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

[BU508A]

Incoming TE: Keithley 230 voltage source.

[Cerebus]

Later they had a segment about paying for tickets. It seems the contactless payments I make several times a day in shops was pioneered in the London Transport Oyster card. Never knew that.

A bit of LT propaganda there I suspect.

The first contactless payment system used in public transport was the UPass system used by the Seoul Bus Transport Association in South Korea in 1995. The Oyster card was 2003, eight years later. The MIFARE contactless card was introduced by Phillips/NXP/MIFARE in 1994.

[tggzzz]

Later they had a segment about paying for tickets. It seems the contactless payments I make several times a day in shops was pioneered in the London Transport Oyster card. Never knew that.

A bit of LT propaganda there I suspect.

The first contactless payment system used in public transport was the UPass system used by the Seoul Bus Transport Association in South Korea in 1995. The Oyster card was 2003, eight years later. The MIFARE contactless card was introduced by Phillips/NXP/MIFARE in 1994.

Possibly, but I believe there is some useful basis behind it. Similar questions: who created the first TV and the first computer.

[URI]

Upsie, my short story of my 5370B with link to this TEA-thread pissed of a user at the TEA-thread over at eevblogs.

20230328_Screenshot_eevblog_TEA-thread.png

Was my approach to rude?

[Cubdriver]

Upsie, my short story of my 5370B with link to this TEA-thread pissed of a user at the TEA-thread over at eevblogs.
20230328_Screenshot_eevblog_TEA-thread.png

Was my approach to rude?

You can't please everybody. <shrug>

Kind of surprised at his reaction - he always seemed like a good dude. Dunno.

-Pat

[tggzzz]

Upsie, my short story of my 5370B with link to this TEA-thread pissed of a user at the TEA-thread over at eevblogs.
20230328_Screenshot_eevblog_TEA-thread.png

Was my approach to rude?

Yes and no.

Obviously, there's no requirement for you to cross post.

OTOH I can appreciate his being irked at not seeing the photos, and also at not wanting to bother with another forum.

It doesn't take much to post in both forums; the markup can be pretty much copied directly which just leaves the photos to be done "manually". But it is extra "unnecessary" work.

To avoid unnecessarily breaking friendships after the schism, on the few occasions when I think there is something very interesting to both sets of friends, I'll post in both forums. But mostly I post here.

[MED6753]

For the benefit of those who chose to stay on the blog rather than migrate here I do on occasion post there and link a thread to here. It has been met with universal approval and I will continue to do so if I feel it's of general interest. The individual who raised an objection I think is complaining about the lack of seeing the pictures. He has mentioned that before but he did state that he can see my pictures because they are linked to ImageShack. But it seems to be an issue with him, and him alone. I've not seen anyone else complain with that problem.

[Zenith]

I don't think you were at all rude.

Forum schisms affect people in different ways. Some are never going to have anything to do with the new one, are glad the malcontents left and so on. Some are never going to have anything to do with the old one, after being insulted and had posts deleted etc, and are glad not to be annoyed by the creeps who caused the row. Some can happily live in both camps.

My view is that I'm happy to read and sometimes contribute to EEVblog, but not the TEA thread.

[Specmaster]

My take on the forum schisms is that life too short to bear grudges etc and its best to just bury the hatchet and move on, if others wish to carry on in their own shell, let them, they normally have a limited view and are of the opinion they are always correct. I still visit the old forum occasionally and take part, as not all my friends came over here, most did, and I enjoy the relative peace and quiet here without all the moaning.

[mnementh]

Upsie, my short story of my 5370B with link to this TEA-thread pissed of a user at the TEA-thread over at eevblogs.
20230328_Screenshot_eevblog_TEA-thread.png

Was my approach too rude?

Not at all. In fact, David should have approached you via PM. The only part of the post that really matters would be the request to make the content available/crosspost for their benefit.

The way it's phrased and done publicly feels like mostly just sqwawking over old petty squabbles; as if there were somehow something wrong with you for not automatically giving eevBog preferential treatment.

mnem
*toddles off to fix a toaster*

[mnementh]

*tssssssst....*

mnem
What...? No X-Ray...?

[mnementh]

Gixen has released iOS and Android apps for your eBay hunting pleasure: https://www.gixen.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=10912

mnem

[TonyAlbus]

Keithley 230, great catch @BU508A
you will be amazed how well it will work, mine was still perfect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJpYL_gLIpA

and to match the 220, but i found the 224
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tx7D4F0WLNc

and if not is was easy to calibrate if you have something you can calibrate it against to.

Have fun, you will love it.
(only a bit noisy)

[mnementh]

https://www.amazon.com/WOWSTICK-Screwdr ... 09GJLDBK4/

.

It's arrived; a day late as Amazon decided to save a shekel by combining the delivery with a much more expensive bit. meh.

Packaging is very iStuff; little boxes inside of big box and each bit in a silky white plastic baggie.

That said; after a few minutes fiddling with it, I'll say the general quality level is actually much higher than expected. Enough so that I want to take a few more pics and get into it once it's had a chance to fully charge up.

Honestly, if I'd known how well-made it is at first look (like if I'd seen it on sale at a Expo vendor's table and had a chance to hold it in my hands) I'd not have hesitated to pay the $20 regular price it still has on Amazon.

note: You can click on the thumbs under my post and get the full-size image for detail viewing.

.

So.... a little research online revealed that these are not some cheapie Chinesium POS; they are a somewhat better Chinesium tech gear from XIAOMI. The WOWSTICK family is one of their "uber" product lines, and they apparently have quite a following. These are apparently an older model being cleared out. This is the SD23 "STANDARD" set, which only includes the XO bit kit; the more you pay, the more of these little tubes you get in ascending order X0, X1, X2, X3, etc.

The bits are very good; well formed and crisp edges, hardened black-blasted CR-V without the cheap-feeling nickel coating and very similar in hardness to my well-loved KOBALT and HUSKY multi-bit micro-drivers I've relied on for decades now. I'd happily have paid my $11 for just these bits to use with one of those manual drivers.

The tube carrier is quite clever; the bits stick into little rubber holders which are captive on a bit of steel rod with grooves cut in it. This set has, interestingly, PH0, PHOOO and PH2 (properly sized, just scaled down outer diameter), but no PH0 or PH1. But it does have the 3 most common Pentastar and Y/Triangle bits, and a SIM Card removal tool.

I had a chance to use it in anger during the week; I needed to tear down wifey's old laptop to service the cooler and diag a faulty keyboard. The WOWSTICK worked fabulously, and def saved some assache on the longer screws that go through 3-layer sandwich of bottom plastic body, mainboard, and top plastic bezel.

The stand is actually quite usable and useful; it is made of solid anodized aluminum with a silicone rubber base (I peeled it up and looked under) and in no time I was in the habit of sticking it back in the base. No, it doesn't charge the driver; it is very obvious that would defeat the convenience of the thing. But it uses a common USB-C (and they include a little 6" one) so charging is pretty well sorted anyways.

Review and teardowns seen online show these use a all-metal-gear driveline, in a brass frame; the operation feels and sounds silky smooth.

TL/DR: These are still showing on Amazon for $14.95 with a $5 coupon right now... all y'alls wanna go on and get you one, at least those in the States; you overseas might wanna see if you can find it on sale too.

https://www.amazon.com/WOWSTICK-Screwdr ... 09GJLDBK4/

mnem
Definitely 2 thumbs up from this tool dwagon.

So... I vacillated for a while over getting a companion bit set to go with my WowStick (which I quite like... enough that I just bought a 2nd as a spare while they're on sale cheap); then I stumbled across this: $25 bux, lots of 5-star ratings, and same-day eligible on Prime.. plus a 5% off coupon for just a wee bit of thrift.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0921NTGDJ

Verdict: This is "the good cheap set" to get. Quality is ~95 points; some flash which is easily knocked off, and some of the Security Torx bits aren't perfectly centered, but are still very usable. That's it for flaws.

.

Decent blasted-finish CR-V, and the right selection of bits including spares of commonly used ones. I like that there are a good selection of thin flat blades, and full sets of triangle, Y-wing and Square drive, and Hex from 0.7-6mm.

Added to that is that the "extras" are actually of usable quality; the tweezers are decent heavy material and ground down to a needle point that meets perfectly, and the included plastic & metal spudgers are usably thin and have no burrs on the edges.



I find the spiral-fluted "knurling" on the driver handle is actually quite effective even with wet paws, and the magnet easily picks up 5-8 regular-sized screws on the tip of the P2 bit. And finally, the RolyKit packaging makes it the perfect companion to my just-acquired WowStick mini-screwgun (which I like enuf that I just bought a 2nd while they're on sale for a spare); a better, more usable kit than their biggest for ~$36 all-in.

https://www.amazon.com/WOWSTICK-Screwdr ... 09GJLDBK4/

NOTE: For reference' sake, I have posted full-res images with this Show & Tell; you can see them by clicking on the thumbnails below the post.

mnem
*still toolish after all these years*

[Robert]

Not TE directly but I went to look at a PDF manual yesterday and could not access my NAS drive.
It's a WD and I found out today that WD have been hacked and shut down their servers. The frustration is I can't access MY LOCAL drive without WD's systems being up. Nothing about that in the instructions or any review I read before I bought it.
have a back-up but I'm pretty p'd off with WD. Needless to say I'm looking for a new NAS even when (if) WD come back online. I don't think I'm the only unhappy WD customer...

[mnementh]

Well, fuck-a-diddly-doo. Yeah, Fuck WD. With a shovel. I literally hope that the fallout from this shit bankrupts them.

mnem

wah-wah-wahhhh...

[Specmaster]

Not TE directly but I went to look at a PDF manual yesterday and could not access my NAS drive.
It's a WD and I found out today that WD have been hacked and shut down their servers. The frustration is I can't access MY LOCAL drive without WD's systems being up. Nothing about that in the instructions or any review I read before I bought it.
have a back-up but I'm pretty p'd off with WD. Needless to say I'm looking for a new NAS even when (if) WD come back online. I don't think I'm the only unhappy WD customer...

I have a couple of NAS drives, a 4 bay D-Link and a single ZyXel which are frequently inaccessible as almost Windows 10 update breaks something in the network with them, they worked flawlessly on Windows 7.

[tggzzz]

Not TE directly but I went to look at a PDF manual yesterday and could not access my NAS drive.
It's a WD and I found out today that WD have been hacked and shut down their servers. The frustration is I can't access MY LOCAL drive without WD's systems being up. Nothing about that in the instructions or any review I read before I bought it.
have a back-up but I'm pretty p'd off with WD. Needless to say I'm looking for a new NAS even when (if) WD come back online. I don't think I'm the only unhappy WD customer...

I'd be pissed off too.

One of The useful "definitions" of a distributed system is, as we all know, a system where you can be screwed by a computer that you didn't know existed.

It is difficult to know what can be done about that class of failures. If you don't have a detailed understanding of how the system works and fails (and who does?), it is difficult to come up with explicit countermeasures.

The best advice I've come across is to have two physically different types of backup media, e.g. rust, flash, cloud, dvd, tape.

I'm sure it is coincidental, but today... "Why a top US cyber spy urges: Get religious about backups"
https://www.theregister.com/2023/04/03/ ... ?td=rt-9cp

[mnementh]

Here I go down a rabbit-ho'; similar, but not the same as the one before...

So all y'all may or may not remember, but back when we were doing the STM32/T-12 OLED soldering stations, I had a controller bite the dust due to one of these little bastards made with a cheap clone/counterfeit/just plain POS LM2956 that failed pass-element short. Turned out I was just part of a fecking shitstorm of the damned things that all failed this way and supposedly aren't supposed to do that. Well, lesson learned, and since then I haven't even looked at anything Chinesium claiming to be a LM2956.

So now... I find myself needing to get 8.4V/1A off of a 48V battery to power the headlight on my eBike... and it needs to be a switcher to limit heat in a printed enclosure, and it needs to be pretty small. That leaves pretty much the LM2456HV( ~60Vin, 1.5-37Vout/3A) above and a few pretty pricey options from Pololu.

Anybody recognize this Chinesium semi manufacturer? Also, I'm trying to figure out the best way to "test to destruction" on one specimen and find out if it fails open as the LM2956 family are supposed to do...

mnem
Popcorn will be provided; BYO shades.

[cyclin_al]

Not TE directly but I went to look at a PDF manual yesterday and could not access my NAS drive.
It's a WD and I found out today that WD have been hacked and shut down their servers. The frustration is I can't access MY LOCAL drive without WD's systems being up. Nothing about that in the instructions or any review I read before I bought it.
have a back-up but I'm pretty p'd off with WD. Needless to say I'm looking for a new NAS even when (if) WD come back online. I don't think I'm the only unhappy WD customer...

Oh Yes! I am really worse than annoyed with it. SWMBO's mother has one of those and I get stuck being the SysAdmin for it. Yes, I am hearing about it today!!!

I have an older WD MyBookLive, which is beyond EOL and has a known security weakness. It has been firewalled for quite some time, so it cannot phone home to WD. Luckily, it would still function while firewalled, unlike the newer one that SWMBO's mother has. I have been meaning to replace it, but too busy on other stuff, (not even TEA unfortunately).

So, what to replace it with? It needs to be something that is relatively robust against the things a SWMBO mother might do

[cyclin_al]

Here I go down a rabbit-ho'; similar, but not the same as the one before...

So all y'all may or may not remember, but back when we were doing the STM32/T-12 OLED soldering stations, I had a controller bite the dust due to one of these little bastards made with a cheap clone/counterfeit/just plain POS LM2956 that failed pass-element short. Turned out I was just part of a fecking shitstorm of the damned things that all failed this way and supposedly aren't supposed to do that. Well, lesson learned, and since then I haven't even looked at anything Chinesium claiming to be a LM2956.

So now... I find myself needing to get 8.4V/1A off of a 48V battery to power the headlight on my eBike... and it needs to be a switcher to limit heat in a printed enclosure, and it needs to be pretty small. That leaves pretty much the LM2456HV( ~60Vin, 1.5-37Vout/3A) above and a few pretty pricey options from Pololu.

Anybody recognize this Chinesium semi manufacturer? Also, I'm trying to figure out the best way to "test to destruction" on one specimen and find out if it fails open as the LM2956 family are supposed to do...

mnem
Popcorn will be provided; BYO shades.

I got some similar ones, not quite the same, last year before major events happened. I have not touched anything electronics in that time, and finally starting to find time to get back into it. Please share your setup, and we can see if I get the same fireworks or different...?

20230403_231755.jpg

[mansaxel]

Here I go down a rabbit-ho'; similar, but not the same as the one before...

I actually, upon seeing the mini-picture on your Amazon shipping rant in the Discord thread, thought "I'm certain he swore not to ever touch those again"..

Having said that, I'm interested too. I've got -- under construction -- what I've dubbed Main Bus B, a small 24V battery-backed system intended to keep tiny DC-powered devices off wall warts and with some spare power for outages. There's a couple ATA boxes, the media converter/CPE for the fiber connection to the broadband provider, a Raspberry Pi that monitors a bunch of temperatures, and so on.

None of these vill run from 24V, especially not a pair of lead-gel batteries as is now. So I need buck converters en masse.

I've been thinking about two mods to these, one being RFI related where I intend to do an extra parallel cap on in and out, and also a series inductance on input. This was in some ham related site, where they'd done some EMI/RFI testing on buckers and determined how much stuff that was needed to get them FCC legal. (a lot, but still cheaper to add than buying the real stuff.)

The other is, once I've decided the application and thus output voltage, just to add a matching crowbar zener with a suitable fuse, choosing the zener so as to not be the fuse itself. I'm admittingly pretty ignorant, but as long as the fuse blows before the zener, it should be an ok'ish protection.

[mansaxel]

So, what to replace it with? It needs to be something that is relatively robust against the things a SWMBO mother might do

The cloud. Unless it is way above 1 TiB. I myself don't but I have more than 1TiB and I am not my mother-in-law. Any local storage oughta be cache and nothing else.

For storage I run OpenAFS on a distributed system, and have done so since at least February 2005. It is hell on Earth, and also heads above everything else in networked storage. I only recommend this to people who are certifiably insane, old hat and greybeard unix (not linux) sysadmins. But it works for me.

[mnementh]

Here I go down a rabbit-ho'; similar, but not the same as the one before...

I actually, upon seeing the mini-picture on your Amazon shipping rant in the Discord thread, thought "I'm certain he swore not to ever touch those again"..

Having said that, I'm interested too. I've got -- under construction -- what I've dubbed Main Bus B, a small 24V battery-backed system intended to keep tiny DC-powered devices off wall warts and with some spare power for outages. There's a couple ATA boxes, the media converter/CPE for the fiber connection to the broadband provider, a Raspberry Pi that monitors a bunch of temperatures, and so on.

None of these vill run from 24V, especially not a pair of lead-gel batteries as is now. So I need buck converters en masse.

I've been thinking about two mods to these, one being RFI related where I intend to do an extra parallel cap on in and out, and also a series inductance on input. This was in some ham related site, where they'd done some EMI/RFI testing on buckers and determined how much stuff that was needed to get them FCC legal. (a lot, but still cheaper to add than buying the real stuff.)

The other is, once I've decided the application and thus output voltage, just to add a matching crowbar zener with a suitable fuse, choosing the zener so as to not be the fuse itself. I'm admittingly pretty ignorant, but as long as the fuse blows before the zener, it should be an ok'ish protection.

For your application, there is a different common variant using (allegedly) the "standard" LM2456 that is CV/CC; should be ideal (provided the LM2456 works as it should):

https://www.amazon.com/JacobsParts-Volt ... 07YQ9HPB4/

https://www.amazon.com/HiLetgo-Converte ... 00LPK0IKQ/

and then there's this family, (not CV/CC tho) which I just tripped over while writing this post:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B08HS19W8Z/

As well as one using the LM2456HV:

https://www.amazon.com/LM2596HVS-Indica ... 07ZCP5GNF/

The one I used in my STM32/T-12 soldering station (still working well) was one of these OSKJ 300W Buck/Boost CV/CC:

https://www.amazon.com/Aoicrie-Converte ... 07X47R252/

Got to spend the day doing a bit of road-running; still cogitatin' on the "best" way to destroy one of these...

mnem
BBIAB...

[Specmaster]

I wonder just how warm those heat sinks get, they are too close to those caps for my liking.