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

[tautech]

Stickiness draws newbies attention, and indicates that the thread has important information with a long lifetime, that will be of interest to many people. The TEA thread did not have those attributes.

In contrast, the TEA thread was largely ephemeral chit chat between a small group of wierdos.

The core mistake was to equate/conflate quantity with quality.

All sorts of discussions between people with particular interests might be dismissed as "largely ephemeral chit chat between a small group of wierdos". Chess, bee keeping, using and maintaining vintage cars, and so on. I've stayed with friends and been asked to sort out an electrical problem and have been shocked to find out they didn't have a £5 naff DMM and not even a crappy analogue 1kOhm/V meter. An electric soldering iron; they'd heard of these things, but never would it have crossed their mind to buy one. I don't understand how a civilised existence can be maintained without these essentials but there we are. They were surprised to be told I had half a dozen soldering irons, various sorts of solder, and numerous multimeters and still considered myself ill-equipped. Had they told me the weekend was to be delightfully punctuated with fixing things, I could have come loaded for bear.

"Quantity has a quality of its own", to quote Stalin. I think it was a quirky, active sub-community. I never got the impression newbies were treated with hostility, but it wasn't the section they'd turn up in to invite suggestions about fixing hair curlers, which by any reasonable calculus should just be thrown away. I'd guess a few people were drawn there through Google, some were of a similar view and stayed, others found other sections on the site more to their taste, but generally it was an asset from the POV of DJ. He seemed a bit peeved when the schism occurred.

Yep and exactly why Jonesy let TEA go on so long until someone more precious than us brought the idle chit-chat that was core to the thread to the attention of Geoff (gnif) and the shitshow ensued.
Even now with its much reduced participation it will continue to remain the #1 thread for a good while yet.

[25 CPS]

I put the Hameg scope and frame with the function generator and distortion analyzer on the bench this afternoon for a test run just to get an idea of what kind of shape they're in and try them out. This is the first time I've ever used Hameg equipment. The scope works and most of the problems I was having arose from dirty/noisy controls but I was eventually able to get it to settled in. The AT/Norm button at the top right of the scope might be stuck in though.







I also tried out the component test function that had been intriguing me with a severely aged 15 uF capacitor. It's an Aerovox that was made at their Hamilton, Ontario factory. The factory is gone and the was redeveloped as a shopping plaza and Coca Cola bottling plant, but the ground beneath is still contaminated with PCBs.



A diode gave the characteristic diode curve.

I ended up with a very strong overall impression from the Hameg rig is that it felt like equipment you'd find on lab benches in a college for students to use. I can't put my finger on why I got that impression so strongly. The whole fit/finish/performance didn't feel comparable Hewlett-Packard or Tektronix quality. It had the almost-but-not-quite feel that budget equipment student workbenches would have.

I made a separate thread for the frame with the function generator and distortion analyzer because that ran a bit long. I'm not sure if I'm going to dig into the right side of the frame tomorrow or put the Amber on the bench and go over that. Ideally, time permitting, both. Hopefully the Amber is in good operating condition because from everything I've read, those are well regarded.

[tggzzz]

It's an Aerovox that was made at their Hamilton, Ontario factory. The factory is gone and the was redeveloped as a shopping plaza and Coca Cola bottling plant, but the ground beneath is still contaminated with PCBs.

So now the pollution is both below and above ground.

The greens will point out, with some validity, that those pollutions will soon meet again below ground.

[Zenith]

I put the Hameg scope and frame with the function generator and distortion analyzer on the bench this afternoon for a test run just to get an idea of what kind of shape they're in and try them out. This is the first time I've ever used Hameg equipment. The scope works and most of the problems I was having arose from dirty/noisy controls but I was eventually able to get it to settled in. The AT/Norm button at the top right of the scope might be stuck in though.

From recollection it connects to a switch via a metal rod, which passes through a hole in a part of the metal work. They can get sticky especially if the scope has been kept somewhere damp. Lubricating that part of the rod with a smear of silicone grease usually works. The rod attaches to the switch with a plastic snap on part which can break. I've attached the rod with piece of heatshrink.

A diode gave the characteristic diode curve.

I ended up with a very strong overall impression from the Hameg rig is that it felt like equipment you'd find on lab benches in a college for students to use. I can't put my finger on why I got that impression so strongly. The whole fit/finish/performance didn't feel comparable Hewlett-Packard or Tektronix quality. It had the almost-but-not-quite feel that budget equipment student workbenches would have.

A low voltage Zener should show the Zener breakdown as well. I never thought the component tester was particularly useful. There are a few pages about it in the Hameg manuals. Some folks think it's fantastic.

Hameg sold into the hobbyist market and were aimed at those with slightly deeper pockets. There were cheaper scopes around. They were bought by some companies for production line use or service departments. Universities bought them for teaching labs. At the time they were claimed to be the most popular scope brand in Europe. They weren't in the same league as HP or Tek, but they were probably a quarter of the price. IIRC HP launched its last analogue scope in 1983 and they were always aiming at the top end. Tek made a serious attempt to cater for the budget and educational markets but I'm sure Hameg were more successful in those areas.

They turn up at swapmeets in the UK for £10 or less. Usually they have some problem. ebay prices are considerably higher. In my opinion they are perfectly OK scopes. Some of the higher bandwidth ones have unusual features. A 60 MHz one has a strange delay trigger and a 100MHz one has a quirky dual timebase

The last couple of times I've been to The National Museum of Computing, they had a 20MHz Hameg attached to their Colossus machine, monitoring wave forms. It looked like a part of the furniture. When they power up the Colossus, they power up the scope. I assume the signals were at no more than a couple of MHz. Using a period scope would be unnecessary and painful. It's well within the capabilities of the Hameg and it sits there doing its duty, day after day.

[Zenith]

Yep and exactly why Jonesy let TEA go on so long until someone more precious than us brought the idle chit-chat that was core to the thread to the attention of Geoff (gnif) and the shitshow ensued.
Even now with its much reduced participation it will continue to remain the #1 thread for a good while yet.

It lived in a world of its own. DJ never looked at it, but was pleased by the amount of activity. The moderators were never called to deal with it, part of the reason why DJ didn't look. Mostly it was on track but there were spells when it was very discursive. One or two newcomers complained about the rambling nature of it. gnif got involved at a time when there were particularly rambling discussions. He did a double take and applied exactly the same standards he'd apply to other parts of the site*. So he deleted posts, and pissed people off. BANG!!! But you can't have an explosion unless you have explosives there to detonate.

Depends what you mean by "precious". Valued, or affected and unduly sensitive. Two mistakes were taking seriously complaints from people who hadn't contributed much, and heavy handed meddling with something not understood and so damaging it.

*On the rest of the site I'd rarely seen gnif intervene and when he did I thought it was entirely justified. e.g. banning a long term nuisance poster, who'd previously been banned and returned under another handle.

[tggzzz]

Yep and exactly why Jonesy let TEA go on so long until someone more precious than us brought the idle chit-chat that was core to the thread to the attention of Geoff (gnif) and the shitshow ensued.
Even now with its much reduced participation it will continue to remain the #1 thread for a good while yet.

It lived in a world of its own. DJ never looked at it, but was pleased by the amount of activity. The moderators were never called to deal with it, part of the reason why DJ didn't look. Mostly it was on track but there were spells when it was very discursive. One or two newcomers complained about the rambling nature of it. gnif got involved at a time when there were particularly rambling discussions. He did a double take and applied exactly the same standards he'd apply to other parts of the site*. So he deleted posts, and pissed people off. BANG!!! But you can't have an explosion unless you have explosives there to detonate.

Depends what you mean by "precious". Valued, or affected and unduly sensitive. Two mistakes were taking seriously complaints from people who hadn't contributed much, and heavy handed meddling with something not understood and so damaging it.

*On the rest of the site I'd rarely seen gnif intervene and when he did I thought it was entirely justified. e.g. banning a long term nuisance poster, who'd previously been banned and returned under another handle.

That is an extremely good summary.

[mnementh]

(SNIP)


A diode gave the characteristic diode curve.

I ended up with a very strong overall impression from the Hameg rig is that it felt like equipment you'd find on lab benches in a college for students to use. I can't put my finger on why I got that impression so strongly. The whole fit/finish/performance didn't feel comparable Hewlett-Packard or Tektronix quality. It had the almost-but-not-quite feel that budget equipment student workbenches would have.

I made a separate thread for the frame with the function generator and distortion analyzer because that ran a bit long. I'm not sure if I'm going to dig into the right side of the frame tomorrow or put the Amber on the bench and go over that. Ideally, time permitting, both. Hopefully the Amber is in good operating condition because from everything I've read, those are well regarded.

We had Hitachi V2xx & V4xx family scopes in my time at uni. Very similar fit and feel, and like the Hamegs the internals were 100% bread-and-butter design using common off-the-shelf discretes and ICs. You can probably still buy every semi in them new, tho you may have to put some of them on a SMD-DIP PCB to use them.

Good to see someone else discovering the joy of these workhorse CROs!

mnem

[Robert]

The Hameg 'scopes were a mid-range 'scope in the UK. Certainly a step above the "Scopex" designs that were sold under many names. Similar to the lower end Telequipment of same vintage but below Phillips, Tektronix and HP. Gould did a similar colour / style range but they were plauged by faulty HV windings on the mains transformers. I actually got a bunch re-wound by Majestic Transformers in Bournnemouth in the late 89's when a 20MHz 'scope was worth enough to make it viable. Not today...

[AVGresponding]

As for EEVBlog, do you and the others here frequent it still? I haven't looked at it since the big blowup other than spot reading the occasional thread that comes up in Google results for equipment I've looked up.

I do, but not to the same degree that I used to

[Robert]

Anyone on here going to National Hamfest on Friday and interested in a HP 1183A Instrument Mobile? Designed for the 54600 series of 'scopes MSOs etc will also taka other instruments.
ANY offer considered. Scope not included (I do have a nice 54645D MSO but it would be extra).

Agilent-1183A.jpg

coemes apart so will fit in even a small car.

[tggzzz]

Anyone on here going to National Hamfest on Friday

No, but I'll be interested to read the event report.

[Cubdriver]

As for EEVBlog, do you and the others here frequent it still? I haven't looked at it since the big blowup other than spot reading the occasional thread that comes up in Google results for equipment I've looked up.

Like you, I will occasionally land there after a web search, and have now and then exchanged messages with David (Factory) through PMs, but beyond that, not at all.

-Pat

[Zenith]

Anyone on here going to National Hamfest on Friday and interested in a HP 1183A Instrument Mobile? Designed for the 54600 series of 'scopes MSOs etc will also taka other instruments.
ANY offer considered. Scope not included (I do have a nice 54645D MSO but it would be extra).
Agilent-1183A.jpg

coemes apart so will fit in even a small car.

I shall be at the National Hamfest on Friday. Unfortunately, although it's obviously a fine thing which would grace anyone's workshop, I am not in a position to avail myself of your kind offer of an HP 1183A Instrument Mobile at any price, including £0.

[tggzzz]

I've occasionally wondered about a scope trolley, but decided I don't have the room. More importantly, while they were useful for Tek7k series, I dislike those preferring 24*5 and 4x5 portable scopes.

[MED6753]

I've occasionally wondered about a scope trolley, but decided I don't have the room. More importantly, while they were useful for Tek7k series, I dislike those preferring 24*5 and 4x5 portable scopes.

Roll your own. While not height adjustable they serve the purpose.

[Zenith]

A friend told me how he'd worked in a placed where they'd stretched the budget to buy a top end HP scope. They couldn't bring themselves to splash the extra on the matching scope trolley, so they put it on an old tea trolley.

[25 CPS]

I had some brief, all too short time testing out the Amber 3500 + 331 last night before I had to leave for work. It took some time to figure out and get accustomed to how the controls on the 331 interact with the regular front panel controls on the main unit and in some cases take over from them. By the time I got familiar with operating it, I was really getting into testing this out and time flew. By the time I realized how late it was, I barely had enough time to shut off the equipment and head out the door to get to work on time.

I do think I've found a bad interaction between one of my BNC cables and the BNC terminals on the QA403 though. It seats better on the 8903B which according to the Amber has a lower distortion than the QA403 so I might have to reserve that cable for use elsewhere. This might account for some of the surprise values I had the other day with the Hameg distortion analyzer.

Anyways, I made a separate thread for the Amber.

[Robert]

Nation aHamfest Visit Report.
I went on Friday. No one wanted the instrument mobile
Rally was busy but not crowded. I was one of the first in other than traders. The outdoor fleamarket opens 30 minutes before the hall. Table are expensive £30 so not too much junk. First thing I picked up isn't TE, a Shrike exploder in unissued condition and complete. Even the battery had a charge. That and a home brew single channel unit were £30.
Went indoors and during my first quick scan around I spotted a Anritsu Sitemaster S331A antenna analyser and distance to fault meter. Earlier model but useful range from 25-3000 MHz. Plus points were it was charged, had the power supply, 50R load, test cable, manual, software, softcase, Pelicase and the power meter head. Oh and the VHS triang video Even better was the price £150. I did try to haggle but not too hard
Items I didn't buy:
IFR 500 radio test set £150 (I have 3 radio test set already)
IFR 1200 (I think) radio test set £175
HP 3586B Selective level meter First asking £100 but 'm sure £50 would have got it. I've always wanted one of these but never seen one for sale in the UK. unfortunatly it's huge nd I no longer have the space and now have other equipment that will do 99.9% of what it will.
Ther was one dealer with a bunch of clean TE of various sorts. I bought a R&S UDS-5 51/2 digit DMM from him. It was cheap, £45, but gatting it home while everythig else seems to work it wont display a reading on any range or function. Trying to locate an english manual but it goes on the repair pile for now.
A mate picked up a Picoscope 2202 USB oscilloscope for £2 That's £1/MHz, yes it only a 2MHz 8 bit model Hoe ever I brought a coule of relays for him and we did a swap. The relays cost me less than nothing. I'll yse the 2202 as the front end sor a simple gamma spectrometer.
So summary is worth the 3 h round trip but might not have been. There was a lot more new radio stuff than used.
Telonic Instruments, a UK TE seller including Rigol and Siglent had a big stand but that's not my thing.

Robert.

[tggzzz]

Thanks for the report. It doesn't seem sufficiently good for me to want to hike there next year, unless I can do something else at the same time.

When you said the Shrike exploder had a charge, I wondered whether it was legal to sell that to any Tom Dick or Harry Then the penny dropped.

[Robert]

Edited to clarify no ceefive
https://www.chemring.com/what-we-do/cou ... e-disposal has a link to the Shrike datasheet (I got a Mk5).

[Robert]

So I had a lok inside the R&S UDS 5 DMM.
It is full of Roederstein EK electrolytics. These have a dark brown thermoset plastic case rather than the usual aluminium can. Sevveral of them are obviously faulty. Tiny cracks and dried out electrolyte residue.
And there are no supply voltages on the analog (isolated) PCB.

Roederstein-EK-2.jpg

Roederstein-EK-1.jpg

Looks like I have about 28 capacitors and a bridge rectifier to replace. I don't normally do bulk capacitor replacement but I'll make an exception for these.

[Robert]

Well I was wrong. The little 1A bridge rectifier that supplies the +5, +15 and -15 regulators was OK. With the capacitors replaced still no measurements. The +15 and -15 Volt outputs were OK but no 5V. That comes from a LM309K (TO3) regulator. Whipped that out and it read totally open circuit on diode test, It's dead Jim. I looked in the TO3 regulator box and found a LM109K 883 first. Bit overkill being a full military spec and fully tested version. Still available only £57 each
Put that in and a bit of progress. It now says Error 100. The 5V starts OK but drops off and the LM109K gets warm.
So Got the Fluke VT04 Visual Thermometer out:

VT_0005T.jpg

To be honest you don't need a thermal imager for that one, you could burn your finger on it.
Unfortunatly that IC is not in the circuits or PCB layouts for the manual that is on the web. Part number is still readable though. It's a SN74S74N. Don't know if it's failure was cause or effect. Possibly cause as it's leads are rusty. Anyway I put a socket and a SN74LS74N in it and it works

74S74.jpg

New-74LS74.jpg

UDS-5-Resistance.jpg

Anyone want some dodgy components?

Duff-Bits.jpg

[Zenith]

I went there on Friday. I got there late, after 10am, having taken a detour. The weather on the M5 was horrific. I bumped into a couple of ex-colleagues from the Bristol area. The M5 was closed lower down because of surface water and they'd been diverted onto the A38.

The rally: I went there the year before last and thought it was OK. Last year it was cancelled. This year, despite the unpromising start, the Newark area are was pretty much dry. There were about 100 yards of stalls with junk of various sorts. Inside there were some get rid of it stalls, and large stalls from serious sellers of amateur gear. No bring and buy and no piles of interesting and cheap TE for £30 and less, There was TE but it was mainly top end and they were looking for sensible money. I sounded out a Marconi 2022 and he wanted £300. Stewart of Reading would probably do you one for that much and his would work. I saw the HP 3586B Selective level meter. It was a 19" rack type thing and I had no clear idea what it did. There was also a very clean HP8460B, not shown working and they are subject to all sorts of ills.

There were a few clean looking Eddystones, but apart from that nothing by way of boatanchor radios.

I went to the Telonic stall and checked out the Siglent HD scopes as I have a vague intention to buy one. I couldn't really play about with it. The gent was going through the options. I thought it impolitic to say I would buy the bottom end one and apply the unofficlal licence upgrade. I did buy from them a nice pair of silicone test leads and shrouded croc clip attachments. I bought one pair with a DMM. The problem is if you order a pair specially, shipping is £6 and when VAT is added they are £21. They were offering a 10% rally discount and they worked out to just over £12.

Apart from that I came away with odds and ends. A bag of assorted components including a few silver mica caps and some 0.01% resistors plus other useful looking caps. It had to be worth £1.

I then went off to spend the weekend with friends in Mansfield. I was due to visit them anyway and going to the rally first doesn't impinge on the weekend.

As a rally, for the things I'm interested in, I'd rate it well below Newbury or DD. It certainly wouldn't justify a three hour drive each way. A couple of years back it seemed better.

[Robert]

You were too late, we got all the good bits
The guy with the clean TE neatly laid out with no price tags was who I bought the R&S DMM off. I'm a bit disapponted that he didn't tell me it as faulty. If I'd paid his original aking price I'd be seriously miffed.
The 3586B is basically a very high precision HF Receiver. It was deignied for accurate level and frequency measurment on analog telephone trunk systems that sent lots of SSB "calls" down a bit of coax. It has a bit of a cult following in the USA.
The Anritsu S331A I got is fully working with a good battery. Ex RAF and looks like it was never used. That was a bargain.

[Zenith]

Whether a rally is any good or not depends on what you are interested in and how sharp eyed you are. It might produce a stack of manuals you have been looking for, or books, or components. It might yield an obvious wreck for not much, which happens to have the missing bits for another wreck you've meant to do something about for years. It's very subjective.

My impression of that was not much in the way of TE or stashes of parts or other things, of interest to me. It could have been very different. Now had one been interested in modernish ham radio gear, or even older ham radio gear, it could have been stellar. One of the traders had a junk section with stuff marked from £5 to £30, but nothing I could get worked up about.

R&S UDS-5 51/2 digit DMM for £45. A bit naughty IMHO, since I'd guess he was well acquainted with its problems. I might have been tempted to inquire about his HP8640B, had it been shown working or was particularly cheap. There was something about that stall, all very clean, nothing shown working, no prices but I guessed he wanted top wack. Offputting.

I did see a Polyskop shown doing something not very impressive, at the back of one of the stalls for £50. It looked very big and heavy. I'd guess it was some description of spectrum analyser. I'd heard of the name as one of the bits of kit used for setting up the filters in RA17s although that one looked newer. Times have moved on, and what would have been mega impressive in the 1950s is no longer so.

There was a stall selling Tiny SAs and Tiny VNAs. I've toyed with the notion of buying one and it was interesting to see them in the flesh.

My general impression was that it fell short. I heard a couple of the outside stallholders say that the pitches were too expensive, so not where you'd go to get rid of stuff for a few quid rather than take it down the dump.