Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[McBryce]

I ordered one of these flashlights from BangemGood https://www.banggood.com/XANES-XHP50-1800lm-Powerful-Long-Range-Zoomable-Flashlight-Kit-with-18650-Li-ion-Battery-USB-Rechargeable-and-Power-Display-Mini-Torch-Focus-Adjustable-Tactical-Light-p-1749466.html?cur_warehouse=CN on the 22nd July. They processed, packed and shipped it within 2 hours from their China warehouse and this morning it arrived at my very local delivery office, I'm very impressed with that kind of speed, its travelled thousands of miles in the same time it often takes for stuff ordered from within the UK. Now the postman has not yet been, will he come today and more important if he does, will he have this flashlight with him (actually I say him, it might be the rather cute postlady that comes sometimes), or will it lounge at the delivery office for a few days?

My money is on "lounge at the delivery office for a few days"! 

My deliveries at the moment: Ordered a 121GW from Dave - Made it from Australia to Germany in less than a week. Speakers ordered (on the same day) from a shop that I could drive to in 40 minutes... Still waiting.

McBryce.

Just as well you didn't put your shirt on it then, its arrived and first impressions are very favourable, although I doubt that its as powerful as they claimed, but it is very bright nonetheless.

Good luck with that. I just chargebacked Aliexpress because two orders got closed immediately and no refund issued. Their customer support is impossible to get to as well.

Strange, I never had any problems with Aliexpress customer support, just fill in all the details as requested and post, then I normally get a response within a couple of hours.

Congratulations, my deliveries weren't so lucky, but I'll celebrate your win while mourning my lack of luck (any reason to crack open a beer is good for me).

McBryce.

[Robert763]

Where do I find myself such a woman?

I found her in a bar in San Francisco (Foster City to be precise)

[Specmaster]

I can't let this unwarranted Mastech bashing go unchallenged.

Gee...chill out. It's not like I'm blowing smoke up your kilt or pissing in your blood pudding. 

How about pissing on a rope?

[Cerebus]

Ugh I hate stuff like that. One purpose novelty stuff does not belong on this planet.

A good crepe pan isn't a one purpose novelty item though. We use an indian tava, but it's essentially the same thing, and it gets used for pancakes, chapattis, parathas, muffins, or pretty much any pan baked dough or batter based comestible.

[Specmaster]

Oh fun. The seller has packed the Tek 475 and the 7150 in the same consignment.

Place your bets….

Seeing as everyone else is erring on the side of doom, I'm going to say that you might be pleasantly surprised to discover both of them pretty well protected with bundles of bubble wrap to keep both of them safe and sound.

[Specmaster]

Nuking the Saber part... WTF-ever.

The ballast/speaker/charge board is finished; time for testing. Which requires that I rebuild the emitter, as it died during testing with several different CC LED drivers which proved not sufficiently durable for the expected use abuse case. We (lightsaber nerds) tend to overdrive these LEDs to  125-200% of "rated" current to get adequate illumination of the blade, so I do keep a few spares on hand.

mnem
 

Can't you get some ultra bright LEDs to fit it?

[med6753]

When the USPS decides to do the job they are chartered to do amazing things CAN happen. These transistors went from the Newark, NJ distribution center to the Albany, NY distribution center to the Newburgh, NY distribution center to local PO and to me in less than 24 hours. I doubt that will ever happen again. 

Anyway, these are the OEM Germanium 2N2207. Tested them. Both good. Into my spare stock.



The vertical output transistors for the Type 547 are supposed to arrive Friday. And the lady cop was supposed to come up this weekend but she was just informed that she is on a special assignment BOTH Saturday and Sunday. Rats! 

[cyclin_al]

Went looking for a photo of my old bench.     The only one I have was from when I was going to sell some of my cameras. 

 Both the bridge and the main table had cable trays.  There was a rack on the right hand side and rack mounted power outlets.   I would have kept it if it was possible.




I sold the Mamiya but found room for the Nikons in my carry on.   

We brought our three dogs with us, which is the main reason why I had to leave so many things behind.    We spent everything we had on the move.

Willow in her custom made flight crate.  She was too big for the largest varikennel.

The FM2 is a very nice camera; I kept one of those as well 

That is a gorgeous large tall dog.

However, not a large dog.  For correct scale, this is a lap dog:


EDIT:  NO, our dogs are NOT horses.  They are too tall to be horses.  The official criteria for a miniature horse is maximum 32" tall at the shoulder.   

[bd139]

Third time lucky. Third offer on second round accepted.  Now own an HP 5381A counter 

A distinctly low ball device. Just need for casual work. V-f plot by hand etc

[cyclin_al]

Shipping is a mixed bag of results this week.

Tool Time widda ToolDwagon:
The pliers are GearWrench; like most of their products (evidently, an Apex Tools brand up here), quality is decent and if you can get them on sale you can get a great deal on a tool you'll use for years or even decades. The jaws are ground evenly with a well-centered point, and they meet close enough to pull a single hair off my arm without cutting it.

Earlier this week I received an email from PrincessAuto that they had cancelled the pliers from my order. 
Purolator shows up the day before yesterday with a large box containing all the other items I added to the order in order to meet the threshold for free shipping.
However, I found a lonely pair of pliers hidden underneath all the packing materials 

Purolator returned once again this morning with a rather large and lightweight box.  After removing lots of packing material, I was about to conclude there was nothing in the box.
It turns out hidden in the corner, Princess Auto sent that last set of pliers remaining in stock from the main warehouse. 

Final result is that my toolboxes are very happy:


Purolator also showed up this afternoon, but the driver said that he remembers delivering my box (the pliers) to me this morning.
I am absolutely certain that he has a box in his truck containing a set of leads with 4-wire kelvin clips. 
He left again without giving me my package.
In this case, I believe the tracking information that the leads are on that truck.

Purolator also stopped by yesterday with some RC vehicle parts:

It looks like I received these plastic differential housings.  Totally not what I ordered or need.
What I need is this complete front differential assembly advertised as containing metal gears:

I have contacted the seller, who has asked me to check the box again.
It looks like I may have to get my first experience raising up the issue with PayPal.
The remainder of this particular order is fortunately correct.
The silver lining is that recent events (bashing the other truck) means that I can repair the second truck with these parts:


This is all significant since the Purolator depot is about 60 km from where I live.
I have a feeling Purolator will be coming back tomorrow (if I am lucky).   
That likely comes out to close to 600km, when it could have all been done in a single trip with a slight delay and good planning.
A slight delay of a day or two is negligible after waiting up to a month...

[tggzzz]

Ugh I hate stuff like that. One purpose novelty stuff does not belong on this planet.

Exceptions: a fish kettle, and an asparagus kettle. Possibly add a. turbotiere, but given the price of whole turbots, it might be better to rent

Easy way of avoiding kitchen geegaws. Ask whether you already have a way of doing whatever the geegaw does, and ask whether cleaning takes longer than any time saved.

Don't apply those question to TEA geegaws.

[mnementh]

   Nuking the Saber part... WTF-ever.

The ballast/speaker/charge board is finished; time for testing. Which requires that I rebuild the emitter, as it died during testing with several different CC LED drivers which proved not sufficiently durable for the expected use abuse case. We (lightsaber nerds) tend to overdrive these LEDs to  125-200% of "rated" current to get adequate illumination of the blade, so I do keep a few spares on hand.

mnem
 

Can't you get some ultra bright LEDs to fit it?

These are the ultra-bright LEDs. Just like the LED flashlight junkies on the CandlePower forums, we get "ultra-bright" by overdriving them and putting them on a big-arse heat-sink; I'm driving these at 1.5-2.5W per element. This one held up for two years driven this way; it wasn't until I tried to move to more efficient CC LED Drivers that I killed this emitter.



Otherwise you have to get into the 10W LED emitters like the one on the left here. These require a completely different emitter housing and collimator lens; also aboot 4x as much VA power source to operate unless you're willing to put up with ~20-30 min runtime. I could do that with some lightsaber hilts... but not enough room in this one for the requisite number of 18650 cells, controller board and CC LED driver PCBs.

My lightsaber is purple; getting that requires mixing red & blue at current levels determined by trial/error. On top of that there is another channel for "flash on clash" functionality in the sound/light controller PCB, so I use all 3 elements in this one. Problem, as with most "fun" things, is making it all fit in a small space.

This rebuild is something I've been putting off for years... when I first got it, I found out that some of the stories I'd heard aboot UltraSabers build quality were true; but they were a local producer, so I took a gamble on a Mystery Box saber and got lucky.

No complaints as mine has sound and a decent hilt for aboot 1/4 what it should cost.  They really did cut a number of corners, chiefly with a too-small power source and craptacular wiring which I fixed as best I could when I got it. This rebuild is taking so long because I'm trying to resolve all those cut corners now. In between bouts of packing to move.

I am toying with the idea of mixing up my own 3-ch CC LED driver PCB to fit in this space; I might follow through with that if I find a chipset that actually handles the abuse under testing. After I'm done moving.

Hey; this is my relaxation time. 

mnem
 

[Robert763]

Mixed luck on ebay recently. The two “3500mAh” 3mm thick LiPo cells finally turned up from China. Packed in very thin card boxes, no proper insulation on the ends of the leads and in an all plastic bubble envelope. No UN number or any indication that it contained lithium cells. Both card boxes were crushed and one cell was bent and showed 0V 
I could have set an aircraft on fire. Seller gave a refund but should be fined.

Fitted a LEMO plug to the BCD Electronics M1 bonding tester’s charger box. Went to charge it and found the supplied mains adaptor was 5V output not the required 15V
No response from seller on that. With 15V applied it charged up OK and is working 100%. ±1 count on all ranges to my standard resistors.

I put an offer on this www.ebay.co.uk/itm/184969801036 earlier, even though it already looked cheap enough. Got the offer accepted so now I’m getting a bit of unknown RF test kit 
It’s a portable “frame” running Win XP which can take various plug-ins. Most come with wired or optical network plug-ins. This has a dual band BAT which is a cell phone site tester. The interesting bit is the spectrum analyser and waterfall display. There is not much data available probably because Acterna went to JDSU and then VIAVI. However the flyer says it will measure out of band interference. The bands are around 800 an 1800 MHz so will be interesting to see what the SA coverage is. The manual should be in a file on the unit. We will see….

[Saskia]

Ugh I hate stuff like that. One purpose novelty stuff does not belong on this planet.

Exceptions: a fish kettle, and an asparagus kettle. Possibly add a. turbotiere, but given the price of whole turbots, it might be better to rent

Easy way of avoiding kitchen geegaws. Ask whether you already have a way of doing whatever the geegaw does, and ask whether cleaning takes longer than any time saved.

Don't apply those question to TEA geegaws.

get a dutch oven.
A one stop solution to all your cooking needs ...

[bd139]

I have a very large stainless steel pot. That and a santoku knife and an oven tray is enough to cook most things. I can do a full roast dinner with just those.

[factory]

Vintage Multimeter for the brave? Who'd be willing to measure 5kV (AC or DC) with this meter and these probes?

https://www.ebay.de/itm/224547972795

McBryce.

Already have a pair of Windsor (export brand of Taylor) 88A meters, one has a working 5kV AC range & the other a working 5kV DC range. Probably should buy some replacement resistors to fix them, or swap them to get one of the pair fully working.




If I need to measure more than 5kV I have this electrostatic meter. 


David

P.S. I do have a small-ish Triplett similar to the one in the ePay link, but not sure exactly which one.

[tggzzz]

Ugh I hate stuff like that. One purpose novelty stuff does not belong on this planet.

Exceptions: a fish kettle, and an asparagus kettle. Possibly add a. turbotiere, but given the price of whole turbots, it might be better to rent

Easy way of avoiding kitchen geegaws. Ask whether you already have a way of doing whatever the geegaw does, and ask whether cleaning takes longer than any time saved.

Don't apply those question to TEA geegaws.

get a dutch oven.
A one stop solution to all your cooking needs ...

Oh,I have similar things. Try steaming a whole on-the-bone fish in  one. Ditto steaming asparagus more at the bottom than the delicate tips.

[factory]

P.S. could really use one of them exploding cats, to install in this computer  , had lots of problems with it the last few days, it froze shortly after an error appeared and then refused to boot afterwards (not even a beep from the motherboard), it's done this twice now, I suspect a hardware problem. 

It could easily be a windows update (if that's your OS). My laptop started behaving oddly after updating yesterday, the line detection doesn't work properly now and it keeps dropping in and out, with accompanying beep (until I got annoyed and turned the sound off).
Naturally I checked the output from the brick as I thought the high ambient t was making it shut down, but nope. Just windows being windows.   

Bit behind on here again.....

It's done it again over the weekend, I'm fairly certain it's a hardware problem, as it refused to do anything other than spin fans/drives up and light the LED on the front. To rule out the OS (win 10) I unplugged the HDD's and still couldn't get anything for a while after repeatedly trying, I would normally expect the motherboard beep & show the boot screen, then the post info, would have thought an error about no drives too.

Not sure I can be bothered investigating further as the PC is getting on a bit, the motherboard & CPU are from 2008, I did replace the cheap nasty Coolermaster PSU after it failed in 2011 (filled with CrapXon caps & not enough space to fit decent parts, due to component density). The GPU, RAM and HDD's got upgraded in 2014.

Might be time for a partial rebuild with new motherboard, CPU, RAM, SSD, etc. Thinking of going for a Ryzen 3700X (65W), not sure about the rest yet, as I need to see if I can find a motherboard with correct expansion slots for the GPU & other cards.

David

Just as much for those playing along at home as for you, my friend :

Don't forget to go here and do some research; https://pcpartpicker.com/products/cpu/

Check parts pricing now vs history so you don't fuck yourself paying too much for something which price has tanked for some unknown reason.

A couple hours spent there can save you a few hundred or more, depending on build.

mnem

Thanks for that link, it really helped narrow down a suitable motherboard for my needs.

Having spent some time looking at various bits, I'm currently thinking of the following;
Ryzen 3700X CPU & B550 ATX Motherboard (either Gigabyte Gaming X V2 or ASUS Prime Plus),
500 GB M.2 SSD & 4TB HDD and 2x8GB RAM.
Finally a replacement Soundblaster card, as mine is to old to fit the newer slots and I'm keeping the existing case, GPU, PSU, DVD, etc.

Anyone know if I can use the existing Win 10 OEM license, or will I have to buy another?

David

[Saskia]

Found a nice old BO turntable, may need new belt, for low Pesos.

Anyone here ?

[med6753]

Dutch oven? 

[Saskia]

David: the Asus Prime usually have decent VRMs. I would go with those.
Soundblaster ? What do you want with it ?
If you want to have a decent sound card then go for one of those Asus thingies.
https://www.asus.com/Motherboards-Components/Sound-Cards/Hi-Fi/Essence_STX_II_71/

like the one I posted the link for.
I can recommend it.

[BU508A]

Anyone know if I can use the existing Win 10 OEM license, or will I have to buy another?

If you need a new license, I'd do the following thing:
- get a cheap Win7 pro license (DVD + sticker)
- install Win7
- upgrade to Win10

This is still possible, I've done it some weeks before on a notebook of an uncle of mine.
The notebook had Vista installed, so I replaced the harddisk with a SSD and added some memory.
Worked nicely and he is a happy camper.

I've bought the Win7 license here (NAWTS):
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/143980602049

[bd139]

Also if you look on eBay for computers sometimes they leave the stickers on when they take the photos 

[mnementh]

Anyone know if I can use the existing Win 10 OEM license, or will I have to buy another?

If you need a new license, I'd do the following thing:
- get a cheap Win7 pro license (DVD + sticker)
- install Win7
- upgrade to Win10

This is still possible, I've done it some weeks before on a notebook of an uncle of mine.
The notebook had Vista installed, so I replaced the harddisk with a SSD and added some memory.
Worked nicely and he is a happy camper.

I've bought the Win7 license here (NAWTS):
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/143980602049

You don't need to do all that. Just do a clean install of Win10 and put the Win7 product key in when it asks. If the existing computer is a scratch-built, you should be able to extract the product key (and those for most other products) using Belarc Advisor or similar. As long as the license isn't from a prebuilt or OEM machine, it will most often activate normally.

In many cases, as long as you aren't switching from Intel to AMD or vice versa, or from 32-Bit to 64-bit, you can actually swap over the old HDD, video card and other peripherals at the first build and it will often authenticate. AFTER that, swap one component at a time out, waiting for it to activate successfully before adding the next, and you should be fine. This is nice in that you don't lose your existing work environment; my old AMD 1055T went to a FX-8350 CPU, RAM & MB that way.

I literally had "the same build" with "upgrades" and kept my work environment on that machine since first built with Win7 .edu licenses when I was in school the 2nd time; easily more than a decade.

mnem
 

[med6753]

Check out Dave's latest mailbag. Tony's bench is featured plus us TEA nuts get a mention.