Test Equipment Anonymous

seems like it was an overdose situation. no idea why the guy did not just call 911. (except that they were both Mexican nationals) road was open by the time I got up there. It's on the web. Search on "Adams County Pennsylvania body". People can panic, especially when a tragedy happens whe...

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Was what I saw.

Who their right mind would cart a stiff up a mountain to get rid of it?

And did you notice the anti-backlash gears? Some of those gears were actually two gears side by side with a spring to set rotational tension between them to eliminate backlash. Lovely. It must have been fearsomely expensive when new. I hope that chap is going to restore it to full operation. Undoub...

The standards of mechanical construction in top end valve gear and some of the solid state equipment were very impressive. Aluminium castings and precision machining as well as ingenious mechanical engineering. I've always been impressed by the Racal RA17 receiver. That R&S unit takes it to anot...

I'm not completely sure the way it works because I haven't watched TV in many years. There was a 405 line analogue VHF service with it's own antennas which was switched off in 1985. There was a 625 line analogue service which was switched off in 2012. There's an HD TV terrestrial service, which is s...

I wonder where I could get some iron II sulphide, to make stink bombs. Buy it on ebay or make it. https://edu.rsc.org/representing-chemical-reactions/iron-and-sulfur-reaction/713.article You could probably get away with iron filings rather than iron powder. For stink bombs I recall the H2S was diss...

Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the rally scene is slowly declining. The same is true for mechanical engineering events, and for the same reason; the attendees are dying off. I would guess that the average age at such events is > 70. I don't see many people younger than me at either event a...

I think the cancelled Newbury boot sale sent more people to the chaotic crater-filled McMichael that year and the combined experience made them less enthusiastic about rallies generally. Unfortunately, for a number of reasons, the rally scene is slowly declining. Telford seems to get better year by...

I thought they were £20 and £50 and the punter on the left was coy about the price of his. I didn't ask. I recall the patter about how one had been stored and just needed circuit boards reseated, which begged the question of why he hadn't just reseated them. There was another I saw in the back of an...

It is going to be very hard to sell this now as I'm sure it's better than my 2019 and 2019A in some ways. I suppose I should just replace the Philips small blue capacitors in those, next. An interesting question. They are very nice RF sig gens, if a bit big. They do have their quirks and common fau...

Excellent deductive trouble shooting and something to remember for the future. I have a 2019 which works apart from the OCXO really needing replacing - I have plans. I really want it to continue working as I don't want to mess with it. I have another 2019 which is "mostly working". It work...

Producing the hack for a scope takes genuine software skills of a particular type, and some dedication. Applying the hack or independently produced licences may involve basic Linux skills, such as logging on via Telnet and deleting or renaming a file, or running a Python script, entering the serial ...

I thought the SDS800X-HD were the best bang per buck. Pity about the 7" screen. The SDS1000X HD definitely seemed over-priced. SDS2000X Plus was on special offer so I splashed out. I don't like touch screens, but it can be used with a USB track ball. The 10" screen is definitely worth havi...

V2 licensing is an entirely different story and quite different for each model series where only analysis of an instruments memdump can find the algorithm that allows for license generation. Currently there is just one keyholder and he's keeping the door shut as he like us has witnessed how far the...

I'd probably do what you are doing, unless there was a lot of pressure from Siglent not to. I'm not sure what happens if an instrument sold as bottom of the line, but has unofficial licence code updates, fails under warranty. Presumably Siglent or the dealer is entitled to refuse to honour the warra...

No doubt some pro's hack but they're normally one man bands with shallow pockets whereas the real pro's cough up for the BW and optional features they need. That's what I suspected. Startups and very small companies might sail close to the wind, but established companies, the military and governmen...

The higher cost professional products OTOH use V2 licensing which with some effort can be cracked but there are no online scripts available yet.....so sorta locked up tight for now making a clear distinction between hobbyist and pro models. I wonder why they changed tack. Is it your experience that...

In the 60s and 70s when silicon transistors were hot news, and presumably makers thought they could get an edge by offering something they could claim was different, there were literally thousands of types. Large numbers were interchangeable in most applications. Now there are maybe a couple of hund...

Point noted about 1N4001 vs 1N4007. I've certainly got some 1N4007, but whether I have anything lower voltage, I've no idea. If I have, I may do some measuring to see if there's genuinely a difference. But you don't know what's happened with them over the years and you don't know what the maker kno...

I've noticed the site was hard to access because of gateway errors and a general lack of responsiveness. I haven't noticed it with other sites. There weren't ridiculous numbers of guests. I've no guess what caused it, possibly something misconfigured.

I assume that professionals buy a piece of gear, use it and it goes off for calibration as a matter of routine. Then after a few years, it's sold off. They are not going to mess about with unauthorised modifications... I don't agree with your argument about pricing, but I accept that it's a valid a...

Tektronix and HPAK have been doing it for decades. I bought my Tektronix TDS3032 oscilloscope in about 2000 and on one of the firmware updates I discovered it was sampling at 5GS/s rather than maximum of 2.5GS/s that I'd paid for. The next firmware update "corrected" that. If you buy a bo...

It's amazing the number of things where the much more expensive de luxe high performance version, is very little different from the standard one. e.g. Siglent and Rigol TE, where the right licence codes turn the bottom of the range into the top of the range, with all options available. I suppose the...

Interesting and a post worth noting for the future. I eyed up those two 2018s at Newbury and heard the patter about one being incomplete, but the dearer one only needed the boards wiggled. I was tempted. There was another 2018 on the stall next door for £70, as I recall. I don't know what claims the...

Your preliminary results were fascinating and encouraging. I bought the cheap GPSDO on ebay and assumed it was essentially perfect for my purposes, but I wasn't quite sure. I wondered how it would compare against an off-air standard and there were still a few weeks before Droitwich 198kHz went off t...