Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Saskia]

Oooooops. Bought a Nakamichi 680 by mistake ...

[mnementh]

I know I'm tempting fate... but today's fun will involve both cameras fully dismantled at the same time in hopes of piecing together one working optical assembly. After I get some coffee and eggs in me I'll tackle  the one with the inner objective rattling around loose inside the lens...

Tempting fate, Murphy and that little voice (which you usually try to ignore) is silent ... except for some quiet, nervous  whimpering.   See you on the other side!

Yup. on my 2nd cuppa coffee now. Might be ready soon. ish.

mnem
except that now I have SWMBO telling me how I need to do things to make progress on our move-in...

[med6753]

Oooooops. Bought a Nakamichi 680 by mistake ...

That's an expensive "mistake". I just looked a typical prices. 

[Specmaster]

Has anyone else seen Daves new video? He is going to be restoring his Sinclair C5 in memory of Sir Clive Sinclair and Dave also said that he made consumer electronics affordable to the masses by building down to a price point and his pocket calculator was just 20% of the price of its comparable HP35, reaffirming my points about him making them affordable and even in some cases achieving what HP said was impossible. Anyway, watch the video, he makes many valid points and so many today owe a lot to Sinclairs products for inspiring them into getting them into the industry.

[Specmaster]

If you've ever tried adjusting convergence on an old school CRT colour TV, you will know the definition of "iterative insanity"! 

I have. That is exactly the kind of experience I'm talking about. You over-tweak one just too far and you're back at the beginning.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

You simply have not lived until you've done survived the unholy convergence rituals necessary on a old Pioneer or Hitachi CRT projection set with analog panel. 

mnem
*speaks soothingly to the PTSD dwagon juddering in the deepest recesses of the tinkerdwagon's memories*
"there, there.... it's okay.... we'll never, ever have to do that again... we promise..."

Yes, but here is the interesting bit, if someone hadn't done it that way in the first instance, we would not have the system that we have today, someone has to do the pioneering bit to start with and then others find a better way of doing parts of it and these parts all get put together and slowly but surely we end with the modern era products. It makes zero difference be it electrical, electronics, aviation, mechanical etc, the evolution is much the same.

Compare the Wright Bros early plane



to the A380, things have come a long way but in a series of small improvements done over the years by hundreds of people all improving just a small part of the whole thing each time, its called progress.

[BU508A]

Has anyone else seen Daves new video? He is going to be restoring his Sinclair C5 in memory of Sir Clive Sinclair and Dave also said that he made consumer electronics affordable to the masses by building down to a price point and his pocket calculator was just 20% of the price of its comparable HP35, reaffirming my points about him making them affordable and even in some cases achieving what HP said was impossible. Anyway, watch the video, he makes many valid points and so many today owe a lot to Sinclairs products for inspiring them into getting them into the industry.

Hmm, Jeremy Clarkson is looking very different in this video....

 

[Saskia]

Oooooops. Bought a Nakamichi 680 by mistake ...

That's an expensive "mistake". I just looked a typical prices. 

@450 pesos. Wrong offer, but Seller accepted before I could cancel ...

[mnementh]

Oooooops. Bought a Nakamichi 680 by mistake ...

Maybe a little light colouring would help keep you out of trouble... 

mnem
so very analog...

[Cerebus]

Overview

Irn-Bru is known for its bright orange colour and unique flavour.[2] As of 1999 it contained 0.002% of ammonium ferric citrate, sugar, 32 flavouring agents including caffeine and quinine (but not in Australia), and two controversial colourings (Sunset Yellow FCF E110 and Ponceau 4R E124). On 27 January 2010, soft-drink manufacturer A.G. Barr agreed to a Food Standards Agency voluntary ban on these two colourings although no date was set for their replacement.[3] After lobbying by First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond, a proposed restriction of Sunset Yellow to 10 mg/litre was eased to 20 mg/litre in 2011 – the same amount present in Irn-Bru.[4] As of August 2021, Irn-Bru still contains these colourings.[5]

I find this beverage highly suspect. Might be good mixed with Tito's, tho. 

*makes mental note to add said toxic ichor to his next recreational beverage shopping list*

mnem

That which cannae kill ya makes ye stronger. Anyway, where do you think the Scots get their hair colour from? Such ruddiness is clearly unnatural in a nation whose skin tone is "titanium white".

I actually quite like Irn-Bru (tagline "Made in Scotlan' frae girders") but it's not the same since the mindless* "sugar tax" has seen every soft drink manufacturer who didn't already use them switch to artificial sweeteners just around the time that scientific consensus is forming that artificial sweeteners are innately bad for you. Your mileage may vary because the source of sweetness (whether sugars, which sugars, and which artificial sweeteners) varies so much from country to country for ostensibly identical fizzy drinks.

* Used in the sense of "no actual thinking was involved in this decision" typical of political decision making.

[Cerebus]

Oooooops. Bought a Nakamichi 680 by mistake ...

Don't fuss yourself over it. It's an easy thing to do, it could happen to anybody. Just remember to learn from you mistakes and accidentally buy a Studer next time.

[Saskia]

Oh, I did. And the external Dolby C ...

[Cerebus]

Has anyone else seen Daves new video? He is going to be restoring his Sinclair C5 in memory of Sir Clive Sinclair and Dave also said that he made consumer electronics affordable to the masses by building down to a price point and his pocket calculator was just 20% of the price of its comparable HP35, reaffirming my points about him making them affordable and even in some cases achieving what HP said was impossible. Anyway, watch the video, he makes many valid points and so many today owe a lot to Sinclairs products for inspiring them into getting them into the industry.

Just because you weren't the only person who swallowed Sinclair's self-promotional propaganda doesn't confirm him as the genius he went around telling everybody that he was, or that he was anywhere as influential as some (including himself) make him out to be. I'm sure that our esteemed prime minister can find all sorts of people that agree with him, that does not make him necessarily correct. Comparing a Sinclair calculator to an HP calculator is like comparing a 1980s Lada to a Rolls-Royce Silver Ghost, if the former cost 20% of the latter, you were ripped off.

[mnementh]

Has anyone else seen Daves new video? He is going to be restoring his Sinclair C5 in memory of Sir Clive Sinclair and Dave also said that he made consumer electronics affordable to the masses by building down to a price point and his pocket calculator was just 20% of the price of its comparable HP35, reaffirming my points about him making them affordable and even in some cases achieving what HP said was impossible. Anyway, watch the video, he makes many valid points and so many today owe a lot to Sinclairs products for inspiring them into getting them into the industry.

OMFG... speaking as a seasoned go-kart/dune-buggy/scooter aficionado... the design of that thing is pure shite. I mean, I figured it wouldn't be great, given the limitations of the body design... but fucking wow...!!!

That thing is a deathtrap all by itself going down a empty street, much less sharing the roads with actual roadworthy vehicles. Fuck, it wouldn't even make a good speed-bump; might slow down a Fiat 500.

This is Power Wheels level of shite-ness.   

Truly beyond horrible. Motherfucker should've been prosecuted for marketing that as a road vehicle. Wait... was he...?

mnem
 

[Cerebus]

Has anyone else seen Daves new video? He is going to be restoring his Sinclair C5 in memory of Sir Clive Sinclair and Dave also said that he made consumer electronics affordable to the masses by building down to a price point and his pocket calculator was just 20% of the price of its comparable HP35, reaffirming my points about him making them affordable and even in some cases achieving what HP said was impossible. Anyway, watch the video, he makes many valid points and so many today owe a lot to Sinclairs products for inspiring them into getting them into the industry.

Hmm, Jeremy Clarkson is looking very different in this video....

 

Still got a bloody strange accent though...

[Cerebus]

OMFG... speaking as a seasoned go-kart/dune-buggy/scooter aficionado... the design of that thing is pure shite. I mean, I figured it wouldn't be great, given the limitations of the body design... but fucking wow...!!!

That thing is a deathtrap all by itself going down a empty street, much less sharing the roads with actual roadworthy vehicles. Fuck, it wouldn't even make a good speed-bump; might slow down a Fiat 500.

This is Power Wheels level of shite-ness.

Truly beyond horrible. Motherfucker should've been prosecuted for marketing that as a road vehicle. Wait... was he...?

mnem
 

The marketing view, according to Sinclair:



The reality:



Note smug dick and the tail-back he's caused in the first photo. Please also note the look of abject fear in the second photo.

A cutaway:


The "chassis":


Sir Clive Sinclair "genius" and Mensa enthusiast. Yeah, right!

[bd139]

Going back to my point about cheapness. The market is full of people who buy something shit because it’s cheap, then have to replace it fairly quickly with the thing they should have bought to start with. Sinclair had the unique position on this.

Anyway got to be honest here. The company I currently work for may not have existed without Sinclair. But that’s a very long causality chain 

[mansaxel]

I don't know what the modern ones are like, but the old one I picked up (and flipped) had far too many skeleton pots for my comfort.

Quite. Trimpots are the work of the devil. I go out of my way when designing things to design out the need for them. Electronic, closed case, calibration/alignment is the only way to go to keep your sanity. I've worked on too many things where tweaking pot A alters the thing you have to trim with pot B, and tweaking pot B alters the thing you have to trim with pot A. That kind of iterative insanity is what computers where made for.

I have a 3-tube video projector in need for alignment against a sloped screen. You on?

(just kidding, I've way too many experiences with them to ever consider that particular kind of horrible..)

[Robert763]

If you've ever tried adjusting convergence on an old school CRT colour TV, you will know the definition of "iterative insanity"! 

I have. That is exactly the kind of experience I'm talking about. You over-tweak one just too far and you're back at the beginning.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

You simply have not lived until you've done survived the unholy convergence rituals necessary on a old Pioneer or Hitachi CRT projection set with analog panel. 

mnem
*speaks soothingly to the PTSD dwagon juddering in the deepest recesses of the tinkerdwagon's memories*
"there, there.... it's okay.... we'll never, ever have to do that again... we promise..."

At least those are all low power. In a typical british valve colour TV the presets carried signficant power. Smoe were wirewound. Most ran hot. Often the plastic would break as soon as you touched it and a cooked preset would jump all over the place....

[mnementh]

Going back to my point about cheapness. The market is full of people who buy something shit because it’s cheap, then have to replace it fairly quickly with the thing they should have bought to start with. Sinclair had the unique position on this.

Anyway got to be honest here. The company I currently work for may not have existed without Sinclair. But that’s a very long causality chain 

As in what... they evolved out of a need to actually provide something Sir Clive promised but didn't deliver...? 

Seems there's a lot of opportunities for that, considering how many half-baked pies he had his dick in... 

mnem
..."I got yer horse right here, his name is Paul Revere... the jockey sez 'Can do! Can do...!' "

[mnementh]

I don't know what the modern ones are like, but the old one I picked up (and flipped) had far too many skeleton pots for my comfort.

Quite. Trimpots are the work of the devil. I go out of my way when designing things to design out the need for them. Electronic, closed case, calibration/alignment is the only way to go to keep your sanity. I've worked on too many things where tweaking pot A alters the thing you have to trim with pot B, and tweaking pot B alters the thing you have to trim with pot A. That kind of iterative insanity is what computers where made for.

I have a 3-tube video projector in need for alignment against a sloped screen. You on?

(just kidding, I've way too many experiences with them to ever consider that particular kind of horrible..)

*without a moment's hesitation* "fuck. you." 

mnem
*eats the horse you rode in on*

[Saskia]

This calls for a 500 grams recalibration...

[Neomys Sapiens]

I heard there are vegetarian and even vegan human beings ! It's just a rumor though, never seen one in real life so far.
So, why couldn't there be vegan Dwagons as well ?! It ought to be possible, at least in theory. 

Do note that the French definition of "Vegetarian" is someone who'd happily eat chicken and fish. Happened to friends who are North European vegetarians..

I eat everything. And I probably should, but a little less.  Breakfast sandwich:

• 2 slices sourdough bread, toasted (they're a few days old, and while this bread keeps wonderfully, it was time to start toasting
• Butter
• Thin slice of smoked ham
• Dijon mustard (Bornier, the best!)
• Lidl sauerkraut

Nah, they got that wrong. You're vegetarian as long as you eat only predominantly plant-eating animals, as opposed to mainly meat-eating animals. So no stoats, eagles, cats, wolverines, buzzards...

[Specmaster]

Has anyone else seen Daves new video? He is going to be restoring his Sinclair C5 in memory of Sir Clive Sinclair and Dave also said that he made consumer electronics affordable to the masses by building down to a price point and his pocket calculator was just 20% of the price of its comparable HP35, reaffirming my points about him making them affordable and even in some cases achieving what HP said was impossible. Anyway, watch the video, he makes many valid points and so many today owe a lot to Sinclairs products for inspiring them into getting them into the industry.

OMFG... speaking as a seasoned go-kart/dune-buggy/scooter aficionado... the design of that thing is pure shite. I mean, I figured it wouldn't be great, given the limitations of the body design... but fucking wow...!!!

That thing is a deathtrap all by itself going down a empty street, much less sharing the roads with actual roadworthy vehicles. Fuck, it wouldn't even make a good speed-bump; might slow down a Fiat 500.

This is Power Wheels level of shite-ness.   

Truly beyond horrible. Motherfucker should've been prosecuted for marketing that as a road vehicle. Wait... was he...?

mnem
 

Agreed, this is not a good thing at all for use on normal roads, but on special roads, or dedicated cycle tracks, for use by push-bikes, electric scooters and low speed items like a C5, then it, might be a different thing all together. Here in the UK many cities are experimenting with dedicated tracks / lanes segregated from the normal traffic on which electric scooters are allowed (but only ones supplied by authorised suppliers who rent them out by the mile/hour) private ones that are on sale in shops etc are and remain illegal for use in public areas. https://www.chelmsford.gov.uk/leisure-theatres-and-museums/visiting-chelmsford/chelmsford-e-scooter-trial/

[mnementh]

If you've ever tried adjusting convergence on an old school CRT colour TV, you will know the definition of "iterative insanity"! 

I have. That is exactly the kind of experience I'm talking about. You over-tweak one just too far and you're back at the beginning.

   BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

You simply have not lived until you've done survived the unholy convergence rituals necessary on a old Pioneer or Hitachi CRT projection set with analog panel. 

mnem
*speaks soothingly to the PTSD dwagon juddering in the deepest recesses of the tinkerdwagon's memories*
"there, there.... it's okay.... we'll never, ever have to do that again... we promise..."

At least those are all low power. In a typical british valve colour TV the perset carried signficant power. Smoe were wirewound. Most ran hot. Often th platis would break as soon as you touched it and a cooked preset would jump al over the place...

^{Oh, these were just a different kind of evil.}

This one, the high-energy was all in STK amplifier packs under that huge heat-sink... and they were a really bastard kind of evil where they would go leaky, or the deflection coils would develop a few turns short and make the STK go leaky or... short intermittently... or sunspots... or whatever...

Anyways... the only way you could figure this out on some models was to spend the time doing the convergence 2 or 3 times and still not be able to get it in spec. The deflection coils were so loosely wound they were ringy AF even on a good one, so that wasn't a tell... and you can't inject a signal into one STK and observe the output with it hooked up due to physical constraints and how the loading of one STK affects the others in the chain.

This was the beginning of "board-level repair only" factory service procedures on these things, and for good reason. You could spend days locating a single faulty STK, and replace it for a successful repair, only to have its neighbor fail in exactly the same way hours or days later due to now getting full current/voltage that previous failed STK protected it from.

Eventually the service suppliers would develop "repair packs" to replace all the STKs and most common fault/burned out capacitors/resistors shotgun-style... but those were very often clone "STKs" with high mortality rates as OEM ones cost 1/3 the price of a complete board each.

Then you had problems with bacterial infection in the coolant... reflector mirrors that were cigarette smoke magnets, only you couldn't clean them safely because the mirroring is on the outside... plastic lens assemblies that would craze or go cloudy because of all the IR and UV radiation from overdriven CRTs that eventually developed burn-in no matter how careful you were with source material and...

Honestly... CRT projection sets were just a shitshow; even the "good" ones. One of the first "eWaste the day it was made" technologies; seriously.

mnem
and of course, all so you could rot your brain more efficiently...

[mnementh]

This calls for a 500 grams recalibration...

Might need more, to ensure escape velocity. 

mnem