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

[tautech]

this old MacPro is actually the machine I use most of the time now, because sleep/resume just plain fucking work on it, which is an absolute joy.

mnem

W10 does too or are you some Windoze hater ?

[bd139]

W10 does too or are you some Windoze hater ?

The only people who think windows 10 works are the people who haven't used anything else...

[Robert]

Today I decided to finally sort out the door and lock on a wooden "engineers" toolcase I've had for about 20 years. It came from the shack clearance of a good friend who died abut 20 years ago. He was a toolmaker by trade. The case is an 8 drawer made by Neslein. It was in poor shape Having been stored in a damp garage. The front cover/door was falling apart and I never had a key. So I glued the door back together. A simple 4 piece frane with center panel. The lock was another matter. It's a simple 2 lever with a flat key but custom the Neslein. The frame halves are peened together so no chance of opening it without making a mess. So I decided to see how my lock picking skills were (I used to be in the coin-op machine iindustry so was pretty good at opening locks). I used the impression technique starting with stiff plastic card (a used credit card like gift card) as it's stiff enough, easy to cut and shows marks well. So 3bits of plastic later and I have a "key" that operates it. I then got a flat blank from Timpsons. it's too big but the rigt thickness so a good starting point. About 20 minutes filing later and I have a working key. About a hour and a half total for two levers so no expert but it's over 40 years since I did it last.

[bitseeker]

That certainly isn't a quick project, but very cool that you could manually replicate a key.

[Cerebus]

I don't mind going somewhere if there is an opportunity for a hike, some scenery or some nice activities but quite frankly there's fuck all in Lincolnshire apart from Morlocks.

How about poachers? (Or is that too much of a "niche" joke?)

They died out, spent all their time counting and none poaching or breeding.

[Cerebus]

That certainly isn't a quick project, but very cool that you could manually replicate a key.

The ability to take a lock apart and then make a key for it is a sign of either a fascination with and familiarity with the workings of mechanical objects, or the sign of a mis-spent youth. If you can do it to a master keyed lock and end up with a master key then it's definitely a sign of a mis-spent youth. Let's just say that at university no doors were barred to me.

[bitseeker]

[bd139]

That certainly isn't a quick project, but very cool that you could manually replicate a key.

The ability to take a lock apart and then make a key for it is a sign of either a fascination with and familiarity with the workings of mechanical objects, or the sign of a mis-spent youth. If you can do it to a master keyed lock and end up with a master key then it's definitely a sign of a mis-spent youth. Let's just say that at university no doors were barred to me.

Reminds me of the old joke.

"What key can open any lock? .... a pikey"

Cerebus, to note I'm not comparing you to a pikey there

[Robert]

On TE I also did a repair today, I think
I'd mentioned in the other place that I had a bench PSU based on a Farnell G series "equipment" switchmode unit. And that it kept having mains switches welding in the on position. The original switch was a mianture toggle and lasted at least 15 years. So I just replaced it. That failed in a few weeks so I investigated and found a dodgy looking RIFA so I thought That was causing inrush current and welding the contact.
Changed that and the switch, putting a fullsize 15A toggle switch in just in case. That lasted a couple of months. Note this unit has a 360W, G30-12 (30V 12A) PSU inside. These have about a 10% adjustment range but to can set anything from ,1V to full output voltage with an external resistor. The input is a bridge rectifier and big electrolytics so inrush could be high. However they have a inrush limiter. This comprises a 12 Ohm resistor in series with the input with a TRIAC across it. The gate is connected to an isolated winding on the main transformer so as soon as the oscillator starts the TRIAC bypasses the resistor. I assumed that the TRIAC had gone short so ordered a replacement months ago. Went to fit it a couple of eeks ago and I'd mislaid it (and a bunch of other new components from Farnell ). So got another one and took the PSU apart. Both the unit I built it into and the Farnell G series are pretty tightly packedand a pain to get into so I didn't confirm the diagnosis. Took it all apart and surprise surprise the TRIAC dos not read short. Took it out and it tests fine on low voltage DC. Fitted the new TRIAC and a new switch anyway. I can only assume the TRIAC is breaking down or turning on due to high dV/dt at turn on. Only time will tell.

Farnell G input.jpg

[mnementh]

this old MacPro is actually the machine I use most of the time now, because sleep/resume just plain fucking work on it, which is an absolute joy.

mnem

W10 does too or are you some Windoze hater ?

Not just Windoze; I'm a equal-opportunity asshole: Every OS sucks.

Windoze sleep/resume and the resulting workspace that you come back to is at best a fucking crapshoot. Especially when it wrangles with Windoze Update for control of your PC.

Windoze memory management is a inverted pyramid kludge teetering on a mouldering antiquity of a kernel that literally has bits of CP/M in it. Asking it to parse itself into a file and then back into memory again is akin to a surgeon doing brain surgery on himself. As for how it refreshes the RAM when in sleep mode... obviously they don't listen very well to the people who design the hardware they are operating on; memory leaks and dropped bits abound.

When it doesn't crash on resume, or lock up when going to sleep, or again from sleep to hibernate, or just randomly turn itself on in the middle of the night & try to invoke a succubus to eat your soul... the times when it doesn't do these things is the surprise; not the times when it does.

That said... one of the things Windoze does do very well is to give you a million ways to triage and sort your files by a million different attributes. And all readily available in a drop-down dialog in the GUI.

Not surprising, as the design was by committee of bean-counters.

mnem

clickety-click-clicky.png

[Robert]

That certainly isn't a quick project, but very cool that you could manually replicate a key.

The ability to take a lock apart and then make a key for it is a sign of either a fascination with and familiarity with the workings of mechanical objects, or the sign of a mis-spent youth. If you can do it to a master keyed lock and end up with a master key then it's definitely a sign of a mis-spent youth. Let's just say that at university no doors were barred to me.

The thing with this one is that I didn't take it apart! I didn't want to mark the lock up by grinding off the peening. It's only a simple two lever but making a key by impressions on a blank from the levers is a different skill. Making a key from a disassembled lock is easy in comparision.
I basically cut the plast

[Cerebus]

I suspect in my case it was a) the fact I'm using a Mac with old OS (which makes it a total PITA to actually see full details of a image file)

Select file in finder, and either hit command-i, or right click and select "Get Info" and lo a window will open with all the details you could want.

Screenshot 2022-11-05 at 23.24.05.png

As opposed to "Set default view on the folder" to include these details, so you can see them on every file in a folder as you scroll by. What you're describing involves actually opening each file with multiple clicks and selecting a tab to get down to the info you want.

PITA.

Another thing I find infuriating is that you can set some defaults on folder view but not all, and more than once I've had defaults that were once set pretty close to exactly the way I liked them (at least as close as MacOS was willing to tolerate) revert to other defaults for no apparent reason. And lets not even start talking aboot setting those attributes such that they apply to child folders, etc... near as I can tell, you're going down to CLI for that kind of granularity.

Don't think I'm hating on MacOS... this old MacPro is actually the machine I use most of the time now, because sleep/resume just plain fucking work on it, which is an absolute joy. But there are some things that the Apple mantra of "UI so simple your grandmother can use it" turns into a serious amount of assache.

mnem

Oh if that's what you want "View->Show Preview" in finder to get a side window with details (which changes as you scroll through the files), "View->Show Preview Options" to set what appears in the preview. "View->Show View Options" for what is listed along with every file in the main part of the window. Click "Use as Defaults" in the View Options popup to make that true for any Finder Window, otherwise they become the settings only for the currently displayed directory.

The "reverting" of defaults you've seen is probably that you've set some over-riding settings on some directories, or you're getting confused by the Desktop (and one or two other places) having a different variant of settings. So general default settings won't change the desktop and changing the desktop settings won't affect anything else.

The finder's settings for a folder/directory are stored in a hidden file ".DS_Store". You can find whether you've scattered about settings that you need to clean up by running "find . -name '.DS_Store' -print" from you home directory on the command line. Note the dots and single quotes. If you're feeling foolish, substitute '-delete' for '-print' to scrap them - normal huge warning about recursive deletes applies, make sure that you know what will be deleted before you execute.

[Cerebus]

Cerebus, to note I'm not comparing you to a pikey there

I should hope so, you can't go around insulting pikie's like that...

[Specmaster]

I think I'll just leave this here...

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

[bd139]

They all suck. But I try and use the least shit.

[nixiefreqq]

i know this is off topic......but i was really excited to see my bald eagles today across a field adjacent to my neighborhood.

they are the two bumps on top of the poles in the distance.

ps apologize for so many......but they are each less than 50k.

[mnementh]

They all suck. But I try and use the least shit.

Yes, but what you think is "the most shit" seems to change quarterly.

mnem
*looks at his watch inquisitively*

[bd139]

They all suck. But I try and use the least shit.

Yes, but what you think is "the most shit" seems to change quarterly.

mnem
*looks at his watch inquisitively*

Depends who broke what and when.

Have used macOS exclusively since April 2020 however.

[Robert]

I got another Farnell G series PSU out of the garage today. Mainly because I want to look at adding variable current limiting to them (looks possible). Plugged it in and guess what I've been RIFA'd So I had a look and it has two 100nF X capacitors. One let go.
I've two NOS replacements but dare I fit them? They are currently baking in the oven....

[bd139]

I'd just run 'em without the caps and get some plastic ones with whatever next Farnell / CPC / RS / Whatever order you do next.

Got a Farnell B30/5 here. It is stuffed with those buggers and Plessey electrolytics. I may just bounce it on eBay as I don't fancy my chances. Paid SFA for it. Think it was a fiver or so. Would rather it burned someone else's house down

[Zenith]

Those Rifa caps are crap because the transparent cases crack with age. Even unused ones are cracked. Moisture can enter via the cracks and one day Boom!.

I wouldn't waste any time drying them in an oven or messing with them at all. They are just crap.

I won't even buy new production ones, and bear in mind it took probably ten years at least before the problems appeared with the originals. They look too similar to the originals. They may have a totally different plastic shell, but it looks too much the same.

[mnementh]

On The Bench Tonight: My Bust-Ass Lenovo



Today's attempt at something constructive: I've dismantled my 15.6" Lenovo Flex fliptop so I can figure out exactly which parts I need to fix it properly. This is a final reality check to make sure my keyboard and the IPS LCD I removed still function properly.

In the case of this particular screen, removing the LCD requires heating the bezel and removing it destructively from the cracked glass first to have a chance at removing the LCD intact; it is bonded to the digitizer glass with foam tape and you cannot get at the tape to slice it free with a razor any other way.

Now I need to shop a palmrest and digitizer glass with bezel.

Yes, a lot of work... but I just couldn't get used to the newer Acer. I miss my old Lenovo; and after looking at current prices of used everything, I realized I can't replace it with anything similar spec/features for less than a few hundred $$$... so I've re-evaluated my spend limit for parts.

mnem
*toddles off to ded*

[Zucca]

I had to....

20221107_213903.jpg

first post.

PS: I never regret the money spent on Knipex.

PSS: My avatar is too big... 79KB

I am so happy to be back!

[Zucca]

i know this is off topic.....

I have no problem with off topic post as long you are addicted to TEA somehow...

[bitseeker]

Am addicted...and how. Went from buying it to running a forum about it.