Test Equipment Anonymous

From the Banggood page, I have the impression it's a time limited special offer. Up to 80% off on the first 50 items sold. You have to add £11.50 for shipping. Similar things sell on Banggood and Amazon UK, starting at £180 or so. It seems suspiciously cheap, but there are special sales. I've dealt ...

Of the Tek 400 series non-storage, in my experience in the UK, 475 is the most common, 465 less so, then 465B. I haven't come across a 475A or 485 on my travels. I don't see them on ebay either, although I don't particularly look out for them. I have seen some of the lower bandwidth ones rarely, but...

These are not on my bucket list, because I've done them. The National Museum of Computing at Milton Keynes. They have working Bombe and Colossus machines, an early mini computer (Eliot?) an ICL mainframe, a Cray super computer, various microcomputers from the early 80s, some playing games, almost al...

The problem is I now have three properly working ones, Now there's a first world "problem" if ever I saw one :) Cue "When I were a lad...." anecdote. In 1973 they cost $2,500. Depending where you were in the UK that would buy a small house or be a large part of the price of one....

Oh you wicked tempter. You're trying to get your own back for that Marconi Bridge at Weston-super-mare. You may succeed. ... Do I need a seventh 475? Is it time to graduate to 485s? Tee hee. Got to have 7 before you can have 8 :twisted: Not necessarily. A pair or more could be bought at the same ti...

Oh you wicked tempter. You're trying to get your own back for that Marconi Bridge at Weston-super-mare. You may succeed. I'd have thought in a tidy state, and with the front cover and a service manual, it would sell for much more than I've been paying for these things of late, but it is collection o...

Of the two scopes, Guernsey did at least produce a display, before it started to emit smoke. It was probably going to be the most approachable. I thought about what MED said about tants in these scopes, and decided to look more carefully with a magnifying glass. A tant across the +15V line was sligh...

It's coming along nicely. I assume you will spray paint the case.

You'll also have to make up a cursor, since the original has been broken off.

Thanks both. My experience of failing tantalum bead caps is they sometimes explode, they usually get hot and smoke, and they sometimes go dead short and so don't generate any heat. I couldn't see any darkened tants in Guernsey, or anything else that appeared heat damaged, so where did the smoke come...

These two were bought at different swapmeets, one last September and one last Sunday. They both cost £5 and I couldn't resist them for that much. The first was made in the Netherlands. It came with the front cover, and a document pouch with nine probes complete with grabber hoods etc. Five were 250M...

Next up is the 5B13N Time Base. The unit triggers fine but it always acts as if it is in "Normal" mode. In "Auto" mode there is no baseline trace. Auto mode is engaged by lifting -5V to pin 10 of U30. I was able to verify that this functions as it should but pin 10 only drops to...

I was informed by Factory over on the EEVblog that a similar 5A18N plug-in had a production run change that deleted the neon bulbs and installed 5V filament lamps. See here.... I've changed filament bulbs for LEDs sometimes. Filament bulbs can be hard to find and expensive these days. I've made ext...

I can't remember people smoking in cinemas in the UK after the late 70s. I can certainly remember seeing the light from the projector showing up on the swirling smoke earlier. Looking it up, I found Rank Leisure was the first major chain to provide smoke-free cinemas in 1987. I thought it was earlier.

If the change was made toward the end of the production run, there may have been few units produced with it, and so it was only documented in addendum pages, which are as rare as hen's teeth. I'd be inclined to try tracing the circuit, which is always a pain, but since it only switches one or other ...

I had a boss who'd worked for Lyons (ice cream, tea and grim corner cafes) in the early 60s. Strangely they were very switched on to technology. They created LEO (Lyons Electronic Office) which was a very powerful computer for the time. They had forms which could be filled in with a special pen and ...

New Revox B77 are being made but they're listed at just under 16,000 Euro dollars. Edited to add: From what I've seen, they're only making a Revox B77 version of the machine - no Studer PR99 counterpart. I'm not sure how much or if there was a gap between Quantegy bailing out, RMGI starting up and ...

It's a world I only viewed from the outside. There were domestic tape recorders in the 60s. 5" reels and one speed. There were better ones with 7" reels and several speeds and stereo. There were semi-professional ones Uher, Revox etc. All used 1/4" tape. Then there were huge studio ta...

Apparently reel to reel has had a comeback in recent years, especially with some prominent artistes and a section of audiophiles.

Are they still made?

I discovered this strange character on Youtube. A brilliant pianist but something of a nutcase. It amused me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCx8Xcm ... Vinheteiro

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kFv0G0SLvQ4

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Xcmqe6Jb-pU

Once in a while you come across something that's more trouble than it's worth, especially if it's big and needs a special extender or special adapters. If it's small, say shoe box size, you can easily put it aside, return to it later and you may have found inspiration. A few things turn out to be pu...

I've been after one of these for a while, after getting a 912, and being seriously impressed with it. though I did my best bd139 impression with lowball offers and counter-offers, I eventually had to pay £89. Not even close. bd139 would have started by explaining how this thing was an environmental...

However neither the story nor the quote was as memorable and pointed as the Profumo scandal 14 years earlier. Then, when Lord Astor denied an affair or even having met Mandy Rice-Davis, she dispatched that swiftly with pert humour, "Well he would, wouldn't he?". Now that's a quote that is...

I grew up in Epsom, at the time of Joyce McKinney's famous "Mormon sex in chains" case. The journalists adjourned to the local pub, appropriately named The Spread Eagle. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manacled_Mormon_case I remember that including the quote, "I loved him so much tha...

tggzzz wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 8:20 pm

bd139 wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 4:58 pm Acolytes doesn't feel dirty enough.

You ought to be careful... Someone Over There has written "I don't understand why bd139 is some kind of cult character to some,..."

I do. I've got all his merch including the very collectible bd139 Thug Life tee shirt.

I've only seen overenthusiastic admiration of a celebrity, cf the depth perception problem surrounding Musk and Jobs and certain politicians. I can see why the likes of Musk and Jobs are admired. They both achieved a considerable amount. Jobs was certainly a very flawed person. I've never understoo...