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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
On 7/27/19 10:33 AM, Peter Gottlieb wrote:
It is my opinion that this short term,About fifteen years ago I had a very interesting, long conversation with a newly-hired co-worker who happened to have a degree in economics. I'd been through a few corporate startup/IPO cycles at that point, and I told him about how I thought this huge shift toward not seeing past the end of the current quarter dramatically encourages destructive behavior, as does the whole "end goal" of the IPO...after which a corporation has but one customer to please and care about: the body of stockholders. The behaviors encouraged by these attitutes are not conducive to the long-term survival of the company, and almost always result in the company screwing over its real customers and being viewed as "evil" by anyone with a functioning brain. He essentially nodded and said, "yes, of course." He explained that this is textbook economics, and people who pursue a degree in economics are taught this in their first year. We as a society must stamp out this behavior, but it won't happen until the whole thing just self-destructs. Some argue that we're seeing the beginning of that now, and I can't really disagree. -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA |
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
Almost exactly what I have in big lithium ion packs, although I don't have them hooked up at the moment.? I don't have a charger which could put out 5 kW of 28.8 volts to recharge them in 4 hours.
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Peter On 7/27/2019 12:39 PM, Pete Manfre wrote:
Both.? ?Have 24v @ 1920ah BIG |
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
Pete Manfre
Both.? ?Have 24v @ 1920ah BIG P On Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 11:46 AM Peter Gottlieb <hpnpilot@...> wrote: That's respectable for a home system.? Do you have any energy storage, or are |
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Testing a 2-01C Diode
Still working on the recently-acquired 11036A which isn't working. I've checked the probe wiring and don't see anything amiss. When it powers up, the tube gets hot so the heater is evidently working; however, I get no signals back to the meter.
Since I have another probe (this one uses the EA53), I tried that with the meter and it works fine so the problem has to be somewhere in the probe and I'm beginning to wonder if it isn't the tube but am curious as to how that might be considering the heater works (which, I presume, is the primary failure point with these). Before I go spending money on a rather expensive tube, is there simple way I can test this one out of the probe? If I supply heater voltage (via an auxiliary power supply), can I place the diode across the signal source and expect to see half-wave rectification? If I do this, should precautions be made to limit the current through the tube and, if so, how much current is safe? Unless I'm misreading/misunderstanding the specs, the tube is only rated at 1mA DC which seems quite small but, again, I might be misunderstanding that rating. BTW, I'm supplying the AC signal with an HP 3310B function generator. Thanks, Barry - N4BUQ |
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
That's respectable for a home system.? Do you have any energy storage, or are you just doing net metering?
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This weekend I'm working on the high level design of a 200 MW energy storage system which connects at transmission level.? Where it is proposed it should reduce electric rates by about 20% over the full 20 year contract. About now is where I wished engineers worked on commission, like everyone in sales, rather than flat salary. Peter On 7/27/2019 11:37 AM, Pete Manfre wrote:
Talk of power grid solutions¡ this is mine¡. |
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
Pete Manfre
Talk of power grid solutions¡ this is mine¡.? Pete wa2odo? On Sat, Jul 27, 2019, 11:29 AM Chuck Harris <cfharris@...> wrote: Knowing what I know about your involvement in battery backed up |
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Re: Low cost, OSSW/OSHW AR488 GPIB-USB adapter
On 7/26/19 12:02 AM, David Platt wrote:
The VXI-11 "server" software would need to be written, of course... something to implement the VXI-11 RPCs and multiplex access to the bus via the GPIOs.? As I understand it, it's not terribly difficult to access the Pi GPIOs at fairly high speeds via memory-mapped access, so one should be able to get pretty good throughput without needing an FPGA or dedicated protocol chip. Sounds like a good project to talk about on eevblog. Might find collaborators. |
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
Knowing what I know about your involvement in battery backed up
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power grid generation systems; your positive feedback statement, causes me to have some truly scary visions... -Chuck Harris Peter Gottlieb wrote: It is my opinion that this short term, what-can-you-do-for-me-this-quarter mentality |
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
There were many many "Bill and Dave" anecdotes to that effect. They were used to inculcate the company ethos when opening new sites and locations.
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On 27/07/19 15:33, Peter Gottlieb wrote:
It is my opinion that this short term, what-can-you-do-for-me-this-quarter mentality is neither good for the company nor society in general. Positive feedback without control almost always ends in disaster. |
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
It is my opinion that this short term, what-can-you-do-for-me-this-quarter mentality is neither good for the company nor society in general.? Positive feedback without control almost always ends in disaster.
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On 7/27/2019 10:07 AM, Oz-in-DFW wrote:
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
Dr. David Kirkby from Kirkby Microwave Ltd
On Fri, 26 Jul 2019 at 13:29, nigel adams via Groups.Io <nigel.adams=[email protected]> wrote: Problem is, and not wishing to sound arrogant in any way...., In their eyes you have had this scope too long and ?I was a bit annoyed a few years back. Not sure if it was Agilent or Keysight then, but they had a 4395A Network/Spectrum/Impedance Analyzer for sale on their eBay store. Although obsolete now, at that time it was discontinued, but supported, I was interested in this, but only if they could do the software upgrade so it gave impedance data - one enables this from a floppy disk. Agilent/Keysight said it was sold as it is, and could not be upgraded. I pointed out it will still supported, and said I would feel pretty pissed off if I have bought an instrument one week, the following week it was discontinued, and I could not get an update. They said there's a difference between a week and several years. I'm not sure how it happened, but at one point I got asked to complete a survey for Keysight and mentioned this experience and I was not happy about it. Keysight (UK) said they could upgrade it, and the cost was a bit over ?700. By this time the instrument had gone from eBay, and I'd not bothered about it. But certainly, I was told initially that it could not have a software upgrade, despite it was still a supported instrument. There are quite a few times where one part of Keysight says one thing, and another part of Keysight says another. Sometimes you have to argue you case a bit to get what you feel you are entitled to. On other times they have been incredibly generous. Dave
-- Dr David Kirkby Ph.D C.Eng MIET Kirkby Microwave Ltd Registered office: Stokes Hall Lodge, Burnham Rd, Althorne, CHELMSFORD, Essex, CM3 6DT, United Kingdom. Registered in England and Wales as company number 08914892 Tel 01621-680100 / +44 1621-680100 |
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
On Thu, Jul 25, 2019 at 12:12 PM, Dave McGuire wrote:
It sounds like Keysight's upper management has forgotten the nature ofMore likely they never knew. There's also the fact that they live under the tyranny of the financial quarter and get any long term thinking beat mercilessly out of them. |
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Re: Low cost, OSSW/OSHW AR488 GPIB-USB adapter
A year or two ago, I bought an ICS Electronics 8065 Ethernet-to-GPIB bridge on the usual auction site.? It has an interesting approach.? On the Ethernet side, it implements and publishes a VXI-11 interface (which is based on a documented RPC mechanism).? You can open a TCP/IP connection to this interface, tell it to address a specific GPIB device address, and then use the RPCs to communicate.? It handles multiple GPIB targets at once, via individual VXI-11 connection.? As far as I can tell it has full-strength bus drivers.
It can be used with any code library that implements the necessary RPCs... either commercial products, or open-source implementations such as python-vxi11.? I threw together a little Python script which lets me control an HP signal generator via a Web CGI interface... a bit of the code follows. instr = vxi11.Instrument("ics8065", "gpib0,7") ... ??? if deviation != "": ??????? instr.write("fm:stat off") ??????? instr.write("fm:dev " + deviation) ??????? instr.write("fm:stat on") ??? if action == "Modulate": ??????? instr.write("am:stat off") ??????? instr.write("pm:stat off") ??????? instr.write("fm:sour int") ??????? instr.write("fm:int:freq 400 hz") It seems to me that a network-to-GPIB bridge of this source wouldn't be too terribly difficult to open-source.? A Raspberry Pi or similar Linux-based SBC, and a "hat" or similar add-on card with bus drivers wired to the GPIOs, and the proper connector would be about all of the hardware one needed.? A modest wall-wart for power would be plenty. It's not as compact as a USB-based interface, and quite not as portable, but it would "un-tie" the developer from needing to have a laptop right on the workbench near the test instruments.? You can access the network connection remotely from anywhere on your LAN (wireless if you wish), or from anywhere in the world if you have properly-secured remote access of some sort.? (I used the Web CGI I'd thrown together to turn the signal generator into a remotely-controlled fleapower transmitter... with a single-button "Send my amateur-radio callsign via CW" to keep me legal :-) ) The VXI-11 "server" software would need to be written, of course... something to implement the VXI-11 RPCs and multiplex access to the bus via the GPIOs.? As I understand it, it's not terribly difficult to access the Pi GPIOs at fairly high speeds via memory-mapped access, so one should be able to get pretty good throughput without needing an FPGA or dedicated protocol chip. |
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Question Regarding the AC Probe Diode for an HP 410C
I have two HP 410C meters. The probe (HP 11036A) in my first one uses the EA53 which is designed for a 6.3VAC filament. The probe for my newest one has the 2-01C which is designed for a 5.0VAC filament.
I know that the 410B (I have two of those as well) has an adjustment for the filament voltage so it can use either tube; however, the 410C doesn't have that adjustment. I always thought that all the 11036A probes were compatible with all 410Cs but perhaps not. Were some 410Cs made for a 2-01C and others for the EA53? If so, is it possible this is tied to a serial number prefix and the EA53 probes are only to be used with certain prefixes and the 2-01C used for the other prefixes? All the schematics I've found show 6.0VAC as the heater voltage supply so it seems odd to me that the 2-01C was used at that voltage but maybe so? Thanks, Barry - N4BUQ |
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
I believe it is called "progress" , what used to be designed by thinking engineers are mostly done by the kids and their dumb phones IMHO.
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this drives me nuts too! as far as linux may have been easily solved by booting from a disk or usb. no more win stuff for me 2 yrs ago went to linux! there is a learning curve. I have a 98,xp and 7 machines that never go on line..for things that must be win ¸é±ð²Ô¨¦±ð On 2019-07-26 8:31 a.m., Peter Gottlieb wrote:
The state of software is a royal mess and is getting worse. |
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
The state of software is a royal mess and is getting worse.
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I had an old Thinkpad T60 with Win7 which I was using as a lab bench machine, mostly downloading pdf files of parts for troubleshooting. The disk started to have problems and I was unable to reinstall the OS, despite the worthless product key. I installed Linux on a new drive and all was well, until Linux one day booted to some command line. Nobody could help me recover the OS and guess what? To get the files I downloaded required buying some $65 utility. Gee, I was able to very easily do that from the Windows disk. Start from scratch using another laptop, scrap that one. Last night my wife asked me to make a copy of a CD with a bunch of files. Easy, right? All built into Win10. I first copy the files to a temp directory, then put a blank CD in. Then I get the option to make a data CD, name it, then move the files to that window. So far so good, and it tells me the files are to be copied to the CD. But there is no button or menu item to start the process! I Google it and it shows the option, but it¡¯s not there on my system. So I remove the CD and put it back in as a last resort and sure enough the option is now shown. WTF? How much do they check this stuff? Making a copy in XP or 7 was foolproof, why did they break it? Peter On Jul 26, 2019, at 11:09 AM, Tom Gardner <tggzzz@...> wrote:On 26/07/19 14:50, Peter Gottlieb wrote:In reality it is worse than that; here's three Microsoft horror stories... |
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
On 26/07/19 14:50, Peter Gottlieb wrote:
Support for an OS has several angles.In reality it is worse than that; here's three Microsoft horror stories... Once, while WinXP was still fully supported, I had an "interesting" experience with a Samsung netbook after its hard disk failed. Printed on the underside of the netbook were the WinXP licence and the xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxxx-xxxx product key. I bought a new hard disk and installed it, then used an external CDROM drive to re-install WinXP from my own WinXP installation CDROM, using the product key on the bottom of the netbook. WinXP installed in the usual way, quite successfully, as expected. But when I first rebooted I was confronted by an unfamiliar DOS-box window, which said "Microsoft" at the top and "shan't boot into WinXP because the product key was wrong". What the...?! WinXP had just installed correctly. I contacted Microsoft, and their service person said it was a Samsung problem, even though this was clearly a Microsoft display. I contacted Samsung, and their service person said it was a Microsoft problem, quite reasonably IMHO. (But they did try to weasel out by asking the disk drive's manufacturer; the original was Western Digital (!) and by chance the replacement was Samsung) In the end the only solution would have been to buy another a new hard disk from Samsung, with WinXP pre-installed. Bugger that; I installed Linux and the 10 year old netbook continues to work well with an excellent battery life since the I set the BIOS to only charge it to 80% of capacity. The second horror story is Microsoft's PlaysForSure (TM) music. Since Microsoft have turned their servers, you can't move the music you purchased to another hard disk. Makes a mockery of "PlaysForSure", despite Microsoft claiming it was merely "pining for the fjords" The third horror story happened this month: Microsoft closed down its ebooks platform. It has offered a refund, plus a bit if your carefully curated bookmarks have gone up in aetherial smoke. See a pattern? |
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Re: What would you do if you had some test equipment with Serial No: 0000001?
Support for an OS has several angles.
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I would hope the negotiated deal for a piece of equipment with an embedded OS would have a lifetime, fully transferrable license for that piece of equipment. So your Win2k scope should have the rights to use that OS until the instrument is scrapped. I don¡¯t think Microsoft should be forced into infinite support in the form of security updates, although they sort of secretly do for Win2k and XP, if you set the registry flag indicating they are in a bank ATM. But even that can¡¯t last forever. However, if the scope is operated standalone or on a very well protected network as a practical matter a lack of updates doesn¡¯t matter. As for Tek supporting older instruments, there should be reasonable limits. It will be increasingly expensive to support older gear as fewer and fewer personnel are familiar with the older technology. Should Tek still support 545 vacuum tube scopes? What about parts which are no longer available? But, from the customer perspective, what is reasonable? Should 10 years of replacement ASICs be stocked? What about increasingly complex and expensive test setups, which themselves may have unobtanium repair parts? 10 years would be satisfactory to me for standard instruments, maybe 5 for highly specialized ones, but I would definitely balk if less than that, and try to avoid a company that hinders third party repairs. I¡¯ve worked at many places that have older gear which is maintained and calibrated by these third party firms and if gear must be sent back to inly the manufacturer then there is little difference to Chinese or Korean test gear. Peter On Jul 26, 2019, at 8:29 AM, nigel adams via Groups.Io <nigel.adams@...> wrote: |
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Re: HP Service Note availability
<bump>
And: A reminder that I will be more than happy to help scan the SM's - heck, I'll pay (reasonable) postage to send back and forth. My personal preference for the associated SN's (but not limited to) are the HP 3663A, 5335A, 5345A, 5245L, 3325A, 5105A, 5110B, 8640B, 8903A, 3456A, 3455A.? Again, while those are on the top of my personal list, I will of course help with any others that anyone wants. Thank you all again, Hal |
Dave McGuire
Harold Foster
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