Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bd139]

The rest, not so much: a major benefit of going out is to inhabit somewhere completely different, not to stay in cyberspace.

The trick is to do Augmented Reality -- experience the Real World enhanced with information from Other Places. It makes the Real World a more multifaceted place. And it takes less time to immerse yourself into something when you can apply the aggregate previous knowledge of the world on top of the actual experience.  The most obvious example to me is GPS and electronic maps.

This.

Also handy for things you see but don’t know…

[mansaxel]

I won't be properly entertained until I see Jacob Rees-Mogg scurrying along the embankment.

As my wife told me that there were some resignations, I immediately asked whether Über-Twit R-M was among them. Pitchforks or not, I was disappointed.

[Robert763]

Try Santander. They have actually had the most clue I've experienced so far.

On a quick skim, Santander's login security is solely pin/password, without the possibility of a "what you have" number generator.

While I regard that as sufficient in the past (e.g. my account that I've had since 1975), and it might be OK for the intended use, for the future I'd like something better.

Nope, if you have a more modern smartphone, you have the option of fingerprint scanning as well, which works really well.

... until you need to revoke all 10 certificates. Or can toes be used too?

It says nothing about using your fingers. There's a good supply of them out there if you have to get another one.

I did a self-revocation of a fingerprint 26 years ago 

[Vince]

TEAMS sorted... friend paid me a visit this evening, passed me his old work laptop.

We connected to the interweb via the Wifi of my ADSL box. First time I use that, works fine, was not terribly difficult to get working, it's auto-detected by the laptop then you click on it and it asks you for a password, that's indicated on the ADSL box (well, you press a button and it displays it on its tiny crappy built-in LCD ).

Opened my Gmail account from there so I could click on the link  / invite I was given.

Opens up the web browser and it works, I can see my ugly mug in the frame, sadly.

Same friend also brought me a fucking TV to repair... for a friend of his. Said friend has a bucket truck which I could use to do a massive hair cut to my biggest tree at the back of my garden. 10 meters high by the looks of it, too big for my tiny back yard...  an ash tree, if Google served me correctly. It grows fast...

Anyway, I will trade this TV repair for a bucket truck job. Seems fair to me.

It's a gigantic 55" Samsung (model UE55NU7026K ) LED 4K "smart" TV. Got Ethernet and USB, and a couple HDMI ports for inputs, which means I have no way to send a signal to this shit.
But that's OK, TV works fine, it's just a backlight problem.

The right half of the screen is in the dark. left half works just fine and shows life.

Have already fixed one LED backlight problem a year or so ago, on here (TEA helped), so I am not a virgin in this matter, which is good (increases the chances of fixing it, and not destroy it when taking it apart, if need be).

Previous TV I remember had a LED driver chip on the SMPS board, that had 4 independent current controlled outputs, but the TV used only one output, all the LEDs were in series in one giant string. One LED was open circuit, and 4 others failed short-circuit.

OK so this other TV I guess has two strings one for each half of the screen, and one of them is down. So is it the driver chip that's got only one of its outputs failed, unlikely I guess, or more likely, since they always fail... one or more failed LEDs in that string.

I don't have the high voltage low power adjustable power supply I dream of in my lab... to test this string. But luckily since we have two strings and one is working... I guess I can just swap the two strings on the power board, and see if the fault changes side... if so, I need to take the screen apart and remove the LCD... which means high likelihood of damaging it when handling it. So hopes are low for a successful repair.

Wish me luck.


You shall now resume your normal banking / iphone / climate / gas / oil activities, sorry for the interruption. 

[mansaxel]

TEAMS sorted... friend paid me a visit this evening, passed me his old work laptop.

While I think another poor soul in Teams is not a thing to celebrate per se, this is excellent news for you as it's a potential stepping stone.

[tautech]

Ok, then that video does sort of make some sense, but here is another angle, what would happen with all that natural gas if we don't use it for heating or cooking? It's going to get released into the atmosphere and do what? Build up to become a huge big gas cloud that we are going to be breathing in and then one day a lightening strike ignites it and the entire planet erupts into a huge fireball and incinerates everything and everyone or worse, the planet blows apart and ceases to be a planet any more. 

You must be pulling our plonkers. Natural gas that has happily spent millions of years underground is suddenly going to start floating up into the air if we don't use it?

Undersea methane clathrate/hydrate? (Note the question mark)

Methane in permafrost.

And methane rising from landfill sites, sewage works, cows and other sources, and yes it was a bit of tongue in cheek but it does make you think, and don't forget that now we have drilled into the earths crust and disturbed the balance, so there is always the possibility of leaks and blow outs, even from capped wells, at some time in the future I'm sure that there will be a major event, but when is the question.

Landfill sites and sewage works often "harvest" the methane now. Cows I'm suspicious of, but I've never bothered to investigate whether there's any more substance than PETA/Greenpeace propaganda.

But there is a hell of a lot of methane in permafrost and in clathrates/hydrates.

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/colossal-crater-found-Siberia-what-made-it
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=siberian+methane+craters+2020&t=ffsb&iar=images

You nailed it, propaganda and nothing else.
Here, the rage is restoring wetlands, that is undoing all the hard work our forefathers did in the last century or so by fencing all the streams and rivers which while providing habitat for desirable species also provides habitat for vermin. 
But that's not all folks, as adding fences to waterways to protect them also restricts maintenance of them where over time they return to the marshes and swamps of old....that release significant quantities of methane !   

[mnementh]

TEAMS sorted... friend paid me a visit this evening, passed me his old work laptop.

We connected to the interweb via the Wifi of my ADSL box. First time I use that, works fine, was not terribly difficult to get working, it's auto-detected by the laptop then you click on it and it asks you for a password, that's indicated on the ADSL box (well, you press a button and it displays it on its tiny crappy built-in LCD ).

Opened my Gmail account from there so I could click on the link  / invite I was given.

Opens up the web browser and it works, I can see my ugly mug in the frame, sadly.

Same friend also brought me a fucking TV to repair... for a friend of his. Said friend has a bucket truck which I could use to do a massive hair cut to my biggest tree at the back of my garden. 10 meters high by the looks of it, too big for my tiny back yard...  an ash tree, if Google served me correctly. It grows fast...

Anyway, I will trade this TV repair for a bucket truck job. Seems fair to me.

It's a gigantic 55" Samsung (model UE55NU7026K ) LED 4K "smart" TV. Got Ethernet and USB, and a couple HDMI ports for inputs, which means I have no way to send a signal to this shit.
But that's OK, TV works fine, it's just a backlight problem.

The right half of the screen is in the dark. left half works just fine and shows life.

Have already fixed one LED backlight problem a year or so ago, on here (TEA helped), so I am not a virgin in this matter, which is good (increases the chances of fixing it, and not destroy it when taking it apart, if need be).

Previous TV I remember had a LED driver chip on the SMPS board, that had 4 independent current controlled outputs, but the TV used only one output, all the LEDs were in series in one giant string. One LED was open circuit, and 4 others failed short-circuit.

OK so this other TV I guess has two strings one for each half of the screen, and one of them is down. So is it the driver chip that's got only one of its outputs failed, unlikely I guess, or more likely, since they always fail... one or more failed LEDs in that string.

I don't have the high voltage low power adjustable power supply I dream of in my lab... to test this string. But luckily since we have two strings and one is working... I guess I can just swap the two strings on the power board, and see if the fault changes side... if so, I need to take the screen apart and remove the LCD... which means high likelihood of damaging it when handling it. So hopes are low for a successful repair.

Wish me luck.


You shall now resume your normal banking / iphone / climate / gas / oil activities, sorry for the interruption. 

Good for you getting your Teams on! Break a leg, brother!

As for your TV BL issue... Yeeeah, this is one of my pet peeves in the right to repair battle. Every-fukkin'-thang nowadays has a cheap LCD in it (aside from a few bastard OLED devices... even worse for the landfills), and all of them are designed to be cheap to build first, not to have that BL replaced. In fact, you'd swear they were designed to thwart it.

All you "Right-To-Repair" guys wanna do some real good? Sponsor and push a bill to force manufacturers to make LCD displays serviceable so the device can stay out of the landfills for a sensible timeframe instead of the LCD being a built-in doomsday clock on every gawddamn household device they infest.

mnem
"Fuckkin' fuckity-fuck-face fukkin' fuckers... FUUUUUCK!!!" ~bd139

[mnementh]

Try Santander. They have actually had the most clue I've experienced so far.

On a quick skim, Santander's login security is solely pin/password, without the possibility of a "what you have" number generator.

While I regard that as sufficient in the past (e.g. my account that I've had since 1975), and it might be OK for the intended use, for the future I'd like something better.

Nope, if you have a more modern smartphone, you have the option of fingerprint scanning as well, which works really well.

... until you need to revoke all 10 certificates. Or can toes be used too?

It says nothing about using your fingers. There's a good supply of them out there if you have to get another one.   

Haha, that reminded me of this

Why does Serge the Psychotic Seal have Dexter's voice? Is Dexter hallucinating all this?

mnem
And worse... when does Mandark crash this party...?

[mnementh]

TEAMS sorted... friend paid me a visit this evening, passed me his old work laptop.

While I think another poor soul in Teams is not a thing to celebrate per se, this is excellent news for you as it's a potential stepping stone.

1000x this. We all have to get our hands dirty to make the world a better place... Teams is Vince's Pandora Box Shithole, just like MS Ticketing once was mine. 

Please take a moment to say a prayer for both our tarnished souls, my brothers; before the old ones carry us off... 

mnem
I am not my pants. No, I am not your pants, either.

[tggzzz]

Roger Needham used to recommend that your passwords should be "shocking nonsense", the shocking bit intended to make you think twice before telling someone your password. On that basis perhaps one should use one's 11th digit, the middle wicket so to speak, so that you aren't tempted to reveal your *ahem* original biometric in public. Of course revocation would be particularly undesirable.

I can think of people for whom it would benefit mankind. Much like retrospective abortion.

[tggzzz]

The rest, not so much: a major benefit of going out is to inhabit somewhere completely different, not to stay in cyberspace.

The trick is to do Augmented Reality -- experience the Real World enhanced with information from Other Places. It makes the Real World a more multifaceted place. And it takes less time to immerse yourself into something when you can apply the aggregate previous knowledge of the world on top of the actual experience.  The most obvious example to me is GPS and electronic maps.

That feels close to someone else indicating what I should experience, and to avoiding thinking and planning, and accidentally avoiding serendipity. (One of my favourite concepts and words!)

Do offline research, then experience X for yourself, then do research to find what you missed. And equally, what other people missed.

[Vince]

TV REPAIR

OK, here goes.

Simply removing the back cover was an adventure in itself. It's not designed to be removed. No. Not a single screw. Instead a shit load of very, very stiff plastic clips that bite into the metal chassis, real hard. Two rows of clips. One that's 2 inches from the edge, another that's 4 inches from the edge. Only way about it, is to pry the cover off by shoving a long beefy screw driver deep under the cover, and pry, hoping the cover, which flexes several inches in the  process, won't explode. Luckily for me the plastic held up, no drama, but boy that was close. I was really, really scared.... 

The two big black boxes at the bottom that look like VHS tapes... aren't VHS tapes (I checked). They are the speakers, of course 

OK so straight to the LED connector to see if I can swap the strings there.... problem again : there are no wires going to the power board... nope. Look how they made it... there is a connector that's attached to the chassis, and the power board plugs straight into that connector, no wires ! So I can't swap the strings to trouble shoot things ! 

Oh I am only 15 minutes into this thing and I already want to scrap if for parts. But I can't... not this one.
Plus I checked date codes on the board and this freaking thing is only 3.5 years old ?! 
The other TV I worked on was 15yo, so I didn't care too much about it... but this one is a 55" Smart TV 4K that's only 3+ years old ?!
So it's probably still worth a little something and the owner might indeed be happy if I can fix it... then he will owe me with his  bucket truck !!! 

OK, so I can't swap the strings, pfff.... what next.

The connector is 12 way, and only the first 8 pins are used / populated.

So looked at the power board, big TH components, traces around the connector....

There is a pinout table printed next to the connector, on the silk screen, how nice. It confirms that only the first 8 pins are used.
The 8 pins are labeled as follows :

1+
1-
2+
2-
3+
3-
4+
4-

So that would mean 4 independent strings.. potentially, but it means squat because I can't access the LED strips to see how they are wired. I can't remove that connector from the chassis, or I would cause damage...

However what I can do is buzz the pins to see if all the anodes and cathodes are independent or not. They appear to be, no two cathodes or anodes are tied together.
OK that's good. I mean if there are 4 strings in this backlight, and half of the backlight is dead, that means that two adjacent strings failed at the very same time.... unlikely.

It's now more likely that the power board is bad.... even more likely because of this : looking at the tracks at the connector, one can see that the anodes of string 1 and 2 are tied together, as well as their cathodes. Same for strings 3 and 4, their anodes and cathodes are connected together.

Looking at the board layout at the top side, you can see we have two "channels" (even labeled as such on the silk screen, conveniently).

So... it's looking good isn't it ? Now it's more likely that the fault is on the power board, no need to take the fragile LCD sandwich apart to get to the LED strips (at least for now...), what a relief !!!!! 

As you can see on the relevant pic, each channel is made of :

- one diode
- one power resistor
- one small blue disc ceramic cap
- one film cap
- next to one big ass coil
- and of course the pièce de résistance, one big TO220 trannystor !    A 5N50, sounds like a MOSFET kind of part number doesn't it.

OK so I am done for tonight, but tomorrow I can then start working on that board.

First power it up to figure out which channel works and which one doesn't.
Then try to see within that channel, what component is dead... assuming I am lucky and it's one of those few big TH components, rather than one in a million tiny SMD components on the under side of the board.... with no schematic and board layout to help, I have zero chance of fixing this board....

So let's check the easy stuff first and cross fingers that we get lucky ! 

I guess of course the most likely suspect is the MOSFET. So I could just remove it, should be easy, and stick it in my superb, very helpful 5 Euros Chinese component tester... I am so happy I bought this horrible thing, one of the best investments in the lab 

Stay tuned !!!   

[Cerebus]

Roger Needham used to recommend that your passwords should be "shocking nonsense", the shocking bit intended to make you think twice before telling someone your password. On that basis perhaps one should use one's 11th digit, the middle wicket so to speak, so that you aren't tempted to reveal your *ahem* original biometric in public. Of course revocation would be particularly undesirable.

I can think of people for whom it would benefit mankind. Much like retrospective abortion.

I believe the term of art is "Elective post-partum termination". 

[BU508A]

First power it up to figure out which channel works and which one doesn't.
Then try to see within that channel, what component is dead... assuming I am lucky and it's one of those few big TH components, rather than one in a million tiny SMD components on the under side of the board.... with no schematic and board layout to help, I have zero chance of fixing this board....

I recommend to look out for the datasheet of the controller IC. The manufacturer are following often very closely the design recommendations given in the datasheets. Helped me in the past several times.

[Vince]

First power it up to figure out which channel works and which one doesn't.
Then try to see within that channel, what component is dead... assuming I am lucky and it's one of those few big TH components, rather than one in a million tiny SMD components on the under side of the board.... with no schematic and board layout to help, I have zero chance of fixing this board....

I recommend to look out for the datasheet of the controller IC. The manufacturer are following often very closely the design recommendations given in the datasheets. Helped me in the past several times.

Yeah that's also what I do in this type of situation... it's better than having zero schematic at all. Gives you at least some idea of how it might be wired up...

[mnementh]

...Yeah, 625 line PAL is interlaced; I was thinking that when we were talking before. 

That's another reason I decided to put a pin in this project; I'm waiting on the outcome of this eBay dispute. If I'm not keeping this turd, I think I'd much rather spend the time and brain power figuring out what went wrong with my fuckeroo UTG962E. And playing with my brand-new LeSiglent T3DSO2102. 

mnem
Never any shortage of things a tinkerdwagon needs to do...

I'm a bit interested how this scope thing finally is.
For now my guess is that this 313 vertical has nothing to do with PAL.

Is there possibly a military grade high resolution video system with small screens?
Just wondering from where HP got their idea.

Somebody should count those H-sync pulses.
625 is raw PAL and it includes blanking time.

Somebody should also adjust their scope monitor so that returning beam is visible and count how many H-lines it needs.
That much is needed over that 313.

Old Hitachi schematics has very clear horizontal timing as 41.2us.
Is it the right device for sure?

Only one google hit for CDU-10BA241, title of Hitachi schematics.
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/hp-871xb-vna-crt-module-capacitor-identification-help/

Much more for CDK-10BA242.
One of its CRT is 240ANB31N and earlier tube shuffle pays off.
As everybody remembers 31 is green, it continues so that 4 is white.
Tube in Hitachi schematics is 240ANB4(N).

Is this white CRT a rarity, is the whole input side of that schematics a rarity?
Maybe 546xx real H-sync is something else than 24270Hz.

According to the Wikipedia entry, there were several PAL standards; most operated at 625 lines(576 visible)50Hz while PAL M operated at 525 lines(480 Visible)60Hz. There was a "standard" called PAL-60 as well that allowed European VCRs to display NTSC VHS tapes; it was a bastard in that it misused the hardware by displaying PAL video at 60Hz with the NTSC color information, this was later promoted by video game consoles like the DreamCast.

I've read somewhere in the HP sales fluff that "waveform refresh" is at 60Hz, so I suspect it is something like that. OTOH, as they're using the PAL chip in a closed system, there's probably no reason they couldn't make their own "bastard" format at 625 lines(576 visible)60Hz... 

As for where these monitors came from... they are small open-frame industrial monitors meant for all sorts of automated manufacturing applications; usually driven by some embedded computer.

mnem
I think. As always, take anything I say with a grain of salt big enough to pickle a dragon.

[Cerebus]

The rest, not so much: a major benefit of going out is to inhabit somewhere completely different, not to stay in cyberspace.

The trick is to do Augmented Reality -- experience the Real World enhanced with information from Other Places. It makes the Real World a more multifaceted place. And it takes less time to immerse yourself into something when you can apply the aggregate previous knowledge of the world on top of the actual experience.  The most obvious example to me is GPS and electronic maps.

Pah! You can have my compass and Ordnance Survey 1:25000 maps when you can prise them out of my cold dead hands.

[mnementh]

Roger Needham used to recommend that your passwords should be "shocking nonsense", the shocking bit intended to make you think twice before telling someone your password. On that basis perhaps one should use one's 11th digit, the middle wicket so to speak, so that you aren't tempted to reveal your *ahem* original biometric in public. Of course revocation would be particularly undesirable.

I can think of people for whom it would benefit mankind. Much like retrospective abortion.

I believe the term of art is "Elective post-partum termination". 

"Enforced Darwin Award".

mnem
*toddles off to the dwagon cave*

[med6753]

Let's see....am I in the right thread? 

Anyway, starting looking at this FUBAR'ed Type 1A1 plug-in. On the lower vertical settings (20mV, 10mV, 5mV) ranges there is considerable noise on the channel 1 trace. And the noise is still present when the input is set to GND position.



First suspects are FET's Q122 and Q142. Located on this little pre-amp board. I have spares from a parts Type 1A1. Changed them out and it took care of the excess noise. However, now the DC balance, gain, compensation for channel 1 are completely out the window and I'll have to re-calibrate Channel 1.





Once Channel 1 is re-calibrated then on to Channel 2. On the lower vertical settings the high frequency compensation is peaking and can't be adjusted out.

[Vince]

First power it up to figure out which channel works and which one doesn't.
Then try to see within that channel, what component is dead... assuming I am lucky and it's one of those few big TH components, rather than one in a million tiny SMD components on the under side of the board.... with no schematic and board layout to help, I have zero chance of fixing this board....

I recommend to look out for the datasheet of the controller IC. The manufacturer are following often very closely the design recommendations given in the datasheets. Helped me in the past several times.

Just removed the rubbery goo that was covering the driver chip. 16 pin.

Hard to read, used the optivisor + torch light for 5 minutes, still not 100% sure what the P/N is.

I think it's :

 6N18665

However I am not sure about the two digits in red. Might be the letter ' G ' or digits ' 6 ' or ' 0 ', I can't get a reliable view on them.

It tried googling but no luck what so ever...

[tautech]

Just removed the rubbery goo that was covering the driver chip. 16 pin.

Most usually a 8 pin chip.....just saying.

Give us the # on that chap please.

[GreyWoolfe]

TEAMS sorted... friend paid me a visit this evening, passed me his old work laptop.

While I think another poor soul in Teams is not a thing to celebrate per se, this is excellent news for you as it's a potential stepping stone.

1000x this. We all have to get our hands dirty to make the world a better place... Teams is Vince's Pandora Box Shithole, just like MS Ticketing once was mine. 

Please take a moment to say a prayer for both our tarnished souls, my brothers; before the old ones carry us off... 

mnem
I am not my pants. No, I am not your pants, either.

My company uses Teams.  We actually went from Skype for Business to Teams.  Our bi-weekly conference calls are on Teams.  I participate by phone only, even when I am not actually on the road.  I had a program manager call me today asking why I didn't respond to his question in Teams chat.  I said I was in the kitchen.  He said that I was green and asked if I use a mouse jiggler.  I said of course, I can't stand my laptop suspending itself every 15 minutes and it can't be disabled, I don't have that level of privilage.  That little jiggler dongle is a life saver.

Thankfully, I am not my pants either.  I have forgotten my phone, keys, wallet, BT headset and pen but I haven't YET left the house without my pants.  Yet.  I hope that day never comes.   My memory seems to be slipping more and more.  Mrs GreyWoolfe thinks its the chemotherapy/fatigue from it that causes my memory issues.  I will not disabuse her of that notion.

[Vince]

Just removed the rubbery goo that was covering the driver chip. 16 pin.

Most usually a 8 pin chip.....just saying.

Give us the # on that chap please.

Are you drunk or what ?! 

I already gave you the P/N in huge big bold letters, in that very message that you replied to ! 

And no it's not 8 pin, I just said it was 16 ! 

Maybe you have not had your morning coffee just yet ?! 

The other TV was also a 16 pin controller. An MP3394S.

This one as I just said, not 100% sure what the P/N is, but at least sure about the first characters and no match on Google that I can see.


OK, it's morning for you I guess, but 02H30 for me here, I am going to bed... now.

See you later.... 

[mnementh]

That's the Samsung fuckyoonium chip. Datasheet PAPER ONLY. On display in the same filing cabinet as the demolition plans for Arthur Dent's home. 

mnem

[tggzzz]

The rest, not so much: a major benefit of going out is to inhabit somewhere completely different, not to stay in cyberspace.

The trick is to do Augmented Reality -- experience the Real World enhanced with information from Other Places. It makes the Real World a more multifaceted place. And it takes less time to immerse yourself into something when you can apply the aggregate previous knowledge of the world on top of the actual experience.  The most obvious example to me is GPS and electronic maps.

Pah! You can have my compass and Ordnance Survey 1:25000 maps when you can prise them out of my cold dead hands.

Just so.

OSmaps show interesting features that you didn't know existed.
VR stuff tends to have advertising features that you don't care exist. Plus black propaganda, fake news, and people/organisations flashing "look at me".

No contest really.