Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) : Discussion and Group Therapy Thread

[tautech]

.................
mnem

It's all lies, he's wearing pants ! ^^^

[nixiefreqq]

this is driving me crazy.

could be there in about an hour and a quarter if timed to avoid traffic.

but i do NOT need another SA.

https://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva ... 36327.html

[Cubdriver]

Yes you do!!!!!

-Pat

[mnementh]

.................
mnem

It's all lies, he's wearing pants ! ^^^

Be glad that pic was from last Thanksgiving! And that I edited the bumblebutt out of this one!!!
mnem

[mnementh]

Ugggh. Took a big gamble tonight... spent $140 on Chinesium parts to fix my Lenovo Flex 1580. I know I can't replace the laptop for anywhere near that, so I paid my dimes and tooks muh chances.

The nature of the failure (cracked out around the hinges, failed keyboard that's integrated with the upper panel/palmrest) makes new pretty much mandatory, and of course new OEM has not been available since I first cracked the digitizer years ago.

mnem

[bitseeker]

but i do NOT need another SA.

Famous last words uttered by many, myself included.

'Tis but a matter of time or circumstance...

[MED6753]

this is driving me crazy.

could be there in about an hour and a quarter if timed to avoid traffic.

but i do NOT need another SA.

https://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva ... 36327.html

Stop whining and go get it. But yes, any town in Virginia that's close to DC will have nightmare traffic.

[tggzzz]

this is driving me crazy.

could be there in about an hour and a quarter if timed to avoid traffic.

but i do NOT need another SA.

https://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva ... 36327.html

You know you want to get it, see which of your SAs you prefer to use, and then flog one of them.

Couldn't you make a profit on that one?

[Zenith]

this is driving me crazy.

could be there in about an hour and a quarter if timed to avoid traffic.

but i do NOT need another SA.

https://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva ... 36327.html

You may not need it, but need is irrelevant. You desire it. It is driving you made with desire.

I currently have 18 oscilloscopes, and they're mine, mine I tell you!!

I can resist buying others, unless they are there before me and are tidy looking and cheap, in which case, resistance crumbles.

Go for it. You owe it to yourself.

[Cerebus]

this is driving me crazy.

could be there in about an hour and a quarter if timed to avoid traffic.

but i do NOT need another SA.

https://washingtondc.craigslist.org/nva ... 36327.html

What would Luci say?

Luci.jpg

[Cubdriver]

If anyone wants a Tek 7000-series extender, the person I got mine from has another up for sale. While they're asking $30 more for this one than I paid for mine, I doubt you'll find one this cheap any time soon. NAWTS, of course.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/314246845535?m ... name=11021

As a reminder, this is the one I got a few weeks back:


And for clarity, the apparently missing fingers in the edge connector are not indicative of damage, they are specifically not present - not knowing this previously had made made me question the condition of others I'd seen listed in the past, suspecting that they had damaged connectors with missing contacts.

-Pat

[MED6753]

If anyone wants a Tek 7000-series extender, the person I got mine from has another up for sale. While they're asking $30 more for this one than I paid for mine, I doubt you'll find one this cheap any time soon. NAWTS, of course.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/314246845535?m ... name=11021

-Pat

Would love to have one but not at that price.

[Robert]

Non TE alert!

I bought a somewhat tired late (i.e 1938 ish) Myford ML2 lathe about 4 years ago with all good intentions. However the knackered spindle and bearings along with lack of space in the garage and being very busy with the day job and playing with TE meant that other than aquiring a replacement used spindle and bearings, a 3 phase motor and VFD, the ML2 hadn't turned under power.

A few months ago I managed to make space in the garage (and installed a small mill). I finally started to work on the ML2. Then a ML7 appeared in a engineering forum for sale ad and it wasn't far away from me. A quick drive and I was the owner of a very early (1945) Myford ML7 that had clearly been well looked after as well as being used to make a couple of locos by the previous owner. A bigger and better made lathe than the ML2. That was a just under a month ago. I've not been so tardy this time. The ML2 has gone to a new home, and the ML7 basically set up.
I've fitted the 1/2 hp 6 pole 3 phase motor I'd bought for the ML2 and actually made some swarf this afternoon. Waiting for a new belt and some other bits to finish the installation properly but nearly there. The VFD is very roughly set up with no enclosure and being run from the controls built into it. Not good practice but a lot of hobby users seem to think it's OK

Robert G8RPI.

[Cubdriver]

Robert, the VFD that runs my South Bend 10K lathe has been ‘temporarily' spliced into the mains cable for about twelve years now. There is nothing so permanent as a temporary lash up that works…

Happy to hear you got the Myford up and cutting!

-Pat

[mnementh]

*sigh*

You hadda say South Bend, dinnch'a...?

I remember my High-School machine shop... it had row after row of old War-production SB 13-32s like this one; also had several 48" Bridgeports and a reciprocating shaper that was kept inside a chain-link fence as it was "outlawed" and only allowed to be used by the instructor and a few "gifted" students with his direct supervision. I can still hear old man Kirsch shouting "Don't let me catch you walking away with a key in the chuck... that is grounds for immediate expulsion from my class!"



I remember reading that they'd auctioned it all off a few years after I graduated... for safety's sake, kids were to do home-ec instead.

mnem
Another victim of the age of litigation...

[Robert]

A un-enclosed VFD is fine until a bit of swaft gets in there...
For the 'mericans a ML7 is a what you would call a 7"x20" hobby / light industrial screwcutting lathe.

[mnementh]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/394314811546

This one is just 30 minutes from my house...


mnem
:drool:

[Cubdriver]

*sigh*

You hadda say South Bend, dinnch'a...?

I remember my High-School machine shop... it had row after row of old War-production SB 13-32s like this one; also had several 48" Bridgeports and a reciprocating shaper that was kept inside a chain-link fence as it was "outlawed" and only allowed to be used by the instructor and a few "gifted" students with his direct supervision. I can still hear old man Kirsch shouting "Don't let me catch you walking away with a key in the chuck... that is grounds for immediate expulsion from my class!"

Beautiful piece of machinery. Cringe to think how many have since been melted for scrap.

I remember reading that they'd auctioned it all off a few years after I graduated... for safety's sake, kids were to do home-ec instead.

I can't understand why people are now so incapable of doing anything for themselves... /s

mnem
Another victim of the age of litigation...

It's incredibly frustrating that everyone has to grow up in a bubble now - heaven forbid a kid should get a hangnail at school. <facepalm>

-Pat

[Cubdriver]

https://www.ebay.com/itm/394314811546

This one is just 30 minutes from my house...


mnem
:drool:

A Bridgeport has long been on my list of wants. The biggest thing I miss from my last job was the access I had to the small machine shop we had.

...some day... And stop drooling on it - it'll rust!!! <smack>

-Pat

[25 CPS]

I remember reading that they'd auctioned it all off a few years after I graduated... for safety's sake, kids were to do home-ec instead.

It's incredibly frustrating that everyone has to grow up in a bubble now - heaven forbid a kid should get a hangnail at school. <facepalm>

-Pat

It's either funding cuts or for safety up here. I think I might have told this story before but when I was in high school, I didn't take the electronics class that was offered because students weren't allowed to use capacitors. That was strange because the high school still had classes in fully equipped wood, metal, machine, welding, and automotive shops plus a house wiring class, and all the equipment was used and there was plenty of opportunity to get hurt. The very selective application of the bubble wrap with that one always puzzled me.

The problem with putting students in home ec classes here was that those were scrapped at the same time as the shop classes were back when Mike Harris was savaging education in Ontario. The result was that if you had to learn how to use tools and machines or cook, it had to take place outside of the public school system and students who didn't have the opportunity to learn any of that outside of the public school system were totally out of luck.

Fortunately, in more recent years, some of this has started to be brought back. The skilled trades in Ontario have been starved of new apprentices and there's been the slow realization that the idea of "university or bust" has never been valid, and, on the home economics side, not everyone is in a situation where they can learn the basics from their parents.

[25 CPS]

It's been a rainy, crummy fall day and I actually have the weekend off before starting another shift rotation. So what have I been up to this weekend?

Yesterday was actually beautiful. A friend of mine came out with his son so he could see this 1980s time capsule of a dead mall before it gets torn down. It's on life support and word came out that the plug is being pulled on December 26; Boxing Day sale, going out of business sale, it's going to be the same thing. First, we got chased off the top level of the parking garage because it's "closed". How do you know it's closed? You don't. There's no barriers, no signs, nothing, to indicate it's closed other than a supremely frustrated security guard who has to leave his office on the ground floor and go to the top of the parking garage to chase anyone out of there because...there's nothing at all stating it's closed. The three of us were groaning in dismay that, yet again, we've run into another place where you can't enjoy the view on a nice day.

After that and the dead mall, we took a trip a little bit out of town and enjoyed a relaxed dinner at a restaurant by the side of a country highway. During dinner, the friend got a response to a Kijiji ad for a small CRT TV he wanted to pick up for one of his retro computer systems. Apparently if you want a CRT TV, the search term to use is "box TV" now. We were having a laugh about how records are almost exclusively known as "vinyl" now and how we used to differentiate them by running speed (33, 45, 78) or format (LP, single, 78) and not the compound (vinyl, polystyrene, shellac) they were made out of. The lady was giving away a lot of consumer consumer electronics from an estate so he ended up with the TV set and some satellite equipment and I ended up with a CB radio and a nice Toshiba cassette deck which as a nice surprise way to finish out Saturday night.

Today, I went for breakfast with a friend of mine from the first football team I was on. He's an electrician and wanted to borrow a couple of tools. This got off to an excellent start because the Mistress of Misery next door was sitting on her front porch enjoying her first cigarette of the day - until I left. The sight of me walking out of the house, across the street, getting in the SUV and starting it up and driving off is so awful, so offensive, so hideous that she felt compelled as she always does at the sight of me to crush out her cigarette and storm off inside. I must have cost her a fortune in wasted tobacco over the years. Breakfast was nice, we shot the breeze about football stuff and life in general.

Headed home, had another coffee, went downstairs and did some work on the bench with the 8903B, 3562A and TDS scope and one of the frequency counters spun up. Unfortunately, I didn't get any pictures of what I was doing but I was using the HP 35 as a daily driver when I wanted to crunch numbers, which was enjoyable. It's working well but I think I found a few oddities with how it handles some things so I brought it, the 45, and their manuals upstairs after I finished with the 8903B and I've been hanging out in the living room with the cat while I work through some of the examples in the manuals just for fun, trying them out the way Hewlett Packard instructs.

I ordered a GPS disciplined oscillator plus some other stuff to go with from China a while ago and it's almost here but the parcel tracking is a bit ambiguous. I got a notification so I went outside to see if it had arrived. No such luck on the GPSDO but I ran into the other neighbouring family who are genuinely nice people. We caught up for a bit and I told them about what happened with the HP 35 delivery and it turns out they've had problems with delivery drivers leaving packages on their porch in full view as well. What really infuriates them is they bought a secure drop box and put a sign on it several years ago saying for couriers to drop parcels in through the hatch on the front, but very few of them do.

All the fall cleanup outside is done, there's nothing urgent inside that needs to be done, and I've got a couple more days off before that shift rotation starts up so I'll be making sure to have more putter in the workshop time before I go back to work.

[bitseeker]

25 CPS, that's quite the smorgasbord of nostalgic places, items, and activities to compensate for crummy weather.

[MED6753]

The next time I think I might have too much TE I'll replay this video again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shg7VNoIL_g&t=594s

[Cubdriver]

The next time I think I might have too much TE I'll replay this video again.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Shg7VNoIL_g&t=594s

There is no such thing as too much TE - only too little space!

-Pat

[vk6zgo]

If anyone wants a Tek 7000-series extender, the person I got mine from has another up for sale. While they're asking $30 more for this one than I paid for mine, I doubt you'll find one this cheap any time soon. NAWTS, of course.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/314246845535?m ... name=11021

-Pat

Would love to have one but not at that price.

Ditto here, ----- even the international mail is a bit savage when you convert it to Oz Pesos!

I remember my old work had several Tek ones & a couple of copies made in the "PMG Workshops".
Easy to do, when you have Senior Techs, Techs, & Trainees on tap, &, as a large Comms & Broadcasting organisation, can buy the stuff to build the hardware cheaply.
Not so much for the normal person in a back shed!