Besides, I like coffee with my sugar and half-and-half.![]()
-Pat
Sugar in coffee? Bleah!Half-and-half?



Tomorrow I'll pull together the BOM for capacitor/part replacement.
Yuck. The coffee has a HP-ish color.![]()



Is there something I don't know about old TI BC183L trannystors, auction of 20 sold for £210.
eBay auction: #314026002138
Or much better price from Langrex, 10 for £2.25. https://www.langrex.co.uk/products/bc183l-92-npn-transistor-x1opcs/
David
Or 100 for £3.20 (plus VAT) from ESR Components.
https://www.esr.co.uk/shop/contents/en-uk/d2112001_AC_to_BC_Series.html
Could be some daft thing, like with valves, where only a Mullard ECC81 with the code from such and such a factory and a particular anode construction will do, as its musicality and sheer sonic competence is overwhelming.
I offered some transistors once, they were free to collector.....And charged to the emitter, I suppose![]()
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Only if they didn't collect from my base.
mnem
Not enough soggy ol' boots in all the land... not near enough...
Yes, but you have to have the mythical golden ear to hear the difference, because none of our expensive (back in the day) test gear is capable of measuring the incredible increase in the signal quality. It’s clearly audible (to them) but otherwise immeasurable. Don’t question, you tin-eared heathen!
![]()
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-Pat
Anyone in the UK with a serious amount of HP gear to diagnose? Here's someone (not me) selling almost every HP card extender you could think of: https://www.ebay.co.uk/sch/emjo_90/m.html?item=314114703504&rt=nc&_trksid=p2047675.m3561.l2562
McBryce.This seller is getting some ridiculous bids on a lot of few dozen very used OC44s. What makes these cruddy transistors so valuable ?The only people I can think of who'd want them are restorers of 1960s transistor radios, which have a bit of a following.
You can get NOS from a few suppliers, but they are over £10.
A different Tektronix mug showed up the other day on our favorite bank account evacuation site, so I snagged it. It arrived today. Smaller than the cobalt blue one (still my favorite) but nice to have another, different one.
-PatYuck. The coffee has a HP-ish color.![]()
LOL - First off, I don't think I want Tek-truquioseturquoise coffee - doesn't seem appealing. Don't think I'll let the creamer get that far 'off'.
Besides, I like coffee with my sugar and half-and-half.![]()
-Pat
Edit - I kan tipe.
Yuck. The coffee has a HP-ish color.![]()
Call that a cup of coffee? This is a cup of coffee:
If it's not as black as Louis Armstrong in a light-proof room, it's not black enough.
(I really thought that was a cup of builders tea with way too much milk in it, not coffee.)
BLEEEEARRRRGHHH!!! Black coffee is for bitter people with dried up little souls. Like Sid.

Not much TEA today Went to Ely and amongst other things I visited a charity shop connected to the animal shelter we got our dog from. In a bin was a Canon EOS 40D camera. It said untested due to no battery charger. It did have a body cap, strap, battery and fast 8GB CF card. At £30 it was worth a punt. They offered a refund if it didn't work but I'm not going to ask a charity for refund... My current DSLR is a EOS 20D bought new back in 2004 for $1400 (in the USA). So this would be a bit of an upgrade.
Got home, charged battery and - nothing, dead. So to TE. Got the Fluke 8060 out. Battery read OK and some continuity across contacts in the camera. However the contacts on the battery looked greasy. So quick wipe with contact cleaner, stuck it back in and it all works. Not a bad DSLR. "only" 10 megapixels but the overall image quality beats the 15 MP 50D that replaced it.
Also got a chance to check the resistance of the Current probe cal fixture Flukesez Bam 50R (no, not taken with the Canon, it was taken before I went out).
That was a jammy find with the 40D, not sure I'd agree about it having a better image capability than the 50D, which I have, I also have the 7D and the 50D is my camera of choice for what I use it for. I find that the reason why I favour it over the 7D, even though the 7D has way more pixels, but the focusing system on the 7D cannot offer me a single spot focus in any quadrant, it always presents me with multiple zones of focus and as such, if shooting through say a chain link fence, will tend to focus more on any part of the fence rather than the plane on the opposite side. The 40D has the ability to provide me with multiple zone or just a single zone and with the single can shoot through the holes of the fence, ignoring the fence as long I focus on the single spot through it.
The 40D, has 5Mp fewer pixels than the 50D and 2Mp more than the 20D and I find that the 7D has a far better image quality on subjects that are not confused by the multiple focus points, such as a single plane in blue sky. YMMV.
That transformer is a common mode choke, part of the mains input filter.
What's an audiophool? And why are they smashing up chewb gear?
People who pay a lot of money for things they believe will improve the sound of their hifi, including particular subtypes of valve, solid silver loudspeaker cables, particular brands of capacitor and audiophile IEC mains cables. All of this is highly dubious on an engineering basis.
Some valves which were never considered audio valves back in the day, such as E180F and ECC88 have become popular in these circles. E180F had gold flashed pins for solid technical reasons, but gold flashed pins clearly improve the sound.I've even seen adverts for little towers to hold speaker cables up off the floor to improve the sound quality and reduce losses to the floor, presumably by the capacitive effect?![]()
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BLEEEEARRRRGHHH!!! Black coffee is for bitter people with dried up little souls. Like Sid.


Yes, but you have to have the mythical golden ear to hear the difference, because none of our expensive (back in the day) test gear is capable of measuring the incredible increase in the signal quality. It’s clearly audible (to them) but otherwise immeasurable. Don’t question, you tin-eared heathen!
![]()
![]()
-Pat
It is remarkable how much these golden ears refrain from actually finding out if they have been swindled or not -- mention something like double-blind testing to them and you will forever be branded an Un-Believer. Such testing of course will reveal that standard 0,75mm2 (just below AWG18) zipcord is a perfectly fine speaker cable at moderate lengths. I think that the 'phools secretly know and fear that this is true, but being caught would be so horrible.
And it has to be double-blind; for the subtle cues of someone in the know will mess the results up. This goes back to a early 1900s study in animal psychology, involving a certain German horse, called Der kluge Hans.
BLEEEEARRRRGHHH!!! Black coffee is for bitter people with dried up little souls. Like Sid.
You rang. Sitting here drinking the stuff
Engineers and IT folk exist on the stuff mostly.
Edit: med knows how to coffee like an engineer
A different Tektronix mug showed up the other day on our favorite bank account evacuation site, so I snagged it. It arrived today. Smaller than the cobalt blue one (still my favorite) but nice to have another, different one.
-PatYuck. The coffee has a HP-ish color.![]()
LOL - First off, I don't think I want Tek-truquioseturquoise coffee - doesn't seem appealing. Don't think I'll let the creamer get that far 'off'.
Besides, I like coffee with my sugar and half-and-half.![]()
-Pat
Edit - I kan tipe.
The logo would do much better if the contents weren't coloured like UK Staff Sergeant tea.
This of course has electronic implications too, and since we're now on probation for offtopic violation, I'm going to prove this by quoting the service manual of the Yamaha PM1800 mixing desk, in which it is written the following phrase: "Un-sweetened black coffee is probably the least harmful". This is in the context of cleaning the mixer after exposure to spilled drinks. Their recommended procedure was distilled or de-ionised water and toothbrush, which worked a treat. Classic umbrella drinks or sweet sodas were not even remotely as friendly to the device. I think this is a major contribution to me drinking my coffee all black ever since. I much prefer my sweets on food, like toast with jam and cheese. Which I'm getting right now, away from electronics, of course.
Not much TEA today Went to Ely and amongst other things I visited a charity shop connected to the animal shelter we got our dog from. In a bin was a Canon EOS 40D camera. It said untested due to no battery charger. It did have a body cap, strap, battery and fast 8GB CF card. At £30 it was worth a punt. They offered a refund if it didn't work but I'm not going to ask a charity for refund... My current DSLR is a EOS 20D bought new back in 2004 for $1400 (in the USA). So this would be a bit of an upgrade.
Got home, charged battery and - nothing, dead. So to TE. Got the Fluke 8060 out. Battery read OK and some continuity across contacts in the camera. However the contacts on the battery looked greasy. So quick wipe with contact cleaner, stuck it back in and it all works. Not a bad DSLR. "only" 10 megapixels but the overall image quality beats the 15 MP 50D that replaced it.
Also got a chance to check the resistance of the Current probe cal fixture Flukesez Bam 50R (no, not taken with the Canon, it was taken before I went out).