Test Equipment Anonymous

BU508A wrote: ↑Tue Feb 04, 2025 6:25 am Local chemical heterogeneity enabled superior zero thermal expansion in nonstoichiometric pyrochlore magnets

Try saying that three times, fast!

Firing the Lorentz Plasma Cannon

Where is Wally? Extended version.

https://floor796.com/

I discovered this strange character on Youtube. A brilliant pianist but something of a nutcase. It amused me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCx8Xcm ... Vinheteiro

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/kFv0G0SLvQ4

https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Xcmqe6Jb-pU

How big is a neutrino?

Well, probably not what one would expect.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-024-08479-6#Sec1

"The Nagel–Schreckenberg model is a theoretical model for the simulation of freeway traffic."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagel%E2% ... berg_model

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupportmacgyver/

https://www.reddit.com/r/techsupportgore/

These came up in my search results while I was trying to figure out how to get my X-Arcade's trackball working in a RetroPie build... lots of horror-show content; grab a cup of coffee and relax, kill a few minutes. For the record, I don't give a flying fuck how much moo-sqweezins you may or may not have in there.

mnem

"Tinkering" with pure Fluorine:

BU508A wrote: ↑Fri Feb 28, 2025 4:52 pm "Tinkering" with pure Fluorine:

Better pictures here: https://www.science.org/topic/blog-cate ... -work-with

Add a soupcon of chlorine, and...

"[ClF₃, chorine trifluoride] is apparently about the most vigorous fluorinating agent known, and is much more difficult to handle than fluorine gas."
"I’ll let the late John Clark describe the stuff, since he had first-hand experience in attempts to use it as rocket fuel. From his out-of-print classic Ignition! we have:
”It is, of course, extremely toxic, but that's the least of the problem. It is hypergolic with every known fuel, and so rapidly hypergolic that no ignition delay has ever been measured. It is also hypergolic with such things as cloth, wood, and test engineers, not to mention asbestos, sand, and water-with which it reacts explosively. It can be kept in some of the ordinary structural metals-steel, copper, aluminium, etc.-because of the formation of a thin film of insoluble metal fluoride which protects the bulk of the metal, just as the invisible coat of oxide on aluminium keeps it from burning up in the atmosphere. If, however, this coat is melted or scrubbed off, and has no chance to reform, the operator is confronted with the problem of coping with a metal-fluorine fire. For dealing with this situation, I have always recommended a good pair of running shoes.”
https://www.science.org/content/blog-po ... e-you-time

("Ignition!" is available at the internet archive)

A Youtube video 21:45 minutes long on the origins and end of Heathkit. I'm sure we've all built, or acquired at some stage, Heathkit gear.

10:30 to 16:40 is a quiz type presentation, which I found I could do without.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V-F_Fz2G7BI

While bumbling around looking for a picture of a hand card punch, I came across
https://hoc.lgfl.org.uk/resource.html

Short videos of what there is at TNMoC, plus other stuff. Looks like it is a KS2/3 teacher's resource.

tggzzz wrote: ↑Wed Apr 30, 2025 10:49 am While bumbling around looking for a picture of a hand card punch, I came across
https://hoc.lgfl.org.uk/resource.html

Short videos of what there is at TNMoC, plus other stuff. Looks like it is a KS2/3 teacher's resource.

There's a hand punch available at the CHM in Mountain View. I've operated it. The card I'd punched was then verified by running it through a Model 26 Printing Card Punch in copy mode. Flawless.

Speed gun physics explained:

From tekscopes, news of Sphere's HP and Tek inventory....


Tom Norman via groups.io
to TekScopes
5 hours agoDetails
As many may remember, Walter Shawlee II passed away September of 2023. Since that time, his wife Susan, and children, have been busying themselves with the task of liquidating much of the electronic goodness that Sphere Research had accumulated. Susan intends to continue to make their collection of slide rules, nixie tubes and various other items available. Additionally, she is continuing in her effort to find homes for the remaining equipment. Please do visit Sphere’s site and help.
Sphere’s inventory of Tektronix and HP parts has found a new home with us. We have the beginnings of a website (tekandhpparts.com), with the intention of continuing to make these parts available to the Tek and HP enthusiast community.
A bit about us:
1) The goal of the website is to continue to make Sphere’s inventory available to the people like us that enjoy collecting, repairing and making use of these amazing examples of engineering and manufacturing.
2) A secondary goal is to “pay back” our retirement account of the funds used to buy the parts. It is truly secondary, and may never happen, but who knows?
3) We are retired, have three children, farm 20 acres of grass hay, tend to cows, sheep, horses and chickens, and have FAR too many hobbies and other responsibilities to have taken on another, but here we are….
4) Our website is an amateur work in progress. Please read the home page posts for information on the site and on our progress. Tek items will be posted first, followed by HP and then “other” semiconductors and who knows what else. There is much awaiting inventorying, so if you don’t see the part you are interested in, please contact us directly (tom@tekandhpparts.com) and we will let you know if we have it. Look for announcements on the homepage as we complete the inventorying and pricing of each group of parts. Please be patient as we get the website, inventory and pricing figured out. Feedback is, as they say, a gift, so please share any constructive advice or suggestions for the site that you may have. The suggestion "You should have your head examined" has already been given!
We can’t ever hope to duplicate the knowledge that Walter possessed, but will do our best to provide you with the right parts for your project. We look forward to getting to know our new customers, and will work hard to earn your trust.
Thank you,
Tom and Darla Norman

Electronic and mechanical music clips from 8 yrs ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5M5ao1D4jWo
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2UesaCcfI_8

Just nuts, this guy has too much spare time.......

Making google search suck slightly less, by removing the LLM slop
https://www.dedoimedo.com/computers/goo ... rview.html
Needs firefox, or another browser where you can add a different search engine.

Interesting mini documentary on HP

Not sure, if I should put it here or to the time nuts in the metrology section.

https://imgur.com/gallery/anniversary-o ... ng-cz8E4RN

Say wut?!?

I'm lost for words, a shame that ChatGPT wasn't.

"Item description from the seller
The Hewlett 83711b Packard Synthesized Cow Generator is a unique and innovative product designed to convert organic waste into clean energy. With the brand name Hewlett known for its quality and reliability, this cow generator utilizes advanced technology to synthesize cow dung into electricity, making it a sustainable and environmentally friendly energy source. This product offers a solution to energy shortages and helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, making it a valuable addition to any eco-friendly energy generation project."

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/336025379743

First celestial image unveiled from revolutionary telescope

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cj3rmjjgx6xo

I'm having difficulty understanding how you can find/select the interesting objects to examine. So many pixels, and interesting objects are often only a few pixels in size.

Ditto how starlink trails are removed.

Remove starlink trails:
I'd say, take some pictures shortly after, combine them and remove the starlink patterns.

Perhaps a similar approach would work for finding interesting objects.

It's a common technique, and increasingly common in amateur astronomy, to take hundreds of exposures and average them to get rid of atmospheric distortions, aircraft, satellites etc. This telescope is on top of a mountain in Chile, so well above most of the atmosphere, and it's not clear how wide a view it is. If it's a narrow view, there would be only a small chance of having it spoiled by a satellite.

The resolution for digging down into interesting objects will depend on the quality of the optics and the resolution of the sensor. In this case, extremely high, in both cases.

It has 3,200 megapixels (67 times more than an iPhone 16 Pro camera) and would require 400 Ultra HD TV screens to show a single image.

There are Hubble composite images which are huge, hundreds of MB. You can drill into them a long way, but they may crash your computer.

https://esahubble.org/images/heic1909a/