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

[Robert]

Picked up a little bit of TE recently. One of those odd things that you could build yourself but don't. It's a Behringer CT100 audio cable tester. detects opens, shorts as usual and also generates 440Hz or 1kHz test tones at 3 levels. This is enough to drive a pair of headphones. Also detects phantom power. I paid £10 on ebay but they are only £20-30 new. I might see if there is enough room to add a couple of insulated BNCs.

[mnementh]

mnem
YMMV, DQMOT, IANAL, WTFBBQ, DILLIGAF?!?

" IANAL?"---we know you're "anal", what else is new?

You have no idea how apropos that is right now... I am sitting here taking a quart of hot broth and Drano in prep for a colonoscopy this afternoon. This is dose #2, and I know from experience how little warning one gets when it starts to work...

Feeling a bit like Cartman in that ep of South Park...
mnem

[MED6753]

I am weak. It was cheap and price includes shipping plus tax. It's basically a single channel Type CA. Uses the same tubes so I have plenty of spares. Should be here early next week.

[Cerebus]

Shut up, bd... even you can cut Linus some slack on this one.

I still want to punch his face. It's just so punchable.

The "still can't figure out which way a baseball caps goes" issue just adds to the desire...

[Cerebus]

... while over-reaching on a small stepladder.....

The thing that broke me of that habit was rigging stage lights atop a 4m 'A' ladder, getting a bit of a wobble on and recovering, realising that my 'opo' John had gone off for a piss and that if the ladder went I was going to be left dangling by two arms from a length of 2" gas pipe and wondering whether my strength would hold out until John got back, all the time praying that it was a piss he'd gone for and not a shit. Stopped over-reaching on that day and ever since.

[mnementh]

Shut up, bd... even you can cut Linus some slack on this one.

I still want to punch his face. It's just so punchable.

The "still can't figure out which way a baseball caps goes" issue just adds to the desire...

Here you go guys... someone new to pile your loathing on.

mnem
*toddles off to meet his doom*

[mansaxel]

Sod that. 4h40m on LNER. I can sit still that long and my laptop battery will still be at 75% at the end of it

Basking in the glory that's ECML. Yes, I'd do it. I'd not, OTOH, take Avanti on the more westerly route. You will not likely arrive in time, and not even get to travel on the Settle-Carlisle line.

If you want misery, the Midland Main Line running the old class 43 HST sets was the worst. Slow, unreliable, bumpy and you end up in Nottingham at the end of it!

I've actually taken it, once in 2012 and once in 2018; the first time it was just out from STP and back; the other time we came from MK and Bletchley, stayed the night and then went to London.

[Robert]

Rail Travel is not too bad if you live in London. From my home a few miles from Cambridge city center to get to a lot of places you have to go into london first. That means two buses, a train and the tube in the wrong direction before you even get on the train to your destination. Edinburgh is not too bad as you can get LNER from Peterborough. Even that is 3 buses, a walk and a train just to get to Peterborough. Unless a big buffer is left a single delay can result in missing the main train. And it takes 30 minutes longer than driving.

[mnementh]

*pokes TEAnonymous with a stick*

mnem
where are all you freaks...?

[Zenith]

I'm finding things somewhat becalmed as far as TEA goes.

The UK rally season is finished - well there's Chippenham in a couple of week's time, but I don't expect much from that. Ebay is not yielding much that I'm interested in, at a price I'd want to pay.

Several projects are held up waiting for things to arrive; either they are making their way from China, or the usual suppliers are waiting for stocks to arrive.

There are several non-TEA related things I have to get done before the weather gets too cold.

[bd139]

Yeah dried up here too. Also too busy shovelling unicorn turds all day to have any energy to do anything by the end of it.

I am however getting some use and utility out of the calculator purchase which is a notable reasonable eBay purchase.

[mansaxel]

Yeah dried up here too. Also too busy shovelling unicorn turds all day to have any energy to do anything by the end of it.

I am however getting some use and utility out of the calculator purchase which is a notable reasonable eBay purchase.

I have a couple bids out for = calcs, a few Sharp ones, just to have a buffer for when the children need calculators in school. There's a hp 16 on the local site too, but not in a very nice condition.

[Robert]

I've been too busy to even look at my National Hamfest purchases. A week in Washington DC, a bunch of domestic chores etc. Also the wid and rain has detered me opening the garage unless essential. Easier to let damp in tham get it out.
I did pick up the Myford ML 7 lathe and have that in the garage on it's stand. Not fitted the motor unit yet though as I'm putting s new 3 phase motor and Variable Frequency Drive on it. The old(er) ML2 is in the overflow garage and will be on ebay shortly.

I am rebuilding the "analyser" stack in the workshop now the HP 8568B has gone to a new home. The base is a two drawer filing cabinet. The bottom TE is a HP 3325A synth /generator. On top of and bolted to it is a Aten 1u monitor/keyboard drawer. That is fitted with a frame of 25mm x25mm x3mm alloy extruded angle to take the weight of the kit above. That starts with a R&S CMW-CU "PC". The R&S CRTU/CMU200 radio testset / spectrum anayser will go on top of that. From there I'm undecided but probably the Satsync GPSDO and HP 5335A counter. I might stick the big PREMA 6.5 DMM up there too as I've now got the Fluke 8845A for the main bench.

Robert.

[tggzzz]

I'm finding things somewhat becalmed as far as TEA goes.

The UK rally season is finished - well there's Chippenham in a couple of week's time, but I don't expect much from that. Ebay is not yielding much that I'm interested in, at a price I'd want to pay.

Several projects are held up waiting for things to arrive; either they are making their way from China, or the usual suppliers are waiting for stocks to arrive.

There are several non-TEA related things I have to get done before the weather gets too cold.

Such as protecting yourself against the UK only having 60% electricity for up to a week?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... fears-grow

Apart from that, the PPAuctions stuff is half up on its site, and there's a Ramco next week.

[mansaxel]

Also, the recent gift from a colleague of a Trio-Kenwood VT-104 SSVM turns out to work OK. 0,2dB out from my 8060A at 1kHz. I follows downward nicely in the ranges too. The hp 200CDR heats the room and pushes about 16,5V RMS into a high impedance load, and as far as that goes, the SSVM does what it should. Frequency response is at least to 60kHz, which is OK, not only for Robert's 400Hz mains but also for audio purposes, perhaps except tape recorder bias voltage.

[bd139]

I'm finding things somewhat becalmed as far as TEA goes.

The UK rally season is finished - well there's Chippenham in a couple of week's time, but I don't expect much from that. Ebay is not yielding much that I'm interested in, at a price I'd want to pay.

Several projects are held up waiting for things to arrive; either they are making their way from China, or the usual suppliers are waiting for stocks to arrive.

There are several non-TEA related things I have to get done before the weather gets too cold.

Such as protecting yourself against the UK only having 60% electricity for up to a week?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... fears-grow

Apart from that, the PPAuctions stuff is half up on its site, and there's a Ramco next week.

That's actually near number one in my list of problems. How do I keep our infrastructure running. Turns out AWS don't have any answers yet or aren't allowed to talk about it. Such confidence.

[mansaxel]

Turns out AWS don't have any answers yet or aren't allowed to talk about it. Such confidence.

I think it is fair to assume they're reasonably well prepared; after all, gensets at the data centre is something even a manager can understand, but the data centres might be still useless if no-one can get to them. There are a lot of things on the way that could go dark, for which there's no SLA, and where the backup power situation is messy at best.

OTOH, the practice of running live tests where you simply kill the feed into the facility, that's risky. And managers hate risk that can hit them. So the question remains if the diesels will start in an emergency.

[mnementh]

I suspect bd is more worried about things continuing to run as power capacity is commandeered for "life-support essential services" rather than commerce.

Not likely even AWS' BU infra was designed around more than a few days' power outage; what we're talking may come is more like zombie-apocalypse grade and duration downtime, at least to those in critical IS roles.

mnem

[bd139]

Turns out AWS don't have any answers yet or aren't allowed to talk about it. Such confidence.

I think it is fair to assume they're reasonably well prepared; after all, gensets at the data centre is something even a manager can understand, but the data centres might be still useless if no-one can get to them. There are a lot of things on the way that could go dark, for which there's no SLA, and where the backup power situation is messy at best.

OTOH, the practice of running live tests where you simply kill the feed into the facility, that's risky. And managers hate risk that can hit them. So the question remains if the diesels will start in an emergency.

Actually from what I have observed, I don't think they planned for this scenario at all. Short outages yes. The issue is more that they saved on redundancy costs by pushing this down to the customer to deploy their hardware into multiple availability zones (DCs) in a region as an anti-affinity measure and leave the assumption on the table that at least 1 availability zone will be online. They are all built equally so it is possible all three availability zones could go dark if the entire grid's assumptions are violated.

Also Amazon have never had three availability zones go dark. No one knows what will happen.

When we lost one availability zone earlier this year, there are capacity problems for a couple of days as well while they went round and fixed stuff afterwards. Certain instance types could not be launched in the failed AZ. Across three this will be a bitch.

As for the cloud, I think we should use it as a meeting place and synchronisation hub but that's it.

[mansaxel]

Actually from what I have observed, I don't think they planned for this scenario at all. Short outages yes. The issue is more that they saved on redundancy costs by pushing this down to the customer to deploy their hardware into multiple availability zones (DCs) in a region as an anti-affinity measure and leave the assumption on the table that at least 1 availability zone will be online. They are all built equally so it is possible all three availability zones could go dark if the entire grid's assumptions are violated.

Also Amazon have never had three availability zones go dark. No one knows what will happen.

When we lost one availability zone earlier this year, there are capacity problems for a couple of days as well while they went round and fixed stuff afterwards. Certain instance types could not be launched in the failed AZ. Across three this will be a bitch.

As for the cloud, I think we should use it as a meeting place and synchronisation hub but that's it.

No, it will not work to everyones expectations. That is near certain. And working redundancy is hard, whereas expensive non-working redundancy is easy and everywhere.

[tggzzz]

I'm finding things somewhat becalmed as far as TEA goes.

The UK rally season is finished - well there's Chippenham in a couple of week's time, but I don't expect much from that. Ebay is not yielding much that I'm interested in, at a price I'd want to pay.

Several projects are held up waiting for things to arrive; either they are making their way from China, or the usual suppliers are waiting for stocks to arrive.

There are several non-TEA related things I have to get done before the weather gets too cold.

Such as protecting yourself against the UK only having 60% electricity for up to a week?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... fears-grow

Apart from that, the PPAuctions stuff is half up on its site, and there's a Ramco next week.

That's actually near number one in my list of problems. How do I keep our infrastructure running. Turns out AWS don't have any answers yet or aren't allowed to talk about it. Such confidence.

ISTR reading recently that there are indeed major unknowns for data centres and telecom facilities, and that Discussions Are Taking Place.

Quite apart from the usual (comp.)risks in the failover procedures, there are questions about whether places will have (and get) sufficient diesel to keep them going. If they rely on gas generators then the gas will be cutoff in preference to cutting off domestic consumers. That's not a political consideration, it is because after gas is interrupted "qualified" people have to visit every premise to ensure reconnection is done safely. Visiting all domestic premises would be a nightmare!

Apart from that, the official winter electricity forecast is at
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/researc ... er-outlook
https://www.nationalgrideso.com/documen ... 6/download

The exec foreward starts "Our central view remains, as set out in the Base Case, that there will be adequate margins (3.7GW / 6.3%) through the winter to ensure Great Britain remains within the reliability standard1, although we expect there to be days where we will need to utilise many of the tools in our operational toolkit, including use of system notices"

But there's a big but... The base scenarios are essentially "happy daze^H^H^H^H days" forecasts w.r.t. the ability to import electricity from Europe and that there won't be any gas supply problem. The relative market price will determine whether we export electricity to Europe.

Probably a good idea to have significant cash under the bed. But unfortunately the problems of that are visible out of my bedroom window: <100m away there is a house being extended. Since 3 days ago that house has a charred/missing roof, and there was significant water damage to the neighbouring house.

[bd139]

Yes it is the diesel that worries me. I don't think anyone understands exactly how much diesel an average datacentre can guzzle. The batteries last a few minutes. The tanks last a few hours if you are lucky. But the batteries take hours to charge. The diesel supply is already constrained.

The whole thing is built around a single outage rather than persistent energy shortages.

[Zenith]

Such as protecting yourself against the UK only having 60% electricity for up to a week?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... fears-grow

I can't say The Guardian is one of my regular reads, but I'm pleased they are slowly catching up.

Apart from that, the PPAuctions stuff is half up on its site, and there's a Ramco next week.

The problem with PPAuctions is the goods are in Lincolnshire and it's a total 7 hour drive to collect them. They don't appear to have a dispatching service. They have a number of interesting items, but I'd have to succeed in a few at knock down prices to make it worth while. 15% buyer's premium + VAT. The £100 successful bid becomes the £138 bill with some messing about and a long and expensive trip (£50 for diesel) to collect it. Perhaps I've missed something here. If it was 50 miles away I'd give it a go. There are some items in Bicester, but nothing I want.

Ramco looks better, but they are not offering anything I'm gagging for.

[tggzzz]

Such as protecting yourself against the UK only having 60% electricity for up to a week?
https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... fears-grow

I can't say The Guardian is one of my regular reads, but I'm pleased they are slowly catching up.

The Grauniad will (like Private Eye) print things that other media is to scared to print.

Apart from that, the PPAuctions stuff is half up on its site, and there's a Ramco next week.

The problem with PPAuctions is the goods are in Lincolnshire and it's a total 7 hour drive to collect them. They don't appear to have a dispatching service. They have a number of interesting items, but I'd have to succeed in a few at knock down prices to make it worth while. 15% buyer's premium + VAT. The £100 successful bid becomes the £138 bill with some messing about and a long and expensive trip (£50 for diesel) to collect it. Perhaps I've missed something here. If it was 50 miles away I'd give it a go. There are some items in Bicester, but nothing I want.

Ramco looks better, but they are not offering anything I'm gagging for.

The stuff in Bicester is hunt4auctions, presumably stuff that hasn't sold quickly enough previously. hunt4auctions on bidspotter/ibidder has the irritating habit of setting a low starting price that is below the minimum price they will accept. Timewasting.

PPAuctions is OK-ish provided you can get multiple things cheaper than at Ramco. Ramco have stopped sending overseas, presunabky because of the new Brexit red-tape. Might mean there are fewer bidders, but I wouldn't bet on it.

The trip to PPAuctions in Aunby/Stamford is indeed a pain, but one that I've tolerated in the past. I've had some nice stuff from them as well as some that was binned after stripping out any bits worth keeping. A significant issue is that they keep stuff in a farm outbuilding, under hessian to reduce condensation! This auction stuff will only have suffered that for a couple of weeks, whereas the spring auction stuff has overwintered like that.

In the past I've just ignored the petrol costs, but that has to be questioned now. But that's coming from someone that went the same distance to Hackgreen

[tggzzz]

Yes it is the diesel that worries me. I don't think anyone understands exactly how much diesel an average datacentre can guzzle. The batteries last a few minutes. The tanks last a few hours if you are lucky. But the batteries take hours to charge. The diesel supply is already constrained.

If I have the arithmetic right, then 1l of petrol has about 30MJ of energy. Hence 100l of diesel will have - roughly - 1MWh of energy.

Now, what's the power consumption of a datacentre? Assume a 25% efficiency, and that will indicate how much diesel is going to be guzzled.