Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Neomys Sapiens]

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 ...

Did you get the adaptor needed to refill those little dots that thing is eating?

[Saskia]

it's the green version with regrowing dots which requires fertilizer in the form of 1 € coins ...

[ch_scr]

Ok, I'm back. T480 (8th gen 4-Core i7, 16GB ram, 1920x1080 IPS Panel, backlit keyboard & nvidia mx150 as cherry on top)
Owner put in a 500gb samsung 860 evo and a 250gb Toshiba RC100 m.2.
Seems to come from a good home, owner told me he never charged the battery over 80% and had lenovo exchange the charger for a non weeping one. To top it off he threw in the old 16g optane, might make a fast usb stick?
All that for 750€? Still not sure I'm not dreaming 
Installing debian on the Toshiba right now 

[Saskia]

Optane for USB ?
Umm, no.

How much do you want for the Optane ?

[ch_scr]

Worst thing is I have to sort out my USB stick to make a W10 install disk. And lets not think about shuffeling the data pile over - I might get to sorting it this time (who am I kidding?)

[xrunner]

Ghetto SMD desoldering tool.

Hey it works. 

[mnementh]

A little elbow grease was actually quite enough in this case; the object was to protect and preserve a pair of work boots, not impress Admiralty.

mnem
 

Not surprising when you use a Polaris missile as a sex toy. 

What exactly are you suggesting here, med...?

mnem
*snif* It's true... I've been in love with Grace Hopper ever since the nanoseconds incident... *snif*

[bd139]

Ok, I'm back. T480 (8th gen 4-Core i7, 16GB ram, 1920x1080 IPS Panel, backlit keyboard & nvidia mx150 as cherry on top)
Owner put in a 500gb samsung 860 evo and a 250gb Toshiba RC100 m.2.
Seems to come from a good home, owner told me he never charged the battery over 80% and had lenovo exchange the charger for a non weeping one. To top it off he threw in the old 16g optane, might make a fast usb stick?
All that for 750€? Still not sure I'm not dreaming 
Installing debian on the Toshiba right now 

Nice deal! Also T480 which was the last one you could actually change the battery in. Winner winner chicken dinner to quote Dave.

[bd139]

Ghetto SMD desoldering tool.

Hey it works. 

I've done exactly that before. It does indeed work 

[BU508A]

Ghetto SMD desoldering tool.

Hey it works. 

I've done exactly that before. It does indeed work 

Ungh, I think, I'll stick with my hot air rework high-tech thingie from Aoyue. 

(picture similar)

[ch_scr]

[...]
Nice deal! Also T480 which was the last one you could actually change the battery in. Winner winner chicken dinner to quote Dave.

It's also the first newer gen Thinkpad with 25W quadcore & newer gen nvidia (mx 150 instead 940 mx).
Makes it so it's not worth to get anything from before tbh. If you don't get the nvidia T470 is ok as well, but the line is excactly there.

[mnementh]

Thanks to BangUgood for sending me a free sample of the comprehensive RF tester.
2 out of 2 not working, but i am sure that is just bad luck and these just slipped true quality control 
it is a real pity... if they check better what they send and how they send.. packaging.. it would be a nice device...

https://youtu.be/YrKRUExTtps

i so wanted to show you a nice compareison aside the Marconi...   guess the stars were not aligned

Yeah, I spent some time doing the BG Reviewer thing back when I was playing with the Tiny Whoop-class micro-quadcopters; you're not the only one who's received busted-ass stuff from them for review. You'd think they would take a moment to make sure a unit going to a reviewer at least works before they ship it out; and when you try to get things sorted with them to have something you can actually review, they treat you like they're doing you a favor. 

This strange attitude towards what Westerners consider "proper customer service" is something I've encountered in many different product markets, not just RC toys. That recurring experience (along with nearly universal shamelessly cut-throat dealings with channel partners and even those who bankroll their business) is one of the main reasons I keep repeating that our Asian cousins simply do not think the same way we do about such things.

Cheers,

mnem
As always, take with a pinch of salt big enough to pickle a dwagon; IMHO, YMMV, DQMOT, WTFBBQ, DILLIGAF...?

Man... i rest my case.... and i wanted to make it work...they don't work with me.... and i am a positive guy.... man... what can i say.....
thanks for the even wors crap you send me when i paid for it?    guess that does sums it up..
well from there side... who is tony and those few 1000 watching that.. we have biljons here... or other don't don't watch tony// 

Yeah, well... these sites deal in profit by nickels & dimes. I imagine there's little drive to worry aboot a single customer. No idea how they don't get that the attitude translates so poorly to reviews tho.

The bottom line here is the bottom line... and we may make fun of bd139 being a Ferengi, but these guys really are...

mnem

[Saskia]

which reminds me that I have to swap out my company T460 for a company T480 or 490 when I get a chance. It's just the backup notebook, but still. Even 16 GB don't cut it with all that corporate Microsoft sheeeet installed.

The P53 however is a completely different thingie.
It works, mate ...

[Cerebus]

.....
Battery life
Assuming fully-charged Ni-MH batteries:
Meter only: 20 hours (approximately)
Source/Meter: 4 hours (approximately)

  4 hours? 4 freaking hours?!?   

And this is why my go-to handheld is my Fluke 25 - officially 1000 hours on a PP3 and in the case of mine still running on the PP3 I stuck in it when I got it secondhand several years ago (I'm not quite sure how long. 4-5 years?).

[Cerebus]

it's the green version with regrowing dots which requires fertilizer in the form of 1 € coins ...

Is it actually that new, or has it been retrofitted to take €?

The freaking Euro may have taken some of the pain out of travelling, but it's also taken some of the fun out of travelling. I used to quite like the reminder of a good trip sitting in my spare change bowl, a French franc here, a Deutschmark there; and I spent ages learning to pronounce pfennig properly. 

[Saskia]

tbh neither as it is an Arcade1up unit. This was a joke reply to Neomys' comment.

retrofitting to Euro is not that difficult, those coin testers cost about 25 quid.

[bd139]

Ghetto SMD desoldering tool.

Hey it works. 

I've done exactly that before. It does indeed work 

Ungh, I think, I'll stick with my hot air rework high-tech thingie from Aoyue. 

(picture similar)

I had an Aoyue 936 which somewhat put me off their stuff. I was happily soldering away and the handpiece fell to bits. Then the element went and when I took it to bits I found rather disappointingly that I needed a soldering iron to replace the element 


Just spent an hour recovering a big 12 disk mdraid RAID 10 array on a friend's home server because he set it up and then couldn't work out how the hell to handle a disk failure . No rest for the wicked 

Edit: oh and the entire thing was basically porn 

[BU508A]

Ghetto SMD desoldering tool.

Hey it works. 

I've done exactly that before. It does indeed work 

Ungh, I think, I'll stick with my hot air rework high-tech thingie from Aoyue. 

(picture similar)

I had an Aoyue 936 which somewhat put me off their stuff. I was happily soldering away and the handpiece fell to bits. Then the element went and when I took it to bits I found rather disappointingly that I needed a soldering iron to replace the element 

Mine is okay so far, except for the potentiometer for the air flow rate. I need to replace it, because it behaves a bit erratic. Maybe it is a good idea to change both of them ...

[med6753]

Edit: oh and the entire thing was basically porn 

Is he hosting a website or is just for personal use?

Are both hands heavily callused? 

[Kosmic]

TEA Question 

100-120VDC at 3A variable with current limiting. Anything old or used I should look at or do I buy a slightly dodgy 120V 3A switchmode off Aliexpress? Duty is Foam Cutting hot wire so some noise isn't an issue but I would also prefer not to get a kick out of life from using it.

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001133803791.html?spm=a2g0s.8937460.0.0.1e482e0eFnuCWM

If you really need 300W for foam cutting, and who's to say you don't, I would have thought that you've be better off with less voltage and more current. I personally wouldn't want to be playing about with an exposed resistance wire that had 100+ VDC across the ends of it. Plus it's much easier to find respectable high current low voltage SMPSs from the likes of Meanwell that it is to find a 300W odd PSU in the 3A or so region.

My last manual 1.2m bow ran 0.8mm Nichrome so 15-16V was fine. Problem with it was always the Kerf was fat so you needed to fudge the templates to allow for this. Not ideal but for one offs we made it work.

Come forward a few decades and to the current design of a new CNC cutter wire length is potentially 1.8m so wire drag and kerf is an issue so to reduce both wire comes down to 0.2 Nichrome or more likely Titanium. Based on the testing I have done with Titanium 90V at 1.5A would get it done. If I decide the 0.2 is not lasting long enough then 0.3 or 0.4 will get used for general use but then the current comes up and voltage down to likely 50V.

Ahhh... NM then. Didn't realize you were building a production machine. What is the purpose here...? Tall stacks of multiple copies all at once, or is cutting with LASER NCE as just too wasteful of the LASER's lifetime...? I know you said you really like the results with your CNC LASER.

mnem
 

Going to set it up on the roof for tonights 3am Possum and quarterize the problem 

We don't have Possum over here but we have Racoons. And they get stuck some times trying to break in by the roof 

[Cerebus]

We don't have Possum over here but we have Racoons. And they get stuck some times trying to break in by the roof 

They wear those burglar masks for a reason you know. Sure, a racoon got stuck and caught, but could you I.D. him? 

[mansaxel]

Just spent an hour or so slowly fiddling away with a Dell 1850 PSU, retrofitting voltage regulation to it. With a 10K linear pot (it says "RFT" but I somehow have a hard time believing it's from DDR) the regulation is strongly non-linear; one gets a lot of travel regulating easily on mV steps, and then all of a sudden it jumps up above 13,9V and then further on straight into protection.. Probably should give a log pot a try.  Found out that one of my radios, an Ericsson / Niros 70cm mobile, is very picky with its "12V" and wants the battery version of that, ie. 12,6 or so minimum..

[25 CPS]

This is how you properly instrument a barbecue rotisserie motor while cooking a chicken:



The setup with the rotisserie motor in action.



Look how bad the power factor is!



For chair side viewing.  Note the current is a tenth of the displayed value because the clamp meter is on the x10 socket on the line spreader.



The motor test load, aka a chicken, aka dinner with some potatoes to get roasted underneath it.

[cyclin_al]

Off Topic but interesting I think, especially for you guys in the GWN and a possible thing to go and visit if thats the sort of thing that floats your boat (pun intended) 

Thanks!

Yes, it is interesting.  I have not seen that particular video before.

I have been there twice.
Back on our honeymoon, we stopped in and did the self-guided tour inside the sub.  Not enough space for a guide.

We were there again last summer so the kid could meet SWMBO's uncle for the first time; grandpapa passed away before the kid was born, so this was a big family moment.
Anyways, due to restrictions, we walked around outside but could not tour inside.  That means we have to go back in the future so the kid can see inside.

[mindcrime]

I am not an addict, I can stop any time... I am not an addict, I can stop any time... I am not an addict.. oh hell, who am I kidding?

So I just broke down and bought an HP 53310A Modulation Domain Analyzer on Evilbay.



Why? I don't know. Why ask why? Why are we here? Where is all this going? Emacs or Vi? KITT or KARR? Blue Thunder or Airwolf? Too many questions! Too many problems, the world can't solve
Too many people, no-one wants to be involved
(Lack of communication, back off)



#RIPTawnyKitaen