21 Sep
2010
21 Sep
'10
3:39 p.m.
On 21/09/10 21:28, Tony Duell wrote:
Yeah, those prices are about right for ebay. Stewart of Reading usually
have them too, but at a considerably higher price (?45 last time I checked).
I was going to
suggest the Fluke 25 or 27 -- these can be had for about=20
=A320 to =A330, do all the basics (current to 10A, voltage to about 750V,=
=20
resistance to 10M) and are ruggedised, so pretty difficult to break. Put=20
it this way: if you drop it on your foot, expect a trip to A&E.
I assume those are E-bay prices? Or is there somewhere else I should be
looking? As I mentioend, I don;'t think my 85 failed due to
external impact. It
wasn't dropped. Nothing fell on it. Yes, it was in a tool drawer, with
fairly small tools in boxes. Not in a tool box with hammers, etc. I don;t
think a ruggedised version would have helped.
Aye, by the sounds of it the seal on the LCD failed, and over time the
liquid crystal material has evaporated or leaked out of the display, and
has now failed completely.
> If you're after modern, shiny and new, the
Agilent U1251A and U1251B are=20
> nice. Really, REALLY nice. Big display, 4.5-digit 50,000 count, true-RMS=20
[
... ]
Sounds very nice, but I'll bet it's not cheap
:-).
?300 ish from Farnell.
I'm a regular customer at the Farnell trade counter (enough so that I
can remember my account number off the top of my head, and a couple of
the staff recognise me on site), where they have a little "bargain
corner". Usually it's ex-demo kit, slightly damaged (scuff or scrape?
half the price!) or stuff that's been sent back, repaired by the
manufacturer, and for whatever reason isn't suitable for sending back to
the customer.
Off the top of my head, I've ended up with:
- Endless spools of wire-wrap and equipment wire
- a JST crimp connector kit (butt splices, Faston blades and sockets,
etc. including crimp tool) for ?20 -- discounted because the plastic
tray was slightly damaged (solution: Araldite and a few chunks of FR4).
- the Agilent DMM (?50). Someone tried to "fix" it, and put it back
together wrong. Fixed the switch, chucked in a new PP3 and some fuses,
good to go. I've since bought the IR Data Link and Temperature
Measurement kits for it.
- GALEP-4 EPROM programmer (?20). Seems to be a customer return. No
PSU or cable, but it's just a standard 1:1 M-M DB25 anyway (PC parallel
port). 40 pin Aries ZIF socket, pindriver based, does EPROMs, Flash,
GALs, AMD/Vantis PALCEs, MCUs... I don't think it can read the Hitachi
6803 variant on the Floating Logic Board (read: A/D board) in the
Solartron, but you can't have everything...
--
Phil.
classiccmp at philpem.me.uk
http://www.philpem.me.uk/