Hi all,

I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
time which could be better spent doing other things.
I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
I experience.

Thanks,

CD.

On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>time which could be better spent doing other things.
>I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>I experience.
>
>Thanks,
>
>CD.

The Rigol scopes are excellent. And you can run a fan or charge your
phone from the front-panel USB connector.

The Siglent power stuff seems good too.

Extech DVMs seem good too.

On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 12:38:09 -0700, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com>
wrote:

>On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
>wrote:
>
>>Hi all,
>>
>>I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>I experience.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>CD.
>
>The Rigol scopes are excellent. And you can run a fan or charge your
>phone from the front-panel USB connector.
>
>The Siglent power stuff seems good too.
>
>Extech DVMs seem good too.

I have not heard a bad word said about Rigol scopes yet. Siglent do
some interesting RF stuff at competetive prices, assuming the
quality's good (again, not heard anything to the contrary).

On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
<cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:

>Hi all,
>
>I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>time which could be better spent doing other things.
>I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>I experience.
>
>Thanks,
>
>CD.

My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I blew up a channal once myself in the first week
when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from the table (scope stands on the ground)
Made a new graticule.
So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot interrupt things with the meter impedance.
Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
Things last forever here...
Scope used on a regular basis..
RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
Digital meters used every day.
Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
What more do you need?
Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
Not much pocket mony as a kid.
UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
But it does not help you one bit.
Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.

On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 07:01:34 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

>On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
><cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>
>>Hi all,
>>
>>I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>I experience.
>>
>>Thanks,
>>
>>CD.
>
>My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
>Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from the table (scope stands on the ground)
>Made a new graticule.
>So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>Things last forever here...
>Scope used on a regular basis..
>RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>Digital meters used every day.
>Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>What more do you need?
>Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
>Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>But it does not help you one bit.
>Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>

I don't think any of us here truly understand what electrons do, Jan!
Boat anchors don't impress anyone nowadays; they're more likely to
make one look like some sort of oddball mad scientist who couldn't get
laid. ;-)
I'm guessing you don't have a TV. Would I be right?

On a sunny day (Mon, 01 Apr 2024 09:39:59 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
<cd@notformail.com> wrote in <j6sk0j5cpqb46pt9tg6uvji35a2bstb9o8@4ax.com>:

>On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 07:01:34 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
>wrote:
>
>>On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>><cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>
>>>Hi all,
>>>
>>>I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>>just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>>not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>>on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>>time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>>I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>>anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>>piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>>particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>>perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>>I experience.
>>>
>>>Thanks,
>>>
>>>CD.
>>
>>My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>>when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with it, fixed it locating the problem with the other
>>channel.
>>Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from the table (scope stands on the ground)
>>Made a new graticule.
>>So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>>For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>>and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>>also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>>Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>>Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>>Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>>GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>>a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>>Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>>Things last forever here...
>>Scope used on a regular basis..
>>RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>>Digital meters used every day.
>>Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>>What more do you need?
>>Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>>When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
>>Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>>Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>>UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>>Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>>But it does not help you one bit.
>>Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>
>
>I don't think any of us here truly understand what electrons do, Jan!
>Boat anchors don't impress anyone nowadays; they're more likely to
>make one look like some sort of oddball mad scientist who couldn't get
>laid. ;-)
>I'm guessing you don't have a TV. Would I be right?

I learned the basics of how electrons behave and move as a small kid from this book:
https://www.boekenwebsite.nl/techniek/zowerkt-de-radio
'That is how radio works'
He also wrote
that is how TV works
and
That is how the transistor works.
I remember walking the streets of Amsterdam looking for usable parts for my own TV in primary school
Tried to make an OLED TV too.

In high-school were I build an tube amplifier for the school band
I got an old tube CRT from a TV shop.
Made an HV generator using a car ignition coil on the output of an old EL84 audio amp,
made that amp oscillate by feeding back some output to the input.
The output of the ignition coil rectified by an old TV HV diode
Horizontal deflection coils on same amp
Vertical defection coils on an other audio amp.
That was my first scope.
Not very high frequency..
Had a transistor FM transmitter of my own design working too,
we had a radio program!
As to understand electrons START THERE
That is what it is all about.
That is how I started as a kid, books from Van Aisberg
Later when studying electronics I got some old tube TV, and gradually replaced each part with transistors
rewound horizontal output transformer, build a new tuner.
By that time Elector magazine published the 'teletor'
https://archive.org/details/elektuur-36-1965-11_20200524
used some ideas from that and had my first transistor TV, mine was MUCH bigger had a real CRT.
In 1968 designed my own TV vidicon camara, left my current design job and started in broadcasting, hired on the spot,
6 month payed training in the school banks all about broadcasting all about television
Many years nothing but film, TV and audio, video recording, satellite, slow motion, video editing, running a TV studio, what not
So, you could f*cking learn a bit
Yes I have a nice Samsung TV and a portable one too.
I can build one from scrap in no time, but the digital decoders these days need a chip
but I can code that too.
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/raspberry_pi_dvb-s_transmitter/

I like to open source things, worked in all sort of science fields electronics is used for,
from medical to space to army to navy to broadcasting, been there done it
Electrons try to understand, math is just about quantities and breaks down anyways as mamaticians will do a divide by zero
and claim a new reality.
EInsteinianism is brain dead.
hehe

PS I had a TV repair shop in Amsterdam for many years (see it is also going to ..repair)

..

Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:
> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>> I experience.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> CD.
>
> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I
> blew up a channal once myself in the first week
> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with
> it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from
> the table (scope stands on the ground)
> Made a new graticule.
> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot
> interrupt things with the meter impedance.
> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance
> scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and
> RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum
> analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
> Things last forever here...
> Scope used on a regular basis..
> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
> Digital meters used every day.
> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
> What more do you need?
> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
> But it does not help you one bit.
> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just
> like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>
>
>

Many wise words there.

Boat anchors can still be great as they require you to understand better
what is being measured and don’t hide things away with abstraction and
unhelpful software.

--
piglet

On Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>time which could be better spent doing other things.
>I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>I experience.
>
>Thanks,
>
>CD.

If you only use it on weekends, you'll probably continue to have
problems - even if it's only remembering how the equipment is
supposed to work.

You'll find that it's connectors, batteries, heaters, indicators,
software and personal safety equipment that wear out most frequently.
If your test gear includes any of these, maintain them regularly to
avoid disappointment.

If you find that you are missing something that you need, address
THAT issue.

RL

On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 11:36:48 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

>On a sunny day (Mon, 01 Apr 2024 09:39:59 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
><cd@notformail.com> wrote in <j6sk0j5cpqb46pt9tg6uvji35a2bstb9o8@4ax.com>:
>
>>On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 07:01:34 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
>>wrote:
>>
>>>On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>>><cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>>
>>>>Hi all,
>>>>
>>>>I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>>>just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>>>not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>>>on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>>>time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>>>I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>>>anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>>>piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>>>particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>>>perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>>>I experience.
>>>>
>>>>Thanks,
>>>>
>>>>CD.
>>>
>>>My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>>>when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with it, fixed it locating the problem with the other
>>>channel.
>>>Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from the table (scope stands on the ground)
>>>Made a new graticule.
>>>So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>>>For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>>>and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>>>also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>>>Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>>>Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>>>Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>>>GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>>>a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>>>Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>>>Things last forever here...
>>>Scope used on a regular basis..
>>>RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>>>Digital meters used every day.
>>>Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>>>What more do you need?
>>>Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>>>When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
>>>Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>>>Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>>>UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>>>Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>>>But it does not help you one bit.
>>>Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>>
>>
>>I don't think any of us here truly understand what electrons do, Jan!
>>Boat anchors don't impress anyone nowadays; they're more likely to
>>make one look like some sort of oddball mad scientist who couldn't get
>>laid. ;-)
>>I'm guessing you don't have a TV. Would I be right?
>
>I learned the basics of how electrons behave and move as a small kid from this book:
> https://www.boekenwebsite.nl/techniek/zowerkt-de-radio
> 'That is how radio works'
>He also wrote
> that is how TV works
>and
> That is how the transistor works.
>I remember walking the streets of Amsterdam looking for usable parts for my own TV in primary school
>Tried to make an OLED TV too.
>
>In high-school were I build an tube amplifier for the school band
>I got an old tube CRT from a TV shop.
>Made an HV generator using a car ignition coil on the output of an old EL84 audio amp,
>made that amp oscillate by feeding back some output to the input.
>The output of the ignition coil rectified by an old TV HV diode
>Horizontal deflection coils on same amp
>Vertical defection coils on an other audio amp.
>That was my first scope.
>Not very high frequency..
>Had a transistor FM transmitter of my own design working too,
>we had a radio program!
>As to understand electrons START THERE
>That is what it is all about.
>That is how I started as a kid, books from Van Aisberg
>Later when studying electronics I got some old tube TV, and gradually replaced each part with transistors
>rewound horizontal output transformer, build a new tuner.
>By that time Elector magazine published the 'teletor'
> https://archive.org/details/elektuur-36-1965-11_20200524
> used some ideas from that and had my first transistor TV, mine was MUCH bigger had a real CRT.
>In 1968 designed my own TV vidicon camara, left my current design job and started in broadcasting, hired on the spot,
>6 month payed training in the school banks all about broadcasting all about television
>Many years nothing but film, TV and audio, video recording, satellite, slow motion, video editing, running a TV studio, what not
>So, you could f*cking learn a bit
>Yes I have a nice Samsung TV and a portable one too.
>I can build one from scrap in no time, but the digital decoders these days need a chip
>but I can code that too.
> https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html
> https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/raspberry_pi_dvb-s_transmitter/
>
>I like to open source things, worked in all sort of science fields electronics is used for,
>from medical to space to army to navy to broadcasting, been there done it
>Electrons try to understand, math is just about quantities and breaks down anyways as mamaticians will do a divide by zero
>and claim a new reality.
>EInsteinianism is brain dead.
>hehe
>
>PS I had a TV repair shop in Amsterdam for many years (see it is also going to ..repair)
>
>.

Jan, do you have a 'toy' budget?

Most new stuff (that might actually save time or work
better than home brew) seems to fall into that category.

RL

On Mon, 1 Apr 2024 12:09:00 -0000 (UTC), piglet
<erichpwagner@hotmail.com> wrote:

>Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:
>> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>> I experience.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> CD.
>>
>> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I
>> blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with
>> it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
>> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from
>> the table (scope stands on the ground)
>> Made a new graticule.
>> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot
>> interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance
>> scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and
>> RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum
>> analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>> Things last forever here...
>> Scope used on a regular basis..
>> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>> Digital meters used every day.
>> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>> What more do you need?
>> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
>> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>> But it does not help you one bit.
>> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just
>> like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>
>>
>>
>
>Many wise words there.
>
>Boat anchors can still be great as they require you to understand better
>what is being measured and don’t hide things away with abstraction and
>unhelpful software.

A color digital scope is fabulous. It can measure volts and time and
frequency, save and analyze waveforms, display pre-trigger, and you
can lift one with one hand. And the traces are in color!

Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:

> I learned the basics of how electrons behave and move as a small kid from
>this book: [...] > I remember walking the streets of Amsterdam looking
>for usable parts for my own TV in primary school

Jan, you forget that we had the *advantage* of starting from the
beginning and having to make or scrounge everything.

When I started, there was nobody with much knowledge of electronics to
help me and very little material of any kind. My city had been bombed
during WWII (not as bad as Amsterdam, but bad, nevertheless) and both my
grandfathers showed us how to make furniture from odd scraps of wood.
The family motto seemed to be "If you can't make it, you can't have it".

I eventually learned to solder with a gigantic 65-watt iron that could
undo two tags of an octal valveholder while you tried to solder the
third. I saved my pocket money for a year to buy a government surplus
multimeter - and when it arrived, the pointer was lopsided and the
safety cutout had been glued solid. There was no "Sale of Goods Act", I
just had to take it apart and mend it myself.

I begged scrap radio and television sets off a local repair shop to use
as a source of components - you made what you could with whatever you
had to hand. Government surplus valves were available but expensive;
you just had to hope they were not too low on emission, because nobody
had any way of testing them. Amplifiers were 'designed' by rote: the
anode load resistor of a 6J7 was 47k - or 100k - nobody knew why. A 6V6
needed a transformer to match it to the loudspeaker - any transformer, -
nobody knew how to calculate ratios and it wouldn't have mattered if
they had, because the chances of finding the correct transformer were
nil. Data sheets were a closely-guarded secret, I never even saw one
until I went to college.

My first oscilloscope was an EMI WM2 (partly designed by Alan Blumlein,
I believe). It was absolutely lethal to work on and most of the
components were out of specification or intermittent, so It only worked
for brief periods between long intervals of failure and repair.

When I took the job of setting up an electronics workshop for an
educational establishment, we could afford a 12v soldering iron but no
transformer, so I begged a scrap pre-war one off my cousin's business.
I set about building a stabilised power supply around it, but it had to
be switched off each time I wanted to make a soldered joint, so I had to
be quick and finish each connection before the iron cooled down. We had
no large resistors, so I loaded the power supply on test with a plastic
bowl full of salty water and a couple of pieces of aluminium plate.

Many of the huge 'boat anchors' of test gear, so despised by the modern
generation are still working and still perfectly adequate ...as long
as you know what you are doing.

--
~ Liz Tuddenham ~
(Remove the ".invalid"s and add ".co.uk" to reply)
www.poppyrecords.co.uk

On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 09:15:42 -0700, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com>
wrote:

>On Mon, 1 Apr 2024 12:09:00 -0000 (UTC), piglet
><erichpwagner@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:
>>> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>>> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>>> I experience.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>> CD.
>>>
>>> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I
>>> blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>>> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with
>>> it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
>>> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from
>>> the table (scope stands on the ground)
>>> Made a new graticule.
>>> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>>> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>>> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>>> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot
>>> interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>>> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>>> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance
>>> scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>>> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and
>>> RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>>> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>>> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum
>>> analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>>> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>>> Things last forever here...
>>> Scope used on a regular basis..
>>> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>>> Digital meters used every day.
>>> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>>> What more do you need?
>>> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>>> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
>>> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>>> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>>> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>>> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>>> But it does not help you one bit.
>>> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just
>>> like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Many wise words there.
>>
>>Boat anchors can still be great as they require you to understand better
>>what is being measured and don’t hide things away with abstraction and
>>unhelpful software.
>
>A color digital scope is fabulous. It can measure volts and time and
>frequency, save and analyze waveforms, display pre-trigger, and you
>can lift one with one hand. And the traces are in color!

I know they have their advantages, but they can also tell lies by
showing glitches in waveforms that are internally generated by the
scope rather than the DUT. For such occasions, it can be very useful
to keep an old analogue scope. I've got 13 of 'em!

On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 17:37:49 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
wrote:

>On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 09:15:42 -0700, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com>
>wrote:
>
>>On Mon, 1 Apr 2024 12:09:00 -0000 (UTC), piglet
>><erichpwagner@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>>Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:
>>>> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>>>> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>>>
>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>
>>>>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>>>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>>>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>>>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>>>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>>>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>>>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>>>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>>>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>>>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>>>> I experience.
>>>>>
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>
>>>>> CD.
>>>>
>>>> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I
>>>> blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>>>> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with
>>>> it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
>>>> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from
>>>> the table (scope stands on the ground)
>>>> Made a new graticule.
>>>> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>>>> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>>>> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>>>> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot
>>>> interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>>>> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>>>> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance
>>>> scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>>>> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and
>>>> RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>>>> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>>>> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum
>>>> analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>>>> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>>>> Things last forever here...
>>>> Scope used on a regular basis..
>>>> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>>>> Digital meters used every day.
>>>> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>>>> What more do you need?
>>>> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>>>> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
>>>> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>>>> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>>>> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>>>> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>>>> But it does not help you one bit.
>>>> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just
>>>> like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>>>Many wise words there.
>>>
>>>Boat anchors can still be great as they require you to understand better
>>>what is being measured and don’t hide things away with abstraction and
>>>unhelpful software.
>>
>>A color digital scope is fabulous. It can measure volts and time and
>>frequency, save and analyze waveforms, display pre-trigger, and you
>>can lift one with one hand. And the traces are in color!
>
>I know they have their advantages, but they can also tell lies by
>showing glitches in waveforms that are internally generated by the
>scope rather than the DUT.

I've never seen that. Aliasing is obvious.

>For such occasions, it can be very useful
>to keep an old analogue scope. I've got 13 of 'em!

I have several oldn Taks on carts, as antiques, but I never expect to
power them up again.

We do have a bunch of 11801 samplers that still work. They are all
solid-state except for the raster-scan CRT.

On Mon, 1 Apr 2024 17:34:24 +0100, liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid
(Liz Tuddenham) wrote:

>Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:
>
>> I learned the basics of how electrons behave and move as a small kid from
>>this book: [...] > I remember walking the streets of Amsterdam looking
>>for usable parts for my own TV in primary school
>
>Jan, you forget that we had the *advantage* of starting from the
>beginning and having to make or scrounge everything.
>
>When I started, there was nobody with much knowledge of electronics to
>help me and very little material of any kind. My city had been bombed
>during WWII (not as bad as Amsterdam, but bad, nevertheless) and both my
>grandfathers showed us how to make furniture from odd scraps of wood.
>The family motto seemed to be "If you can't make it, you can't have it".
>
>I eventually learned to solder with a gigantic 65-watt iron that could
>undo two tags of an octal valveholder while you tried to solder the
>third. I saved my pocket money for a year to buy a government surplus
>multimeter - and when it arrived, the pointer was lopsided and the
>safety cutout had been glued solid. There was no "Sale of Goods Act", I
>just had to take it apart and mend it myself.
>
>I begged scrap radio and television sets off a local repair shop to use
>as a source of components - you made what you could with whatever you
>had to hand. Government surplus valves were available but expensive;
>you just had to hope they were not too low on emission, because nobody
>had any way of testing them. Amplifiers were 'designed' by rote: the
>anode load resistor of a 6J7 was 47k - or 100k - nobody knew why. A 6V6
>needed a transformer to match it to the loudspeaker - any transformer, -
>nobody knew how to calculate ratios and it wouldn't have mattered if
>they had, because the chances of finding the correct transformer were
>nil. Data sheets were a closely-guarded secret, I never even saw one
>until I went to college.
>
>My first oscilloscope was an EMI WM2 (partly designed by Alan Blumlein,
>I believe). It was absolutely lethal to work on and most of the
>components were out of specification or intermittent, so It only worked
>for brief periods between long intervals of failure and repair.
>
>When I took the job of setting up an electronics workshop for an
>educational establishment, we could afford a 12v soldering iron but no
>transformer, so I begged a scrap pre-war one off my cousin's business.
>I set about building a stabilised power supply around it, but it had to
>be switched off each time I wanted to make a soldered joint, so I had to
>be quick and finish each connection before the iron cooled down. We had
>no large resistors, so I loaded the power supply on test with a plastic
>bowl full of salty water and a couple of pieces of aluminium plate.
>
>Many of the huge 'boat anchors' of test gear, so despised by the modern
>generation are still working and still perfectly adequate ...as long
>as you know what you are doing.

Yes, and more importantly, they can be *kept working* indefinitely
because although they do blow up quite frequently, they're also
pre-SMT, so even people with my shaky hands and poor eyesight can
repair them. Thank god for through-hole!
Your comment on the soldering iron reminded me of my first one which
had to be heated up with a blowlamp. I managed to find one on Ebay for
illustration:

https://tinyurl.com/kbanemun

john larkin <jl@650pot.com> wrote:
> On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 17:37:49 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 09:15:42 -0700, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 1 Apr 2024 12:09:00 -0000 (UTC), piglet
>>> <erichpwagner@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:
>>>>> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>>>>> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>>>>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>>>>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>>>>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>>>>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>>>>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>>>>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>>>>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>>>>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>>>>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>>>>> I experience.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> CD.
>>>>>
>>>>> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I
>>>>> blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>>>>> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with
>>>>> it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
>>>>> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from
>>>>> the table (scope stands on the ground)
>>>>> Made a new graticule.
>>>>> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>>>>> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>>>>> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>>>>> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot
>>>>> interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>>>>> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>>>>> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance
>>>>> scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>>>>> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and
>>>>> RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>>>>> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>>>>> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum
>>>>> analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>>>>> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>>>>> Things last forever here...
>>>>> Scope used on a regular basis..
>>>>> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>>>>> Digital meters used every day.
>>>>> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>>>>> What more do you need?
>>>>> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>>>>> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter,
>>>>> still stuff worked.
>>>>> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>>>>> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>>>>> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>>>>> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>>>>> But it does not help you one bit.
>>>>> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just
>>>>> like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>> Many wise words there.
>>>>
>>>> Boat anchors can still be great as they require you to understand better
>>>> what is being measured and don’t hide things away with abstraction and
>>>> unhelpful software.
>>>
>>> A color digital scope is fabulous. It can measure volts and time and
>>> frequency, save and analyze waveforms, display pre-trigger, and you
>>> can lift one with one hand. And the traces are in color!
>>
>> I know they have their advantages, but they can also tell lies by
>> showing glitches in waveforms that are internally generated by the
>> scope rather than the DUT.
>
> I've never seen that. Aliasing is obvious.
>

Some instruments do kick crap out of their inputs. I have an otherwise very
nice Krohn-Hite tunable filter box that is hard to use because of its
terrible kickout.

Scopes generally don’t do that, because there are vertical amps and
attenuators in the way.

However, you do need to understand a little bit about how sampling works.
For instance, say you’re looking at a noisy signal. You want to see some
more detail, so you start cranking the horizontal scale knob to the right.
Everything looks fine until you get past the maximum sampling rate.

The scale keeps getting finer, but the display breaks up completely,
turning into a lot of nearly vertical lines. Of course that’s because it’s
gone from real-time to equivalent-time sampling, but it’s puzzling the
first time you see it. (To the analog-only folks: ET is useful, but
requires careful attention to triggering and averaging. )

In general, 1980-2005ish vintage boat anchors really rock, but you have to
get the best. Just yesterday I bought a Tek TDS 684C—1 GHz BW, 4 GS/s
simultaneously on all four channels, with fabulous knob response. It was
$300, about 1.5 cents on the dollar versus new.

When I was at IBM, bought one brand new in the late 90s (probably $20k) and
used it for nearly everything.

>
>> For such occasions, it can be very useful
>> to keep an old analogue scope. I've got 13 of 'em!
>
> I have several oldn Taks on carts, as antiques, but I never expect to
> power them up again.
>
> We do have a bunch of 11801 samplers that still work. They are all
> solid-state except for the raster-scan CRT.
>
>
I’m a big fan of those too, and use them often. I have a very nearly
complete collection of sampling and O/E heads, too—just missing the SD-32
50 GHz sampler.

Right now I’m working on a lab amplifier, based on three paralleled
SAV-331+ pHEMTs. Characterizing its noise performance is turning out to be
a bit of a puzzle, despite a pile of top-of-the-line boat anchors, but I’ll
keep that for its own thread.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC /
Hobbs ElectroOptics Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

On a sunny day (Mon, 1 Apr 2024 12:09:00 -0000 (UTC)) it happened piglet
<erichpwagner@hotmail.com> wrote in <uue84s$2fnab$1@dont-email.me>:

>Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:
>> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>> I experience.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> CD.
>>
>> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I
>> blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with
>> it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
>> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from
>> the table (scope stands on the ground)
>> Made a new graticule.
>> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot
>> interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance
>> scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and
>> RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum
>> analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>> Things last forever here...
>> Scope used on a regular basis..
>> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>> Digital meters used every day.
>> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>> What more do you need?
>> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
>> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>> But it does not help you one bit.
>> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just
>> like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>
>>
>>
>
>Many wise words there.
>
>Boat anchors can still be great as they require you to understand better
>what is being measured and don’t hide things away with abstraction and
>unhelpful software.

That is why I still use an analog scope
it is old, it is big, but it does not lie.

I build a 300 MHz analog one long time ago,
but then moved to far away and donated all stuff,
including my guitar and trumpet .. amplifiers, audio and video tape recorders, records, TV, radio, what not.

And then many years later when back in the Netherlands started accumulating stuff again, now have boxes full of electronics
and a nice musical keyboard to play with.
For me it all is a learning experiment / experience.
Maybe some code I wrote or some circuit I designed helped somebody, cool.
I never use much math, a tennis player does not use math to see where the ball will go (wind speed, mass of ball, force of backhand, angles,
would take ages.
It is all in my neural net, electronics
And somehow everything works.
Maybe some small building blocks, circuits that I then combine, ever newer ones being accumulated trying out things.
I did some neural net programming years ago, good chance Ai can beat us in a while.
It can already do that in the medical field
But it does not stop at electronics for me, I am very interested in the things it is used for,
been working in many fields fixing and designing electronics.
What you learn in one you can sometimes use in the other.

On a sunny day (Mon, 1 Apr 2024 17:34:24 +0100) it happened
liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid (Liz Tuddenham) wrote in
<1qrchq1.w6xc5sp9kef4N%liz@poppyrecords.invalid.invalid>:

>Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:
>
>> I learned the basics of how electrons behave and move as a small kid from
>>this book: [...] > I remember walking the streets of Amsterdam looking
>>for usable parts for my own TV in primary school
>
>Jan, you forget that we had the *advantage* of starting from the
>beginning and having to make or scrounge everything.
>
>When I started, there was nobody with much knowledge of electronics to
>help me and very little material of any kind. My city had been bombed
>during WWII (not as bad as Amsterdam, but bad, nevertheless) and both my
>grandfathers showed us how to make furniture from odd scraps of wood.
>The family motto seemed to be "If you can't make it, you can't have it".
>
>I eventually learned to solder with a gigantic 65-watt iron that could
>undo two tags of an octal valveholder while you tried to solder the
>third. I saved my pocket money for a year to buy a government surplus
>multimeter - and when it arrived, the pointer was lopsided and the
>safety cutout had been glued solid. There was no "Sale of Goods Act", I
>just had to take it apart and mend it myself.
>
>I begged scrap radio and television sets off a local repair shop to use
>as a source of components - you made what you could with whatever you
>had to hand. Government surplus valves were available but expensive;
>you just had to hope they were not too low on emission, because nobody
>had any way of testing them. Amplifiers were 'designed' by rote: the
>anode load resistor of a 6J7 was 47k - or 100k - nobody knew why. A 6V6
>needed a transformer to match it to the loudspeaker - any transformer, -
>nobody knew how to calculate ratios and it wouldn't have mattered if
>they had, because the chances of finding the correct transformer were
>nil. Data sheets were a closely-guarded secret, I never even saw one
>until I went to college.
>
>My first oscilloscope was an EMI WM2 (partly designed by Alan Blumlein,
>I believe). It was absolutely lethal to work on and most of the
>components were out of specification or intermittent, so It only worked
>for brief periods between long intervals of failure and repair.
>
>When I took the job of setting up an electronics workshop for an
>educational establishment, we could afford a 12v soldering iron but no
>transformer, so I begged a scrap pre-war one off my cousin's business.
>I set about building a stabilized power supply around it, but it had to
>be switched off each time I wanted to make a soldered joint, so I had to
>be quick and finish each connection before the iron cooled down. We had
>no large resistors, so I loaded the power supply on test with a plastic
>bowl full of salty water and a couple of pieces of aluminium plate.
>
>Many of the huge 'boat anchors' of test gear, so despised by the modern
>generation are still working and still perfectly adequate ...as long
>as you know what you are doing.

Amsterdam in the fifties had some nice electronics shops
Radio Rotor and Valkenberg in the Kinkerstraat...
Closed 2013?
https://www.rtlsdr.nl/hamnieuws/amsterdamse-elektronicazaak-radio-rotor-gesloten/
https://www.nvhr.nl/brands/Valkenberg.htm

Years later at school somebody made a light dimmer from a capped fluorescent tube filled with water and a piece of metal on a wire sinking in it to adjust the light.
In those fifties some relative gave me an old record player and some 78 RPM records 'His Masters Voice' label...
It had a dynamic element and a replaceable needle...
and I had some battery tubes and stuff.
Soldering with a screw driver heated in the coal fire we had as heating in the living room...
Tried my first (tube) radio transmitter ...
Peculiar, when my father's radio broke down (he had a nice big one) I told the technician that came to fix it what to replace...
Was not allowed to touch that radio... World news, he was a journalist.
Later we moved away from Amsterdam into the country, for me big minus,
lost all my friends, places I could get parts from out of reach..
Revolted, so they did send me to a boarding school, joined the gangs there, parts we got..
And before you know I was building a tube amplifier for the music group we had..
Some had money, rich parents..
The guitarist really liked the sound of that amplifier, later asked for some more stuff.
Transformers... balanced output transformer I got from a surplus shop in The Hague..
Later got some nice radio stuff from them too, 31 set for example
https://armyradio.com/Wireless-Set-No.-31.html
Now we are talking early sixties...

On a sunny day (Mon, 01 Apr 2024 08:29:00 -0400) it happened legg
<legg@nospam.magma.ca> wrote in <pq9l0j51r2l1cshv8mokqldq7pj0grd467@4ax.com>:

>Jan, do you have a 'toy' budget?
>
>Most new stuff (that might actually save time or work
>better than home brew) seems to fall into that category.

No idea what you mean by that.
What are you doing and what do you want to accomplish?

On Tue, 2 Apr 2024 09:56:33 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

>john larkin <jl@650pot.com> wrote:
>> On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 17:37:49 +0100, Cursitor Doom <cd@notformail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> On Mon, 01 Apr 2024 09:15:42 -0700, John Larkin <jl@997PotHill.com>
>>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Mon, 1 Apr 2024 12:09:00 -0000 (UTC), piglet
>>>> <erichpwagner@hotmail.com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>> Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:
>>>>>> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>>>>>> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Hi all,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>>>>>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>>>>>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>>>>>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>>>>>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>>>>>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>>>>>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>>>>>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>>>>>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>>>>>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>>>>>> I experience.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> CD.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I
>>>>>> blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>>>>>> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with
>>>>>> it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
>>>>>> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from
>>>>>> the table (scope stands on the ground)
>>>>>> Made a new graticule.
>>>>>> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>>>>>> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>>>>>> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>>>>>> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot
>>>>>> interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>>>>>> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>>>>>> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance
>>>>>> scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>>>>>> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and
>>>>>> RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>>>>>> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>>>>>> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum
>>>>>> analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>>>>>> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>>>>>> Things last forever here...
>>>>>> Scope used on a regular basis..
>>>>>> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>>>>>> Digital meters used every day.
>>>>>> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>>>>>> What more do you need?
>>>>>> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>>>>>> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter,
>>>>>> still stuff worked.
>>>>>> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>>>>>> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>>>>>> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>>>>>> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>>>>>> But it does not help you one bit.
>>>>>> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just
>>>>>> like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> Many wise words there.
>>>>>
>>>>> Boat anchors can still be great as they require you to understand better
>>>>> what is being measured and don?t hide things away with abstraction and
>>>>> unhelpful software.
>>>>
>>>> A color digital scope is fabulous. It can measure volts and time and
>>>> frequency, save and analyze waveforms, display pre-trigger, and you
>>>> can lift one with one hand. And the traces are in color!
>>>
>>> I know they have their advantages, but they can also tell lies by
>>> showing glitches in waveforms that are internally generated by the
>>> scope rather than the DUT.
>>
>> I've never seen that. Aliasing is obvious.
>>
>
>Some instruments do kick crap out of their inputs. I have an otherwise very
>nice Krohn-Hite tunable filter box that is hard to use because of its
>terrible kickout.
>
>Scopes generally don’t do that, because there are vertical amps and
>attenuators in the way.
>
>However, you do need to understand a little bit about how sampling works.
>For instance, say you’re looking at a noisy signal. You want to see some
>more detail, so you start cranking the horizontal scale knob to the right.
>Everything looks fine until you get past the maximum sampling rate.
>
>The scale keeps getting finer, but the display breaks up completely,
>turning into a lot of nearly vertical lines. Of course that’s because it’s
>gone from real-time to equivalent-time sampling, but it’s puzzling the
>first time you see it. (To the analog-only folks: ET is useful, but
>requires careful attention to triggering and averaging. )
>
>In general, 1980-2005ish vintage boat anchors really rock, but you have to
>get the best. Just yesterday I bought a Tek TDS 684C—1 GHz BW, 4 GS/s
>simultaneously on all four channels, with fabulous knob response. It was
>$300, about 1.5 cents on the dollar versus new.

You've seen my SDxx sampling head collection. Must have been worth
$250K new, twice that adjusted for inflation.

>
>When I was at IBM, bought one brand new in the late 90s (probably $20k) and
>used it for nearly everything.
>
>>
>>> For such occasions, it can be very useful
>>> to keep an old analogue scope. I've got 13 of 'em!
>>
>> I have several oldn Taks on carts, as antiques, but I never expect to
>> power them up again.
>>
>> We do have a bunch of 11801 samplers that still work. They are all
>> solid-state except for the raster-scan CRT.
>>
>>
>I’m a big fan of those too, and use them often. I have a very nearly
>complete collection of sampling and O/E heads, too—just missing the SD-32
>50 GHz sampler.

Some day my 11802 will die. I'll mourn it.

>
>Right now I’m working on a lab amplifier, based on three paralleled
>SAV-331+ pHEMTs. Characterizing its noise performance is turning out to be
>a bit of a puzzle, despite a pile of top-of-the-line boat anchors, but I’ll
>keep that for its own thread.

The old HP analog noise figure meters got way sub 1 dB, with some sort
of lock-in technique.

I remember some germanium jfets that got below 1 dB at low MHz (for a
Raydist navigation receiver, pre-GPS) and was astounded.

Come to think of it, I slightly helped get GPS started. That's another
story.

On Tue, 02 Apr 2024 10:10:36 GMT, Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid>
wrote:

>On a sunny day (Mon, 1 Apr 2024 12:09:00 -0000 (UTC)) it happened piglet
><erichpwagner@hotmail.com> wrote in <uue84s$2fnab$1@dont-email.me>:
>
>>Jan Panteltje <alien@comet.invalid> wrote:
>>> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>>> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>>> I experience.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>> CD.
>>>
>>> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I
>>> blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>>> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with
>>> it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
>>> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from
>>> the table (scope stands on the ground)
>>> Made a new graticule.
>>> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>>> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>>> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>>> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot
>>> interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>>> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>>> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance
>>> scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>>> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and
>>> RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>>> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>>> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum
>>> analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>>> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>>> Things last forever here...
>>> Scope used on a regular basis..
>>> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>>> Digital meters used every day.
>>> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>>> What more do you need?
>>> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>>> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
>>> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>>> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>>> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>>> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>>> But it does not help you one bit.
>>> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just
>>> like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>
>>Many wise words there.
>>
>>Boat anchors can still be great as they require you to understand better
>>what is being measured and don’t hide things away with abstraction and
>>unhelpful software.
>
>That is why I still use an analog scope
>it is old, it is big, but it does not lie.
>
>I build a 300 MHz analog one long time ago,
>but then moved to far away and donated all stuff,
>including my guitar and trumpet .. amplifiers, audio and video tape recorders, records, TV, radio, what not.
>
>And then many years later when back in the Netherlands started accumulating stuff again, now have boxes full of electronics
>and a nice musical keyboard to play with.
>For me it all is a learning experiment / experience.
>Maybe some code I wrote or some circuit I designed helped somebody, cool.
>I never use much math, a tennis player does not use math to see where the ball will go (wind speed, mass of ball, force of backhand, angles,
>would take ages.
>It is all in my neural net, electronics
>And somehow everything works.
>Maybe some small building blocks, circuits that I then combine, ever newer ones being accumulated trying out things.
>I did some neural net programming years ago, good chance Ai can beat us in a while.
>It can already do that in the medical field
>But it does not stop at electronics for me, I am very interested in the things it is used for,
>been working in many fields fixing and designing electronics.
>What you learn in one you can sometimes use in the other.

We still have one Tek 7104 (1 GHz microchannel analog scope) that
works. One of my guys likes it.

On 01-04-2024 09:01, Jan Panteltje wrote:
> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>
>> Hi all,
>>
>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>> I experience.
>>
>> Thanks,
>>
>> CD.
>
> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I blew up a channal once myself in the first week
> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from the table (scope stands on the ground)
> Made a new graticule.
> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot interrupt things with the meter impedance.
> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
> Things last forever here...
> Scope used on a regular basis..
> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
> Digital meters used every day.
> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
> What more do you need?
> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
> But it does not help you one bit.
> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>

Very true about specifically the 1% statement. Sidebar, at an earlier
employment, we needed to equip a new lab. Guys wanted GHz scopes. When
asked if the ever looked at edges faster than 1ns, no one did.

On a sunny day (Thu, 4 Apr 2024 11:55:40 +0200) it happened Klaus Vestergaard
Kragelund <klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote in <uultes$iq0n$1@dont-email.me>:

>On 01-04-2024 09:01, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>> I experience.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> CD.
>>
>> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with it, fixed it locating the problem with the other
>> channel.
>> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from the table (scope stands on the ground)
>> Made a new graticule.
>> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>> Things last forever here...
>> Scope used on a regular basis..
>> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>> Digital meters used every day.
>> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>> What more do you need?
>> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
>> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>> But it does not help you one bit.
>> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>
>
>Very true about specifically the 1% statement. Sidebar, at an earlier
>employment, we needed to equip a new lab. Guys wanted GHz scopes. When
>asked if the ever looked at edges faster than 1ns, no one did.

When a kid you could test if the 4.5 V battery was empty with your tongue
(nowadays likely forbidden to do that ;-)

It is all relative
In the frequency domain the rtl-sdr sticks I have are 1 ppm.
I do have a 10 MHz Rubidium frequency reference, was cheap, from ebay
that I can use for frequency stuff so as to lock the xtal oscillator in my satellite LNB
that has around 10 GHz in and 1 GHz out, into that RTL-SDR stick, was good enough
for SSB reception (so a few hundred Hz accuracy) on QO100
https://panteltje.nl/pub/octagon_twin_LNB_OTLSO_inside_RT320M_PLL_IMG_6538.JPG
replaced that crystal in the LNB on the right by 24 Mhz external reference locked to the 10 MHz Rubidium reference
https://panteltje.nl/pub/ethernet_controlled_LNB_reference_cicuit_diagram_IMG_6848.JPG
about 1 GHz LNB output to the rtl-sdr stick, so now have a 10 GHz spectrum analyzer.. few Hz precision...
Even without the Rubidium lock:
https://panteltje.nl/pub/even_cheap_LNBs_can_receive_ESHAIL2_IMG_6775.JPG

Cost, a few Euro, cheap LNBs are 5 dollar on ebay, but have no xtal oscillator but some ceramic resonator so drift a lot, too much for SSB,
but still useful for watching spectra...

signal generator:
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/newsflex/download.html#freq_pi

frequency counter;
https://panteltje.nl/panteltje/pic/freq_pic/index.html
cost < 10 Euro

Its easy,..

Klaus Vestergaard Kragelund <klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote:
> On 01-04-2024 09:01, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>
>>> Hi all,
>>>
>>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>> I experience.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>>
>>> CD.
>>
>> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I
>> blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with
>> it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
>> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from
>> the table (scope stands on the ground)
>> Made a new graticule.
>> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot
>> interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance
>> scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and
>> RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum
>> analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>> Things last forever here...
>> Scope used on a regular basis..
>> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>> Digital meters used every day.
>> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>> What more do you need?
>> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
>> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>> But it does not help you one bit.
>> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just
>> like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>
>
> Very true about specifically the 1% statement. Sidebar, at an earlier
> employment, we needed to equip a new lab. Guys wanted GHz scopes. When
> asked if the ever looked at edges faster than 1ns, no one did.
>
>

It’s true that there are a lot of relatively undemanding jobs in
electronics. You can get on fine with a 200-MHz scope if all you’re doing
is PIC and Pi and ham radio and analog TV.

It’s also true that you can often make do with what you have—the most
important test instrument is the one between your ears.

In the before times, doctors were much better with stethoscopes than they
are now.

But I’d sure prefer a cardiologist who could use tomography and ultrasound
over the best stethoscope guy.

And it’s a lot easier finding gigahertz oscillations if you aren’t limited
to a 10-MHz
scope with scale marks in cuneiform.

Good boat anchors make capability like that very affordable. My lab is full
of top-of-the-line gear (over $2M at list price), for which I’ve paid about
2-3 cents on the dollar. (Not counting a few very helpful donations early
on.) Of course I have some good newer stuff, such as a two-channel arb, a
NanoVNA2, and a logic analyzer with protocol decoding.

It’s a bit old-school-looking, so it doesn’t impress visitors unless they
actually know something, and that suits me perfectly well.

But by all means don’t buy any, so it’ll keep being cheap for me. ;)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC /
Hobbs ElectroOptics Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

On Thu, 4 Apr 2024 11:56:23 -0000 (UTC), Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

>Klaus Vestergaard Kragelund <klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On 01-04-2024 09:01, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>>> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>>> I experience.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>> CD.
>>>
>>> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I
>>> blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>>> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with
>>> it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
>>> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from
>>> the table (scope stands on the ground)
>>> Made a new graticule.
>>> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>>> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>>> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>>> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot
>>> interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>>> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>>> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance
>>> scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>>> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and
>>> RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>>> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>>> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum
>>> analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>>> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>>> Things last forever here...
>>> Scope used on a regular basis..
>>> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>>> Digital meters used every day.
>>> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>>> What more do you need?
>>> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>>> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
>>> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>>> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>>> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>>> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>>> But it does not help you one bit.
>>> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just
>>> like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>>
>>
>> Very true about specifically the 1% statement. Sidebar, at an earlier
>> employment, we needed to equip a new lab. Guys wanted GHz scopes. When
>> asked if the ever looked at edges faster than 1ns, no one did.
>>
>>
>
>It’s true that there are a lot of relatively undemanding jobs in
>electronics. You can get on fine with a 200-MHz scope if all you’re doing
>is PIC and Pi and ham radio and analog TV.
>
>It’s also true that you can often make do with what you have—the most
>important test instrument is the one between your ears.
>
>In the before times, doctors were much better with stethoscopes than they
>are now.
>
>But I’d sure prefer a cardiologist who could use tomography and ultrasound
>over the best stethoscope guy.
>
>And it’s a lot easier finding gigahertz oscillations if you aren’t limited
>to a 10-MHz
>scope with scale marks in cuneiform.

We have a product in development, a new digital delay generator, that
had too many picoseconds of excess, erratic jitter. Turns out that the
50 MHz LC oscillator squeggs at about 6 GHz, which I guess is my
fault. We found that with a spectrum analyzer, not a scope.

My new oscillator, using a BUF602 as the gain element, looks good.
Jitter is under 10 ps RMS at 5 usec out, which is great for a
triggered LC.

The Rigol scopes are pretty good frequency counters too. Mine hasn't
been calibrated in maybe 5 years, and I checked it against a 10 MHz
GPS, and it's perfect, given its 1 PPM resolution.

On 4/4/2024 7:56 AM, Phil Hobbs wrote:
> Klaus Vestergaard Kragelund <klauskvik@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> On 01-04-2024 09:01, Jan Panteltje wrote:
>>> On a sunny day (Sun, 31 Mar 2024 18:41:18 +0100) it happened Cursitor Doom
>>> <cd@notformail.com> wrote in <9k7j0jlnbhs8qfg5m17pium0835meean83@4ax.com>:
>>>
>>>> Hi all,
>>>>
>>>> I'm starting to get a bit fed up with having my test equipment blow up
>>>> just when it's needed. This is the drawback with vintage gear; if it's
>>>> not used frequently then it can go *bang* the next time you switch it
>>>> on. It makes for good practice in repairing stuff, but wastes a lot of
>>>> time which could be better spent doing other things.
>>>> I think it's time I modernised my test gear. I was just wondering if
>>>> anyone has any recommendations they can share. Is there a particular
>>>> piece of test equipment you couldn't live without? Something you're
>>>> particularly impressed with? I'd be interested to know so I can
>>>> perhaps acquire said item and thereby reduce the number of explosions
>>>> I experience.
>>>>
>>>> Thanks,
>>>>
>>>> CD.
>>>
>>> My 10 MHz Trio dual trace analog scope is from 1979 or there about, I
>>> blew up a channal once myself in the first week
>>> when I accidently touched a booster diode in a TV I was repairing with
>>> it, fixed it locating the problem with the other channel.
>>> Later I cracked the graticule when a soldering station fell on it from
>>> the table (scope stands on the ground)
>>> Made a new graticule.
>>> So, and still working perfectly, OK for all things I build with micros.
>>> For RF to about 1.6 GHz I use RTL_SDR USB sticks and the spectrum analyzer I wrote.
>>> and for AC DC measurements I have some made in China digital meters and an analog one.
>>> also a Voltcraft clamp-on meter for current when you do not - or cannot
>>> interrupt things with the meter impedance.
>>> Also have a Voltcraft soldering station.
>>> Blew up one of my digital meters a while back (volts on the resistance
>>> scale) but fixed it again (replaced resistor).
>>> Many other test equipment I designed and build, like amplifiers LF and
>>> RF, SWR meter, radiation meters, gamma spectrometer,
>>> GHz stuff for satelite, transmitters low and very high power, what not,
>>> a frequency converter to use the RTL-SDR sticks and so the spectrum
>>> analyzer on higher and lower frequencies.
>>> Have a SARK100 SWR analyzer too.
>>> Things last forever here...
>>> Scope used on a regular basis..
>>> RTL-SDR stick 24/7.
>>> Digital meters used every day.
>>> Use my self designed lab power supply every day..
>>> What more do you need?
>>> Learn to use the stuff, understand what's important, and that is it
>>> When I started in electronics as a kid I did not even _have_ a meter, still stuff worked.
>>> Build my own scope at some point back then when I somehow got the parts
>>> Not much pocket mony as a kid.
>>> UNDERSTAND your systems, what electrons do.
>>> Showing of with boat anchors may impress people, especially the clueless...
>>> But it does not help you one bit.
>>> Anything with an accuracy better than 1 percent in most cases is just
>>> like apes screaming load trying to impress other apes.
>>>
>>
>> Very true about specifically the 1% statement. Sidebar, at an earlier
>> employment, we needed to equip a new lab. Guys wanted GHz scopes. When
>> asked if the ever looked at edges faster than 1ns, no one did.
>>
>>
>
> It’s true that there are a lot of relatively undemanding jobs in
> electronics. You can get on fine with a 200-MHz scope if all you’re doing
> is PIC and Pi and ham radio and analog TV.
>
> It’s also true that you can often make do with what you have—the most
> important test instrument is the one between your ears.
>
> In the before times, doctors were much better with stethoscopes than they
> are now.
>
> But I’d sure prefer a cardiologist who could use tomography and ultrasound
> over the best stethoscope guy.
>
> And it’s a lot easier finding gigahertz oscillations if you aren’t limited
> to a 10-MHz
> scope with scale marks in cuneiform.
>
> Good boat anchors make capability like that very affordable. My lab is full
> of top-of-the-line gear (over $2M at list price), for which I’ve paid about
> 2-3 cents on the dollar. (Not counting a few very helpful donations early
> on.) Of course I have some good newer stuff, such as a two-channel arb, a
> NanoVNA2, and a logic analyzer with protocol decoding.
>
> It’s a bit old-school-looking, so it doesn’t impress visitors unless they
> actually know something, and that suits me perfectly well.
>
> But by all means don’t buy any, so it’ll keep being cheap for me. ;)
>
> Cheers
>
> Phil Hobbs
>

My most useful old machine dollar for dollar is my 8012B pulse generator!

<https://imgur.com/a/2GaSZVq>

$50 "not working." It was just a burned-out pilot lamp and dirty controls.