Old Book Teardown #3: Vest Pocket Guide To Electrical Testing And Troubleshooting (1987)

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Silly Job Title: Charge Charmer

This video is part of the Old Book feature of my video blog.

In this video we take a quick look at Vest Pocket Guide To Electrical Testing And Troubleshooting by John E. Traister published in 1987 with 130 pages.

In the video I also wish everyone a happy new year, talk a little about upcoming Xin1 projects, and mention how expensive it will be to upgrade my scope to 350 MHz.

And if you’re interested the Wikipedia page for Logic Analyzer says that the first commercially available instrument to be called a “Logic Analyzer” was the HP 5000A Logic Analyzer, introduced in October 1973.

Thanks very much for watching! And please remember to hit like and subscribe!


Following is a product I use picked at random from my collection which may appear in my videos. Clicking through on this to find and click on the green affiliate links before purchasing from eBay or AliExpress is a great way to support the channel at no cost to you. Thanks!

Victorinox Swiss Champ Red Swiss Army KnifeThis is an image of the product.notes

Let’s go shopping!

More chromium woes

Man my chromium browser has been giving me a lot of grief lately. Two times so far I needed to reboot to fix the problem. This is the third time and rebooting is always such a hassle. :(

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Thu Nov 23 20:20:54 [bash:5.2.15 jobs:0 error:0 time:0]
jj5@charisma:/home/jj5
$ chromium 
[1123/202056.945777:ERROR:elf_dynamic_array_reader.h(64)] tag not found
[1123/202056.945823:ERROR:elf_dynamic_array_reader.h(64)] tag not found
Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)
-------------------

PCBWay: Educational 555 Board

I got an email from one of the marketing people from PCBWay who said they could offer me free PCB printing services in exchange for a review of their service on my blog. I am very happy to do that!

Today I signed up for an account over here: https://www.pcbway.com/Member/Login/

The signup process was extremely painless: email address, password, terms of service, privacy policy, done.

(Note: I am not a lawyer, but I did read the ToS and privacy policy, and basically they claim the rights to your design files for various purposes and might transfer your data over an insecure network. I think these services are fine for hobbyists dealing with open hardware, but if you’re a commercial entity dealing with higher value intellectual property or larger volumes you might like to get legal advice before engaging.)

After logging in I got an email confirmation code emailed to me. I updated my account settings including my basic information and contact information so they know where to ship my PCBs. In exchange for my having filled out my full profile they gave me US$35 worth of vouchers with various terms (e.g. minimum spend).

I then used their shared project service to search for a 555 timer circuit that would meet my requirements. I found this one: Educational 555 Board.

I clicked “Add to cart” and accepted all the defaults (shown below) on my order for 5 PCBs. So far I am a happy customer! (Update: as part of our sponsorship deal PCBWay covered the shipping costs too! I was a bit worried they might ask me to cover the shipping, but they included it, which was super excellent, especially as the shipping was about five times as much as the boards themselves!)

I’m just getting started with PCB printing. I expect that in future I will do much more of it. I have been working my way through PCB design with KiCad – updated for KiCad 7 to learn how to design PCBs using KiCad. Apparently there is a PCBWay Plug-In for KiCad, so that might be something worth checking out.

When my PCBs from PCBWay arrive I will make a video of me putting together the 555 timer circuit and then using it to test my IC test probes. Stay tuned for that one!

More chromium woes

So it seems that my trouble with chromium is not over. Today a new twist. Thank God I still have Firefox! I will try updating and rebooting again, but can’t do that at the moment.

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Mon Nov 20 10:11:08 [bash:5.2.15 jobs:0 error:0 time:0]
jj5@charisma:/home/jj5
$ chromium 
[4085207:4085207:1120/101109.660602:ERROR:policy_logger.cc(157)] :components/enterprise/browser/controller/chrome_browser_cloud_management_controller.cc(163) Cloud management controller initialization aborted as CBCM is not enabled.
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672026:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672044:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672050:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672055:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672061:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672064:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672075:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672079:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672082:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672086:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672091:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672098:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672107:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672115:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672132:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672147:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672154:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672159:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672165:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672169:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672173:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672178:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672185:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085238:1120/101109.672193:ERROR:login_database.cc(1100)] Password decryption failed, encryption_result is 2
[4085207:4085207:1120/101109.758579:ERROR:cmd_buffer_helper.cc(141)] ContextResult::kFatalFailure: CommandBufferHelper::AllocateRingBuffer() failed
Fontconfig error: Cannot load default config file: No such file: (null)
[1120/101109.770548:ERROR:elf_dynamic_array_reader.h(64)] tag not found
[1120/101109.770620:ERROR:elf_dynamic_array_reader.h(64)] tag not found
30185030681216:error:1000007d:SSL routines:OPENSSL_internal:CERTIFICATE_VERIFY_FAILED:../../third_party/boringssl/src/ssl/handshake.cc:393:
Trace/breakpoint trap (core dumped)
-------------------

// 2023-11-22 jj5 – UPDATE: a reboot fixed this problem.