EEVblog 1420 - Mailbag

1 hour Mailbag!

SPOILERS:
00:00 - Pleo the Dinosaur!
06:23 - Amazing workbench of the week from voltnut Xdevs!
14:25 - DEC VAX 370/11 135A 5V PSU teardown
22:22 - Emizon MCM Electronics alarm panel + AdPlayer LCD screen
31:29 - GVDA GD128 Colour LCD Multimeter
45:37 - I void Warranties T-Shirt
46:25 - Denon capacitor xmas ornament
47:41 - NetSTM32 ethernet board
51:22 - Kevin Lutzer's PCB Business Card
54:22 - SnowPi RGB Xmas ornament
56:48 - Probe dithering average vibration attachment

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#ElectronicsCreators

[bobcarter]

The Power Supply review reminded me of walking down a manufacturing line in the early 80's and watching a test technician diving away from a freshly built box as a pair of pint pot capacitors in a similar switch mode power supply exploded a second later - very loudly ! Fortunately he was OK, just a little ringing in the ears, so I asked him how he knew it was going to go and he told me the transformer whistle just sounded wrong when he powered it up for the first

[OrbiterElectronics]

The vibrator is to help break down oxidisation on the joints for better probe contact 😃

[ric]

The pink thing is to prevent cold joints. If you attach it to the soldering iron, vibrating the tip increases the heat transfer, and spreads the flux promoting a better wetting of your components. Very important when you are doing trough-hole stuff.

[MickDownUnder]

@Marco Reps would find that lab to his liking.

[nikmilosevic]

Between TiN and Shahriar, two of the most drool worthy labs I have seen. 5V 135A, for charging all the phones.... 😁

[borisdg]

The screen brand/model was on the flex cable. It's from HanStar.

[martinkuliza]

57:59
- it goes around something
- and it vibrates

of course, what else would it be other than a device that goes around your probe and gives you dithering :p

[zombicreature]

I was looking for such a vibrator for my probes all my life, makes your hand more relaxed after a day of work :D

[timb]

Lovw the VAX 11/750 5V PS... I ran one of those systems back in the day - a beast of a machine - built like a tank. Counter height chassis - about 3ft wide. Maxed at 8MB of RAM on 8 slots... "CPU" was about a half-dozen cards on the unibus backplane. Those were the days... :)

[derofromdown-under]

Can you please do a repair on Pleo the dinosaur Dave. Might just be something simple wrong with him... 10/10

[alfarobase]

Hello Dave, I was screaming in front of my computer: "be gentle with the screen, you started to shear the screen ribbon!! it's unusable now". my little advice: you should enjoy the connectors and do them the honor of disconnecting them, even during 2min teardown and especially with item in working condition to... keep them working. ;-)

[AtaruMorboshi]

SGS (Società Generale Semiconduttori) was established in 1957 by Olivetti and Telettra. Olivetti Elea 9000-series electronic calculators (1957) were arguably the first solid state machines to hit the market, and were completely based on in-house developed and produced semiconductors from SGS. Even Telettra telecommunication equipment (such as microwave links) were built with such components. Later, SGS merged with Thomson from France, becoming SGS-Thomson and nowadays STMicro. It still has many research centers and fabs in Italy, one not far from where I live.

[laustinspeiss]

I worked for DEC (in LSI systems) for a while, and as a second topic, I used to ‘play’ on a VAX 11/750 writing FORTRAN-77. A lot of great memories from that era.

[loydsa]

Dave playing with a Plio priceless, good on you mate!

[TheDefpom]

Lol, even a special treat for Mrs EEVBlog.

[OneBiOzZ]

i could see that pocket meter as being useful for someone who wants a large screen on a meter that could actually easily slip in and out of a pocket
for automotive or something

[oetken]

03:00 I think it needs two voltages. Maybe 6V and 3V, because of the three terminals.

[PlaywithJunk]

I used to repair such DEC power supplies in the 1990s. They used the NE555's for PWM to regulate the switched power supply output. The power supply dates from the days before dedicated SMPS chips were imvented :-)
The big capacitors were really dangerous and they could melt your screwdriver when fully charged. I used a large 50 Ohm resistor to discharge them. Most of the time, I had to replace capacitors and sometimes the BIAS voltage was not working. BIAS was used as some sort of standby power and to power the low voltage parts. Without that, nothing works.

[MrPhil]

Cinterion was one of the incarnations of a 2G/3G/4G module manufacturer. who is still going today!

[richie]

Dear Dave, when you forget your po box it's time to go back to ZX81. No wackers Great content as usual thank you. Best wishes from Richard England GB.