Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

Agreed with the cameras they are quite good, trouble with them is however that there are many that are tucked away in locations where you cannot see them until the last minute, and they are usually the ones located just where the limit changes from say 40 to 30 and are designed to catch people in the process of actually slowing to new limit, the sign of which is also pretty well hidden until the last minute.

Well, if one isn't speeding, who cares where the cameras are? And if one isn't observant enough to spot a speed limit sign or a bright yellow speed camera in a reasonably predictable place on the road in enough time to react to it safely then one certainly isn't observant enough to be in adequate control of a vehicle that is being driven over the speed limit. A traffic sergeant I used to know said he never ticketed people for mere speed, but for failing to spot that a police car was behind them when they were speeding or sitting at the side of the road while PC Plod was standing next to it in high-vis with a RADAR gun in his hand.

Thats why I said, about many are tucked away where it is hard to spot them until its too late, many are just after a speed limit change and don't give motorists sufficient time to slow down without hard braking, risking being rammed from the rear. There is a camera on the M11 just before it meets the North Circular where the speed drops from 70 to 50, the camera is just 400 odd metres from the speed limit sign. That sign is easy to miss, especially if you are behind or in the process of overtaking a lorry etc. In fact that camera did hold the record for the most fines issued and used to be, I recall, being attacked on many occasions by either placing tyres over it and setting them on fire and other times being rammed so that the camera was facing the ground and so they had to put a crash barrier there to protect it.

I now see that they have since erected a solitary speed limit repeater sign just prior to the camera, and this camera is still also missable if there is a lorry between it and you. I knew about this camera and also the speed limit change as I was a regular on that road, but strangers could be so easily caught out by it.

For the avoidance of doubt, I have never been caught speeding by either a camera or a policeman in 56 years of driving but seeing as my livelihood depended on my ability to be able to drive, I saw the need to invest in equipment to help me protect my driving licence, such as a GPS based camera warning system and also dashcams.

[PA0PBZ]

Wow! That is CLEAN! 

Must have been quite a long call... (been there, done that)

[factory]

And a not so clean HP DMM on ePay, nice! 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225062710116



David

[Specmaster]

<snip>
Well no, sorry to disappoint ! 

You must have misunderstood me.... it is just as unserviceable as the older TV I worked on. In both cases you have to crack the screen apart, peal every layer of the "sandwich", and disconnect and remove off course the LCD panel itself... which is the dangerous / tricky part.

Also in both cases the strips are held with freaking double sided sticky tape which is a nightmare.

This TV, is even worse because the strip is stuck against its heat sink, there is very limited access to get tools, unlike the older TV with the strips laying flat on the chassis, so you had ample access from all sides to pry the strips off of the chassis.

So no, sorry Dragon... still a bunch of crap I am afraid ! 

I will call it serviceable when you can replace the strips without having ti remove / disturb the LCD panel. That is, put the strips OUTside the frame, not inside..... 
... and when the strips are also fixed with screw or any method designed to be easy to get off... so no glue or tape thanks...

Of course this will never happen... at least not on consumer stuff... maybe professional fancy expensive screens are built better, I don't know...

I doubt there is a set anywhere that is designed to be serviceable, they are all designed to be easy to assemble by robots and hence the trouble in getting inside it in the first place. A robot just drops the back cover onto the chassis and simply presses it home and the grips you mentioned are designed to make that process easy.

[Specmaster]

And a not so clean HP DMM on ePay, nice! 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225062710116



David

Oh yuck, I hope that cleans up OK, it would never grace my bench that's for sure 

[Vince]

TV REPAIR

Still, it does not explain why that bad string can have zero voltage when it's in // with the other one tat gets 1230V....
I just checked the solder joints of the connector on the power board, they looked good. Reflowed them anyway, still no joy.

Makes no sense. See picture below. There big fat traces on that connect pins 1 and 3 and 2 and 4 to // the strings. How can have 130V on a set of pins and zero (well, 1.5V right now.. better than nothing I guess !) on the other set of pins....

OK, powered up the TV, not much exposed metal at the back of the connector on the pwoer board, but with the sharp probes I managed to get contact.

Verdict : I DO get power on both strings...so no problems with the tracks and solder joints on the connector, board and its connector is fine.

However I do NOT get power on the mating connector that's mounted on the chassis !

So, a dodgy connector, my luck... 

[Cubdriver]

And a not so clean HP DMM on ePay, nice! 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225062710116



David

Oh yuck, I hope that cleans up OK, it would never grace my bench that's for sure 

Damn you guys!  I'm a sucker for a basket case...      

-Pat

[Zucca]

spotted two UPS 5000W pure sine with network management cards in the company dumpster...

sooo temping... but alone it is impossible, they are heavy as fuuuuuuuuu

Go to Harbor Freight, spend $40 on a hand-truck. Problem solved.

Oh yeahhh... dumpster. Bring hand tools. Remove the battery cartridge(s) and handle separately.

mnem
Been dere, dunnat, aching back tomorrow.

Theoretically, the UPS's should be already without the batteries; or in the states you just can throw the SLA's away in the community garbage, together with electronics?

could not resist, it WAS in the electric waste dumpster.
Batteries were still connected at 51V holy crapppp....

>40LBS crime.

[Vince]

TV REPAIR

Make sure if you are able to resurrect the other strings, that your friend is well aware that he might actually spot areas of his screen that are dimmer than others, in the areas with the dead LEDs, otherwise he might not be happy with you. Short of replacing all the strings, I can see no way around that problem. Great work so far, keep it coming.

Well yes if I manage to fix the thing I will see if the lighting is even enough to be acceptable, i fnot will tell him what he wants to do.

Hopefully there WILL be dark spots and he will tell me OK fuck you can keep it... more spare boards/parts for Vince ! 

We shall see.

I don't know where to buy the strings nor how much that costs. If it's available for this particular TV, and is ridiculously cheap including shipping... like 20 Euros shipped, and given the TV is recent, maybe he will want to pay for that. We are not there yet....

[Vince]

And a not so clean HP DMM on ePay, nice! 
https://www.ebay.com/itm/225062710116



David

Oh yuck, I hope that cleans up OK, it would never grace my bench that's for sure 

Damn you guys!  I'm a sucker for a basket case...      

-Pat

Well someone needs to rescue this little thing... give us a shout when you get it !

Just needs a bit of a clean, come on ! 

[bd139]

Will probably clean up fine. Insides however, hmm.

[mnementh]

TV REPAIR

So this panel is actually designed to be able to service the LED BL array...?

HALLE-FUKKIN-LUJAH!!!

These LED arrays are driven CC in series; they separate them in banks and modulate the drive current to different zones of the screen for higher "dynamic contrast" compared from one part of the screen to other parts. I'd guess that the two banks on each side drive alternately to be able to keep dwell time lower; either that, or each bank is aligned with a different diffraction lens so it corresponds to a different quadrant of the screen. 

mnem
https://youtu.be/YrLk4vdY28Q

Well no, sorry to disappoint ! 

You must have misunderstood me.... it is just as unserviceable as the older TV I worked on. In both cases you have to crack the screen apart, peal every layer of the "sandwich", and disconnect and remove off course the LCD panel itself... which is the dangerous / tricky part.

Also in both cases the strips are held with freaking double sided sticky tape which is a nightmare.

This TV, is even worse because the strip is stuck against its heat sink, there is very limited access to get tools, unlike the older TV with the strips laying flat on the chassis, so you had ample access from all sides to pry the strips off of the chassis.

So no, sorry Dragon... still a bunch of crap I am afraid ! 

I will call it serviceable when you can replace the strips without having ti remove / disturb the LCD panel. That is, put the strips OUTside the frame, not inside..... 
... and when the strips are also fixed with screw or any method designed to be easy to get off... so no glue or tape thanks...

Of course this will never happen... at least not on consumer stuff... maybe professional fancy expensive screens are built better, I don't know...

Awww, ma-a-a-an.... I saw that aluminum panel right there and imagined that somebody had come to their senses.  Of course, they just made it look like you might be able to work on the fuxxoring thing with some level of sanity...

Fuck you, Samsuck... it's just like Lucy and that fucking football again...   

mnem

[mnementh]

TV REPAIR

Make sure if you are able to resurrect the other strings, that your friend is well aware that he might actually spot areas of his screen that are dimmer than others, in the areas with the dead LEDs, otherwise he might not be happy with you. Short of replacing all the strings, I can see no way around that problem. Great work so far, keep it coming.

Well yes if I manage to fix the thing I will see if the lighting is even enough to be acceptable, i fnot will tell him what he wants to do.

Hopefully there WILL be dark spots and he will tell me OK fuck you can keep it... more spare boards/parts for Vince ! 

We shall see.

I don't know where to buy the strings nor how much that costs. If it's available for this particular TV, and is ridiculously cheap including shipping... like 20 Euros shipped, and given the TV is recent, maybe he will want to pay for that. We are not there yet....

Why the eff would you trash an obviously repairable TV like that? Just put it away and wait for a paycheck so you can buy some LEDs for Ifni's sake. You really should replace those LEDs anyways, even if you are sending it back to the owner. Just jumpering them out is begging for all the others in the string to fail prematurely.

Correct repair, short of replacing them all, would be to measure voltage drop across every LED with them lit up and replace any that read appreciably lower or higher than the average. That would be your best chance to avoid recidivism. You already have a cheap hot-air rework station, right?

mnem
 

[Vince]

TV REPAIR

Make sure if you are able to resurrect the other strings, that your friend is well aware that he might actually spot areas of his screen that are dimmer than others, in the areas with the dead LEDs, otherwise he might not be happy with you. Short of replacing all the strings, I can see no way around that problem. Great work so far, keep it coming.

Well yes if I manage to fix the thing I will see if the lighting is even enough to be acceptable, i fnot will tell him what he wants to do.

Hopefully there WILL be dark spots and he will tell me OK fuck you can keep it... more spare boards/parts for Vince ! 

We shall see.

I don't know where to buy the strings nor how much that costs. If it's available for this particular TV, and is ridiculously cheap including shipping... like 20 Euros shipped, and given the TV is recent, maybe he will want to pay for that. We are not there yet....

Why the eff would you trash an obviously repairable TV like that?

I don't want a TV, I don't watch TV, and even if I did, I would not want this particular one, way too big for my house, looks crap and ugly. Like all TV's.

Just put it away and wait for a paycheck so you can buy some LEDs for Ifni's sake.

You mean so I can sell it to make money ? Depends how much it's worth on the second hand market, why not... but still, why wast emoney on new LED strips if it looks good enough as is to be flogged.
Plus, from a moral point of view, I don't like the idea of making money from something that was given to me. If I fix it, it's to give it back to the owner.

You really should replace those LEDs anyways, even if you are sending it back to the owner.

Again not my call, not my TV. I don't get to make decisions, the owner does.
If he is happy the free repair and doesn't want to spend money to replace LEDs, it's his wallet and TV, he does what he wants.
All I can do is give him the information so he can make an informed decision, of course.

Just jumpering them out is begging for all the others in the string to fail prematurely.

Yes. And even if I replaced the faulty LED's, the other would probalby start failing as well anyway....
so you replace the LED strips, costs money... then you don't know the quality that you will get, they might fail anytime as well.
And if they don't, then the power board will go bad because of caps or any of the numerous power transistors or diodes.

You never see the end of it, by the time you have fixed it 4 times in 2 years, you could have bought a brand new TV with a warranty.

It's just like what you said with old cars ! 

Correct repair, short of replacing them all, would be to measure voltage drop across every LED with them lit up and replace any that read appreciably lower or higher than the average. That would be your best chance to avoid recidivism. You already have a cheap hot-air rework station, right?

Yes I have the cheap one everyone used to buy a few years ago, with the fan in the hand piece....
Replacing only the 2 individual defective LEDs you mean ? OK would do if I had appropriate LEDs on hand, but I don't.
Well maybe I could see if it's technically possible to use the ones I salvaged from the other TV, could have a look at that.
Efficiency/ brightness and colour temperature would of course not be the same, but maybe similar enough that it would be a better alternative to no LEDs at all... don't know.

First, try to fix the damn thing, get all 4 four strings working, then put the "light pipe" and reflector back into place to see if there are dark spots or if it's acceptable as is (old TV with 5 dead LEDs was just fine, incredibly enough....)

Then I will take it from there. One step at a time, one step at a time... 

[factory]

...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.

All PALs are interlaced and 546xx is clearly not, or at least I've not seen a picture indicating different, there part of the picture would be dimmed or disarranged.
There's also D1-PAL, a possibly standard for digitized stuff and 720x576i, obviously not a full signal.

It's of course also possible that the scope has a crooked installation of things where composite signal is composed and taken apart inside the scope and only after that fed to monitor, since there are separated sync sync signals.
Never seen one but who knows, maybe it was a clever form of direct memory access and used chip exported all necessary signals.
On the other hand, maybe 313 is just a prank since one more or less doesn't mean a thing when the real one is 312.5 and license plate was already famous.

First stackexchange answer has a good picture of beam.
https://electronics.stackexchange.com/questions/98922/why-there-is-625-lines-pal-in-t-v-scanning-or-odd-lines/98926#98926

Good place for PAL specs.
http://martin.hinner.info/vga/pal.html
Good picture of field selection.
http://martin.hinner.info/vga/pal.gif

TI paper has exact scope screens.
https://www.ti.com/lit/pdf/sboa109

Where did the PAL picture standard discussion come from for this HP scope? the PAL chip on the 54645N scope mainboard (A3) is just a Programmable Array Logic IC, listed as A3U5 "IC DGTL PAL CMOS 1800-GATES 12NS", I did post the relevant diagram parts, not sure if anyone looked at them.  Pixel data goes in and video data in the form of half bright & full bright pulses come out.

Horizontal & vertical sync pulses come from the A3U28 G-Array IC, these are 19.72kHz & 60Hz for the 54615B at least, I did verify this. I didn't check pulse width but could do, as it's still apart, waiting for some spare time to try & find the intermittent fault.

I doubt the Hsync/Vsync would be any different for the broken Agilent scope, but I suspect the video data is double given the increased specifications mentioned.

David

[med6753]

End of an era. I've had that same roll of 60/40 for perhaps 40 years. But as you can see it's nearly run out. So a replacement arrived today. Genuine Kester 60/40. I figure I better grab some before the nannies outlaw it. That new roll will most likely outlast me.

[Vince]

Geez even your spool of solder is BLUE !!!     

Must be a very old / NOS roll though, seeing as the original Smurf blue has faded quite a bit it looks like ! 

[Cubdriver]

End of an era. I've had that same roll of 60/40 for perhaps 40 years. But as you can see it's nearly run out. So a replacement arrived today. Genuine Kester 60/40. I figure I better grab some before the nannies outlaw it. That new roll will most likely outlast me.

Mmmmm, yummy lead solder!      

-Pat

[med6753]

Geez even your spool of solder is BLUE !!!     

Must be a very old roll though, the original  Smurf blue has faded quite a bit it looks like ! 

That new spool is pure white. The camera lied.

[Vince]

Oh wow, that bad ?! Looks like you need not just a new spool of solder, but also a new camera ! 


EDIT : looks like maybe you used the flash ? I find it's usually too violent and modifies colours.... the dark gray carpet in my car looks purple when I use the flash...

At the end of the day I think the camera just sees the colour as it is, and it's just our human eye that's easily fooled into thinking it's gray when it's purple in reality... just dark enough purple to look gray, but when the flash throws enough light at it, it eventually reveals the truth...

So I would not be mad at the camera, rather mad at the guy who designed the dye for my carpet and your spool of solder !....

[med6753]

Oh wow, that bad ?! Looks like you need not just a new spool of solder, but also a new camera ! 

I need a new pancreas too but that's unlikely to happen. 

[bd139]

Find an image editing tool with white balance control on it. Click that then click the bit of the picture they’ll at is supposed to be white. Job done. 99% of the photo is the photographer not the camera

[Specmaster]

End of an era. I've had that same roll of 60/40 for perhaps 40 years. But as you can see it's nearly run out. So a replacement arrived today. Genuine Kester 60/40. I figure I better grab some before the nannies outlaw it. That new roll will most likely outlast me.

Holy crap, I'm in shit creek then, I've 9 of these bad boys to get through, maybe I should start to list some on eBay, cos you use way more solder than I do, and I've only recently started the first one of 10 that BD and I purchased some time ago when leaded solder was beginning to become unobtainable so we brought 10 each to keep us going  

[bd139]

I’ve used two of the bloody things already 

Mostly using some 62/36/2 Felder stuff that cost me a fortune for repairs though. 60/40 for prototype shit.

Will add it eyeball watchlist at hamfests as well.

[Specmaster]

Find an image editing tool with white balance control on it. Click that then click the bit of the picture they’ll at is supposed to be white. Job done. 99% of the photo is the photographer not the camera

Yeah, but to be fair to med, the label is pure white, so I think on this occasion it might just be the flash and the way it is reacting to it.