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

[25 CPS]

We just went to the vet and back. They can see him at 11:30 so we came home. The vet's office is around the corner a bit less than five minutes by car so we figured it'd be better to spend the three hour wait at home and come back than in the waiting room with the cat stuck in his cat carrier. Hopefully it's nothing serious. I'm not sure if it's crystals in his urine, he's still urinating, it's the absence of any #2s over the last couple of days that sparked my concern. I levelled off the litter boxes so I could tell if he's been in them and he has, the litter's been pawed, there's urine sometimes, but nothing else. I've checked the rest of the house and he hasn't been going elsewhere either.

There were actually two reasons for picking up the power supply yesterday. Obviously, any Hewlett Packard bench power supply for $20 is a deal not to be passed up on, but it also slowed me down from barreling home from work. I was hoping, really hoping, especially with the bit of extra time to collect the power supply on the way home that the log jam would break and there would be something more substantial in one of the litter boxes by the time I got back. Unfortunately there wasn't, so that's how the hastily arranged day off and vet visits came to be.

[mnementh]

Best wishes that your furry kid doesn't have anything horrible going on.

Good score on that 6205B as well; I paid $50 for the one I got with the buggered-up switch and was glad to get it.

mnem
Here, have a cookie...

[25 CPS]

I arranged to take the rest of the week off work yesterday afternoon after we got back from the vet just in case he was going to need after care or followup visits. The vet diagnosed a severe case of constipation and there was a round of X-Rays and blood/urine tests that we’re still waiting for results on to try to pin down underlying cause.

They treated him for the constipation yesterday but the log jam still hasn’t broken. The way the vet made it sound, it was like I was going to have to follow the poor guy around the house with a roll of paper towels but there was nothing so I called back after they opened this morning and they said to bring him back in. We’re in the waiting room now waiting to be seen.

[mnementh]

eeeeep! I know it breaks your heart to see furry family unwell; it's not like they can tell you what's wrong.

mnem
*sigh*

[mnementh]

In other news...

Today, I took my son to school carrying a bag of goodies and a bouquet of flowers for this girl he fancies; turns out she broke up with her boyfriend a couple weeks ago, so he's feeling like now is the time to make his move.

I gave him the usual warnings about "being the rebound guy" and how "grandiose gestures and public displays of affection often backfire; so be prepared..."; but I also reminded him that I remember what it was like, and that "all's fair in love & war".

I also told him I believed he's got a lot going for him, and sincerely, good luck... as "Fortune favors the bold..."

I figure today will bring either a "first real date" or a restraining order. Ifni save him; he is so his father's son.

mnem
"Vaya con juevos, my boy..."

[MED6753]

In other news...

Today, I took my son to school carrying a bag of goodies and a bouquet of flowers for this girl he fancies; turns out she broke up with her boyfriend a couple weeks ago, so he's feeling like now is the time to make his move.

I gave him the usual warnings about "being the rebound guy" and how "grandiose gestures and public displays of affection often backfire; so be prepared..."; but I also reminded him that I remember what it was like, and that "all's fair in love & war".

I also told him I believed he's got a lot going for him, and sincerely, good luck... as "Fortune favors the bold..."

I figure today will bring either a "first real date" or a restraining order. Ifni save him; he is so his father's son.

mnem
"Vaya con juevos, my boy..."

Or in 9 months you become a grandfather.

[Cubdriver]

I arranged to take the rest of the week off work yesterday afternoon after we got back from the vet just in case he was going to need after care or followup visits. The vet diagnosed a severe case of constipation and there was a round of X-Rays and blood/urine tests that we’re still waiting for results on to try to pin down underlying cause.

They treated him for the constipation yesterday but the log jam still hasn’t broken. The way the vet made it sound, it was like I was going to have to follow the poor guy around the house with a roll of paper towels but there was nothing so I called back after they opened this morning and they said to bring him back in. We’re in the waiting room now waiting to be seen.

Fingers crossed…

-Pat

[Cubdriver]

Mnementh, I FINALLY got around to putting the roller/pad kit you recommended for the HP Laserjet 5200 printer just before the eevblog blowup in last night, and that seems to have cured its inclination to feed multiple sheets and jam. Thanks for the tip! (It had become a monitor stand, and I didn’t have a pressing need to print on 11 x 17 paper until just now, so it had been languishing on the priority list. Thankfully I’d ordered the kit back when you suggested it last year, so I had it on hand, and even more miraculously was able to find it six months later…)

Now I need to cobble together a shelf of some sort to hold the monitor that was sitting on the printer…

-Pat

[Specmaster]

I arranged to take the rest of the week off work yesterday afternoon after we got back from the vet just in case he was going to need after care or followup visits. The vet diagnosed a severe case of constipation and there was a round of X-Rays and blood/urine tests that we’re still waiting for results on to try to pin down underlying cause.

They treated him for the constipation yesterday but the log jam still hasn’t broken. The way the vet made it sound, it was like I was going to have to follow the poor guy around the house with a roll of paper towels but there was nothing so I called back after they opened this morning and they said to bring him back in. We’re in the waiting room now waiting to be seen.

Any more news yet? How old is your furry friend?

[mnementh]

In other news...

Today, I took my son to school carrying a bag of goodies and a bouquet of flowers for this girl he fancies; turns out she broke up with her boyfriend a couple weeks ago, so he's feeling like now is the time to make his move.

I gave him the usual warnings about "being the rebound guy" and how "grandiose gestures and public displays of affection often backfire; so be prepared..."; but I also reminded him that I remember what it was like, and that "all's fair in love & war".

I also told him I believed he's got a lot going for him, and sincerely, good luck... as "Fortune favors the bold..."

I figure today will bring either a "first real date" or a restraining order. Ifni save him; he is so his father's son.

mnem
"Vaya con juevos, my boy..."

Or in 9 months you become a grandfather.

Well, I'll hope he follows in his father's wake a little longer then, as I didn't have any kids (yeah yeah yeah; that I know of ) until I wanted to have kids.

mnem
For those who wonder: Response was "I'm just not ready, it's too soon; but you're cute and here's my number."

[mnementh]

Mnementh, I FINALLY got around to putting the roller/pad kit you recommended for the HP Laserjet 5200 printer just before the eevblog blowup in last night, and that seems to have cured its inclination to feed multiple sheets and jam. Thanks for the tip! (It had become a monitor stand, and I didn’t have a pressing need to print on 11 x 17 paper until just now, so it had been languishing on the priority list. Thankfully I’d ordered the kit back when you suggested it last year, so I had it on hand, and even more miraculously was able to find it six months later…)

Now I need to cobble together a shelf of some sort to hold the monitor that was sitting on the printer…

-Pat

Glad I could help!

Those old machines were not built like "printers"; they were more built like a "tabletop printing press" with all the industrial-duty chops that implies.

They're worth spending a bit of assache on.

mnem
*not always assache-intolerant*

[vk6zgo]

Further to my rather "off topic" posting on the "3D printers" thread, I thought I'd add another one here!

My automatic trans linkage repair on the Camry worked OK, & after checking it went into the various gears, I left it sitting there, not taking it on a "shakedown cruise" till yesterday. ("St Valentine's Day").

SWMBO loves Lobster, so I drove to Fremantle, (too far for Uber Eats) & picked up a Seafood platter, plus two whole lobsters.

I was a little worried about everything getting too cold, but as luck would have it, we have two big empty Styrofoam packs sitting there which are from "Lite n' Easy" the company who normally supply us a weeks' worth of "calorie controlled" meals, so I "repurposed" one.

It worked well, the goodies arriving nice & hot.
With a glass of "Brown Bros" Crouchen Riesling, we proceeded to demolish our "calorie controlled" meal plan &, we don't even feel guilty.

[Cubdriver]

Glad I could help!

Those old machines were not built like "printers"; they were more built like a "tabletop printing press" with all the industrial-duty chops that implies.

They're worth spending a bit of assache on.

mnem
*not always assache-intolerant*

That's for sure! I bought it used a few years ago from the Bay of Evil; according to its data page it's about a half a ream of paper shy of having printed 125,000 pages. Definitely a workhorse.

-Pat

[Zenith]

Modern printers are a carefully worked out scheme to milk the customer. The official spare cartridges are eyewateringly expensive.

Fortunately, if you choose the right printer, ways have been found to work around it. Bottles of toner and refill instructions. Various adjustments to stop the printer's firmware behaving in an anti-social way.

[Specmaster]

Modern printers are a carefully worked out scheme to milk the customer. The official spare cartridges are eyewateringly expensive.

Fortunately, if you choose the right printer, ways have been found to work around it. Bottles of toner and refill instructions. Various adjustments to stop the printer's firmware behaving in an anti-social way.

Many of those official cartridges, be it ink or toner also come with built-in chips that have either a page counter or a date code, which when the set parameters have been reached, will prevent the printer from continuing printing, even though they are far from empty.

I now only buy 3rd party cartridges or just refills and refill cartridges without these chips embedded in them.

[TonyAlbus]

As the equipment gets older, so do our eyes...
This microscope i like already better then the DM9 after playing 20 minutes with it. 200x is perfect for electronics, the 1200x of the DM9 was to much. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pwdK9a9e6CE

front.jpg

[Specmaster]

Today, while I was researching the planned ULEZ expansion to include all London and also parts of Essex etc that are not technically London, I stumbled across this video and I think the points raised within it are very revealing. Could it be that we are indeed being told a load more lies, again by the Authorities?

Discuss?

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

[tggzzz]

I don't really understand what microscope magnification means, especially where there is a screen involved. If you connected that to a 21inch screen, would the indicated magnification be higher?

Now I'm older, the issue isn't magnification, it is the inability to focus with my eyes close to the subject.

I have two optical stereo microscopes, and as far as I can tell the linear magnification is *12 and *24. (No indication of lens powers, so I have to eyeball it)

For most purposes, *12 is good.

[Cubdriver]

I don't really understand what microscope magnification means, especially where there is a screen involved. If you connected that to a 21inch screen, would the indicated magnification be higher?

Now I'm older, the issue isn't magnification, it is the inability to focus with my eyes close to the subject.

I have two optical stereo microscopes, and as far as I can tell the linear magnification is *12 and *24. (No indication of lens powers, so I have to eyeball it)

For most purposes, *12 is good.

For what it's worth, with macro photography at least, the 'magnification' is relative to the image on the sensor. Most specialized SLR macro lenses will do 1:1, meaning that the image on the sensor is the same size as the object being photographed. I also have a specialized macro lens that will do between 1:1 and 5:1, meaning a maximum magnification of 5x. Based on this I'd conclude that magnification is the same in these electronic microscopes - based on the ratio between the size of the subject and size of the image projected onto the sensor.

-Pat

[TonyAlbus]

I have no technical explalaintion for that, but i know 1200x was to much for electronic use, even shifting the unit to its max...
with this one.. all they way up (prob not 200x) it was great to work on, and if you want it even bigger you put the unit lower...prob close to 200X
but with the DM9 that is 1200x.. putting the on the highest position..it was still to much zoomed..
whatever it means.. 200x at the closest and able to go higher with the unit to (less) .. is great.
so what ever they lie about... 1200X even lied about is to much.. the 200 lie is better.

[Specmaster]

I don't really understand what microscope magnification means, especially where there is a screen involved. If you connected that to a 21inch screen, would the indicated magnification be higher?

Now I'm older, the issue isn't magnification, it is the inability to focus with my eyes close to the subject.

I have two optical stereo microscopes, and as far as I can tell the linear magnification is *12 and *24. (No indication of lens powers, so I have to eyeball it)

For most purposes, *12 is good.

I just got my microscope out and played with it a bit, trying to work out something meaningful regarding magnification. It is listed on AliExpress as a 1200X magnification scope for soldering. That to my mind would mean that something measuring 1mm would mean that at max magnification it would seem to be 1.2m in size.

I placed something that was 1mm in size on the bed of the scope and with the scope moved to its closest point to get a good sharp image on the display screen that came with it (7"), that image measured 60mm and with the scope at it furthest from the object, it measured 6mm on the screen, so that, the way I see it equates to a useable magnification range of 6 to 60 times its original size, so I think the 1200x is just Chinese marketing BS. Of course if you feed the output of the camera to a larger screen the effective magnification would increase, as would the amount of visible artefacts present in the optics.

[tggzzz]

My way of measuring magnification was to put a rule in the microscope, look at through the lens, remember the angle contended by 1mm, and compare that with the scale seen looking beside the microscope. 1mm->12mms or 24mm.

I've just compared those with a cheap (but useful) Micronta pocket microscope married x30. That is slightly stronger than my stronger stereo microscope, but it isn't a 30:1 ratio. But then my 12* now looks more like 10* and my 24* now looks more like 20*! In both cases the objective to subject distance is 70mm, completely unlike the Micronta.

If I knew the right way to measure microscope magnification, I would measure it.

[Zenith]

IIRC a microscope for examining bacteria had an objective of 100x and a 10x eyepiece giving an overall magnification of 1000x. Bacteria are about a micron in size. Those objectives needed oil immersion. Optical microscopes hit the limit at 1500x. There are articles about measuring the magnification of microscopes, but if it was made by Nikon or some similar company, use the numbers on the objective and eyepiece. As you push the magnification, the lenses and general quality of the instrument become more critical.

I can't see what earthly use a 1200x microscope would be for soldering, or any of the electronics work we are likely to do. A stereo microscope with a magnification of up to 40x seems a much better bet.

Sounds like the sort of claims made for £5 ebay LED torches; 5000 lumens and a 9,900 mAh Li-ion 18650 battery. A similar but decent quality one might produce 1,200 lumens at most, the el cheapos probably produce 200 lumens at most . The best 18650 batteries from Panasonic, LG, Samsung etc have a max capacity of 3,500 mAh. The 9,900mAh battery probably came out of an old laptop battery pack and you'll be lucky if it has a capacity of over 500mAh.

[tggzzz]

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnification

With an optical microscope having a high numerical aperture and using oil immersion, the best possible resolution is 200 nm corresponding to a magnification of around 1200×. Without oil immersion, the maximum usable magnification is around 800×.

Thus I doubt the 1200* is the same thing! But 1mm on the PCB certainly isn't 1.2m anywhere, even on the display!

Comclusion: I ought to bone up on optics.

[mnementh]

Those numbers are likely some theoretical maximum that it can maybe focus on, with the lens like 1/2 mm away from a subject on a slide or some such shit.

Compared against an opaque subject that's all lumpy and shit, usable magnification will be much less, and magnification at such distance as to be able to actually work under the damned thing will doubtless be exponentially less.

mnem
This is real life; of course there will be a test.