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Re: I need a new/used lab computer
I'm not a windows fan, but a while back got a tiny machine with windows 8 on it. It felt like using a phone as a computer. It updated to 10 (painfully, it didn't really have enough free space to do it properly) and is still horrible to use. I do have an alternate boot to win 7 on my linux laptop which I use occasionally for some proprietary config tool etc.?
But recently that was happening too often so I grabbed a cheap pc (second hand NUC 7i7 for ?70 ish) and it came with W11, no option.?
To be honest, I find it more usable than anything since W7. I think they might have walked back some of the worst errors of the last few years. It's still frustrating and naggy compared with debian but it's not quite so horrible.
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Now I might be missing some as-yet unencountered part of the W11 experience which will drive me to distraction, but at this point I'm thinking it's not as bad as painted. Especially compared with 10. Is what does it do badly ? So far I've avoided registering it as I don't see any point but it is slowly putting in uncustomisable and unpleasant behaviour so apparently it's built to annoy. Does the level of intrusive adverts eventually grow to the point where it's unusable ?
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Re: HP 8568B Instr Check Light?
Also, I have seen the intermittent caused by an intermittent interconnect cable on the rear. Usually a broken wire inside the connector from cable stress or worst case where the cable meets the connector shell. Those are still repairable, but harder to do. (Find the broken wire, slit the plastic sheath, spread the wire sheath, find the break, repair or jumper it, insulate the single wire, put it all back inside the sheaths, tape up the slotted plastic sheath, check the cable continuity.) Doable, but a PITA. A replacement used cable is in the $35 to $150 range on EBay.
Don Bitters |
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Re: HP 8643A and Capacitors
Not 100% sure, but I believe the power supply to mother brd. connection is a Molex to tinned pins connector on either the power supply brd. or mother brd.. On the 85662A display unit the tinned pin oxidizes and becomes resistive causing resistive voltage drop and heating. If the Molex white nylon start to brown then this is your problem. Cleaning both the pin and jack may solve the problem, but if it got hot enough you may have lost the spring tension on the socket side. Rebending that contact might work, or you may have to replace that spring contact. Usually it is only one pin, the one with the most current draw.
Don Bitters |
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Re: HP859x Power Supply Schematics
Thanks, Chris!
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For anyone else digging, they are here:
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-mark
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On Fri, Mar 7, 2025 at 10:16 AM, Chris Weir wrote:
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Re: I need a new/used lab computer
Hey Jim,
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I'm a little late to the party here, but what about just fixing the original PC? You didn't mention the type of kaput-ness involved, which could be a number of things ranging from trivial to fatal. My dreaded worst case PC failures have always been HDDs losing boot sector or crapping out entirely, so having to redo the OS and all programs and trying to recover lost data. Power supplies and other drives and such are trivial, being mostly easy to replace commodities. If the OS HDD is still good, of course it's simplest to just park a fresh PC around it and tweak it to match the new HW details.
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I even fixed a huge Dell XPS400 motherboard a few years back. It suffered from the same sorts of things as other gear - bad electrolytic caps - and I could see it coming for over a year in advance as more and more paralleled caps gradually puffed up and blew their tops until there just wasn't enough C anymore. When it finally went down, I had to pull the board, and replaced several dozen caps throughout. It was tricky in many spots, where way undersized pads for caps had to be cooked out adjacent extremely skinny signal runs without wrecking anything on these multilayered boards - they are not laid out well at all for such service. It worked though, and continues to do so, with no signs of problems with the fresh caps. However, the usual problem happened again recently - the OS HDD crapped out entirely, with no spin-up or anything. I reloaded it with a new one and it's up and running, but not used much now. I keep a number of old PC types as spares mainly for legacy ports, programs, and devices, running on WinXPSP2. My "modern" PCs (one tower, two laptops) are on Win10/11.
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So anyway, maybe you can fix the original, depending on what's wrong - nothing to lose in trying. Good luck.
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Ed |
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Re: HP 8568B Instr Check Light?
The 2 check LED’s deal with the state of the instrument and the communications between the upper and lower units. If the upper unit does not power up but the bottom unit does, IIRC the right LED will be on. If the left LED is on the typical cause is a stuck key on either unit. The simplest test for this is do a key press on every key, if no movement the key spring is loose in the unit somewhere, probably just behind the keyboard, but it can be anywhere in the unit. You can pull the key(s) to the out position
and do the IP and it may clear it. A little tape can be used to hold the key in the open position temporarily. Don Bitters |
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Re: HP 8643A and Capacitors
开云体育
You might try resoldering the power connectors on the IO board, filter board and main supply board. Otherwise, bad cable, crimp?
You might find that it fixes itself when you put it all back together. If so, a wiggle check is in order.
I had a power failure code and everything tested fine when I disassembled the power supplies. I resoldered the power connectors and put it back together. The problem was gone but I am still not 100% sure what caused it. I did end up recapping everything for
peace of mind.
For the battery, I ordered one from Newark. I think it was this one:
It fits on the board where the original battery was without "skywiring".
Tony
AD0VC
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Bill Carver <bill@...>
Sent: Friday, March 7, 2025 8:29 AM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [HP-Agilent-Keysight-equipment] HP 8643A and Capacitors ?
My 8643A started doing a "recalibrate" every time I turned it on. Once the 8643A completes that "recalibrate" its RF output and frequency are OK, although I have not tested every aspect of modulation, sweep, etc. I assumed it was failure of the memory backup
battery, but it was original and OK. But old and leakage would be a disaster, so replaced the battery with three AAA NiCad. Still "recalibrated", as expected. The fault message at the end reported the 5.25V supply was not within spec. I checked a test point at the output of the power supply filter board and found less than 5.0V. Having experience with tired computer grade capacitors I assumed that would be the
case here. Surprise: no transformer supply with big caps, just two switchers. I pulled both switching supplies and found that both the oven switcher and the main 5V/15V supplies voltages were
OK. Particularly the 5.25 I tested with a 2A load current and it was perfect. All capacitors in both supplies with Nichicon 105C and operating at a fraction of rated voltage. Nonetheless, considering the age and the disassembled state of the 8643A I have all new capacitors (again Nichicon 105C which were also
my choice when I was working). I have replaced caps and retested the 24V oven switcher. The last capacitor for the main switcher is supposed to arrive today and I expect the main supply will test OK by tonight. Out of curiosity I tested the removed capacitors
and all but one exceeded the rated capacitance and had tiny leakage current. It appears I am losing about 300mV between a supply at 5.25 volts and the connector at the output of the power-filter board. Something drawing too much current? It would have to be a seriously large amount of current. That seems unlikely given that it seems to be working. All DC supplies pass through a passive filter board with series inductors, shunt capacitors.? With the supplies still out and the filter output connector disconnected, I will measure the shunt impedance of that filter board. Anyone with 8643A experience have any other ideas? Bill On 3/7/2025 7:51 AM, AArnaud via groups.io wrote:
Hey everyone, Having recently picked up an Hakko 474 I've decided to desolder every electrolytics in the PSU to test them before ordering some. To my surprise they're all well within specs, close to new. I now understand why Sprague is regarded as such a good brand, I'm leaving them in. I'm only replacing the blown tantalum on the A7 board. I'll post another update when some DC calibration will happen. Arnaud. |
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Re: HP 8643A and Capacitors
开云体育My 8643A started doing a "recalibrate" every time I turned it on.
Once the 8643A completes that "recalibrate" its RF output and
frequency are OK, although I have not tested every aspect of
modulation, sweep, etc. I assumed it was failure of the memory
backup battery, but it was original and OK. But old and leakage
would be a disaster, so replaced the battery with three AAA NiCad.
Still "recalibrated", as expected. The fault message at the end reported the 5.25V supply was not
within spec. I checked a test point at the output of the power
supply filter board and found less than 5.0V. Having experience
with tired computer grade capacitors I assumed that would be the
case here. Surprise: no transformer supply with big caps, just two
switchers. I pulled both switching supplies and found that both
the oven switcher and the main 5V/15V supplies voltages were
OK. Particularly the 5.25 I tested with a 2A load
current and it was perfect. All capacitors in both supplies with Nichicon 105C and operating
at a fraction of rated voltage. Nonetheless, considering the age
and the disassembled state of the 8643A I have all new capacitors
(again Nichicon 105C which were also my choice when I was
working). I have replaced caps and retested the 24V oven switcher.
The last capacitor for the main switcher is supposed to arrive
today and I expect the main supply will test OK by tonight. Out of
curiosity I tested the removed capacitors and all but one exceeded
the rated capacitance and had tiny leakage current. It appears I am losing about 300mV between a supply at 5.25 volts and the connector at the output of the power-filter board. Something drawing too much current? It would have to be a seriously large amount of current. That seems unlikely given that it seems to be working. All DC supplies pass through a passive filter board with series inductors, shunt capacitors.? With the supplies still out and the filter output connector disconnected, I will measure the shunt impedance of that filter board. Anyone with 8643A experience have any other ideas? Bill On 3/7/2025 7:51 AM, AArnaud via
groups.io wrote:
Hey everyone, Having recently picked up an Hakko 474 I've decided to desolder every electrolytics in the PSU to test them before ordering some. To my surprise they're all well within specs, close to new. I now understand why Sprague is regarded as such a good brand, I'm leaving them in. I'm only replacing the blown tantalum on the A7 board. I'll post another update when some DC calibration will happen. Arnaud. |
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Re: HP859x Power Supply Schematics
Anyone who downloaded my schematics of the Output Regulator should update them with those I have just uploaded to the files section, along with the schematics of the other two boards. I found a couple of errors, and I have updated some signal names to better reflect their function.
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Chris |
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5 files uploaded
#file-notice
Group Notification
The following items have been added to the Files area of the [email protected] group.
By: Chris Weir <chris.a.weir@...> Description: |
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Re: HP 3403C True RMS Voltmeter display fault
Hey everyone,
?
Having recently picked up an Hakko 474 I've decided to desolder every electrolytics in the PSU to test them before ordering some.
To my surprise they're all well within specs, close to new. I now understand why Sprague is regarded as such a good brand, I'm leaving them in. I'm only replacing the blown tantalum on the A7 board. ?
I'll post another update when some DC calibration will happen.
?
Arnaud. |
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Re: I need a new/used lab computer
Just as another data point, I do know for a fact that a PCIe to PCI bridge, NI PCI GPIB card, and Windows 10 64 bit will work.? I have yet to run any program that won't work with it, but I am sure something out there won't.??
I have not been brave enough to try Windows 11 on this machine, and probably will not until there's an easy path back to Windows 10 if it breaks the GPIB stuff. In all honesty, I probably should just build a second machine solely for the GPIB / electronics tasks, as this is the main machine I use for everything else in the hamshack as well.? It would be ideal to keep it separate and just network into the NAS I have downstairs.? Personally, laziness is the only reason I haven't gone this route, as I even have an old machine that would be perfect for that task. What I'm saying, is that unless you can't find an alternative, or don't have the room, the best bet if starting from scratch is a separate dedicated machine for the GPIB world you need to live within.? YMMV |
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Re: Shipping overseas?
I've heard of such practices, but not suffered them. Are they still doing that? I do advise purchasers to take photos of unopened packages, and for large packages I keep photos of how I packed them. For a large international shipment I would also send photos direct to the buyer. On Fri, 7 Mar 2025 at 13:13, Chuck Harris via <cfharris=[email protected]> wrote: The biggest problem we have had with Ebay's GSP is they |
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Re: Shipping overseas?
The biggest problem we have had with Ebay's GSP is they
will sometimes take apart large double boxed shipments, and then ship them over the pond in their inner box without any padding. You know the inner box? The thing one puts on the instrument to keep it from getting scratched, and to keep the packing foam from damaging it? Then, the item, clad only in its inner protective box, without padding, gets broken, the customer gets pissed, we get an undeserved negative feedback, and GSP won't ship the item back, so we lose the item, the payment, and our reputation all because GSP thought they could save a little space on the airplane. And, no, this hasn't been just a one time thing. It has cost us in the tens of thousands of dollars at this point. -Chuck Harris On Thu, 6 Mar 2025 10:04:49 +0000 "Tom Gardner via groups.io" <tggzzz@...> wrote: Some observations from the UK. TL;DR: fleabay's GSP is wonderful, much |
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3457A calibration data dump / restore
Hello,
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I have a very nice 3457A which has a 40-year old battery. New batteries are quite inexpensive and easy to find, but I'm quite scared at the prospect of replacing the battery without first dumping the calibration data to a file, and having a way of reloading it if anything goes wrong during the replacement process. Someone already tackled the problem of storing the cal data on a PC () but I couldn't find anything about how to restore the data from the PC to the 3457A if the data is lost.
Right now my 3457A is sitting there with a battery which is 40 years old, and counting ...
Any help or pointer(s) would be sincerely appreciated !
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Joel |
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Re: I need a new/used lab computer
开云体育Re:- Do you have anyone in your environment with a not too old laptop? Get it for a box of cigars, install an SSD and Linux Mint. You're back in business!
There is nothing wrong with using Linux for instrumentation.?
But... That is likely impossible with a laptop, if you have a PCI GPIB card, plus though it can work with Linux, the bridge to cross is narrow and wobbly.? (Steeeep learning curve!) ? Then, any existing software that ran on Win7 wont run natively, and even if it does in a VM, may not work with the PCI card known to the host. (From personal experience, with an XP VM on Linux, the NI GPIB-USB devices DO work with software and NI drivers running on XP in a VM, as you can make USB devices visible to the guest OS.)
Nothing wrong with Win 7, so long as you don't let MS muck it up.?? Anyone using it (or later MS OS's that are out of official support) for anything less than trivial, that can access the outside world, should perhaps consider:- or:-? if the above gets broken. ? ?? That goes to the above address. Not used it myself, yet, but is recommended by Mr Gibson of grc.com.?? If you know who he is, nothing more needs to be said. Regards to All. Dave 'KBV.
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Re: I need a new/used lab computer
开云体育I haven’t tried to do anything useful yet, but I did succeed in getting a raspberry pi 5 to see an NI PCI-GPIB card hoping so a compact HPdrive system with the advantage of being able to ssh to it rather than being a microcontroller based solution.
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> on behalf of Gabor Szucs via groups.io <sniper.asys@...>
Sent: Thursday, March 6, 2025 6:45:22 PM To: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [HP-Agilent-Keysight-equipment] I need a new/used lab computer ?
About PCI(e) passthrough - I tried to breathe some new life into an old PCI NI AWG card that supposedly only works with Windows XP. The card works flawlessly on a native XP install on the same machine (a PC from the 2010s). My thinking was that
I could install XP in a VM and set up PCI passthrough to gain "direct" access to the card from within the VM (that would've made the entire setup enormously more useful for obvious reasons, practically meaning that I could use a single computer to manage all
the devices on my bench). However, although the virtualized XP recognized the card, the NI software couldn't initialize it the same way - or use it altogether. I've verified that the hardware supports IOMMU and it's indeed active. Other users had similar experiences
on the NI forums. I didn't have more time to investigate and I left it at that and accepted defeat for the time being. So, as you said, YMMV.?
Gabor
So I guess
On Fri, Mar 7, 2025 at 1:15?AM Ed Marciniak via
<ed=[email protected]> wrote:
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Re: I need a new/used lab computer
About PCI(e) passthrough - I tried to breathe some new life into an old PCI NI AWG card that supposedly only works with Windows XP. The card works flawlessly on a native XP install on the same machine (a PC from the 2010s). My thinking was that I could install XP in a VM and set up PCI passthrough to gain "direct" access to the card from within the VM (that would've made the entire setup enormously more useful for obvious reasons, practically meaning that I could use a single computer to manage all the devices on my bench). However, although the virtualized XP recognized the card, the NI software couldn't initialize it the same way - or use it altogether. I've verified that the hardware supports IOMMU and it's indeed active. Other users had similar experiences on the NI forums. I didn't have more time to investigate and I left it at that and accepted defeat for the time being. So, as you said, YMMV.? Gabor So I guess On Fri, Mar 7, 2025 at 1:15?AM Ed Marciniak via <ed=[email protected]> wrote:
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RubenRubio
Bill Carver