All of my 5360s use wire wrap On Wed, Apr 13, 2016 at 2:45 PM, Richard (Rick) Karlquist < [email protected]> wrote:
> This product came out in the early '70's when I was working > for Boeing. The company bought several and they were > very popular. This was an amazing advance for the time, > to be able to measure short term stability so easily. > This was before HPIB, so you couldn't easily connect a > counter to a computer. > As far as reliability is concerned, at least the unit > I used never had any problems. Everyone loved it. > > Fast forward to 1979. I get hired by the HP Santa > Clara Division. I didn't work in one of the frequency > counter sections, but they were located right next to > me and I interacted with them during donut time. (This > was during the time that HP famously served free > donuts at coffee break time). > > To my shock, I found that everyone at HP hated the 5360. > I guess the complexity was a resource hog. It was > developed at least 10 years before PC-CAD systems came > to Santa Clara, so the schematic was hand drawn and > the PC board layout was with mylar tape. The boards > were hand loaded and wave soldered. I did a 100 IC > board that way with 8 layers and the checking alone > took a whole week. > > It seemed to be lumped with a hated logic analzyer > that was derisively referred to as the "logic furnace". > > It might have been one of those "image" products that > made Bill Hewlett look good but the division loses > money on it. The 5071 was one of those, although > the division didn't actually lose money on it. > They just made less than they ostensibly could have > on their preferred products. > > Rick > > > On 4/13/2016 9:38 AM, John Ackermann N8UR wrote: > >> I was browsing through the HP Journal archives and came across the May, >> 1969 issue, dedicated to the new 5360A Computing Counter -- "An >> Electronic Counter for the 1970s!" >> >> I don't recall hearing much about these in time-nuts lore. I can guess >> from the Journal articles that it was a beast to keep running and was >> very expensive (500 ICs and a 10A 5V power supply). >> >> Is anyone here familiar with the story of this product? >> >> John >> _______________________________________________ >> time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] >> To unsubscribe, go to >> https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts >> and follow the instructions there. >> >> >> _______________________________________________ > time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] > To unsubscribe, go to > https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts > and follow the instructions there. > _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.
