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Friday, 21 December 2018

Test Equipment Anonymous

Well,

My name is Mark and I suffer with Test Equipment Acquisition Syndrome (TEAS).

It starts quite mildly but soon creeps up on you; symptoms are said include:


  1. Buy some broken test gear cheap
  2. Buy service manuals for the broken test gear (often costing more than the gear)
  3. Troubleshoot broken test gear
  4. Seek obsolete components to repair the broken test gear
  5. Buy more test gear to help with the repair of the test gear you are working on
  6. Build shelving and storage for test gear
  7. Buy second and third same items as "spares" and find they are better condition than that you already have
  8. Go to 1 and repeat
You get the idea.

There is help available here, but the condition is quite hopeless.

My latest acquisition is a Tek 466 "storage" scope.

Its in very good condition for its age and notably has "LEDs" instead of "indicator lamps" so is a more recent one of these models:





I've fiddled about with it and given it a good clean, replaced some caps and transistors in the PSU and also a (socketed - thanks Tek) IC regulator and bingo:


There seems to be very little wrong with this. Now all I need is another for spares....

Miss Luna cat is become slightly less timid, but not much:

2 comments:

  1. You either get cats, or you don't (a kind of "Marmite" thing!).
    That's one lovely cat (IMHO!)

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    Replies
    1. Luna has been with us since June 2015 and is extremely timid - very scared of people generally but slowly coming round. I am delighted we have been able to offer her a good home.

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