Chaos Butterflies

A former engineer (who was eventually banned from the facilities for various people problems including throwing a chair at a DJ) had made dozens of these splices where almost anything that’s an analog stereo pair goes into an electrical tape covered Y connection into some kind of 4-wire shielded cable.

Out of curiosity I unwrapped the tape from one of his splices to see what was inside.

Oh, no. No no no no no no my entire facility is wired like this no no no no NOPE FUCK AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHNOPENOPENOPEARONIWITHCHEESENONONONO

The Analyzer’s New Clothes

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This Tektronix 1705A L-band spectrum analyzer has temporarily borrowed a garment from an old waveform monitor.

Why?

Because as I had it on my bench powered up naked after running through a calibration on the CRT power supply, an operator comes walking in and rests his arm riiiiight here. Luckily I got him to move before any BANG occurred.

How do you even guard against awful human error like this?!

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Small naked wire and HV diode are on the input side of a voltage multiplier that puts out FU Kilovolts.

Now if you’ll excuse me— I need to make a sign for him. 😉

Bonus: The resistor the other tech never bothered to replace. Amazingly it still works, but I wasn’t gonna leave it like this!

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while we're on the subject of near crispy critters