OT: One desk to rule them all

Anything worth doing, is worth over-doing. The monster desk looks like the triumph of group equalization over the individual. One giant step for the team, etc. Notice how everyone allocated space in the video is roughly the same identical size. Also notice the multiple conference rooms opposite the giant desk.

I'm sure there are benefits to getting in each others way (collaboration), the elimination of personal space (mess aversion), and tolerance to irritating bad habits (slob prevention), but I haven't really seen any. What the giant desk does it eliminate the partitions that provide the privacy, isolation, noise reduction, traffic reduction, distraction reduction, and reduction of snooping necessary for everything from creative thought to the successful execution of mundane drudgery (paperwork). I can see it for someone who spends their day staring at a computah screen, but not for anything involved in electronics. Speaking about myself, I can't work in a sterilized environment or on a nearly empty desk without being surrounded by my mess of paper, gizmos, and test equipment.

This what a real office should look like:

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

It looks really cool. An architectural dream. Doesn't mean it's at all practical for its purpose, let alone the social engineering aspects. Definitely not something a herd of shy engineers would do well with.

Now that's a Bench, and it's even well organized, neat stacks of everything and all.

I need more table space, myself;

Tim

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Seven Transistor Labs 
Electrical Engineering Consultation 
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I think my clients would run away screaming if they saw that here :-)

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Regards, Joerg 

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

That's actually pretty well organized. What's the prescription meds under the display on the left?

Unusable junk

The Heathkit VTVM makes it.

Best regards, Spehro Pefhany

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Thanks. Those are the two workbenches on which I do the repair stuff. There are also two large and one small desks that take turns acting as a workbench, desk, and storage area. When I moved into the office in

1990, it was 90% workbench and 10% storage. It's now the other way around. Various parts of the office are dedicated to computah repair, 2way radio, Hi-Fi, printers, monitors, and sewing machine repair. Each requires specialized equipment and tools.

Some more random photos at:

Metoprolol 50mg, 1/2 pill per day to prevent my blood from boiling when dealing with irate customers and clients. Also useful for placating the cardiologist. However, the bottle in the photo is full of tooth picks, which are quite useful around the shop. There are similar old bottles hidden in various corners full of hardware and components. The real drugs are in the first aid kit.

I just returned from a bicycle ride and the office now reeks from something burning. Time to drag out the electronic nose. No repair shop should be without one: Foundit. Full scale is >5000 particles per liter of air. Now to tear it apart and see what burned up (this time).

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

Got one, although I don't use it much any more :)

Jamie

You should hear the comments I get about using a Nixie tube frequency counter. Usually it's some variation on "Duz that still work"? (middle right, above the spectrum analyzer). The pile of plugins in the middle of the bench are for the Nixie tube counter.

This is quite an old photo of the same bench. Note the Heathkit DVM, TV vector scope, power supply, and distortion analyzer: I think I still have all of them, somewhere... maybe.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

HP 5245 or 5248?

What model is that Cushman Service Monitor, a CE-5?

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Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to 
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I have two of them. HP5246L and HP5248M. The one in the picture is the HP5248M. I have 6 assorted plugins for them, but only 2 work. I haven't had the time to fix the others. The whole collection originally came from the Comsat ground station at Jamesburg CA. Nobody wanted them, so I got them cheap. There's probably a photo of the counters in a rack somewhere in the photo section, but I couldn't find it.

Cushman CE-5. It was a PITA and had the bad habit of going out of lock when I needed to use it. After fixing it for about the 10th time, where each problem was caused by a different component failure, I decided it was time to get something more reliable. It also weighed far too much to be dragging up and down about 25 stairs every time I needed to go somewhere with it. So, I donated it to a local ham, who maintains repeaters for an ARES groups. He sent it off to a repair facility, which replaced very electrolytic and tantalum capacitor in the box. I guess that's better than replacing them individually as they fail. It now works but the repair was more expensive than the CE-5 was worth. I now have 4ea Wavetek 3000b, and one IFR-1500 service monitors. I've had some rather bad luck lately with service monitors as the two working units managed to fail and I haven't had time to fix them. Failure is always an option with 30 year old test equipment. Repairing the IFR-1500 is going to be a challenge because the stock power supply is badly designed and difficult to repair. All it needs is +5v, +12v, and -12v, so I'm going to drop in a brick PS and be done with it.

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Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558

MDS labs in Ft. Walton Beach, Florida used to sell a digital prescaler for these counters.

I had two 5245L and two 5248, but lost a couple in a rental warehouse when I got sick. I think that I still have a few plugins, but they aren't on my list, and I don't want go digging in my storage building to look, in the middle of the night.

Here are some off what I have.

Hewlett-Packard 5223 Electronic Counter Hewlett-Packard 5233 Electronic Counter Hewlett-Packard 5245L Frequency Counter Hewlett-Packard 5316B Universal Frequency Counter Hewlett-Packard 5325B Universal Frequency Counter Hewlett-Packard 5532A Frequency Counter

I have a CE-3 and a CE-5, plus the external calibrator The CE-3 looks like it was never used. It was only crystaled for a single frequency, and came with the calibrator at a hamfest decades ago for $20. The CE-5 was picked up from a pager & cell phone repair business that owed me a few dollars. I left the Ramsey service monitor behind. I don't do any field work anymore, so the weight isn't an issue.

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Anyone wanting to run for any political office in the US should have to 
have a DD214, and a honorable discharge.

I built a home made 1 GHz prescaler out of some ECL chips many moons ago. It still sorta works if I carefully control the input level. Otherwise, it becomes a doubler, tripler, or random garbage generator. With the preamp enabled, it can also become an oscillator. Looking at the output on a spectrum analyzer is truly disgusting. The hetrodyne method used in the HP Nixie counters may have its limitations, but at least it doesn't generate spurous numbers.

Well, I experienced two miracles in one day. I was about to dive into the IFR-1500 and rapair or replace the power supply when I decided to just turn it on and see what happens. The power supply now works. I'm now the proud owner of an intermittent service monitor. Similarly, I tore apart one of my malfunctinal Wavetek 3000b service monitors, found nothing, put it back together, and found that it now works. So, I'm also the proud owner of a second intermittent service monitor.

I still do field work. (I gave up tower work about 15 years ago). Last weekend, it was two ham repeaters. However, I didn't need the service monitor as the problems turned out to be mostly mechanical (lousy coax connectors, low DC voltage, wrong antenna, intermod, 2 year old temporary antenna finally fell apart, etc). When I left a previous 2way radio repair biz that owed me money, I didn't take any of the test equipment. I took the service truck.

This might be useful if you ever have problems with your CE-3 or CE-5 service monitors:

--
Jeff Liebermann     jeffl@cruzio.com 
150 Felker St #D    http://www.LearnByDestroying.com 
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com 
Skype: JeffLiebermann     AE6KS    831-336-2558