On Thursday, December 15, 2011 11:04:59 AM Peter Blodow did opine: > Gene, > when I was studying physics back in the 60ies and 70ies, the labs of the > Technical University of Munich were full of Tek 525's, 545's etc. > Earning some extra money during study time at Siemens labs, I found the > same models there. Even at this time, they were considered models of > yesteryear, good enough for student work. Since they were standing all > over the place, nobody felt the need of transporting them. And more: > everybody in the TU knew that Tek had equipped them with some special, > readily oxidizable alloy for the handle strips, the one and only place > of corrosion (aside from the rear blower air filter, a foam part > disintegrating into crumbs precisely after 20 years). Besides: the rusty > handles and the weight made them almost impossible to zapzarap - which > is very common with high value electronic equipment nowadays in labs, I > heared. > > Last year, I bought a used Tek 422 for my hobby use - after repairing a > simple primary manufacturing fault (unconnected extension rod coupling > at the time base switch) it was working perfectly. Easily portable, size > of a sheet of paper, dual trace, fast enough for me. The thing may never > have been used, the time base switch being defective from the beginning. > It cost me about $13.
Yeah, their manufacturing QC has sucked for the last 25 years. When the tek 1440 was about 20 years old, we came across a stack of them cheap. Its an automatic transmitter correcter for NTSC transmitters. None of them worked although with those things you need another transmitter (bring about $150,000) and a $5000 demod to test them with so its not exactly a test 8 of them a day operation. I took one and was determined to make it work, but after finding the third place on the pcb where a transistor socket was shorted, I gave up. Their transistor sockets in those were individual pin sockets riveted into the pcb, filled not with a contact spring, but with a teeny bit of conductive elastomer held in place by sticking it out the bottom of this pin socket rivet & closing the tubing on it by swaging. But that left up to an eighth of an inch of it sticking out the top, and it took one hell of a magnifying glass to see the bridge short they made when the next pin socket was riveted into the pcb and had caught the end of a piece from the adjacent rivet. I use an old 16MM projection lens for that sort of close inspections. To 'plug in' a transistor, you just stuck the leads in the holes & the elastomer made the connection even if the sub- miniature rivet was oxidized. > Modern scopes have liquid crystal displays - I still love green > traces.... Peter So do I Peter, but I guess its what I cut my teeth on back in about 1950, with a Hickok 505. We (like I still work full time at the tv station, NOT) just bought a spec analyzer with a nice big color lcd display, an Anritsu, but I'm not used to it yet, and in some ways, I find the color is actually a distraction. IMO the lack of the refresh blink makes you need to concentrate more to catch the updates as you are tuning a transmitter or whatever. This thing does everything but brew a fresh pot of coffee & for all I know there might be a section in the nearly 3" thick manual on that! ;-) Cheers, Gene -- "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." -Ed Howdershelt (Author) My web page: <http://coyoteden.dyndns-free.com:85/gene> A truly great man will neither trample on a worm nor sneak to an emperor. -- B. Franklin ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 10 Tips for Better Server Consolidation Server virtualization is being driven by many needs. But none more important than the need to reduce IT complexity while improving strategic productivity. Learn More! http://www.accelacomm.com/jaw/sdnl/114/51507609/ _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
