Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

@bd139, I took your advice re eBay account and opened another bank account specifically for eBay payments to go in otherwise it will remain empty to prevent chargebacks, thanks for the tip 

Won't eBay just close your account or some other drastic thing, if you prevent chargebacks?

No, how can they do that when there is no stipulation that you have to keep a certain amount of funds in your bank account? Ebay are intending to breakaway from PayPal who used to act as arbitrators in the event of a buyer making a false claim against the seller. We don't yet know just how eBay will react in a situation like that, who will they favour? At least PayPal was neutral and if it was unclear, they would refund the buyer and allow the seller to keep the money they received in the first place.

[SilverSolder]

@bd139, I took your advice re eBay account and opened another bank account specifically for eBay payments to go in otherwise it will remain empty to prevent chargebacks, thanks for the tip 

Won't eBay just close your account or some other drastic thing, if you prevent chargebacks?

No, how can they do that when there is no stipulation that you have to keep a certain amount of funds in your bank account? Ebay are intending to breakaway from PayPal who used to act as arbitrators in the event of a buyer making a false claim against the seller. We don't yet know just how eBay will react in a situation like that, who will they favour? At least PayPal was neutral and if it was unclear, they would refund the buyer and allow the seller to keep the money they received in the first place.

Have they actually said they will do charge-backs at all?

[med6753]

With this model in mind, it becomes exceptionally clear why (for example) items from LA destined for Dallas can be found holidaying in Poughkeepsie.  It is rumoured that the movie "The Secret Life of Walter Mitty" is based on such experiences.

[mnementh]

went to the Metro wholesale place in Bremen and lo and behold, they had a PacMan Arcade in stock.

Not anymore.

I hate lugging that stuff upstairs ...

A real one, or a Arcade1Up...? I keep seeing Wayfair popups for them around $600 supposedly with delivery... and I am tempted... but I've played on them at Costco, and I know it's only a fukkin' tiny 17" screen. Yes, that 2" makes a big difference.

mnem
 

[Saskia]

Tbh an Arcade1up. They do need that riser,  they are a lot smaller, but they do not weigh 300 lbs.
I do have a Phoenix and a crazy Kong cocktail table plus an elevator action and those are just huge and unwieldy. Had a gauntlet as well but was desperate snuff to actually sell it some 20 years ago.
I am not in the Hulk class and thus somewhat unable to carry 300 lbs into the 3rd floor ....
The Arcade1up is 60 lbs and it also takes less than 50W instead of 700-800. And the Pacman one is sold out about everywhere.

[beanflying]

Tbh an Arcade1up. They do need that riser,  they are a lot smaller, but they do not weigh 300 lbs.
I do have a Phoenix and a crazy Kong cocktail table plus an elevator action and those are just huge and unwieldy. Had a gauntlet as well but was desperate snuff to actually sell it some 20 years ago.
I am not in the Hulk class and thus somewhat unable to carry 300 lbs into the 3rd floor ....
The Arcade1up is 60 lbs and it also takes less than 50W instead of 700-800. And the Pacman one is sold out about everywhere.

Uni Memories with Elevator Action (table version on cramped stools to play) and bad Coffee in the Student Union building 

[Saskia]

@mnem 2" always make a difference. Trust me, I can tell ...
 

Fwiw, I think those Arcade1ups are not bad at all. Good screen, lot less danger of spontaneous combustion, easier to move around and don't take up as much space. My elevator action upright is still sitting in the garage because there is just no way to bring it up into the 3rd floor. Those Arcade1ups I can move without help.
Pinballs are a nightmare to move, fullsize arcades are hell.

[mnementh]

I was wondering how long it would take for someone to jump on that one... I was quite proud of myself; saying that with a straight face.

Tbh an Arcade1up. They do need that riser,  they are a lot smaller, but they do not weigh 300 lbs.
I do have a Phoenix and a crazy Kong cocktail table plus an elevator action and those are just huge and unwieldy. Had a gauntlet as well but was desperate snuff to actually sell it some 20 years ago.
I am not in the Hulk class and thus somewhat unable to carry 300 lbs into the 3rd floor ....
The Arcade1up is 60 lbs and it also takes less than 50W instead of 700-800. And the Pacman one is sold out about everywhere.

Uni Memories with Elevator Action (table version on cramped stools to play) and bad Coffee in the Student Union building 

Oh, yeah... I know the real ones are a heavy bitch... I replaced a few CRTS back in the day. The real dicksore were the jumbo Mortal Kombat with the 25" CRT... and there was a multi-game table with a 25" screen (or was it 27"?) and 1/2" glass/Lexan top that weighed like 2 of the original Pac-Man tables. Backache central.

Also many memories of a misspent youth feeding quarters into such beasts; plus Centipede, Moon Patrol & Tempest at Caruso's Pizza.   

That's why when a Pandora Box 11 Arcade box came up for $129, I jumped on it... they have the VGA connector on them and can actually scale the gamefield to the correct aspect ratio even on a modern screen. 2700 games; at least half are dupes/versions of same games, and of those, probably 300 solidly playable titles, heavy on the Street Fighter type games. Still hard to beat that much fun for less $$$ than a night of boozin'.

One of these days I'll fulfill my dream of hacking a XBOX 360 controller into a arcade-style controller with dual digital-proportional analog joysticks as well as all the other XBOX 360 buttons and shoulder buttons. They are still supported in Winbloze10 as long as you have a genuine MS receiver.

mnem
*knocks self unconscious with a Asteroids mallet*

[bd139]

@bd139, I took your advice re eBay account and opened another bank account specifically for eBay payments to go in otherwise it will remain empty to prevent chargebacks, thanks for the tip 

Won't eBay just close your account or some other drastic thing, if you prevent chargebacks?

Probably. This is about partitioning their opinion about what is a fair and just transaction away from your main bank account. This is exactly how most e-commerce companies run as well. The merchant “sink account” usually has a float amount in it and the rest is transferred out.

I’ve got to say though that there have been no issues so far. I can’t complain. I’ve sold some high value items and dealt with a high value return and it has been well timed and fair. They are not attempting to rip off customers.

Also update on packlink. They have paid out within their terms and conditions so far a total of £185. Tips for sellers:

1. Photograph the box open with item packed in it.
2. Photograph the outside of the box with label stuck to it.
3. Keep them religiously for 3 months.
4. Can’t lose 

[bd139]

@bd139, I took your advice re eBay account and opened another bank account specifically for eBay payments to go in otherwise it will remain empty to prevent chargebacks, thanks for the tip 

Won't eBay just close your account or some other drastic thing, if you prevent chargebacks?

No, how can they do that when there is no stipulation that you have to keep a certain amount of funds in your bank account? Ebay are intending to breakaway from PayPal who used to act as arbitrators in the event of a buyer making a false claim against the seller. We don't yet know just how eBay will react in a situation like that, who will they favour? At least PayPal was neutral and if it was unclear, they would refund the buyer and allow the seller to keep the money they received in the first place.

Have they actually said they will do charge-backs at all?

Yes they have. If you don’t handle an INR or INAD case then they just refund the buyer. They pay the buyer first and then the merchant recovers the money from you. If you do handle either of those and offer a refund then the merchant recovers it. You can delay this until the item is returned and checked out.

The case I am protecting myself from is if the buyer is making a fraudulent claim or has returned a different item as I can’t win with the default eBay policy and I would have evidence which supports my case. My option is always on the table to burn the eBay account and say “see you in court”. So far, eBay haven’t won a case against private seller debt collection in the UK I understand from some research.

I don’t need eBay to survive although it’d be nice. As I always say: always have an exit plan.

[beanflying]

  listed under Test Measurment.... What is scary is the 58 sold  $0.60 stamp, envelope and time for $1 in sales.

eBay auction: #384141978729

[bd139]

Feedback on that is suspicious. Might be being used to build a fake reputation. All their buyers have low feedback (3-4 feedback) and account was registered in Feb. This will magically start selling crystal penises, clothes which don't look like the picture and explosive consumer electronic goods within a month or so 

[beanflying]

Didn't get that far but yep buyers in the sub 10 items level. 

And Reported for what it is worth best case is they will lose their account and some time if evilbay acts

[mansaxel]

Look for ex-baggage handlers in management and supervisory roles.  Front line workers with a strong arm and reasonable aim are prime candidates for such positions.  (This also explains many of the mechanical stresses to which packages are subjected.)

When I did a winter as conscientious objector as ESMS fire brigade, we used to call the luggage sorting facility "The Crusher" which was probably unfair, because ESMS is so small that there is scant sorting taking place, and only on departures; the arrivals were more like "Drive the baggage train up to the one belt and move the luggage on to it."

As part of my service I used to help people with disabilities in and out of planes. And fetch their wheelchairs in the cargo compartment. I got pretty good at opening Bay 1 on the MD80 that SAS flew ESSA-ESMS every 2 hours. Once there were no wheelchairs but a coffin. We backed out.

[vk6zgo]

Stabil fuel treatment was my hero yesterday too; mower started first pull and ran smooth as glass all afternoon. I hope for similar with the 2-strokes later in the week when I do the edging and blow the porch off.

As for electric start... I've had it on garden tractors and snowblowers ever since growing up in the salt belt; would never give it up on those things. I think a spinner dome on the engine for a rubber cup on a cordless drill would be a grand idea on those small motors tho... like we use on model airplanes. But that kind of generic solution doesn't give the MFR parts turnover/upsale opportunities.

mnem

Back in the day, in Oz, lawnmowers used a "recoil start", consisting of a large spring which you wound up with a folding handle on top of the "starter".
Once it was fully wound up, the handle would be folded & struck, releasing the spring, rotating the crankshaft, & starting the engine.

This worked well, & was all but ubiquitous on mowers & the like.
Like all things that work, for some unknown reason they replaced them with something that doesn't---------#%^*!?€¥#!!! "cord starts!"

I hate 'em! --------You heave like mad on the cord, the motor coughs, so you have to wait  for the cord to return into the spool, & try it again.

Next time, the thing starts for a second, then dies.

Try again several times----no joy, the damn thing has flooded.
At this point, the cord no longer returns all the way, & a piece about the length of your forearm stays flopping around outside forever, looking for a mechanism to get caught up in.

By now, if like me, you are an elderly gentleman (nice word for "Old Fart"), you are sweating, your arm feels like its about to fall off, so you say "Stuff it!", have a cuppa, lie down, & go on eevblog to whinge.

[mansaxel]

You just know that the younger generation will sign up for this, thinking they are being environmentally responsible, "easy monthly payments" plan in hand...

I have an electric mower. It's got a cord. I aggressively avoid battery-powered devices, especially when they don't have to be (that is, the usage pattern would allow them to be powered by mains directly). When I saw a battery Dremel the other day, I thought "Oh, no, not another thing they've ruined". Then I went back to using my Proxxon FBS240E, which is mains powered. 

Heat gun shoe shine:

I can think of (but don't want to contribute to BD139's fsck stats, so am content thinking of them) the series of Words an inspired NCO would utter at that.

[vk6zgo]

Oh, yeah... I know the real ones are a heavy bitch... I replaced a few CRTS back in the day. The real dicksore were the jumbo Mortal Kombat with the 25" CRT... and there was a multi-game table with a 25" screen (or was it 27"?) and 1/2" glass/Lexan top that weighed like 2 of the original Pac-Man tables. Backache central.

Also many memories of a misspent youth feeding quartebrs into such beasts; plus Centipede, Moon Patrol & Tempest at Caruso's Pizza.   

mnem
*knocks self unconscious with a Asteroids mallet*

We were so poor that our kids could only afford to play "Single Dragon!"

[med6753]

Today's ramblings and misfortunes....

According to the latest tracking the 6BY8 tube is still stuck at the Kearny, NJ distribution center with no delivery date. Ya think I might get it before Christmas? 

Replacement tubular/coupling caps for the Type 547 PSU are in the hands of FedEx with an expected delivery of Friday.

Discovered that the Type 547 PSU does NOT sequence up the same as the Type 535A PSU even though they are the same basic design. Both the +100V and -150V reference are held off at essentially 0 volts until the time delay kicks in. The Type 535A brings the +100V up to +70V and then the time delay kicks in. So that smoking gun was a flaming fart. 

What I'm basically left with is despite a good power off DC resistance to ground there has to be some sort of short that only appears when power is applied. What could that possibly be? I have a thought. The +100V goes all over the scope and provides series string filament voltages to the tubes, including the plug-in. There MIGHT be a tube that has a filament to cathode short that only shows itself when the tube heats up. So today I'm going to concentrate on isolating sections of the +100V, apply power, and see what happens. This is going to be no easy feat because as stated the +100V goes all over.

Good possibility that procedure is going to involve magic smoke.       

[med6753]

@mnem 2" always make a difference. Trust me, I can tell ...
 

I love it when you talk dirty. 

[tggzzz]

I aggressively avoid battery-powered devices, especially when they don't have to be (that is, the usage pattern would allow them to be powered by mains directly).

A similar example is a car tyre inflator powered by an internal lithium battery.

Inevitably when I come to use it once in 6 months or in 5 years time, the battery will be flat or destroyed.

Much simpler and more reliable to simply power it from the car battery via the cigar lighter; if the car battery is dead it doesn't really matter if the tyre pressure is low.

Ditto large vacuum cleaners; they should be mains powered so they don't run down halfway through a carpet. OTOH, I do like the Dyson small handheld cleaners that are effectively a powered dustpan and brush.

[Saskia]

my car tyre inflator basically consists of a mains powered compressor that is run off 2 large boat (or car) batteries hooked up to a Meanwell true sine wave 1kW inverter. That may seem like overkill, but actually works.

[med6753]

Here you go bd. Guy still has the two 454's for only $40 USD for the both of them.

I got enough on my plate for now. 

https://hudsonvalley.craigslist.org/ele/d/campbell-hall-ham-radio-electronics/7313766212.html

[mansaxel]

Currently writing CGI scripts in Perl, to control hardware via TELNET.

Will serve them on Port 80, using HTTP.  In a frameset.

Do note that this technology is 20 years newer than the Tek 547.

Aaaand Done! The equally ancient revision control system (RCS) reports release date as 2018, which is because I've been developing away from the source tree. Just fixed that, but can't be arsed to swap the pic.

So, what's this then? I've got an Extron matrix, that routes balanced audio in my home stereo. It takes commands over either front panel, RS232 or MIL-STD-1782, and this update is from the former to the latter; my old one was RS-232 only. I've recently got a "new" one off of Ebay for peanuts and expanded from 8x8 to 12x8, and got a network interface. (The Ebay procedure was a pain -- at first I bought what I thought was an audio matrix, but was sent a S-video one. Successfully contested that and was refunded, while keeping the matrix. Second try was even cheaper, and correct. )

But, the old web server using basically the same technology and a serial line, was decommissioned. And I finally got a large enough supply of boredom and round tuits that I sat down and taught myself Net::Telnet.

As it turns out, doing things over telnet is much easier than fighting timing and delays over serial. I removed a lot of bodges and cleaned things up. While I was at it, I also put a panic button and some Squeezebox controls in. The panic button sends "tear all crosspoints out" and the Squeezebox controls are another telnet, to the server application running on another port on the same machine.

The security model is based on layers. The server sits on a network that can't talk to the Internet, not even through NAT. Computers that can reach it are supposed to be controlled only by trusted people. There are holes in this large enough to pass an ocean liner through, but I'm OK with that, after some in-depth security analysis, mostly in form of hand-waving.

The most modern part here of course is the use of CSS for formatting. In contrast to Javascript I think that CSS constitutes actual progress, inasmuch as it's a continuation of the split between content and formatting. Frankly, I hate frontend development. The most refined interface is the command line. The rest is just lazyness.

[mansaxel]

my car tyre inflator basically consists of a mains powered compressor that is run off 2 large boat (or car) batteries hooked up to a Meanwell true sine wave 1kW inverter. That may seem like overkill, but actually works.

My car tyre inflator is called ATLAS COPCO and runs on 400V AC three-phase. For when I'm away from the garage, I've got a smartphone app that allows me to call assistane (AA / ADAC style but not tied to a membership) regardless of which car I'm driving and regardless where in Europe I am. But for a flat tire I don't. I swap it, since I've got a spare and tools in the car. And I check the pressure on the spare regularly.

[capt bullshot]

My car tyre inflator is called ATLAS COPCO and runs on 400V AC three-phase.

Of course, if you're a real man (saxel), you're supposed to do it right