Official Gramps' Memorial Eternal OT Thread

I used to make an art of having to use emergency purchase requisitions to get around the bean counters. As the user, you know what you need and you can't explain why a good quality piece of equipment does what supposedly a "similar" piece of equipment wouldn't do.
That’s the key I figured out too. If bean counters get in the way just let it sit till it becomes a fire drill. Then when some Chief or Mgr starts screaming where is it, hey I filled out the purchase form it’s sitting in XYZ’s inbox demanding justification. Why didn’t you provide the justification? I did I filled out the purchase form 😈
 
Secret sauce that as a seller I much appreciate.

I'm old enough that I remember Hewlett Packard as a company that built quality test equipment before they expanded into cheap computers. There really were no good substitutes when you needed a good Fast Fourier Analyzer and modal analyzer for use in a nuclear plant. Brüel & Kjær made good stuff - if you liked European units and presentation, but that was just another source of frustration. It was Endevco for good nuclear and temperature hardened accelerometers - over Kistler etc. You just can't get that across to someone who doesn't have to use the equipment. I was really good at specs in a purchase order, too; but far more out of self preservation than bias for any specific supplier.
 
I'm old enough that I remember Hewlett Packard as a company that built quality test equipment before they expanded into cheap computers. There really were no good substitutes when you needed a good Fast Fourier Analyzer and modal analyzer for use in a nuclear plant. Brüel & Kjær made good stuff - if you liked European units and presentation, but that was just another source of frustration. It was Endevco for good nuclear and temperature hardened accelerometers - over Kistler etc. You just can't get that across to someone who doesn't have to use the equipment. I was really good at specs in a purchase order, too; but far more out of self preservation than bias for any specific supplier.
Yep in the 90’s I didn’t by an analyzer unless it said HP or a scope unless it said Tektronix
 
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I'm old enough that I remember Hewlett Packard as a company that built quality test equipment before they expanded into cheap computers. There really were no good substitutes when you needed a good Fast Fourier Analyzer and modal analyzer for use in a nuclear plant. Brüel & Kjær made good stuff - if you liked European units and presentation, but that was just another source of frustration. It was Endevco for good nuclear and temperature hardened accelerometers - over Kistler etc. You just can't get that across to someone who doesn't have to use the equipment. I was really good at specs in a purchase order, too; but far more out of self preservation than bias for any specific supplier.

I will say that differentiation is becoming more and more difficult as the manufacturer is building on low cost as well. Everything is becoming a commodity
 
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Yep in the 90’s I didn’t by an analyzer unless it said HP or a scope unless it said Tektronix

Exactly. The Tektronix thing faded when Nicolet started selling dual channel digital scopes though. Measuring time delays with an analog scope was frustrating beyond belief.
 
Bailey over threw his receivers at times. I remember Peyton did the same when he first started in games.


Exactly. When those freshmen QBs see a WR get a step or 2 on a deep ball they get too excited and that adrenaline causes an overthrow. As he gets more practice reps and it becomes commonplace, that will go away. The kid looked as good as you could expect a freshman starting against a 6th ranked team to ever look. If he had hit on either of those 2 deep TDs ...the FF would be calling him Peyton and expecting us to win out...lmao...HB and Salter are both big time QBs that will be very capable IMO...


I know we have beat this horse to glue and back guys....I know....but I still cannot even come CLOSE to understanding these clowns sticking JG out there week after week to singlehandedly beat our own team , while HB could have played better as an 18yo true freshman. We would be 5 and 3 right now IMO... so damn frustrating.
 
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Exactly. The Tektronix thing faded when Nicolet started selling dual channel digital scopes though. Measuring time delays with an analog scope was frustrating beyond belief.
Tek has some nice digital scopes now too modular and expandable. Same for Le Croix
 
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My go to Hewlett-Packard device in the 80's was a serial data analyzer. It allowed me to see every byte of data coming across a serial port. Fun times.
Mine was the HP3653A Control Systems Analyzer. Made my task of genning Bode plots trivial. If I had to use a Phase Angle Voltmeter I’d probably have found another line of work 😂
 
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I think us old farts have sufficiently ruined this thread.

Since it's trashed, I have a question you may be able to answer. New TVs don't necessarily have analog audio out - just toslink optical. Most D/A converters I'm looking at say the TV has to be set to PCM out for the D/A to work. I have an old Bose audio system (two channel RCA inputs) here and through my Cambridge DacMagic A/D and with the TV set to PCM, the Bose does appear to "decode" Dolby signals - I have surround sound in any case when I set a Roku or Firestick to a Dolby format. So the question: is Dolby encoding simply passed through on a PCM signal and then handled the way it was always done in analog decoding? And are people somewhat confusing the description by claiming that an A/D only does Dolby surround sound if it has discrete 5 channel outputs because it can only pass the Dolby encoding but it cannot process the Dolby encoding? I get the difference in synthesized surround sound that older systems used to do vs discretely encoded 5 channel sound - whether PCM passes or affects the encoding isn't clear in the literature I'm finding.
 
Since it's trashed, I have a question you may be able to answer. New TVs don't necessarily have analog audio out - just toslink optical. Most D/A converters I'm looking at say the TV has to be set to PCM out for the D/A to work. I have an old Bose audio system (two channel RCA inputs) here and through my Cambridge DacMagic A/D and with the TV set to PCM, the Bose does appear to "decode" Dolby signals - I have surround sound in any case when I set a Roku or Firestick to a Dolby format. So the question: is Dolby encoding simply passed through on a PCM signal and then handled the way it was always done in analog decoding? And are people somewhat confusing the description by claiming that an A/D only does Dolby surround sound if it has discrete 5 channel outputs because it can only pass the Dolby encoding but it cannot process the Dolby encoding? I get the difference in synthesized surround sound that older systems used to do vs discretely encoded 5 channel sound - whether PCM passes or affects the encoding isn't clear in the literature I'm finding.
Buy a PCM or optical to analog stereo converter. Trust me they exist. By the way PCM is a serial digital format and I believe the optical output is just a hardware layer translation of the electronic signal to optical. The format is retained I believe.

And yes I believe the surround encoding is retained on the PCM or optical output. My JBL sound bar handles 5 channel surround via PCM or optical input. I just use the 3 channel though I didn’t buy the rear channel version. This is in the living room. The media room has the 7.1 channel setup.
 
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Buy a PCM or optical to analog stereo converter. Trust me they exist. By the way PCM is a serial digital format and I believe the optical output is just a hardware layer translation of the electronic signal to optical. The format is retained I believe.

That is what I think. My Cambridge DacMagic does a great job with the optical signal, but I'd been using it with my computer. I'm just pondering whether I want a cheap $20 Amazon D/A or a $100 Schiit Modi 3. I'm leaning toward the Schiit - I have one of their headphone amps - those guys may be nuts and have no more sense of propriety than us, but they do good Schitt.

Example:
License to use website

Schiit owns and reserves all the intellectual property rights in the website and material on the website. You may view, download for caching purposes only, and print pages the website for your own personal use, subject to the restrictions set out below and elsewhere in these terms and conditions. This means: don’t make posters out of our web pages and post them all over San Francisco, we think.
 
That is what I think. My Cambridge DacMagic does a great job with the optical signal, but I'd been using it with my computer. I'm just pondering whether I want a cheap $20 Amazon D/A or a $100 Schiit Modi 3. I'm leaning toward the Schiit - I have one of their headphone amps - those guys may be nuts and have no more sense of propriety than us, but they do good Schitt.

Example:
License to use website

Schiit owns and reserves all the intellectual property rights in the website and material on the website. You may view, download for caching purposes only, and print pages the website for your own personal use, subject to the restrictions set out below and elsewhere in these terms and conditions. This means: don’t make posters out of our web pages and post them all over San Francisco, we think.
That looks like the basic copyright reproduction license we get grilled on yearly.
 
Buy a PCM or optical to analog stereo converter. Trust me they exist. By the way PCM is a serial digital format and I believe the optical output is just a hardware layer translation of the electronic signal to optical. The format is retained I believe.

And yes I believe the surround encoding is retained on the PCM or optical output. My JBL sound bar handles 5 channel surround via PCM or optical input. I just use the 3 channel though I didn’t buy the rear channel version. This is in the living room. The media room has the 7.1 channel setup.

BTW I forgot this was right up your alley; my real education in electronics didn't include digital hardware, so I generally muddle through - generally successfully, but it's always a trial.
 
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BTW I forgot this was right up your alley; my real education in electronics didn't include digital hardware, so I generally muddle through - generally successfully, but it's always a trial.
When it comes to hardware level I’m normally more in the analog/power domain. The digital stuff is pedestrian I’ve got Junior people to do that 😎
 
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BTW I forgot this was right up your alley; my real education in electronics didn't include digital hardware, so I generally muddle through - generally successfully, but it's always a trial.
Think about a BluRay player hooked onto your A/V receiver. You only get more than 3 channel if you hook up the optical or PCM stream. So yeah the surround encoding is retained in the digital stream.
 
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