Test Equipment Anonymous

A DIY PSU is a right of passage and not that hard at all unless current limiting is required......escaping magic smoke always teaches us lessons....

America Had No Radio Crystals in 1941 — So Engineers Cut 30 Million From Brazilian Quartz
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1_l8Qdsq5A

It's much more efficient to remove known dud LED's with a scalpel just pushed sideways between the pads to shatter the plastic and have just the pads remain...then hit them with the iron to remove them.....but Ali PCB's are a whole nuther level of difficulty. Had a porch lamp with 18V LED's on a Ali...

Yup ceramic was the term that I couldn't pull up after a few days away and a long drive home, some 900km and 4 visits to friends and customers.....14 hrs on the road in total after first dropping the grandson at school. I only use the K style tip for SMD passives and it invariably saves firing up th...

I prefer an iron for soldering (I use hot air for desoldering) too, and the small stuff is where the nail polish comes in While I'm happy to use an iron for desoldering small components, a hot air gun may be better for large components with many leads. I'm not comfortable using an iron for solderin...

WW2 EMF triggering of landmines:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BdYFNY3hAOg

Zenith wrote: ↑Tue Feb 03, 2026 12:40 am Stairs are there to be used by all and the footing should be intuitive, not like rock climbing.

It's a deathtrap.

Yup.

Too steep even if it was a traditional build.
The calcs for safe and good staircases are: 2x Rise + Going (tread) = 600mm (2ft) + 50mm (2")

I dropped the dodgy 1N4148s into my "scrap" bin but I could retrieve them. I decided it'd be quite a lot of work to build a test jig to get them to the right temperature to replicate the conditions inside the 3314A. I might fish them out if I decide that would actually be fun. A good frie...

Axial tantalum capacitors are a completely different beast; and akin to an aluminium electrolytic. Yup, I think they're used in place of electrolytic capacitors because they can tolerate high temperatures for long periods of time. You wouldn't normally stick capacitors that can dry out under the me...

Update, I'm now chatting to the son of the late designer of the 3314A on the fediverse. My 2N3904 repair appears to be holding. Oh god. All that work and it was the cheapest transistor in the whole unit! (maybe) Not abnormal. Once every other passive has be checked one must start asking questions o...

Looks like an ordinary old school linear PSU..... OVERVOLTAGE PROTECTION circuitry is where you might focus some thought but normally firing a SCR crowbar can only be reset with a hard power OFF. I've checked the separate zeners for this and they're correct, the SCR acts on the unregulated side and...

Looks like an ordinary old school linear PSU.....
OVERVOLTAGE PROTECTION circuitry is where you might focus some thought but normally firing a SCR crowbar can only be reset with a hard power OFF.

synx508 wrote: ↑Sun Jan 25, 2026 9:26 am

tautech wrote: ↑Sun Jan 25, 2026 8:56 am A link to the schematic would be nice....

Pages 205 and 206 of the service manual from here:

https://www.keysight.com/us/en/assets/9 ... -05762.pdf

Nah, not about to sign up for any furking manual, HPAK can go get stuffed !

Upload it somewhere else.

A link to the schematic would be nice....

I've captured the 15V (via 10:1 probe) and 5.1V (via 1:1) glitch waveforms. The top one is 15V, those ramps are 10ms long and it stays at around 11V for 12ms. The 5.1V resets instantly and recovers as the 15V rises through 14V. Those ramps look so precise, but my reading of the schematic says there...

Yup unpredictable weather cycles, hardly anything new and so much for GloBULL warming. AKL high 20's back in November when we wouldn't expect them until now yet a 19 high and showers are forecast for today and much the same for the next few. The 44C on Xmas day in Perth now seems like a dream from a...

Old beaded resin dipped Tants can have a fault condition called sputtering but it's quite rare. The tantalum momentarily breaks down but self heals but in the time to do this might bring the rail low enough to activate the reboot. If there are any in this unit, replacing them might eradicate the fru...

I had to share the hotel lift with the little guy on the left when in Shenzhen in August '24. He/she/it could open the lift doors, select the floor to travel to and progress to the room # to deliver the online dinner order and signal the occupants their tucker was outside. Darn smart are the Chinese...

Just before the Xmas spirit disappears for another 50 weeks, 44C on Xmas day in Perth required serious effort to remain hydrated.
Home again this morning to NZ and the much more comfortable mid 20's.
Hope '26 is good for you all.

Thanksgiving. I'm sitting on the sofa still feeling stuffed :) I'm a brit but SWMBO / XYL is a California girl. My main lathe is an early Myford ML7. I'm only the 4th owner as far as I can tell. I've replaced the old single phase motor with a 6 pole 3 phase motor and variable frequency drive (VFD)....

An interesting history of electronics downunder, 27 mins
Australia's Forgotten Electronics Giant
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RbzgfBLrscg

Take treasures to sell at the swapmeet. After all, if you don't have duplicates, you aren't trying hard enough :twisted: With luck and discipline you should have a smaller load on the way back. ( And if anyone mentions VNAs, I will go into a corner and sulk ) Go into sulky mode, I have 2 ! A 3.2 GH...

One of these years I'll cross paths with you at a swap meet, though with my nocturnal inclinations I usually arrive closer to or after the end than the beginning. This is probably a good thing as I have far too much stuff already and really shouldn't be bringing more wayward test gear home... Take ...

The falls and rise of IC and component exports per country since 1980.

Some modern scopes, including a few Siglent models, have a built-in AWG as an option. They are not the last word in AWGs, but they are good enough for most things and save bench room. Yup and owned a good few of them at one time or another but don't care much for the limited drive and mediocre feat...