Hi Dave. The last mystery tin box is from a Siemens dual terminal optical fibre system. It's the supervision, alarm monitoring and reporting device. It reports alarms in real time as well as storing past events (there was a limit to the number of events it could hold in memory, but alas that parameter has escaped my memory - no pun intended) The printer port on the front panel connects to a serial printer. We used to use a dot matrix printer as it could print one alarm at a time and simply advance the paper through the printer as required allowing many alarm events to be recorded on a single page of tractor feed paper. Helpful as it provided a permanent record of events which aided fault diagnosis The LT1 and LT2 buttons refer to Line Terminal 1 and Line Terminal 2 hardware equipped to the same subrack. A tech could easily toggle the LCD to display alarms from each Line Terminal independently on the 2 line display using these buttons as well as a facility to scroll through past events. The unit also extended alarms by applying an earth potential via relay contacts to the power and alarms panel in the equipment rack and to the station's generic alarm facility for visual, audible and remote monitoring purposes. The REG buttons refer to optical regenerators along the fibre route between line terminals. You used the buttons to view the alarm events at each regenerator site.

wow! trigBoard! That was awesome!

"I hate cats". "Hong-Kong is not in China". Ho my. This kind of words could start a third world war.

"Do they still make semis in Mexico?" There's a 10,000 acre reservation for the development of a business/industrial park for semiconductor (aimed at newer nodes) manufacturing on the California U.S./Mexico border, with plans for local power generation, on-site water purification (built), amenities, a hospital, with plans for daily commutes of American and Mexican workers (includes plans for a new border checkpoint). Named "Silicon Border". Seems to have no recent developments of actual industrial facilities or any livable buildings, and may have been by the standards of this channel a giant scam. Enjoy researching that, fellow viewers!

46:46 "There is no note" 46:20 *throws note away*

Thank you for sharing great quality content, I've learned much from your channel and forum. Kind regards from Mexico.

welp. Its like 12:25 am where I am and im just sitting here watching an aussie bloke open his mail with an oversized knife...

IEEE like most other scientific organizations always give me a VERY bad taste in my mouth. The whole FUNDAMENTAL idea of science is to be objective, transparent and accessible for everyone. So everyone can dispute or discuss any claims that are being made in the field. Putting articles behind a paywall does exactly the opposite and makes science only accessible for those with a big wallet, status or big enough social network.

Ooooh senior member. Do you get a 10% discount at the local pancake house?

Silly Dave, it's not an oscilloscope - it's an oscillosocpe! It's written right there on the box! Totally different beast.

I know youtr TV background is pretty great when it fools me for a few seconds to believe that you changed your offices and I just haven't heard the news about it. Maybe having just woken up did its part in this trickery as well.

It would be nice to see a decent teardown of one of those beefy diodes or SCRs

The trigboard is a very cool project I've been following for a while.

The shelves in Louis' workbench are the legendary IKEA Ivar system shelves. Ivar is a common Nordic first name btw.

Definitely loving this new bench of the week style!

I was admiring the scopes, 3d printer, and PC setup in the background then noticed it was on a monitor.

I'm surprised you didn't recognise your first item the SCR. I have a dud that is about the size of a hockey puck it was rated at 1700v and 600 A. Both sides mounted onto the buss work.

Oscillosocpe.. on the LCR product case, d'oh!

Yes please for the tweezer shootout, I’m about to buy one!

Good for you on the senior membership. I became a senior member in June of 2020. Now you can run for office!

Congrats! Senior Member of IEEE!

12:15 doesn't the IEEE have enough money for a CNC router or are you the first Senior Member and they tried to use it the first time with some furniture wood they've found on the road?

Thanks Dave for the background selection! Thanks also for the good comments! I try to keep it clean and organized because it is how I feel the best to start my day, but it's not always clean as the picture 😅 shelves are IVAR from ikea. Multiple 3d printers are there because they don't have the same specs (nozzles and filament distribution) and I have different usage for them. I often have to design pcbs for really closed space, then I 3d print the space to be sure of the connectors etc. And I use them to prototype boxes and buttons too. I indeed had a deal of a rigol pack when I changed my lab hardware, the spectrum analyser came after though. Have a wonderful day!

I have a few of those diodes too, and the companion SCRs. This is from the 1970's and a driver failure resulted in commutation failure, shorted SCRs and blowing some expensive silver element sand filled fuses. We changed the parts as a set for the lead and lag for each of 3 phases. This sure brings back memories. No IGBT fets in those inverters.. They were SCRs and big stud mount ones.

Yay, at last a notification that leads to a video that isn't private or deleted :P :D O_o

I actually also recently ordered a DC-6006L Power supply. Looked at it many times and finally pulled out my credit card and ordered it. Curiously enough the idle power is 1.4W, at 57,4W load it draws 60W that means 97,9% efficiency! That is pretty darn impressive! And that is still without calculating the loss in the leads themselve!

Love the lab background today. It lights up your dungeon!

Congratulations from a fellow Senior Member IEEE USA Section 5

Thank you Dave for featuring Kevin's KZfaq where I saw in the screenshot he had a video of how to read from ESP32 and I was on the lookout to learn about the ESP32 since Ive acquired one.

Separate cathode sense lead is because of lead inductance and resistance, as you generally trigger those SCR units using a pulse transformer, and the lead inductance of the main lead can slow down the turn on, so you have a separate lead to allow your gate drive to not have a massive step on it as the device turns on. Gate trigger is around 2V at 5A, typical pulse to ensure the slow device turns on very fast, as otherwise they are prone to burning out with poor gate drive, as only part of the junction turns on. Ferroresonant not too common, though I have had a few of them as UPS units, and they are rugged and reliable, though efficiency is really poor, as the power input is almost constant irrespective of load, though they do provide a really decent sine wave output, just with high third harmonic, but excellent isolation. They do tend to be hard on batteries, as they typically use a SCR charger, and they will survive up to 2 cycles mains loss before they switch over, though most are dual conversion, with an always on output stage. 15 2N3773 transistors per half side, and they will blow up very nicely on any fault, blowing the cans off the TO3 packages. Still got a ferroresonant line conditioner, which also serves as a pretty good room heater, as it is a 1kVA unit, so input power is close to that, and the output is totally isolated. You find the capacitor tend to fail, and you need to replace them with the correct part, as they can have up to 1kV across them under certain conditions, and they tend to run at around 600VAC with normal input voltage and output current.

6:45 Louis has a Big Knob! No... he really does have a Mackie Big Knob mixer :) The Sound-On-Sound review for these is hilarious

Dave, the signal was bouncing on the scope because the horizontal trigger point is set all the way to the right.

Could be the only, and therefore best selling, (active) Amiga magazine!

Cat person here... I crack cat jokes too because they can be awful jerks. Those that get their nickers in a knot over it can leave. I have no problem with dog jokes either because they also can be bloody lumps too. Keep up the fun and ignore the tossers.

Hi Dave, I'm from Hong Kong (Yes, brown tape is the favorite of the logistics ... transportation workers). Hong Kong once is the largest shipping destination, and water is the enemy of the goods, brown tapes work excellent protecting the carton box! Oh, about the letter of the Chinese ShenZhen company, just ignore their name. If they're good enough they probably will have a name like JLCPCB or PCBWay, easier to remember, and they didn't install English input so the apostrophe is in Chinese form (mono space), also no line formatting at all, maybe they should hire a random guy from Hong Kong to fix these "look and feel" problem.

I do really enjoy seeing these random tear downs. I have a sort of nostalia for these old many card plug in board designs. I realize today this can all be probably done a tiny single board with a few high integration pieces. But I still want to design and build something some day that uses these fancy plug in card and chassis and backplane and many discrete parts like this.

DId anyone else notice spelling error on the LCR Reader box? Oscillosocpe :)

Congrats on Senior Member of IEEE.

Is the little scope all jittery/wobbly because the trigger is off the screen to the right? IIRC my Rigol 1054Z has problems when the trigger is way off the screen...

I thought when the heck did he got windows in his lab? Took a second before I realized how. :)

It looks as if the ends of the plastic bits covering the arms of the LCR tweezer makes contact before the tips do.

IEEE Senior Member. Congratulations. I got mine last year. You, me and Grant Imahara! (Yes, I know there are others)

....but for the workshop you show us early I didn't notice fire extinguishers on walls . Smoke alarms would also help .

"I squeeze it really hard and it comes on" 😆 Dicky contacts...

0:55 The 3 wire jobbies looks like SCRs...Silicon Controller Rectifiers 13:35... At $335 USD plus shipping it's a bit pricey... A shootout sounds quite interesting.

Here I am editing videos in Vegas with Dave opening his mail in the background. Brilliant!

46:20 - Noooo! There was a note! lol you chucked it on the floor (at least there was something looking like a manual or something lol)

A cat by any other name is still a sneaky little fur-ball that yaks behind the sofa.

@20:14, when you show the tips in close up, on the rear tip, there is something. It looks sike solder beads. If they are not conductive, you would have to apply pressure, until the metal sufaces further behind get contact.

I love the trigboard. If the power consumption was any lower, it'd be a current *source* :)

I would love to get some useful comparison between LCR tweezers. I am interested in buying one.

The secret IEEE handshake is only for the top 1%. Lol

Are there actually any half decent handheld o'scopes that can display their claimed frequency _properly_ . Even at 50Mhz and lower, that thing was jittering/jumping all over the place and the sine wave was not smooth at all. Square wave would be even worse.

9:39 No that Amiga Bill, I let him know ur talking about him. We are going to be in the next few issues with a huge article. Seriously, the Amiga scene is live and kicking and its huge right now ! HAHA (I didn't send it to u)... thanks for the laughs

I love Cats 😍😍😍

Missed opportunity... (holds up 1N4148) That's not a diode. (2:40) THAT's a diode!

Last device looks like broadcast equipment maybe esa emergency service announcement equipment which prints out instances of test and actual announcement information that is transmitted through said device.

I don’t understand the utility of a power supply that must be driven by a power supply.

Haha, I never thought I would hear Dave talk about a "Big Stud Package" lololololololol I remember showing Diodes and SCR's that size when I was training young apprentices at British Telecom over in England. When semiconductors are that size they make good examples and training props !!

There's a Sydney Amiga user group I am a part of its a fun little group of folks around the old computer still

Congratulations on making IEEE Senior Member! I "leveled up" some years ago for doing AI research and don't know a quarter as much as you do about electronics, but, like you, have been into it since age 7 or so (which in my case was a LONG time ago).

An electronic device not made in China ! Oh the humanity !! Go Canada. I'm on board.

I suspect the "best selling" active Amiga magazine achieved its status by selling more than zero copies. Never used the Amiga- would probably have been a better choice for the family computer than the Atari ST.

Yup, those SCR's and diodes are small compared to the ones I got to play with back in 1980 when I started up and serviced the worlds larges (at that time) 1 MW 3 phase 400 Hz UPS. For the 4 MW 60 Hz stuff they used big ass "Hockey Puck" types. The extra red wire was used for connecting to the gate firing control. It was fun having one of them fail ! LOL

Senior Member ?? Does that mean you get seated closer to toilet and buffet now ? **harr harr harr**

Why can’t Chinese companies use another font than Times New Roman? Is there a law in China forbidding this?

Yeah, cats are super common with engineers. I guess we love that they don't give a shit and are pretty low maintenance.

Huh Dave, _you_ are being the Kickstarter for the Amiga Addict magazine ! 🤣

I notice the USB-PD power supply has go those lovely olive green bulging brand electrolytics. Replaced 2 in other Aldi stuff this week. Give 'em 2 years.

love that shirt! All the old school robots! I'm aging myself by knowing where all of them come from. :-)

If you use the programmable opamp to select ranges, after a simple two-point calibration Atmel can handle AD conversions surprisingly well!

I reckon those tweezers have lacquer on the probes.

Those Prusa i3 printers are something like $1000 delivered to Australia.

3:47 The red wire is actually just cathode connection for gate driving (note that gate voltage is relative to cathode).

Prediction: The portable USB-PD supplies use an XLSemi XL4016 Buck convert IC

21:33 That flat flex connector looks like it's not locked, that could explain the contact problems.

yes please, tweezer showdown!

A few years ago I hacked a WRT54G router to act as a remote wireless sensor, using the enable pin on the buck converter to shut the unit down and save power. That looked absolutely primitive compared to the Trig Board.

15:35 IS CONTAMINATED WITH MAPLE SYRUP.

Congratulations, Dave! I think those voltage ratings need multiplied by 10.

@ 50:23 .. the 74LS00N would be the perfect designator for a delay circuit ^^ .. like "when will I get my signal ? 74L .. S00N"

Congrats ! Well deserved I didn't know exactly what it means to be a senior member but I think the IEEE is important enough

The big diodes are what you can find in 400A Hobart welder

33:11 it looks like that power supply module is about 95% efficient (dissipating about 3.3W) based on the power source output (64.052V * 0.938A = 60.08W input vs 56.79W output)

For those wondering why many Australians don't like cats, well that is because cats do a horrendous amount of damage to the Australian wildlife. So much so that in many areas of Australia any cat caught outside of the owners property will face massive fines.

Congrats on the IEEE, that is so neat!

My cnc plasma cutter with water table came with the ss braided probably the smaller of the 2. My machine is rated 3 phase 300 amps I think. My actual plasma is only 125A though

Summer in Australia? Our asses are freezing down in the heart of Texas!

I actually thought that was your real background until you brought up lab of the week

Isn't that second wire in scr for measuring current in fact? You measure voltego drop across thick wire and knowing its impedance you could calculate current.

You can actually test short turns in a transformer with an ESR meter. And that power supply looks like a synchronous buck converter using TL594.

As popular wisdom says: If you don't like cats, it is because you have never had one.

@15:31 The box says "Oscillosocpe". :) The website of the Canadian LCR meter shows US$ prices. :P

full bridge rectifier out of the stud power diodes !

Congratulations, Dave!

I'm thinking the TV should just be a green screen because I like the idea but the TV is just too small

I have found those mini tweezers multi-meter testers to have reliability issues, they generally are extremely inaccurate when measuring low value inductance.

diodes with an extra wire are scr...

Most such names are easily pronounced by simply saying each of the syllables in order, using the most likely sound of same.

Those staggered connectors look weird at first, but admittedly it's an easy and efficient way of "keying" the plug-in boards. I love it! Also what's with the weird angle on that IC visible to the left at ~48:00? Haven't seen that before...