Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

Yes. ISO or death.

[factory]

A shame to see the state of these early digital LCR bridges & associated equipment, they are all missing parts & boards;
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284157744953
This one still has the rather colourful transformers, but the dekatron boards are long gone.


This is what they would have looked like, more pictures here: https://www.vintage-radio.net/forum/showthread.php?t=158347


David

[Specmaster]

Yes. ISO or death.

Never......

[Specmaster]

Gah, my AD584-M reference unit has just shat itself, does anyone actually have a schematic for these units at all that they could send my way?

All output voltages are now in mV's and D5 just by the on/off switch, next the inductor is cooking itself 

[mansaxel]

No, the form 3-Letter-Abbrev-DD-YYYY is superior to all others; there is zero ambiguity AND it is only one more character in the CH$, FFS.  Think aboot all the wasted characters spent arguing this fekking single concept, and that one extra character means squat. It is only some people and their compulsive need to reduce everything to numbers which makes this an issue at all.

You have not sorted things with sort(1) or awk(1), I see. The modification of nicely looking dates to computer parseable dates is a small price to pay for them to be trivially parseable by our mechancial Baldrick, the computer. No locale issues either. I just could be arsed to take three languages here, and so far it is collision free, but adding more languages there is bound to be a three-letter abbreviation conflict.

Monday	lundi	Montag
Tuesday	mardi	Dienstag
Wednesday	mercredi	Mittwoch
Thursday	jeudi	Donnerstag
Friday	vendredi	Freitag
Saturday	samedi	Samstag
Sunday	dimanche	Sonntag

I prefer 24-hour time with the colon as well, since it allows tacking on seconds with zero ambiguity; but that is probably objectively a bit weird.

mnem
* sworn before me on Jan 24, 2022 09:00:47 local time *

The hours:minutes:seconds  part of your confusion is easier to accept. Because it is correct!

[McBryce]

Could you add Irish too please?:

Monday    lundi   Montag      An Luan
Tuesday    mardi   Dienstag      An Mháirt
Wednesday mercredi   Mittwoch      An Chéadaoin
Thursday    jeudi   Donnerstag   An Déardaoin
Friday    vendredi   Freitag      An Aoine
Saturday    samedi   Samstag      An Satharn
Sunday    dimanche   Sonntag      An Domhnach

McBryce.

[mansaxel]

And I'm confused. Apparently this is confusion Sunday.

NOW i read "Three-letter abbreviation for month" not "day". My point stands. It is easier, and essentially locale-independent to sort numbers. And there's bound to be locale collisions, not to mention the small detail that already in German, an Umlaut is sneaking in. The part of the world that insist on 7-bit ASCII in everything as they sit in front of their  UTF-8 capable computers are clearly challenged here.

[bd139]

I have developed a much shorter encoding for times and dates which allows arbitrary precise dates to a second accuracy using only phonetically unambiguous letters less than or equal to 6 characters long. It’s also sortable into temporal order using sort and further compressible into a 4 byte unsigned integer

I intend for everyone to use this encoding in my new world order which has the primary selling point that it only has one time zone (and laser sharks and blackjack and hookers) thus saving ambiguity.

[TERRA Operative]

Anyone got some spare pocket money to spend?

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/x712051877

[Saskia]

ok, seems I won the active probe thingie.

@Robert will PM you regarding address and such, many thanks in advance.

Apart from that, we had a chicken lunch. Furthermore ...

Seems that the card is running as advertized. Plus, the very helpful folks on the discord channel were able to send me the board definition files within just 10 minutes.

[Cerebus]

Anyone got some spare pocket money to spend?

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/x712051877

I'll check down the back of the sofa for some spare change...

[AVGresponding]

ok, seems I won the active probe thingie.

@Robert will PM you regarding address and such, many thanks in advance.

Apart from that, we had a chicken lunch. Furthermore ...

Seems that the card is running as advertized. Plus, the very helpful folks on the discord channel were able to send me the board definition files within just 10 minutes.

I saw there had been a little battle, glad you emerged victorious!

[URI]

Anyone got some spare pocket money to spend?

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/x712051877

I'll check down the back of the sofa for some spare change...

Pah! There's another one really cheap:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/284157359616

...you just have to get rid off a tiny fatal failure to get it working again.. (for parts).       

[Cerebus]

Anyone got some spare pocket money to spend?

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/x712051877

I'll check down the back of the sofa for some spare change...

Pah! There's another one really cheap:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/284157359616

...you just have to get rid off a tiny fatal failure to get it working again.. (for parts).       

Really bloody annoying that they don't say what the failure is. That thing is stuffed with self diagnostics, it's bound to display a useful message. Probably just wants a new beam tube, which isn't a cheap part but (new tube price + $1200) would be a good price for one of those in working condition with a fresh tube. I've always wanted a caesium clock...

[Saskia]

and paid for. Thanks a lot, Robert, for your help.

[med6753]

Gah, my AD584-M reference unit has just shat itself, does anyone actually have a schematic for these units at all that they could send my way?

All output voltages are now in mV's and D5 just by the on/off switch, next the inductor is cooking itself 

I've got 2 of these but sorry, no schematic. Wish I did. You might have to reverse engineer it. 

Edit, just for giggles try disconnecting the battery and power it from the USB.

[McBryce]

Anyone got some spare pocket money to spend?

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/x712051877

I'll check down the back of the sofa for some spare change...

Pah! There's another one really cheap:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/284157359616

...you just have to get rid off a tiny fatal failure to get it working again.. (for parts).       

I think I need to re-calibrate my "really cheap" standard, it seems to be way off what other peoples "really cheap" standards are.

McBryce.

[med6753]

and paid for. Thanks a lot, Robert, for your help.

Good deal. Glad this worked out. Now hopefully there won't be customs hassles like I encountered when I sent AVG his hp stuff.

[med6753]

Anyone got some spare pocket money to spend?

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/x712051877

I'll check down the back of the sofa for some spare change...

Pah! There's another one really cheap:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/284157359616

...you just have to get rid off a tiny fatal failure to get it working again.. (for parts).       

I think I need to re-calibrate my "really cheap" standard, it seems to be way off what other peoples "really cheap" standards are.

McBryce.

It would have been nice if they gave a little more detail other than "Fatal failure" especially since you are dealing with radioactive material. My suspicion the problem IS the radioactive material. 

[mansaxel]

Anyone got some spare pocket money to spend?

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/x712051877

I'll check down the back of the sofa for some spare change...

Pah! There's another one really cheap:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/284157359616

...you just have to get rid off a tiny fatal failure to get it working again.. (for parts).       

Really bloody annoying that they don't say what the failure is. That thing is stuffed with self diagnostics, it's bound to display a useful message. Probably just wants a new beam tube, which isn't a cheap part but (new tube price + $1200) would be a good price for one of those in working condition with a fresh tube. I've always wanted a caesium clock...

I've got a friend who before the lockdown waves drove from Sweden to Schweiz to pick up a hydrogen maser for a sensible amount. He wanted to complement his cæsium standard with a short-time better behaved one.  As I'm told by the professional time-nuts in Sweden (I happen to have connections with the people who wind The Clock in Sweden) you really want a cluster of perhaps two 5071 Cs clocks and a hydrogen maser on top if it's going to be really good.  Anyway, he's far deeper into time-nut territory than yours truly. Sort of liberating to have someone to compare with in that direction.

[McBryce]

Anyone got some spare pocket money to spend?

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/x712051877

I'll check down the back of the sofa for some spare change...

Pah! There's another one really cheap:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/284157359616

...you just have to get rid off a tiny fatal failure to get it working again.. (for parts).       

I think I need to re-calibrate my "really cheap" standard, it seems to be way off what other peoples "really cheap" standards are.

McBryce.

It would have been nice if they gave a little more detail other than "Fatal failure" especially since you are dealing with radioactive material. My suspicion the problem IS the radioactive material. 

Using the word fatal in conjunction with a device that contains radioactive material was probably a bad choice of words. Especially as Caesium emmits gamma rays.

McBryce.

[Ero-Shan]

Ok, now I'm confused because that is not how I've been taught how to write the date down and almost everyone I know do it the same way as I do and is DD-MM-YYYY, so todays date becomes 24/01/2021 which normally will be shortened to 24/1/21 YMMV.

Oh, interesting. As I wrote above; That's basically the non-ISO common style here in Germany, too.
Ok, we use dots instead of slashes, but that's a minor detail. 

This "little detail" is exactly what pisses me off. We Germans always wrote dates in the form dd.mm.yyyy. But the some stupid asses found out that merkins wrote their dates with slashes. Wanting to be stylish, they exchanged the dots with dashes.
Now, when you see a date like 04/08/2021, what does it mean? The slashes suggest it might be in U.S. format, but then ...

[med6753]

And today's date is......who cares, I'm retired. 

[tautech]

And today's date is......

Monday 25/1/21 7.52am 

[BU508A]

Anyone got some spare pocket money to spend?

https://page.auctions.yahoo.co.jp/jp/auction/x712051877

I'd rather go for an Advantest R6581 8 1/2 digit multimeter for ca. 1700 Euro.
If there wasn't shipping, customs, VAT etc.

https://buyee.jp/item/yahoo/auction/f452869498