Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[beanflying]

snip

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 

We don't generally have that style of roof but we do have a lot of heavy Glazed clay tiles. A place I was renting the cunning little bastards had figured out how to lift them for entry  Back at that period in time they got relocated a long way from home after I trapped them.

[xrunner]

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.

That is a very cool piece of gear, and I want one myself. You don't need to explain why you buy anything here. 

[Saskia]

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.

Dinner under Test ?

[bitseeker]

I needed a high impedance meter for something I'm working on, so I decided to move the old Keithley 610CR, that I got a while ago, to the front of the repair queue. The unit I have was produced in 1972 and last calibration was in 1983.



...

Wow, that's a nice one. Always fun to see old Keithley gear. Added to POI.

[bitseeker]

Wait... what? I'm on that list...?

How...?

I'm supposed to be the class clown... the comic relief... the diversion... not some pillar of the community...   

mnem
Okay... maybe a grime-encrusted recycled wharf-piling of the community...?

People appreciate comedy. 

[bitseeker]

Meanwhile somewhere deep in the statistics:

I’m gonna run for prime minister 

That's a good way to get other kinds of responses.

[bitseeker]

Dude buys a 125€ scope. Gives me neutral feedback "Boxing could be better, CRT was dirty behind cover screen. For the rest product is OK as described.".

CRT was dirty??? What am I, a fucking window cleaner?? Christ.

*ice-tea out*

He probably should've looked at the photos.

[bitseeker]

I go to my pre-surgical screening this morning and come back to nearly 2 pages of OT drivel. When TEA re-surfaces someone send me a memo.

In the meantime I'm gonna go wash the car. 

I detected the same when tonight's archiving job consisted of twice as many pages, but finished in the same amount of time.

TEA Tangents

[bitseeker]

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. 

I concur. The last thing I need is another rechargeable battery to maintain. I love my corded electric mower. No hassle. (Practically) no maintenance. No fuel storage. Little noise. I've had it so long I can't even get replacement parts for it anymore.

[bd139]

Meanwhile somewhere deep in the statistics:

I’m gonna run for prime minister 

That's a good way to get other kinds of responses.

Yeah karma responded heavily to that post and reminded me that my accepted position in life is “wielder of fire hose for miserable software projects”. The universe knows what’s best for it 

[bd139]

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? 

This one is in his house. All for personal use and archival. Neatly organised by domain 

I’m sooooo glad I did it remotely 

[bitseeker]

Agilent E4411B Firmware Upgrade

...

So it seems, for some reason, writing ESALOADR to the floppy from the PC, even if the floppy is formatted on the SA, doesn't sit well. I do not know why. I have not found any other reference to this exact solution on the internet. I ordered the flash chips and memory stick and I plan to do the memory upgrade and get this beast all the way up to A.14.06 firmware. I'm putting that first floppy disk with ESALOADR.TXT in a safe place too!

Well, that was quite the rabbit hole. Added to the POI for future reference.

[bitseeker]

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...



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

BangUgood: Free source of more video episodes.

[bitseeker]

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 

We have racoons, but haven't encountered them trying anything like that. The squirrels, on the other hand, use our roof as a freeway. Their commute begins every day at 0700. Pretty funny.

[tggzzz]

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)

You bought it to complete the trilogy of equipment measuring: V vs t, V vs f, and now f vs t. (If you don'tn have the second, go and buy a spectrum analyser asap).

Now you have the trilogy, you can start wondering why HPAK doesn't sell MDAs any more. That will get you wondering whether the modern generation of fast measuring frequency counters can do the same or a better job. That leads to looking at things like the Pendulum CNT90 (IIRC); ice-tea has one available, I believe. I'd buy one, but I'm overloaded for the foreseeable future.

BTW, the MDA is fun; you can use it to measure startup transients of high quality OCXO such as the HP80111. You can also use it to measure sub-ns risetimes of digital signals.

[tggzzz]

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.

That is a very cool piece of gear, and I want one myself. You don't need to explain why you buy anything here. 

If someone is in doubt, we can give them good reasons 

[Cubdriver]

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.

That is a very cool piece of gear, and I want one myself. You don't need to explain why you buy anything here. 

If someone is in doubt, we can give them good reasons 

"I wanted it" (with the obvious caveat of "and can afford it")  thus far has been sufficient justification as far as I'm concerned.  If I can come up with others, even better, but meeting the aforementioned criteria works for me.

-Pat

[mindcrime]

You bought it to complete the trilogy of equipment measuring: V vs t, V vs f, and now f vs t. (If you don'tn have the second, go and buy a spectrum analyser asap).

Yep, I do have a spectrum analyzer. Albeit it's a nice shiny new Rigol one, not one of those sweet beige/grey HPAK ones!

That said, I have been toying with buying a beige/grey HPAK dynamic signal analyzer as well. 

Now you have the trilogy, you can start wondering why HPAK doesn't sell MDAs any more. That will get you wondering whether the modern generation of fast measuring frequency counters can do the same or a better job. That leads to looking at things like the Pendulum CNT90 (IIRC); ice-tea has one available, I believe. I'd buy one, but I'm overloaded for the foreseeable future.

TBH, even this antique probably exceeds my needs (and skill / knowledge) by a considerable margin. As far as "doing the job" I'm not really worried. At this point, this really is starting to become more of a "oooh, I need one of those to finish my collection" deals, more than a "I need this to accomplish goal X, Y or Z" deal. 

That said, my frequency counter (excluding the ability to use a scope or spectrum analyzer to do that) is arguably not exactly of the "modern generation". See up-thread a few dozen pages or so... I just got a nice, "modern" HP 53132A a month or so ago. Still... with some upgrades, I think it's going to be quite nice in its own right.

BTW, the MDA is fun;  You can also use it to measure sub-ns risetimes of digital signals.

Hmm.. interesting. I hadn't even thought about this much from a perspective of working with digital signals. Ah well, reading the manual (and old eevblog threads on these, which I've already looked up and skimmed over a bit) will be a lot of fun down the line. I don't think this thing is going to be something I'll use every day, but it may turn out to have more use than I expect.

[mindcrime]

"I wanted it" (with the obvious caveat of "and can afford it")  thus far has been sufficient justification as far as I'm concerned.  If I can come up with others, even better, but meeting the aforementioned criteria works for me.
-Pat

Heh... impulse control has never exactly been my strong suit. And to be frank, I'm in a position where I have no wife or kids, no mortgage, and very little debt - but yet a stable job with a decent salary. So I can afford to splurge on some toys here and there. And having grown up more or less what you'd call "dirt poor" I guess part of this is trying to make up for stuff I missed out on when I was younger. I'm 47 now and I can finally build the "dream" electronics lab I wanted when I was 17. 

[Cubdriver]

You bought it to complete the trilogy of equipment measuring: V vs t, V vs f, and now f vs t. (If you don'tn have the second, go and buy a spectrum analyser asap).

Yep, I do have a spectrum analyzer. Albeit it's a nice shiny new Rigol one, not one of those sweet beige/grey HPAK ones!

That said, I have been toying with buying a beige/grey HPAK dynamic signal analyzer as well. 

Now you have the trilogy, you can start wondering why HPAK doesn't sell MDAs any more. That will get you wondering whether the modern generation of fast measuring frequency counters can do the same or a better job. That leads to looking at things like the Pendulum CNT90 (IIRC); ice-tea has one available, I believe. I'd buy one, but I'm overloaded for the foreseeable future.

TBH, even this antique probably exceeds my needs (and skill / knowledge) by a considerable margin. As far as "doing the job" I'm not really worried. At this point, this really is starting to become more of a "oooh, I need one of those to finish my collection" deals, more than a "I need this to accomplish goal X, Y or Z" deal. 

BTW, the MDA is fun;  You can also use it to measure sub-ns risetimes of digital signals.

Hmm.. interesting. I hadn't even thought about this much from a perspective of working with digital signals. Ah well, reading the manual (and old eevblog threads on these, which I've already looked up and skimmed over a bit) will be a lot of fun down the line. I don't think this thing is going to be something I'll use every day, but it may turn out to have more use than I expect.

LOL - he's officially one of us!     (And yes, you need a dynamic signal analyser.  The 3562A is nice, as is the 3561A and the 35660A.  Hell, collect the whole set!)

-Pat

[tggzzz]

"I wanted it" (with the obvious caveat of "and can afford it")  thus far has been sufficient justification as far as I'm concerned.  If I can come up with others, even better, but meeting the aforementioned criteria works for me.
-Pat

Heh... impulse control has never exactly been my strong suit. And to be frank, I'm in a position where I have no wife or kids, no mortgage, and very little debt - but yet a stable job with a decent salary. So I can afford to splurge on some toys here and there. And having grown up more or less what you'd call "dirt poor" I guess part of this is trying to make up for stuff I missed out on when I was younger. I'm 47 now and I can finally build the "dream" electronics lab I wanted when I was 17. 

While never being dirt poor, I never had everything I wanted as a kid. Fortunately my school and university let me use scope during the lunch hour.

Other than that, I understand your position completely.

My version of impulse control consists of waking until I find HP/Tek 20GHz SAs for £400. The impulse control doesn't extend to only having one

[beanflying]

Some of the Gear I now have in the Shack my Uni would have killed for and the Technical Secondary School would have never come close  A bit like mindcrime I spent 25+ years post Uni 'making do' at home with very minimal gear. TEA has shown me the error of my 'former ways' 

He who LIVES and ENJOYS LIFE with the most Toys and leaves the least to others WINS 

[tggzzz]

BTW, the MDA is fun;  You can also use it to measure sub-ns risetimes of digital signals.

Hmm.. interesting. I hadn't even thought about this much from a perspective of working with digital signals. Ah well, reading the manual (and old eevblog threads on these, which I've already looked up and skimmed over a bit) will be a lot of fun down the line. I don't think this thing is going to be something I'll use every day, but it may turn out to have more use than I expect.

It isn't an easy measurement to get right, see
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/hpagilent-53310a-modulation-domain-analyser-frequency-time-interval-analyser/msg3194292/#msg3194292

I take the attitude that the only digital waveforms are femtoamp circuits and photon counting circuits

[tggzzz]

I spent 25+ years post Uni 'making do' at home with very minimal gear

As my .sig hints, I get satisfaction from getting more than expected out of minimal gear, partly because that requires understanding and imagination. I don't respect people who say only the latest and greatest is acceptable.

[Wolfgang]

I spent 25+ years post Uni 'making do' at home with very minimal gear

As my .sig hints, I get satisfaction from getting more than expected out of minimal gear, partly because that requires understanding and imagination. I don't respect people who say only the latest and greatest is acceptable.

Not completely true. For really "interesting" problems you need top gear AND all understanding, imagination and luck you have, plus some black magic thrown in as well.