my sleep when the robot revolt comes... 

mnem
 

Gah only problem with it was when I had that FT817 and attached a 25W homebrew PA, when I keyed down it'd turn off. I think the robot revolt would be taken down in seconds by a few hams without an ATU 

[factory]

Looks like I've won another HP counter to count all the other counters  and a second digital AVO.   

David

[bd139]

Ahha. Did consider a couple of items from that seller but quite frankly the drive put me off.

[factory]

They were posting stuff before, not sure why all these were collection only, the amount of different accounts they have gets very confusing too.
I've already been there once to collect the boat anchor grade HP 691D oscillator, I would have been thinking about taking the train if I had only won the HP counter. Also won the Airmec frequency meter.

David

[bd139]

Collection only I can understand. I find it difficult to pack a basic oscilloscope safely.

Train? Would be cheaper to ride a prostitute there 

[mansaxel]

And then the frigging government is tawking about digital revolution and such crap.

That's because they believed DTAG when the Phone Company said "Die Kunden werden alle mit BRI ISDN zufrieden sein" for like 15 years longer than the rest of Europe. (ISDN was cool 1998 when I got it, not much so 2010.)

DTAG still has way too much influence and market share. I've got a couple friends who've worked for them, and they say "It's like the Telecom Authority (judge, attorney and monopolist in one agency) in Sweden, in the 70s, only worse."

[Cerebus]

Riding the train is for people who would prefer a dominatrix.

"What do you want dearie? The whips and the nipple clamps, or the tea and British Rail sandwiches?"

[BU508A]

Two weeks ago we have cleared the house of a friend of mine. As I promised on Discord, here are some pictures of the stuff I took:

Let's start with this nice package of fifty Fuji Numitrons 3015F:





Next are some scope tubes. The Cossor one is looking very old, I didn't found anything online. A friend of mine is running a little museum with lots of vintage devices, mostly vacuum tube powered. The museum has also a section for old test equipement and I'll ask him if he is interested in this old scope tube.

The Cossor Cathode Ray Tube from the UK:



The next tubes are from Philips and one from Valvo, I think. The Philips are coming in two different colours, DG (green) and DB (blue).

Let's start with the DG 7-32 from Valvo


These are DB-7-2, tiny and very cute scope tubes, including some sockets:


This is a DB-9-3, a bit bigger than the others


This is another DG 7-32/01,  not sure, what the /01 is about, maybe an indicator for the fade-out-time.


And then I got two bench meters, a Keithley 2100 (has some issues with the VFD) and a Fluke 8845A. The HP 34401A is mine, last calibration Oct. 13th 2015 (Keysight Böblingen). I've sent it to Keysight shortly after I'd bought it.

This is the stack, measuring 5V from a DMMCheck r3 from Mr. Malone. The Keithley is a bit off, the Fluke and the HP are agreeing nicely.


Same stack, measuring 1mA coming from the DMMCheck. Same here: Fluke and HP are agreeing, the Keithley is a bit off.


Let's have a look at the resistance measuring part. I took my DIY 10kOhm reference resistor and measured it with the 4-wire technique.

The Fluke:


The Keithley (again, it is a bit off):


The HP:



And here are some details, e.g. calibration date, system version etc.

Let's start with the Fluke: cal date, display test (slight burn-in visible), system version. You have for sure noticed this "Error" indicator. But when I checked out the error messages, there was nothing.  Error gone. 


Next is the Keithley, cal date, system version and no errors:


And that's it.
Thanks for watching.

[bd139]

Next are some scope tubes. The Cossor one is looking very old, I didn't found anything online. A friend of mine is running a little museum with lots of vintage devices, mostly vacuum tube powered. The museum has also a section for old test equipement and I'll ask him if he is interested in this old scope tube.

The Cossor Cathode Ray Tube from the UK:

Cool stuff.

That's going to be a bugger to find anything about. Firstly the logo is a non standard one for them, roughly representing the Raytheon logo font (which incidentally was a pain in the arse because Raytheon only bough the letters for R A Y T H E O N and nothing else) which was way too late for the type of tube. Secondly Cossor made a ton of internal prototype, proprietary and avionics parts and most of the people who would know anything about anything that old is probably dead now based on the average age of the folk there 25 years ago or so. Looks fairly early and based on the lack of coating inside the tube. Worth asking on the following forum - lots of experts on there on CRTs which are UK specific: https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/

Just a point to make, when the yanks decided to rebrand everything RSL and everyone left, half the documentation, staff and old products disappeared in a cloud of vapour in under 30 seconds flat. That was in ~1999 which was pre "archival stuff".

There's a dude who managed to reregister cossor.co.uk who might have some info after RSL dropped it.

[factory]

Never saw this one, listed in a non-TE category. 


The train would be even cheaper if I had a BR rail pass, unfortunately they stopped providing them to new employees decades ago (before I joined the company).

David

[bd139]

That's the bit of kit I wanted 

[mansaxel]

MetraHit 25S arrived. Yes, it looks the part, and dances the dance:

[factory]

Two weeks ago we have cleared the house of a friend of mine. As I promised on Discord, here are some pictures of the stuff I took:

Let's start with this nice package of fifty Fuji Numitrons 3015F:

I've got some of those Minitrons, still attached to the display module from a petrol pump (sorry picture is crap), the very rusty PSU with RIFA's is somewhere in the shed too, wish I had kept the pulser modules as they would have been interesting to experiment with the HP reversible counter.


David