Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

Oh, my. Look at what Shahriar got himself into now.

(Don't worry, he doesn't sacrifice the counter. In fact, he upgrades it a bit.)

Wow ! 

Always wanted one of these since I knew of their existence, well not so long ago... but thi svideo made me fall in love for good for sure !

The one he got looks brand new inside out, a museum piece ! And we got to stare at it for the first 15 minutes of the video, taking the full width of the screen, with excellent picture quality... it was like TE porn... 

Didn't realize there were SO MANY boards in this thing ! 

Using neon byulbs as a memory device wow, so clever and cool ! 

And that cooling fan cowling, a huge die cast aluminium piece !! 

I WANT ONE !!!!! 

His 10MHz mod great, on a little board using the existing slots, wow that's clean and tidy, looks neat !

His little board to replace the can caps, cleaver as well, looks not too bad.. might make some to recap all my glowing Tek scopes !

Beautiful instrument and excellent and interesting video, loved it ! 

Hopefully I can find one in such a nice condition one day... for less than a grand...

Someone posted one here the other days, think it went for 200/250 USD or something ? If in nice condition and with a plug like his one, I would happily pay that...
I would make the 10MHz mod immediately... having such an old and beautiful piece of TE... yet have the precision of a modern 10MHz external ref... wow, the best of both worlds.

Did I say I wanted one ?! 

Sometimes you get lucky. Nixiefreqq has a whole stack of these in his lab and when I visited him last year he GAVE me one. The only thing I did to it was re-cap the PSU and it works perfectly. At this point I don't plan on doing the clock conversion. But that could change.

   

[med6753]

Bunch of TE in GWN
https://montreal.craigslist.org/tls/7410186808.html

Yeah I went there couples of years ago. Most of it is total junk. The place is a dump and there's no light. Windows are open year-round, probably no heat during winter.

If you happen to find something interesting, the guy is looking the current asking price on ebay and that's what he want. But what he is selling is most of the time in really bad shape.

I never bought anything from him. Was always way too expensive for the state the equipment was in.

That is a shame. Looks like some nice stuff but pictures can, and do, lie. 

[vk6zgo]

Heart: OMG YEEESSSHHHH!

Mind: There be money in them there hills!!!

Back: ARE YOU FUCKING INSANE!!!?!

A 7GHz transient sampling scope previously owned by AWE. I wonder what that might have been used for

Hint: AWE is the Atomic Weapons Establishment.

That's awesome!

("I'll let myself out!")

[Vince]

Sometimes you get lucky. Nixiefreqq has a whole stack of these in his lab and when I visited him last year he GAVE me one.

Not fair ! I want one too !! 

You could have bothered cleaning the sticker residue next to the left handle !   

I just realized something strange in Shahriar's video... at the very beginning of the video, the counter is fitted with a plug-in that looks very close to yours, but then  for the rest of the video the counter is fitted with a completely different plugin ?!
Maybe he mentioned that and I just didn't catch it... he speaks at the speed of light, not easy for us poor foreigners...

[Vince]

Well I know what to do with mine when I get a chance to work on it again, the original diodes for D124 & D126 (the one that kept dying), those are 152-061 rated at 175V 100mA.
The later S/N uses 152-107 for those rated at 400V 400mA (can use 1N647), time for an upgrade, should be something in the lot of stuff I bought from work that will do (I didn't have those when I lasted worked on it).
D131 is germanium 152-008 (T12G) rated at 60V 60mA & listed as 1N270 in the Tek RPR list.
https://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/Replaceable_Parts_Records_(RPR)

I think I can see why Q124 (2N2043 germanium) died, it's only rated for 75V between base/emitter, the diode failed and it got +100V through it to ground via the mode switch, will have to look for something silicon to replace that, shouldn't be hard as it's only specced for audio switching.



David

Will check all these 3 diodes again... if they like to fail, and given they are all in the vicinity of the grid of the multivibrator input, it's likely they could cause my problems... more likely than resistors going short or open, or tiny value non-electrolytic caps going bad.
Will check that transistor as well.

No time for that tonight, 00H15 already and tired, worked on the garage foundations today, I am knackered. More of it tomorrow again...

[Cubdriver]

Oh, my. Look at what Shahriar got himself into now.

(Don't worry, he doesn't sacrifice the counter. In fact, he upgrades it a bit.)

Wow ! 

Always wanted one of these since I knew of their existence, well not so long ago... but thi svideo made me fall in love for good for sure !

The one he got looks brand new inside out, a museum piece ! And we got to stare at it for the first 15 minutes of the video, taking the full width of the screen, with excellent picture quality... it was like TE porn... 

Didn't realize there were SO MANY boards in this thing ! 

Using neon byulbs as a memory device wow, so clever and cool ! 

And that cooling fan cowling, a huge die cast aluminium piece !! 

I WANT ONE !!!!! 

His 10MHz mod great, on a little board using the existing slots, wow that's clean and tidy, looks neat !

His little board to replace the can caps, cleaver as well, looks not too bad.. might make some to recap all my glowing Tek scopes !

Beautiful instrument and excellent and interesting video, loved it ! 

Hopefully I can find one in such a nice condition one day... for less than a grand...

Someone posted one here the other days, think it went for 200/250 USD or something ? If in nice condition and with a plug like his one, I would happily pay that...
I would make the 10MHz mod immediately... having such an old and beautiful piece of TE... yet have the precision of a modern 10MHz external ref... wow, the best of both worlds.

Did I say I wanted one ?! 

Sometimes you get lucky. Nixiefreqq has a whole stack of these in his lab and when I visited him last year he GAVE me one. The only thing I did to it was re-cap the PSU and it works perfectly. At this point I don't plan on doing the clock conversion. But that could change.

That was the first hit that began my nixie addiction.


5245Ls and Ms have just quadrupled in value...

They first appeared in the 1963 catalog, and were available up until 1981, at which point it had a $6200 list price for the counter alone.  There were still three plug-ins listed in 1981 - the 5253B heterodyne converter (50~512 MHz, $1750); the 5255A heterodyne converter (3~12.4 GHz, $3700); and the 5257A transfer oscillator (50 MHz~18 GHz; $4800).  A pretty good run considering how much the technology advanced over that period - my guess is that since it was a very early and extremely successful instrument that it was incorporated into a LOT of tightly controlled test setups that would have needed expensive recertification if they'd replaced the 5245 with a different, newer counter, so companies were willing to pay big bucks to get a replacement that would slot right in to replace a worn out/failed one without the need to recertify their processes.

-Pat

[vk6zgo]

Hmm, if they did that much, it would be better than what we currently have, which is zero repairs, even on the main route to the hospital, travelled many times a day by ambulances with blues and twos on, potholes abound. When they used to fill them, if they sealed around the edges with some liquid tar, it would prevent rain getting into the so called repaired hole again to prevent the hydraulic action from smashing asunder the repair.   

The "Old Dart" always was a bit laid back with roadwork.

Back in "the Dreamtime", (1971) when I was in the UK, on a "working holiday", the local authorities had just replaced the "rubber tube" traffic sensors in Southampton with "magnetic" sensors.
Coincidentally, the same job had just been completed in my home city of Perth Western Australia.

In that city, the tubes had been removed from the road, the new sensors installed, & a new road surface, complete with markings, laid over that short section.

In Soton, slots were cut in the road with a big saw, the new sensors laid in them, connected up, & some tar dribbled over them----the rubber tubes were left in place.

Disturbing them somehow adversely affected their structural integrity, and over the next few months, we were treated to the unedifying sight of them slowly getting torn apart by traffic, leaving pieces of black rubber flapping in the breeze, until, ultimately, just the "slot" in the road where they had formerly lived was left.

Southampton was a bit strange, though---the road markings were seldom paint, but instead, a special material which looked like "yellow tar".
This was imported from France "at great expense"(one of my crappy temporary jobs was unloading the raw material from a truck)

Laying this entailed the use of a special trailer which heated the gunk (with much flames & fury) & deposited a nice neat line.
To this end, they straddled the centre of the road to lay the middle line.

Fearsome as this device was, it paled into insignificance, compared to the other machine, which, for some reason, heated the existing line, shaved the special gunk up & sucked it into its maw (along with a considerable amount of tar).

This thing shot flames out either side when it was in use, much to the consternation of those from other, more fire prone climes.
You could always tell the "foreigners"---we were the ones who cowered to the side of the road as the beast majestically proceeded down the centreline, devouring it .

I have no idea why the second machine removed perfectly serviceable road lines, but no doubt the authorities had a reason.

Edit: Misattributed quote ----sorry Specmaster!

[vk6zgo]

Oh, my. Look at what Shahriar got himself into now.

(Don't worry, he doesn't sacrifice the counter. In fact, he upgrades it a bit.)

Wow ! 

Always wanted one of these since I knew of their existence, well not so long ago... but thi svideo made me fall in love for good for sure !

The one he got looks brand new inside out, a museum piece ! And we got to stare at it for the first 15 minutes of the video, taking the full width of the screen, with excellent picture quality... it was like TE porn... 

Didn't realize there were SO MANY boards in this thing ! 

Using neon byulbs as a memory device wow, so clever and cool ! 

And that cooling fan cowling, a huge die cast aluminium piece !! 

I WANT ONE !!!!! 

His 10MHz mod great, on a little board using the existing slots, wow that's clean and tidy, looks neat !

His little board to replace the can caps, cleaver as well, looks not too bad.. might make some to recap all my glowing Tek scopes !

Beautiful instrument and excellent and interesting video, loved it ! 

Hopefully I can find one in such a nice condition one day... for less than a grand...

Someone posted one here the other days, think it went for 200/250 USD or something ? If in nice condition and with a plug like his one, I would happily pay that...
I would make the 10MHz mod immediately... having such an old and beautiful piece of TE... yet have the precision of a modern 10MHz external ref... wow, the best of both worlds.

Did I say I wanted one ?! 

We used to lug these around the State along with a bunch of other stuff.
A local company made very sweet little aluminium "road cases" for them, padded inside with foam, which in turn, was covered in green felt.

There were other ones of a similar size, used for other instruments, but the internal padding was customised for each device.
I often wonder what happened to those cases------probably ripped apart & the metal recycled! 

[mnementh]

Ouch.  mah back hurtz ...

Loaded the trailer today for the next tour. 2 Arcades (cocktail/full size), 1 safe (350 lbs), 1 fridge, 40+ moving boxes.
Plus the van: 2 arcades, 1 bed (massive beech wood), some TEA, 20 moving boxes
Tomorrow: drive 300 miles and start unloading. Tuesday: finish unloading, start assembling stuff.

In other news my Festool CXS finally arrived. Found out that I am extremely fond of the T18+3 and using it almost constantly. Did use the CXS today as well though as it came with a 90 degree adapter which I needed to disassemble the bed.

Amen, sister. I just spent the afternoon hauling 3 dressers and a desk home from the local Goodwill. Bastards had some decent vintage stuff at prices I just couldn't pass up.



I just went slumming to Horror Fraught and picked these up, so I could stop feeling naked every time SWMBO added something to the honey-do list. Already have 2 projects I need it for...

Total cost: $33. Would've been $28, but they were sold out of the kit that was just the drill. 12V (well, 12.8V MAX, 11.1V nominal) 3S/1.3AH 18650 cell power, VSR/0-650 RPM, clutch actually does have 12 pretty well-defined steps, and 0.8-10mm keyless chuck runs pretty true just eyeballing it.

Only real drawback is single-speed gearbox; even when I do have my good stuff back, it'll be fine as a disposable 2nd screwdriver. 

mnem
*already missing my Makobalt sawzall*

[Specmaster]

Once upon a time that would have settled it for me, the Beeb's music recordists were some of the best in the business. Nowadays I'm not so sure. I've recently heard old BBC stuff from the 70s and 80s that knocks the spots of their current recorded music output that makes me believe that standards have slipped. The BBC now outsources a lot of stuff to outside production companies and I fear that this has weakened the ethos of training and building in-house expertise that made sure that the BBC had engineering staff that set the standard for everybody else.

Selling the engineering department to Siemens probably was a death blow to much of that culture.

OTOH, some of the more prescient thinking on systems building, that is, actively trying to avoid getting caught by vendor lock-in, has been displayed by BBC R&D. A lot of the previously competent companies simply do as they're told and buy the easy way out.

The BEEB have sold their engineering Dept to Siemens  I have lost touch with the news there since retiring. Over the years I have been a regular visitor to the engineers in their engineering depts and in the school summer holidays, my sons would often accompany me on some of those visits and they have been treated like royalty by the engineers. Had many tours of the studio and sets at TV centre in Wood lane and also the radio studios in Portland Place and had many lunches in their excellent restaurants and seen / met many celebrities in the process to boot.

I was always amazed at just how hot their plasma monitors that they had dotted around the reception area got, you couldn't hold your hand on them for long    

[0culus]

Oh, my. Look at what Shahriar got himself into now.

(Don't worry, he doesn't sacrifice the counter. In fact, he upgrades it a bit.)

Wow ! 

Always wanted one of these since I knew of their existence, well not so long ago... but thi svideo made me fall in love for good for sure !

The one he got looks brand new inside out, a museum piece ! And we got to stare at it for the first 15 minutes of the video, taking the full width of the screen, with excellent picture quality... it was like TE porn... 

Didn't realize there were SO MANY boards in this thing ! 

Using neon byulbs as a memory device wow, so clever and cool ! 

And that cooling fan cowling, a huge die cast aluminium piece !! 

I WANT ONE !!!!! 

His 10MHz mod great, on a little board using the existing slots, wow that's clean and tidy, looks neat !

His little board to replace the can caps, cleaver as well, looks not too bad.. might make some to recap all my glowing Tek scopes !

Beautiful instrument and excellent and interesting video, loved it ! 

Hopefully I can find one in such a nice condition one day... for less than a grand...

Someone posted one here the other days, think it went for 200/250 USD or something ? If in nice condition and with a plug like his one, I would happily pay that...
I would make the 10MHz mod immediately... having such an old and beautiful piece of TE... yet have the precision of a modern 10MHz external ref... wow, the best of both worlds.

Did I say I wanted one ?! 

Sometimes you get lucky. Nixiefreqq has a whole stack of these in his lab and when I visited him last year he GAVE me one. The only thing I did to it was re-cap the PSU and it works perfectly. At this point I don't plan on doing the clock conversion. But that could change.

That was the first hit that began my nixie addiction.


5245Ls and Ms have just quadrupled in value...

They first appeared in the 1963 catalog, and were available up until 1981, at which point it had a $6200 list price for the counter alone.  There were still three plug-ins listed in 1981 - the 5253B heterodyne converter (50~512 MHz, $1750); the 5255A heterodyne converter (3~12.4 GHz, $3700); and the 5257A transfer oscillator (50 MHz~18 GHz; $4800).  A pretty good run considering how much the technology advanced over that period - my guess is that since it was a very early and extremely successful instrument that it was incorporated into a LOT of tightly controlled test setups that would have needed expensive recertification if they'd replaced the 5245 with a different, newer counter, so companies were willing to pay big bucks to get a replacement that would slot right in to replace a worn out/failed one without the need to recertify their processes.

-Pat

I want one, I now despair of ever finding one for a reasonable price now that Shahriar has featured one. 

[Zucca]

Oh, my. Look at what Shahriar got himself into now.

(Don't worry, he doesn't sacrifice the counter. In fact, he upgrades it a bit.)

Hard to believe he does not have 1M sub.

[cyclin_al]

Let me fix that for you:

https://carleton.ca/caart/2012/hot-iron-process-asphalt-compaction-hipac-device/

Well, they're meant to be used for new pavement, not for patching. You CAN make a pothole repair that lasts, but doing so requires a lot of work involving a air chisel, making the hole about 2x as big as it was to get back to undamaged asphalt, a dangerous hot-asphalt boiler, and a jumping-jack compactor among many other tools. As you might imagine, proper and safe use of this equipment requires actual skill, and paying people with those skills a respectable wage.

It is much more politically expedient to have swarms of cheap, incompetent morons shoveling cold-patch every spring/fall that a similarly incompetent moron in public office can point to for his political capital, as those swarms are much cheaper, and much more visible to the public.   

I have never seen a proper machine like that in actual use.  Have you?

I completely agree with your comparison on methods of repair.

However, it appears to me that the same concept is being applied to new asphalt as well.

My local road was re-paved this autumn.
In the past few years (as long as I have had the Impreza), there are a few weeks in the spring where the car could not pass due to ground pot-hole clearance issues.
I suspect the problem will return in the spring of 2023.  I would not be overly surprised if the problem returned this coming spring.
The proper machine was not used, as well as numerous other aspects done on the cheap to finish the road quickly before the ground froze...

[cyclin_al]

Bunch of TE in GWN
https://montreal.craigslist.org/tls/7410186808.html

It looks like the massive list poster from Kijiji.
I have never gotten close enough to a deal to even go visit
"The item you are interested is already sold.  I happen to have another one coming in, but it will be 3 times the price..."
Never mind 

[mansaxel]

5245Ls and Ms have just quadrupled in value...

Since they're proper enheavied devices, the price of shipping overseas is a royal pain; add to this sometimes outright incompetent customs/VAT handling, and a sensible price in USA will be completely mad in Europe.

On the Bay, there are perhaps 5 available in Europe, some of which have recently crept up in asking price. Of course the cheap shipping / free trade advantage inside EU will still defend a much higher price here in the end calculation.

And, I want one too. To save it from the clock builders and to display the various 10MHz clocks I have to maintain. If I manage to buy one, the 10MHz mod will be high priority to perform.

[VK5RC]

A recent kit bit of simple test equipment, it is a micro driving current down the power channels of various USB cables measures the resistance - at 500mA and 1A, and checks the data lines as well - displays the results. It is possible to calibrate it for internal resistance and also calibrate the micro's ADC.

[Cubdriver]

5245Ls and Ms have just quadrupled in value...

Since they're proper enheavied devices, the price of shipping overseas is a royal pain; add to this sometimes outright incompetent customs/VAT handling, and a sensible price in USA will be completely mad in Europe.

On the Bay, there are perhaps 5 available in Europe, some of which have recently crept up in asking price. Of course the cheap shipping / free trade advantage inside EU will still defend a much higher price here in the end calculation.

And, I want one too. To save it from the clock builders and to display the various 10MHz clocks I have to maintain. If I manage to buy one, the 10MHz mod will be high priority to perform.

Saving one from the nixie pillagers is what prompted me to buy mine.  Guys on the HPAK mailing list were lamenting clock people buying them and taking the nixies, then scrapping the rest.  I decided to do a search, found one on the bay that wasn't terribly expensive and grabbed it, figuring I'd saved one from having its organs harvested.  Eight years later I'm afraid to count my counters, and they will all be remaining counters as long as I have anything to do with their fates.

Recently got a couple of 10811-60111 OCXOs with the thought of incorporating them into some of my older counters; Shahriar's video has added impetus to do so.

-Pat

[BU508A]

5245Ls and Ms have just quadrupled in value...

Since they're proper enheavied devices, the price of shipping overseas is a royal pain; add to this sometimes outright incompetent customs/VAT handling, and a sensible price in USA will be completely mad in Europe.

On the Bay, there are perhaps 5 available in Europe, some of which have recently crept up in asking price. Of course the cheap shipping / free trade advantage inside EU will still defend a much higher price here in the end calculation.

And, I want one too. To save it from the clock builders and to display the various 10MHz clocks I have to maintain. If I manage to buy one, the 10MHz mod will be high priority to perform.

How about this one from Italy (NAWTS)?

https://www.ebay.de/itm/165189914995

[mansaxel]

How about this one from Italy (NAWTS)?

That one is on my Beobachtungsliste. I would have bought it outright if I could make sense of the mod that's been added.

[BU508A]

And, I want one too. To save it from the clock builders and to display the various 10MHz clocks I have to maintain. If I manage to buy one, the 10MHz mod will be high priority to perform.

How about this one from Italy (NAWTS)?

That one is on my Beobachtungsliste. I would have bought it outright if I could make sense of the mod that's been added.

Could be something similar to the mod which Shahriar did. But not as elegant as he did, of course.

[mansaxel]

How about this one from Italy (NAWTS)?

That one is on my Beobachtungsliste. I would have bought it outright if I could make sense of the mod that's been added.

It WAS on my Beobachtungsliste.

"Diese Angebot wurde beendet." 

Ok, which of you lot was responsible for that?

[med6753]

How about this one from Italy (NAWTS)?

That one is on my Beobachtungsliste. I would have bought it outright if I could make sense of the mod that's been added.

It WAS on my Beobachtungsliste.

"Diese Angebot wurde beendet." 

Ok, which of you lot was responsible for that?

I was just going to remark....who bought it?

Edit.....wasn't me. 

[BU508A]

How about this one from Italy (NAWTS)?

That one is on my Beobachtungsliste. I would have bought it outright if I could make sense of the mod that's been added.

It WAS on my Beobachtungsliste.

"Diese Angebot wurde beendet." 

Ok, which of you lot was responsible for that?

I was just going to remark....who bought it?

Edit.....wasn't me. 

It wasn't me either.   

[med6753]

Maybe I should but mine up for bids.

Starting at $1K USD, 

[BU508A]

There is an expensive 5245L in the German ebay ads (NAWTS):
https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/kultiger-hp-frequenzcounter-hp5245l-time-interval-unit-hp5263a/1884141660-168-20462

It comes with a HP5263A module.