Hi Welcome to everyone's favorite segment: Mailbag the first one for 2023 I Do have a lot of stuff so let's go. I'm actually going to start with not a mail bag because I actually ordered this. It's actually it's something that I commissioned. This comes from Bad Dog Designs in the old darts, so thank you very much for doing this commissioned work so to speak because this was available on it.

Showed up on Twitter and I really wanted it, but unfortunately someone else nabbed it. So I said hey, can you make me one and he said no Walkers Um so here it is. let's check it out. Whoa.

Tell you what, It's nicely packaged. let me have a look. Let me have a look. Let me have a look.

Oh my. God it's upside down. all the electrons are going to fall out. Oh I'm gonna show you properly before I show me look at this bit of commissioned artwork.

It's a DeLorean time machine DeLorean made out of Parts Isn't this absolutely brilliant? Wow! I Love it! That's going straight to the pool room. Thank you very much. Paul at uh oh there you go. It's um, 88 miles per hour one of one.

Let me get the old Googles on so I can see this up close. Um ah, that's terrific I would love to actually have the skills to be an artist. Um, like to do like I'd love to sculpt, paint or do something like this like I probably could but I don't know. that's just that is absolutely fantastic.

Anyway, if you want to check out Paul's designs, or if you want him to commission your own, um artwork I'm sure he'll uh, do it for you, but that is is absolutely. First Rate that is a Bobby Dazzler Straight to the pool room. Thanks Mate! Hi to all my viewers in Germany and thank you very much Christopher Redicker from Hamburg I Love Hamburg Um I've been there. It's absolutely fantastic.

The Train Museum there. Oh best in the world. um miniature. Wonderland isn't it called? Um, it's absolutely.

It's brilliant. Trust me, it's it's worth going to Germany just for that. Anyway, thank you very much. Uh, let's check this out.

What have I got here? We have a note we have some scan these with the githubs so it looks like oh look look it's got a bow tie it everything. oh isn't that pretty? Got some SMA cable connectors with uh, miniature coax and what is in here? Let's check it out. Itty bitty board? um yeah. I have to show you this up close.

What is it? Aha, it's a do-it-yourself fat probe. nice 1.3 gig. So there you go. You can scan that at home 0.3 to 0.4 puff input capacitance nice.

um times 10 uh Probe AC coupled jobby 100K to 1.3 gig Do it yourself probe Um I'm not going to be able to test the performance of it Real. Oh no no. I think I might have a one and a half gig scope now. And here's Christoph's board.

It's so tiny you had to get my macro lens out. Um, it uses a single mosfet in a common uh drain configuration I Can't get this off because I'd have to desolder the can on there. but uh, here's the schematic for an answer. basically just a BF 998 uh fat on there and in common drain and um, pretty much Bob's your uncle so it inputs on this side over here we've got ground and the the input here because it's a common ground.

Of course these scope probes aren't uh, floating. You buy the multi thousand dollar and even tens of thousands of dollars worth of uh, you know the Big Brand scope probes. They all come with big warnings on them. you know, like five volts.

Max Do not float these suckers and uh yeah, you can blow up. You're probably real easy anyway. signal out which you'd go to a 50 ohm uh terminated scope and then you've got uh Power here I Would have preferred to see it which is five volt power. I Would have preferred to see like a another method for powering this thing rather from the little uh, micro coax and SMA but uh, you know it could be compatible with other external uh you know fit power supplies and stuff like that.

but for you, do it yourself one I'd probably prefer to see a couple of pads on there or a different way to do it. There you go, It's the maker probe. It's the bottom of it and uh, nothing special. You know this ain't you know, special.

Rogers uh, high frequency material, anything like that, just regular. um Fr4 will do the job. I'm gonna need a few adapters to actually, uh, test this. so I've got SMA to uh B and C here.

Then I've got a gender changer and the same thing over to here. so I can get some banana plugs on there and power that I got that around the right right way don't I Yep, what I actually need is a Um adapter to get this over to a USB Actually, that would have been handy ha. but I'm smarter than your average bear and um I can use my Sig Gen output. uh DC level 5 volts, no workers.

It just so happens that rodent Schwartz is simply the new Mx04 series scope. You've seen this in a previous video and there will be some upcoming videos as well. I've also got some exclusive content over on my Odyssey Channel um on this. but uh, anyway.

I've soldered a couple of pins on here because Probin is everything with these things. Like you know when you're talking about a high bandwidth fat probe like this, like it's you're doing essentially custom probe in every every time. Okay, so like you'll just like solder wires directly on. you'll get little, you know, customized spring contacts, or you'll actually design in to your product.

If you know you want to actually measure the performance of it, you'll actually uh, design in specific uh, high frequency test pads and you know all sorts of things like that. But anyway, What I've got here? Uh Sig Gen R1 is generating the 5 volts uh DC power which is going into this thing and it's got two Cgens very handy. So I'm generating a 500 millivolt Peak to Peak into 50 ohms because I've got a 50 ohm inline Terminator on there. Um, so you don't get any uh issues with the cables I've come in you got so I showed a video coming together on that before uh, 100 megahertz which is the upper limit of this and I set up my probe here.

uh specifically I've put in the 1.5 gig uh, bandwidth with this which this thing's capable of for this particular case for 100 megahertz doesn't really matter. but uh anyway I've set that up. um I've got my manual attenuation there. we yo 10 volts per volt and if I get this around the right way I can just probe the end of the coax.

Here There we go. we're talking though. Uh Peak to Peak 200 millivolts I've set up 500 millivolts but it is 100 megahertz getting a nice clean signal on there. but the uh, the amplitude's not right If I got my probe in correct I think so let's double check on our second Channel over here we want to change our source there and uh yeah, we're getting our 500.

You know it's 510 millivolts. Something like that. Good enough for Australia near enough. Um, but we're not getting that.

amplitudes a tad off. 200 millivolts? uh Peak to Peak hmm and if I change it to one Meg termination. which wouldn't be right? uh, we're talking. you know, 400 millivolts Peak to Peak there.

But um, yeah, so the amplitude is off I'm not sure why let me check another frequency. Now starting to suspect that I don't have enough uh, current drive from my Sig Gen here. uh, the rail could be dipping. Let me just uh, see if the rails actually there because there's no test points on it for voltage.

uh, 3.94 So four volts? Um, that should be. that should still be enough. It's dropping a bit under load, but four volts should be enough to pair it all right. Now we're getting fancy pantsy.

I'm going to use my micro Supply uh, powered from the USB port here. I've got it set to five volts. You can see it's drawing nine milliamps there, which isn't much. but anyway, there you go.

Uh, we're not using the Sig Gen anymore. Let's try that again. No, we're definitely only getting 220 millivolts, so something is wrong with the amplitude response of that I'm not sure what. Um, kind of scratching my head now.

anyway. I think that's enough for the mail bag if you want me to say I might actually imply really tempted to play around with this and actually compare it with one of my uh, high frequency uh, like commercial fit probes that I've got here. um, on like a high frequency signal because this road and Schwartz Jobby is a one and a half gig bandwidth scope So in theory, um I can actually do it. so um, yeah, leave it in the comments if you want me to do that.

um, like as a second Channel or maybe even a main Channel video I don't know I've always wanted to do a video on um set probes I've never actually done one I don't think Anyway, thank you very much. uh Kristoff that is very cool. Um, perhaps I'm doing something dumb I need to do further testing on that. but yeah, it does actually amplify uh, quite nicely.

And I'll put the githubs uh down below if you want to check it out. Thank you very much. I don't want my Yankee viewers in Raleigh North Carolina I recognize the last name on this one Demco I'll link it in down below hello Ron Demko Who is the capacitor expert um from AVX has sent in some stuff I wonder what it is Anyway, yes, I was gonna do a I think I will do a separate video on this because I suspect you're not going to be able to see what's in here with my regular camera. Okay, what do we got? Got a whole reel of them? Well, not a whole reel because I can see through it.

Oh my goodness. um I don't even wanna. oh these are gonna be insane. These are insane.

Thank you! Hi! Dave Here are 020 ones, 01005s and 008 004 multi-layer ceramic capacitors I Thought you'd like to see how small they can be I threw in some stacked ones as well. Awesome! Are they some of the stack jobbies? Oh nice. I'll show you these and I'll leave these because if I drop it I've lost it. Um, it's gonna have to go under the serious microscope to see how small these bad boys are.

Ah, all the best stuff made in Japan Here we go. What? They don't actually have the type on there, but um, look at the size of the tape. Um, can you even peel that off? 475 Is that uh, 4.7 mic there and we've got some other ones. but uh yeah.

look at the look. look how teeny taut they are. That's just insane. Like come on.

Seriously? Seriously yeah. So there's actually a stacked uh type cap in this case. Um, I'm not sure of the package size there, but you've basically got two of those stacked together and they do this at the Uh Factory so that you know you can actually turn them into uh through-hole Parts Because then they leverage the manufacturing technology and the volume that they get on the regular parts to create higher capacity. Uh Parts If like, space isn't a problem for you, so yeah, that's actually a thing.

So yeah, you can buy those from your mouses and your Digi keys and your whatnots and this fully potted um Oddball looking one here. This is actually a 500 volt. uh, 205k. So that's uh, two microfarads.

um C9n12a I Googled that. But uh yeah, that's probably like a date code. but yeah, 500 volt caps. So this is either an array of like four capacitors or uh, or it could be, um, that like apparel of four parallel caps to actually get uh, the value in there.

So let's measure it. And yep, sure enough, if you go across the pins like that, that's uh to Mike And of course we could like go to opposite corner like that. So I think all the ones there are going to be shorted. Yep, and if we go between there and there, yeah, that should be shorted.

but I mentioned that at one Kilohertz. but yep, yep, yep, that's shorted. So once again, they actually leverage uh, existing manufacturing uh, you know, volume production technology and then just encapsulate it in uh, like a larger value package that people can use for specific applications. And let's have a look at some AVX Kyocera stuff here.

Um, and yeah, these are the different uh process steps to actually manufacturing the capacitors. Um, and and that's exactly what's inside a multi-layer ceramic capacitor there. And I've done a video of course on how these crack in ways to overcome uh, that and stuff like that. And here's the miniaturization challenge.

Yes, 0805 0420105 and 008 double 04 that the actual size of the chip is 0.25 millimeters by 0.125 millimeters. Um, that's just insane you. You can see the mounting area ratio just absolutely plummets and this is why you can do it because you know you can just fit more capacitors per unit volume on your PCB but it's like how they pick in place. Uh, double 08004 caps is just so.

They've got a road map here and you can see that the double 08004 is a 6.3 volts um, which isn't too shabby actually. Um, Andy because you can see that you can get lower voltage ones and but it's only available at the moment in point One mic. but still, that's just like that's just nuts. And the fact that you can get a one microfarad in um, an 01005 is just that's just insane.

And here's just an example of how you can do a DC to DC converter with the embedded Buck I see like under the inductor like that and like that's the entire converter. Um, it's just nuts and then you can surface mount an entire converter you like. you can pick and place that and come on crazy. I Already opened this one.

It's uh, from Australia and it just looked like one of these like formal letter things. Anyway, if you want to send something in, send it to Evlog mail bag gotta put mailbag on it PO Box 7949 Northwest New South Wales Australia not Austria thank you very much Karsten From Maylands in Western Australia Oh, here we go A few years ago I Found out that one of my mother's friends worked at Siemens in Munich and had a patent for something he invented. It was filed in 1954 and the pattern was accepted in 1960. It's something to do with impulse uh Timing Systems and devices.

It's a bit difficult for me to understand. Perhaps you could explain it or give the viewers your opinion. Might make a good usually patterns and gobbledygook unfortunately. Um, so it's often hard to make heads or tails of them really? Um, because that's a patent attorney's job is to kind of like turn your nice idea usually Engineers Have you know nice, solid ideas and turn them into nobody goop while still actually kind of sort of saying what it's doing? I Also found another pattern for impulse storage Matrix comprising magnetic calls.

I've done a video on magnetic core memory which is really cool. Um, sadly. uh Cole Heinz Goss Law passed away in 2013. Here is a photo last time I Saw him in 2012 in Munich There he is fantastic.

thank you very much. Let's check out his pattern, shall we? All right? I Won't go into detail on this but uh, look, we've got some tubes. Good old-fashioned tubes. Ah that's not my uh thing but I Love the look inventor look here it is I'm gonna sign it down here.

Terrific. We're talking uh, June 1960 here. So uh yeah, it's some sort of counting type system Happening Here Impulse Timing System and device. So we have a timing diagram here.

so what is it doing I don't know some sort of pulse synchronization thing and then it it counts or something impulse Timing System and device I don't know. Whoa. you've got some um L's and C's here. although this might not be part of it because sometimes like they put in like existing methods.

So whether or not like this is an existing method or this is a new one, we'll have to read the details here. but look, uh so we've got like a delay line thing happening here. so some sort of yeah like they it they're tapping off. So I'd say that some sort of pulse delay type thing.

um jeez, what's going on in here? What's what's V1 uh I don't know. Um, the way. Here's all the text. This invention is concerned with: the system for timing impulses.

the problem of timing impulses. That is to say of Shifting impulses as the time arises. Electrical columns? particularly? yeah, yeah, relatively short shifts can be affected by means of delay lines. yep, which may, so that's what we saw.

probably over there we've made up a series of Uh reactants elements. A so-called inductance coil chains constitute an example of this type. Uh, I've of course done videos on glass delay lines. Um, ultrasonic delay lines.

They're very cool. Yeah, no, it necessitates accurately timed our capacitances and inductors. Yes, it does. Uh.

Moreover, delay line of this nature causes a reduction in pulse energy. Yes, it does. Uh, So what are this invention? Here we go. This invention Hereafter describes operates in accordance with no method, retaining time shifts in any desired length without even pairing either accuracy or pole shape.

The invention resides in causing an Impulse counter yep, adapted to transmit and Apple pulse after having received a predetermined number of input pulses. Okay, so it waits for a number of input pulses and then outputs to synchronize it to be supplied by the series impulse derived from pulse generator starting from the moment. Um, the frequency of the series is a number, blah blah blah. The contrast the constituent elements do not affect the accuracy of the time shift and accuracy depends solely on the con constancy as two of the time pulse generator.

Okay, right. so they're using a separate pulse generator circuit to um, you know, give it regular periodic things and that will determine how many how it delays it or something like that. Anyway, there you go it goes on and on. Job of a patent attorney I'll link in.

uh, my brother-in-law Phil is a patent attorney I got a video I'll link it in up here and down below. um, if him talking about um, patent attorney staff but oh geez, it goes on, goes on, goes on. What's it actually for though? Um, if anyone knows, leave it in the comments down below. Oh, they're the references.

and yes, here's the magnetic cool stuff. I've done a video showing magnetic core I've still got I've still got that, um, somewhere. it's down in the bunker. but uh yeah.

um. cool stuff. Magnetic cool memory. So thank you very much for sending that in.

That's most interesting if you uh, know exactly precisely how this works and what it's for. uh, leave it in the comments down below. don't get too many from. Bulgaria I Do all my Bulgarian viewers uh and thank you Nicola Uh, matalov up.

let's check it out. I don't know what it is, it just says uh, printed circuit board spoiler alert could be anything though. Oh launched. Okay, what do we got? We have a note, you know I read the notes later.

What is this? Is this a bit of used? Oh no, no, it looks. no, it's new. it's new. What is it? Um, it's a uh, looks like a USB uh pass-through current.

Oh yeah, it's a USB passthrough current meter. um attachment which is Handy Okay, you know you want something like this in your kit. There it is. It's just got the USB and it looks like um that just allows you to whack a current meter uh in series I think that's what's going on there by Dave First of all, I'd like to thank you for all the great content.

No worries I've learned more from you about product design Electronics Measurement equipment, measurement techniques and I did at University Well I I'm sorry about that. um I'm sorry to hear. not to mention you are way more entertaining at all. Thank you very much! My day job is as a senior electronics engineer embedded engineer but currently I'm trying to qualify.

My first project owned my own brand board outline not a bad name I Like that it's called the USB Power injector and does what it says on the silk screen. allows you to easily Supply USB Device hour Oh hey, okay. external uh Power So you can use your lab power supply to inject in here so you can read the current, you can current limit and you can do all that sort of jazz and uh and set the voltage if you want to like. If you're designing the USB uh product for example, you want to like just you don't just want to hook five volts up to it.

Oh yeah, it works. Ship it. No, you want to hook it up to a variable power supply. You want to actually adjust the input voltage up and down to minimum and maximum thresholds so that you know your product can actually handle it.

So yeah, rather than like otherwise, you gotta like strip cables and Dick it around like just having a dedicated thing makes it so much easier. Oh, and he says that it makes characterizing power characteristics like current consumption, operating voltage Etc a lot simpler. Yeah, Um, you don't have to do botch cables which I've done many times. There's pain in the butt.

there's no need to show you I better close-up of that because that's all it is is. um just allows you to inject power in there. Cool bananas. So I'll link in the crowd supply Down Below Thanks very much Nick Thank you very much Simon Richards Martin got a hyphen in there from LMO Engineering Limited in the old dirt.

um it got a little bit uh, shock tested. um on the way here it says battery in the camcorder failed up with my two little boxes here. Um and what we've got in here is it looks like a uh well it's got LMO engineering on the back. There you go, scan me, scan me.

looks like is like a little like you know melon type uh game or oh well. fleshy flash fleshy flash. Aha this is Simon's business card. LMO Engineering Uh, you might remember their Christmas tree from EV blog 1457 and yes, we do use that.

We use a lot of the Christmas trees that uh people have sent in so let's check this out. Here you go so we can just wait. there we go. I'll turn off the lab the studio lights here so I don't know what that's doing.

should follow the instructions. So it does have a joysticky thing so in theory you could probably program that to have like a Merle and uh type um you know interface. I've done a video on the old Merlin game from the uh was it 70s or early 80s? can't remember. but anyway there it is.

it is a well it's a business card. um so yeah. great for like trade shows and uh, you know stuff like that although you wouldn't give somebody this as a business card because obviously that's not gonna uh you want something slim and there's various techniques you can do like you can embed um chips like into the board in like into the actual layers of the board and make it just as thin as the board. you can embed the chips in there.

uh you've got to do like multi-layer construction and stuff. you've got to do control, depth of routing and things like that. but you know all the leads and all the chips and everything can actually be embedded. So it literally is as flat as the Uh PCB but is actually functional.

Um, the battery's a bit of a problem, but you can get really super thin ones these days. So yeah, there you go Business card. Sweet thank you very much. Stephen Gallant from Irvine California I Don't think we've had something from Irvine before.

Where is Irvine in California Anyway, it is a broken something for those playing along at home. We have the note and oh, we've got the digi. I Keep forgetting the name of this particular packaging. It does actually have a name and it's very cool.

And did you key you and others use it but uh yeah, it's It's just good stuff. So I'm going to keep that as packing material. Oh I've got a very nice looking something. Something went thud um Ambit Ambulatory Infusion Therapy.

Sounds medical. Um whoa. But yep. yep.

Yep. Yep, that's like one of those like infusion pumps or something, right? Yeah. Ambit pump. So yep.

um, it does some sort of patient manual. Um, so I Yeah, so you can what use this at home, can you? It's designed for patient use so you know. Hence why you get a manual and it comes in a nice little carry case and all that sort of jazz. Um, so yeah.

I I Don't know what it's actually used for? What do you actually stick in it? Hello! Dave An unfortunate mountain bike accident. oops, Um, has kept me out of the air for a while. just after. Yeah, the problem is, you went in the air and bikes are designed to go on the ground.

I know what it's like? um just after you go us overhead and it's not. It's not fun. Just after surgery on my right shoulder uh deploying um side I was sent home with uh this note a nerve blocker. It is a neatly you know it could be a good Ted a nerve blocker? what? So they give you a a chemical and you uh like do you have a thing in your arm and you're pumping into yourself what are you ropey vocane? um narrow pin 0.2 in NS 500 mils for Ambit pump? um I I I don't know um I don't know.

my drugs haven't had too many of them. well the batteries fell out of the ass. End: the energizers haven't leaked Ambit pump more than pain relief Superior Pain control. So when you hook this up and uh yeah, anytime you're feeling the urge just oh bugger it, just push the button.

Come on, just push it. Ah yeah that feels good. So yeah, this thing. um you know it looks like an IV drip thing so I could like you're not gonna drink it.

So I think it needs to be uh yeah you need to have the uh catheter thing inserted in your arm or whatnot I would guess and uh you just clip that in you know because you can go home with it like insert it in your arm and then you just clip this thing in I don't know I've never I've never had to use um such a thing I've never been in such a position. so thankfully so here it is and look at this on off button. this is uh really interesting look. we can actually switch this on by going like that and there you go.

The LCD comes on Pr14 Whoop beep beep Just give me the good stuff RX Pro 5 I don't know. Do I have to hold down that? What? do I do I don't know. Anyway, all it is is just a pump in there I believe and uh program number there you go. base or eight milliliters per hour.

There you go. program one so you know you want down program four or you set your own one to go. Uh burko. if it's getting too much, um there you go.

So it's it's all it is. Two minute tear down and apparently uh Roper Kane um is an anesthetic um which they use or can also use for um, epidurals and uh, stuff like that. you know? So you give them birth and Dark Knight give him the good stuff and well this is what they give you I think so it looks like this just popped way that just pops out of there like that and yeah I guess the pump is in there it turns turns that and that will just put pressure on there. Oh yeah look look you can see there's a bit of there's a bit of oh, it's used and it's used I Can get some of the good stuff.

Hopefully you can see that but you can see that move. There you go. fluids, fluid's going in there and yeah, they just have a wheel that sort of like puts uh, pressure on there and Spins it out you can see it coming out. hopefully.

Yep, there you go. and I don't know. What's that? some sort of filter? Something that's uh I don't know. It's good.

It's got a pattern in there, maybe a filter? It's not hooked up to any sort of sensor thing so it's not. uh, it's not measuring anything. but there you go. Um, that's to check the rotation.

Uh Optical sensor to check the rotation? I guess Anyway, I do like the battery compartment. Here you go here. It's a bit loosey-goosey but you turn it a bit a little like just a little turn extra and bingo, you've got your leaking batteries out of it. and they haven't leaked in this case.

but you know? um I'm going to have to crack that open though. No screws on it. No. I think this suckers are actually glued or ultrasonically welded together.

So I don't think we're going to just get clips to get this undone I may have to dremel. There's nothing that the Dremel can't fix. Um yeah, it seemed to have been. yeah, seemed to have been glued.

The cases were glued together, But there you go up. Yeah, Absolutely no surprises. There's just a motor in there with a reduction gear. Um, and that's that's it.

What do we got down in there? Do I see a free scale part? do I Um, what's under here? Don't know why we need this large part here. It's Secret Squirrel obviously. but let's let's get that off. There we go.

What have we got? Oh is that blank? Oh no, no there it is. Just got to get the light at the right angle. Uh oh. Nxp jobby and yeah.

PCF like this is old school stuff so that looks like it's just a Philips sum LCD driver is it. And then you've got the uh, the main free scale uh, processor in there and Bob's your uncle? Yeah, but that's what you'd expect. Nothing fancy. Awesome.

Oh thank you very much for sending that in. I'm sorry to hear about your accident. Um, yeah, you come a gutter when you uh, tried to. Yeah, your bike tries to leave the ground I Know the fun of that, but um, yeah, not recommended.

eventually. Do it enough times you will come a gutsa um, leave it in the comments down below. If you've ever used one of these and you've ever had your uh ROP of a Cane or whatever it is, um, is it good stuff or not I don't know. Devastating Dave The Turntable Slave says don't do drugs kitties Thank you very much.

uh tour Hoogland if I'm pronouncing that correctly um from Norway or don't I do all my viewers from Norway We love the contents of what in here? what's in here? Haven't had one for a while so let's check it out. All right. Get the tongue at the right angle that's important and hang on. Oh I think a late 70s no no no no no, it looks newer than that.

No. oh wow, my smell is it's off this year. Um wow BBC um as in the no why would BBC be coming? it's got BBC on it. but um no, this is like it's a gossip.

it's a gossun. Metro what? um like this I I Do not consider this a vintage molded well I could like. you know this is like late 80s, um vintage. So yeah I'd put this at like late 80s vintage.

Something like that. Oh geez that. oh geez that knob is ah that knob is awful. Ah oh the pain.

Oh oh no. oh that's horrific. Oh no. I I declare that the what the worst knob I've ever used in my life.

Oh my goodness, look at this bad boy would you this? This is a multimeter. uh BBC's not uh like the UK BBC it's a brown Bovary um I guess that's just a company logo because this is a gossun Metro one or Metro what? um that made in Germany Thank you very much. uh for playing. It's got all the specs on there.

it is a true RMS uh Joby it's your basic volts, amps uh ohms and deities but uh yeah you've got your inputs here which these actually do have look and well, let's open it up. but these actually do have shutters on them like that. So I stopped the leads coming out I guess um not sure. Hang on are they? They're actually I think they're to put wires in I think that I think that's like a I can see a contact up under there I think is it here because that doesn't make sense in terms of like what you know in terms of locking a probe.

So I don't know. it's either a pro block or it's like for putting wires in there I I Don't know. Anyway, isn't this funky? I really do like these uh, form factor uh, meters and um yeah. so I just got the range here.

it's Auto ranging. it's got uh oh it's got Peak look at that. but as I said, this is the worst. like I'm like I'm really having a hard time turning that like if I just oh man that is truly ah that is the worst rain switch I've ever used.

This one's all right I feel on? That's okay, but this is just nuts. Yeah, let's um, put some batteries in this thing as soon they go in there. What is it? A couple of D cells or something? There we go. We've got four.

uh, Double A's there nice and I really like this. Look at this. We've got a spare fuse in there and um, also a spare fuse holder like as well. just in case you lose that nice attention to detail.

Love it! Let's try and power it up. and I really like, uh, this power switch. We'll turn it on and see if it works in a sec, but you can see that there's actually a thing up here that presses into the switch to switch it off when you close the case. Isn't that beautiful.

I should have put the battery cover back on anyway. Beep in beat. Whoa. Whoa.

There you go. Um, that's not too shabby at all in fact. But the uh, the viewing angle looks good on the camera, but for me up above like it. Actually it starts to look quite poor.

and yeah, that LCD is not the best. but look at that big ass bar graph on there Anyway, it looks like it's got a three volt Diode range. Ohm's way whoa. Okay, there you go.

That bar graph is a bit how you're doing. um the heck. it's got like yeah, okay, all right, a bit of lag on it, but whoa and it's going down down down. A few of the segments are starting to fade, but you know you expect that for the age.

but I I reckon this is Going to be bang on. Damn thing keeps beeping at me anyway. Oh yeah, there we go. She works.

It's reasonably fast responding. Let's try the look at that auto range in yeah Auto Arranging's a bit slow, but there you go and whoa is that the it will actually do a buzzer? but no, no, that's possibly the worst one I've ever seen. I'm gonna turn the beep off. it's actually got data storage.

has it. Interesting range. we can Auto range and you already beep. It seems to beep but bloody everything.

Oh okay, we're over here. That's what this thing is. Reference: Delta reference percentage Wow. really.

ref and set. How can we just what's in I don't know and there's no no. okay. so I set a reference measure a 10K reference resistor Ah that's not too shabby.

Oh yeah, there you go there you go bang on. And the other interesting thing about this is this is a four and a half digit. or uh. actually thirty thousand seems to be uh, 30 000 counts.

So let's measure a battery. You'll note: I'm using a made in Germany battery. thank you very much. 1.3387 1.3393 Ah, pretty close.

Well let's crack it open. I Love how it uses a flathead screws on here. Um yeah, leave it in the comments if you ever use one of these bad boys. Um, this would have been kick ass back in the day I'm curious to know the date Wouldn't surprise me to find uh through-hole uh Parts in here.

seems to be some sort of catch on here that lifts this hole thing up. Oh it doesn't seem to be any. Secret Squirrel Screws on the bottom and these are just like really brittle. um feet.

These are just like gone the way of the dodo. Um, they're just crumbling everywhere. Aha, that's a trick. You've got to close it and that whoa that opens up like that.

Oh it's well shielded. look at that. Nice metal threaded inserts. Um yeah, this is going to be a Bobby Dazzler I think I'll tell you what.

Someone's really gone to downtown designing this thing. It's quite something. It's gone down the rabbit hole, they've chosen the form factor and they've gone all the way. Damn the rabbit hole.

There we go. We're in, got a uh, insulating sheet on the back of that of course and ta-da Yep, as I suspected through hole. ah I can see surface mount and some MILF jobbies down on the bottom board so we're going to get to those. but oh yeah, how does it lift out? Um, that looks like the range switch because that's in the same position as the rain switch.

This looks like the battery contacts which come over to the board. but I can't get that out because there's a plastic standard. Are they? Yeah, there you go, it does all lift out. I don't have to unscrew.

Oh yeah, yeah. check it out. Okay, wow, look at that and shielding on there as well. This is very impressive.

Got a rubber membrane keys there, there's those horrible rain switches I told you about. and uh, and the big rocker here. The big Power rocker, um goes onto the top board there. Wow, that's really something.

Ah ah, they're sold it in. We can flip it open though. We can probably like sandwich it open. Check out these custom standoffs that they've manufactured.

Uh, really quite funky. They've gone to a lot of effort, haven't they? This is, uh, it's really quite something. Oh, I'll get back to you once. I figured out how to get it apart.

Well, none of that gold flash, uh pad rubbish on this. um, tin plate all the way. thank you. Very much wonder it hasn't uh, tarnished over the years.

But anyway, we've got an NEC jobby down there and what's this, uh, ribbon cable down here going over to here for? Oh, that'd be the LCD Okay, right. yeah, of course you've got to be careful lifting these up. dip. Oh, look at that dual wipe.

Ah, just a standard Jewel wipe thing. Anyway, um yeah. like old school. Yeah, this has like you know, early 80s uh construction written all over it.

87 24. But yeah, I reckon so. but I assume that's 24th week 87. Uh, we'll verify that with a couple of others.

But uh yeah yeah, this would have been designed in early to mid 80s. I Like they could have manufactured it for quite some time, so it could be an early 80s design. Oops. I Accidentally pulled out a wire there that a bit that's one of the battery contacts.

This looks like a uh I don't know. It's just a, um, like a clamp thing for the wires. that's that's interesting in its own right. Um, anyway I should be able to shove that back in be able to find some information on that.

Uh NEC uh Joby but um, looks like aha up here. Well check out the rain switch first. Isn't that a multi-level Bobby Dazzler Wow, Ah, three, Four different Wafers Wow, that's really something that's very impressive. A very impressive bit of Kit what do they got there? Is that some sort of big carbon resistor? Anyway, got four big uh Power diodes up here.

um in Bridge configuration and oh, this is fancy pantsy Look at that. We've got it. Well, we have ourselves probably a laser trimmed uh, ceramic input divider there? Yeah, that's really quite something. Wow.

Okay, a few nice uh trimmer caps in there. Look at those jobbies. but all the brains of the outfit is that Maxim part. ah maximum where they were.

They with a go in the day couldn't get them. You'd get samples but you couldn't get them for quids. and Max uh one four one I'm gonna have to look that one up. actually I can't find readily find a data sheet on that one.

So um, it's it's doing the it's doing the ADC it's doing the all the business. Um, because there is absolutely nothing else on there. and I like this board. look at this.

uh, four relays on here. so um, clunk clunk clunk I didn't hear any realize switching. but yeah, obviously. um, is that how they're doing? Like the auto ranging um or the manual ranging I'd have to listen to it more.

power it up. listen to it more. uh, closely. But yeah, it just a ribbon cable down to the main board down here.

So I like there's no other measurement stuff on there. That's it. We've got a little uh shield around there, but that's just that uh, wafer switch and there's just and there's nothing on the bottom. There you go.

It's ultimately very simplistic, but it's based around a maxim. Well, looks like you know, an ADC uh, we've just got a mux and an Op amp there by the looks of it and that's our reference. All the analog Fanboys go wild. It's an Ad636 voltage reference.

but yeah, that's all she wrote. Um, you know very nice uh. ceramic resistor input divider and everything else. but this does a true RMS some rather uh, surprised at the processing.

uh Simplicity of this thing are for its day Anyway, that is absolutely awesome. Um, thank you for sending that in. No one's going straight to the pool room. I Really like that? Um, it still works.

a treat. Of course it does. All these old multimeters usually still work, but anyway, uh, leave it in the comments down below if you use one of these. um, oh by the way.

Beep! I Found out BBC is actually part of BBC Metro What? Gossini, You know all the companies I don't know three, four, or five of them were merged or interconnected back in the day or something. Now of course it's a Goss and Metro what? but back then uh, they were branding this a uh BBC and there's ABB as well I don't know how they figure into it. There's all sorts of uh stuff. I was Finding So anyway, leave it in the comments if you got any, uh, further detail on this or you use one, it's It's just like it's huge and chunky.

but um, it did the business. like you know, 30 000 count back in the day with uh, true RMS was pretty Schmick I've never known Maxim to actually do a multimeter chipset. so I don't think that's a multimeter chipset I think that's just a Delta Sigma ADC and I think we'll find that NEC Jobby down, there is a processor and uh, perhaps with building uh LCD driver as well. although uh, we did.

it could just be serial going over because that's not enough. Yeah, pins? No, no. the LCD must have uh, its own driver inside um there. so you know, probably like a Hitachi uh chipset? um something like that.

Yeah, ADC and uh, Processor doing all the uh, smarts and uh, then LCD driver. hmm foreign.