Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Cubdriver]

Another one missed, been a lot of posts in the last five hours.



David

Ugh - yeah, that one slipped by me, too.   

-Pat

[mansaxel]

My favourite automation at the moment is this one, which works transparently on my phone, ipad and mac (and probably the watch - haven't tried it yet)...

I usually stop at using "Fiona" to tell me that the time is up, using "say" in the terminal. I also wrote this little one, for a laugh:

Code: [Select]

#/bin/bash

# $Id: numb3rs.sh,v 1.1 2019/10/27 09:06:21 mansaxel Exp mansaxel $

ROWS=0
BLANKETT=`mktemp`

case `uname` in
        "Darwin")
        printf " "
        ;;
        "*")
        printf "Won't work without OSX speech synthesis\n"
        exit 1
        ;;
esac

while true ; do
    printf "Сообщение от SA0XLR\n\n"
    sleep 2
    say -v Milena "Сообщение от S.A.0.X.L.R"
    GRPS=0
    sleep 1
    while [ $GRPS -lt 63 ] ; do
        GRUPP=$(seq 1 5 | while read n ; do printf "%d" $(($RANDOM%10)) ;done )
        printf "%s\n" $GRUPP
        GRPS=$(($GRPS+1))
    done    >   ${BLANKETT}
    fmt -w 60 < ${BLANKETT}
    printf "\n\n"
    while read NUMBER ; do
        printf $NUMBER | \
            sed 's/\(.\)/\1./g' | \
            say -v Milena
        sleep 3
    done < $BLANKETT
done
rm ${BLANKETT}
#
# EOF


[bd139]

LOL so basically numbers station in bash 

BTW resize in macOS. Open finder, select images, right click, quick actions -> convert to jpeg. Pick size, quality, strip metadata, press ok. Job done 

I'm actually trying to curate a half decent Tek 465B manual in Preview at the moment as that allows you to do all the usual PDF manipulation crap you have to pay for or argue with pdftools on other platforms.

Edit: I just replicated that entire script in Shortcuts in < 5 mins.

[Vince]

NIXIE DVM REPAIR

OK I am motivated, well at the moment anywho.

I decided to resume work on fixing my turd of a Nixie DVM, Rochar type A.1335, for those who remember this thing.

IIRC that will be round 3.

Just powered it up and quick test to see if it's still alive since the last time I worked on it... 2 or 3 months ago ? Can't even remember when that was. A while ago.

Well at power up, nothing on the Nixie, all dead.... then after 4 seconds some light coming out of them, partially lit digits, then eventually it all comes back to life and they are all rocking.
Strange that. Maybe some leaky caps somewhere that makes for this progressive wakening. I don't know.

...snip...

So that will be my first activity on the meter... it's 17h15 I will spend a bit of time this evening on it, and maybe an hour or two every evening after work.
A little bit at a time, hopefully I will eventually make progress and fix the thing.

P.S. you should really avoid using the N***e word, as it just helps google index TE, for the display choob rapists to find & destroy.

Oh come on...I don't thin tub raist need that to figure out where to find tubes...
Plus, them knowing that Rochar TE contains some, is not going to make their tube business any happier. They are so rare they they would go bankrupt long before they find some to gut.
It's a long defunct smal niche low volume local TE manufacturer, they are extremely rare. found my 3 items ni January out of luck. Been 6+ months then, and I still have not found any more for sale...
Even if the guy found one for sale, so what ? He would have to pay for it. Here because every body is so greedy, it would be advertised at 100 or 150 Euros, add shipping. For that price he would get 4 or 5 tubes max, in unknown condition. He would lose lots of money rather than make any. Even if like me he got lucky and found ONE such instrument at "only" 50 Euros... still have to ad shipping, that props it at 60/65 Euros, for 4 or 5 tubes... ridiculous, not viable to make money, especially when you can get NOS ones for 10 Euros a piece.

It's not like these things were growing on trees like american mass produced HP or Tek stuff, made by the million and spread all over the world.

So he would have to have gotten his hands on a Rochar, or Ferisol or whatever small obscure TE, for free, literally... unlikely. And even then, assuming a good friend of his gives him one.... well in this case he doesn't need Google / TEA / me to tell him there are tubes inside... he can see it for himself...

Also, that means one would have to remove any mention of "Nixie" all over the interweb, of course... it's not gonna happen, it's too late...
Also, people who are sick enough to gut old TE to make a biz out of it, are clever enough to do their own research, they don't need TEA / EEVBlog to know where to find tubes...
Also, there is an entire thread here devoted to just "cool" vintage displays of all kinds... it's a much better source of info than TEA on this subject... should we delete this thread ?! 

More fundamentally, I totally refuse to self censor because of these people. Self censorship is half way toward dictatorship. I refuse that some scum bag stealing tubes, decides if I am allowed to use such and such words when I speak about my hobby. Only Putin can do that with his "special military operation".

Sorry... I love my Niksy tubes and will always lovely Kneeksee tubes. NIC-c tubes are lovely.

If you leave if off again for a few months, you could connect a voltmeter across the display HT supply, if you find the voltage low & climbing slowly, then it's the capacitor reforming, if this happens too often, then it would probably be a good idea to replace the HT capacitor(s).

Yes you are right, must be as simple as that... I already replaced a failed cap, open circuit, in the power supply section, when I first started working on this thing.
The HV supply is made with a voltage doubler using two diodes and two 16uF / 350V caps. I shall be replacing them soon then....

I guess I ought to replace all electrolytic caps in this instrument... I see 8 for power rail duties, plus a few more here and there, for other duties.

I might as well order at the same time the two special 1050ppm tempco resistors that I will need to refurbish the Vref board underneath the chassis...

... and I still have to order 3 caps to finish up the restoration of my glowing RM17 Tek scope, so I could group these two orders. 

[mansaxel]

LOL so basically numbers station in bash 

Yes, and using a reasonably bad random generator, (${RANDOM} which really is not up to randomness at all) which means that if ever transmitted, the pros will realise what it is but the amateurs will bark up the crazy tree for some considerable time.. 

[Vince]

Boy I spent at least 2 hours reading TEA this evening, which means I didn't get anything else done here, zero. Zero minute spent on my Neeksee DVM repair, zero on anything. It's a tragedy.

10PM going to bed now (I am reasonable now... trying to). Please be nice and make it so that when I come back tomorrow evening, I don't have again to spend 2 hours to read you all... I need my life back now please ! 

Just post pictures, it's easier/faster to read than text 

Have fun while I am off-line.

[tggzzz]

Haul from the Rugby hamfest. Although I saw him, I think I got there before the amorphous blob that snarfed the HP9100A at last week's FRARS rally.

The Advance OFS2A off-air frequency standard looks like a dead loss. No manual available. The output never syncs, and since there are only two ICs (both 7490), it looks like it presumes Droitwich is at the original 200kHz rather than the current 198kHz. I'll either flip it at a hamfest, or use the mechanics and replace the PLL etc with something of my own design.

Book for the 'B' version seems the same as you describe that one, 200kHz LW, only two of the three ICs installed.

David

I'm an idiot; mine is an OFS2B.

Thanks for the confirmation that it isn't worth trying to fix.

[Zenith]

LOL so basically numbers station in bash 

Yes, and using a reasonably bad random generator, (${RANDOM} which really is not up to randomness at all) which means that if ever transmitted, the pros will realise what it is but the amateurs will bark up the crazy tree for some considerable time.. 

"Anyone who attempts to generate random numbers by deterministic means is, of course, living in a state of sin."

John von Neumann

[factory]

Last post on the Systron Donner 6016 counter for a while, got the hacksaw & file out and trimmed down the replacement button cap to match the others.



The 200MHz input seems to be working well.



But the 18GHz input is quite deaf, I checked the Philips RF synth against a HP counter and confirmed it's working fine. There is a 6016 manual on the web with diagrams, but no fault finding chart like the 18GHz HP.



Edit: the LEDs for MHz, GHz, etc. are working fine, the camera doesn't seem to pick them up, maybe because these ancient LEDs aren't super retina-burning bright like crap modern ones.

David

[Cubdriver]

That thing is beautiful, David!  Very nice!

-Pat

[Specmaster]

Boy I spent at least 2 hours reading TEA this evening, which means I didn't get anything else done here, zero. Zero minute spent on my Neeksee DVM repair, zero on anything. It's a tragedy.

10PM going to bed now (I am reasonable now... trying to). Please be nice and make it so that when I come back tomorrow evening, I don't have again to spend 2 hours to read you all... I need my life back now please ! 

Just post pictures, it's easier/faster to read than text 

Have fun while I am off-line.

Vince, do your bit on the DVM first, then you can simply skip past the posts that hold nothing of particular interest for you, it is not a requirement to read every post, I promise you. If you do read every post, then there will many days that you achieve zero on work on your projects. You just have to be selective in what you read, nobody expects you to be a slave to the thread. 

[factory]

I've also put the faulty HP 5221B back together, it had been on the shelf with the covers removed, for about two years, took me a while to find the screws that went with it. Currently it has two faulty decoder/driver ICs for the number bulbs. It's missing a two & a one in the picture.



David

[Cubdriver]

I've also put the faulty HP 5221B back together, it had been on the shelf with the covers removed, for about two years, took me a while to find the screws that went with it. Currently it has two faulty decoder/driver ICs for the number bulbs. It's missing a two & a one in the picture.



David

Crazy how when you put something aside to work on it 'later' just how quickly 'later' can turn into years.  I've done the same.  Sadly, those decoders are like hen's teeth.

-Pat

[factory]

NIXIE DVM REPAIR

OK I am motivated, well at the moment anywho.

I decided to resume work on fixing my turd of a Nixie DVM, Rochar type A.1335, for those who remember this thing.

IIRC that will be round 3.

Just powered it up and quick test to see if it's still alive since the last time I worked on it... 2 or 3 months ago ? Can't even remember when that was. A while ago.

Well at power up, nothing on the Nixie, all dead.... then after 4 seconds some light coming out of them, partially lit digits, then eventually it all comes back to life and they are all rocking.
Strange that. Maybe some leaky caps somewhere that makes for this progressive wakening. I don't know.

...snip...

So that will be my first activity on the meter... it's 17h15 I will spend a bit of time this evening on it, and maybe an hour or two every evening after work.
A little bit at a time, hopefully I will eventually make progress and fix the thing.

P.S. you should really avoid using the N***e word, as it just helps google index TE, for the display choob rapists to find & destroy.

Oh come on...I don't thin tub raist need that to figure out where to find tubes...
Plus, them knowing that Rochar TE contains some, is not going to make their tube business any happier. They are so rare they they would go bankrupt long before they find some to gut.
It's a long defunct smal niche low volume local TE manufacturer, they are extremely rare. found my 3 items ni January out of luck. Been 6+ months then, and I still have not found any more for sale...
Even if the guy found one for sale, so what ? He would have to pay for it. Here because every body is so greedy, it would be advertised at 100 or 150 Euros, add shipping. For that price he would get 4 or 5 tubes max, in unknown condition. He would lose lots of money rather than make any. Even if like me he got lucky and found ONE such instrument at "only" 50 Euros... still have to ad shipping, that props it at 60/65 Euros, for 4 or 5 tubes... ridiculous, not viable to make money, especially when you can get NOS ones for 10 Euros a piece.

It's not like these things were growing on trees like american mass produced HP or Tek stuff, made by the million and spread all over the world.

So he would have to have gotten his hands on a Rochar, or Ferisol or whatever small obscure TE, for free, literally... unlikely. And even then, assuming a good friend of his gives him one.... well in this case he doesn't need Google / TEA / me to tell him there are tubes inside... he can see it for himself...

Also, that means one would have to remove any mention of "Nixie" all over the interweb, of course... it's not gonna happen, it's too late...
Also, people who are sick enough to gut old TE to make a biz out of it, are clever enough to do their own research, they don't need TEA / EEVBlog to know where to find tubes...
Also, there is an entire thread here devoted to just "cool" vintage displays of all kinds... it's a much better source of info than TEA on this subject... should we delete this thread ?! 

More fundamentally, I totally refuse to self censor because of these people. Self censorship is half way toward dictatorship. I refuse that some scum bag stealing tubes, decides if I am allowed to use such and such words when I speak about my hobby. Only Putin can do that with his "special military operation".

Sorry... I love my Niksy tubes and will always lovely Kneeksee tubes. NIC-c tubes are lovely.

Yeah your right, the dealers & knowledgable people know exactly what the number bulbs are & will carry on ripping them out, or attempt to sell the complete item at high prices.
The people that might not know, are those clearing relatives or friends collections and aren't remotely interested in electronics, they might google an uncommon model number, find about these choobs and do the same as the greedy sellers, i.e. rip them out & trash the rest.

I'm not saying you have to stop using Nixie, I just prefer to avoid using it myself, I often put alternate words/gibberish instead. Also most of my non US TE doesn't use Nixie anyway, as it's a brand name of one manufacturer, for example the Rochar book just calls them 'digital tubes'.

David

[factory]

I've also put the faulty HP 5221B back together, it had been on the shelf with the covers removed, for about two years, took me a while to find the screws that went with it. Currently it has two faulty decoder/driver ICs for the number bulbs. It's missing a two & a one in the picture.



David

Crazy how when you put something aside to work on it 'later' just how quickly 'later' can turn into years.  I've done the same.  Sadly, those decoders are like hen's teeth.

-Pat

I've spent a bit of my holiday (work shutdown fortnight) last week tidying up some of this 'put to one side' TE and completing repairs that have been waiting for enough free time, work just gets in the way normally, but I would be able to fund my addiction without it. 

There are several ex 5326/7 series display boards (minus the glassware) on ePay USA, but the price is too high, plus the seller is the kind I don't want to buy from, they already sold the glassware separately and the rest of the boards for Au waste. 

I do have a slightly incomplete parts unit, that I bought to provide parts, to hopefully get the 500MHz input of my 5327 going, these are both in storage ATM.

David

[mnementh]

This evening's entertainment just got very expensive. Went to see Thor: Thud and Blunder; got rear-ended in the RAV4 by some waste of skin who jackrabbitted. Car is throwing errors for Lane Departure System, Pre-Collision System and ABS. Can't open the trunk, had to take the center console apart so I can defeat the shifter interlock to get it out of Park. It is entirely possible the insurance company may total it; a complete shitshow. 

I give the movie a C+.   

mnem
*hoping desperately that dinner at TGIF does not make the Trifecta*

[bd139]

Well fuck that for an evening out. TGI Fridays RIP  . Film was, erm, pants. Filler material.

TE related. TM6 simulation complete. Completely understand it now  . There's also one popped up on eBay I might have a stab at. It's still reasonably priced at the moment. It makes it easier to repair something if you have two of them!

[mnementh]

non-electronics related comment removed - gnif

[25 CPS]

I'm not happy with the Hantek so I'm open to suggestions for a replacement AC/DC clamp with a similar current range for smaller applications.

Obviously there is a [hp] 428b and a matching probe somewhere, just waiting for you. It is my most used valve instrument. I whole-heartedly recommend it, in every lab. 1mA FSD is some resolution. For a current clamp.

Until such time as one will grace your bench, may I suggest the Uni-T UT-210e? (it being the "e" model is important, that's the one with the interesting ranges)  Resolution to 1mA on the 2A range, Ranges to 100A IIRC, does AC and DC, will null, and doubles as that 3rd simple DMM one sometimes needs. Price can't be beaten; I paid something like 50 US$ plus shipping.  It's a no-brainer. And none of that "interfacing to DMM" messiness. Display gives value. End.

Edit: Changed model number to be correct, and took actual max current range from datasheet instead of memory.

An HP 428B is definitely a piece of equipment I wouldn't mind getting, but it wouldn't have helped on the truck in this case since I was chasing an AC signal though.  The 428B goes to great lengths to reject AC so it doesn't interfere with DC measurements.

I'll take a look at the Uni-T.  And once I'm off the horrible midnight shift, the Hantek is going to get taken apart again to see if the range switch can be fixed and then I'm going to give it a much more thorough evaluation on the bench.  I didn't have time to do that on Friday when I already had work I needed to do on that truck.  Since I already have it on hand, I might as well see if it can be made to be useable or not.

I can understand the appeal of a clamp meter where you null it, clamp it, read it, and I love the Agilent U1213 I have for that but it was a bit too large for what I was originally planning on Friday that turned out to be unnecessary after all.  But there's one thing about the clamps and interfacing them to a DMM:  If you can interface them to a DMM, you can also interface them to a scope or in my case, a scopemeter for portability and visually observe current waveforms.  Being able to see the shape of current waveforms has come in handy for me in a number of situations.

[vk6zgo]

I remember a professor at Imperial College, who also did some industrial design gigs at an art and design college.

He pointed out that if you asked them to design an egg, they would all create something which was the right size and shape. Better designers' eggs would have the right coloration. The best designers' eggs would have the right weight. None of them would have anything inside.

Typical industrial designer's attitude. They always leave it up to the long-suffering engineer to figure out a way to fit the contents into the "beautiful", but too small, enclosure that they designed.

The engineer is never, ever allowed to make modifications to the enclosure to make it more functional or easier to manufacture as that would destroy the "purity" of the designer's concept.

Very few "design concepts" ever get anywhere near being implemented. Seeing those words is a useful filter causing me to ignore the article and flip to the next article.

There is only one true design concept: Form follows function!

"Form, fit, & function"--of these, "function" is the most important.

This is why you sometimes come across something which, at first sight, looks like "gorilla-isation", but is really the result of a harassed Tech getting a piece of equipment back into service half a world, & several months, away from the source of "official" spare parts.

The non-technical folks who mostly "rule the roost" won't be put off with "The parts are on the way, & will get here in late October!"

[Zoli]

...
Crazy how when you put something aside to work on it 'later' just how quickly 'later' can turn into years.  I've done the same.  Sadly, those decoders are like hen's teeth.

-Pat

Nobody tried to build a discrete replacement? A quick look in the service manual shows that is a simple BCD-to-10line decoder, with high voltage outputs; it should be pretty straightforward way to build them, and look like there's room to mount the boards vertically in the place of the old IC's.

[vk6zgo]

mnem
When I worked as a mechanic, I would swear that automotive engineers hated us fixers... Many times I imagined them standing around the water cooler showing off their latest blueprints: "No, you see there? If we'd put that one bolt in the hinge half a inch further that way, you'd be able to get a wrench on it. This way, you have to take the fender off before you can take the door off.  MUAHAHAHAHA!!!"

With my 1974 Holden, the heater fan was fitted through the firewall from the engine compartment, so, if it failed, you could undo some screws & walk away with the whole assembly-------it never failed!
In my 1988 Ford Falcon, it was mounted inside, & if it failed, as they regularly did, you had to remove the whole dashboard to replace it.
The same car had head bolts with very shallow hex heads, so the socket would slip & mangle at least one!

Bosch Picture monitors had very nice over-engineered hinges so that PCBs could be folded out to allow access, whilst still being operable.
To this end, the hinges were also the connections to the boards.

After a while, they ceased to make contact, no matter how much effort you put into cleaning them.
Meanwhile, Sony used ribbon cable & headers---not so pretty, but much cheaper, & all but trouble free!

[Specmaster]

This evening's entertainment just got very expensive. Went to see Thor: Thud and Blunder; got rear-ended in the RAV4 by some waste of skin who jackrabbitted. Car is throwing errors for Lane Departure System, Pre-Collision System and ABS. Can't open the trunk, had to take the center console apart so I can defeat the shifter interlock to get it out of Park. It is entirely possible the insurance company may total it; a complete shitshow. 

I give the movie a C+.   

mnem
*hoping desperately that dinner at TGIF does not make the Trifecta*

Well, thats a real bummer for sure and it also seems that nobody was injured so that's a positive. WTF does "jackrabbitted" mean, did he hit you and just drive off, or run away or something??

You could always use some TE (bringing it back on topic) to diagnose the errors being thrown up.

[Cubdriver]

non-electronics related comment removed - gnif

[Cubdriver]

...
Crazy how when you put something aside to work on it 'later' just how quickly 'later' can turn into years.  I've done the same.  Sadly, those decoders are like hen's teeth.

-Pat

Nobody tried to build a discrete replacement? A quick look in the service manual shows that is a simple BCD-to-10line decoder, with high voltage outputs; it should be pretty straightforward way to build them, and look like there's room to mount the boards vertically in the place of the old IC's.

I was actually thinking about it today.  May try to cobble something together, either to fit a 74141 (also nearing hens-teeth status) or the Russian equivalent (can’t recall the number off the top of my head), or perhaps a low voltage BCD to 10 line decoder with switching transistors, though that’d be much bulkier.

-Pat