My new toy, my first oscilloscope

Check this sucker out:



Man is it big. Didn't expect that! But it sure is cool.

Now I just need to calibrate the scopes and try it out!

Baw-chicka-baw-baw

Scopes are sexah. You did good for seventy five bones. I shopped for about a month for that kind of deal and gave up. I ended up dropping two hundy on 100 MHz Tek. More than I wanted but I needed a scope at the time.

ebacon said:

Baw-chicka-baw-baw

Scopes are sexah. You did good for seventy five bones. I shopped for about a month for that kind of deal and gave up. I ended up dropping two hundy on 100 MHz Tek. More than I wanted but I needed a scope at the time.

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Thanks! I think I did pretty well. Apparently the guy has more stuff for this thing stored up, he used it for his job from like ten years ago. So the deal could get even sweeter, we'll see!

Do you have any idea what that little plastic "protractor" looking thing is for? Looks like it's to align the light, perhaps..

canuckaudiog said:

Do you have any idea what that little plastic "protractor" looking thing is for? Looks like it's to align the light, perhaps..

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I've never seen anything like that. My guess is that it is used to measure phase relationships between two signals. Your first reference would be the manual. Look under a section called XY Mode.

Someone else posted a link to the XYZ's of oscilloscopes. That's a great book. It was assigned to me as a textbook at a community college. Many of us learned scopes from that book.

"There is NOTHING wrong with your Television Set..."

nice ...how many mhz? did you get leads with it ? looks easier than mine to use ..less controls .

The screen overlay might be for video vectorscope operation. Those scopes were sold primarily for TV service applications, so I guess some of them might have included a vectorscope mode. It lets you visualize conventional analog video hue information as vector phase angle and color saturation as vector length.

i thought the tv angle myself ..mine has that function too ..i just ignore that bit .

canuckaudiog said:

Check this sucker out:

Man is it big. Didn't expect that! But it sure is cool.

Now I just need to calibrate the scopes and try it out!

Click to expand...

That's not big. A lab-grade tube-filled Tektronix is BIG. What you have is pretty normal for a solid-state scope. :thmbsp:

Sam Cogley said:

That's not big. A lab-grade tube-filled Tektronix is BIG. What you have is pretty normal for a solid-state scope. :thmbsp:

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The old scopes were awesome big. Like dorm refrigerators. :yes:

Wonder whatever happened to the scope cart business. :scratch2:

ebacon said:

The old scopes were awesome big. Like dorm refrigerators. :yes:

Wonder whatever happened to the scope cart business. :scratch2:

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Saw a lot of them set up for solid-state scopes at my first job out of college.

Sam Cogley said:

Saw a lot of them set up for solid-state scopes at my first job out of college.

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I saw that too, but about the time I left the field SS scopes were about the size of what canuck bought. That was about year 2000. TEK just released their new line of LCD scopes and they were only about six inches deep and light as a lunchbox. I can't imagine much of a cart market for those.

Times they are a changing and old is new again and all that stuff. I'm attracted to tubes because they are the polar opposite of the electronics that I worked on. They are a history lesson that I can see and that makes things more real.

Hurts me when I read a story here of somebody who's bought an old Tooob Tek scope simply to harvest the tubes out of it...These noble old beasts deserve better, IMHO.

It's a 35mhz unit and it came with 3 scopes.

And yeah, maybe it's not HUGE but.. it's big to me! Haha. I've never owned one before so

I wonder how old this unit is, does anyone know anything about this particular guy that I should be aware of? I'm definitely going to check out that XYZ Scopes PDF, I can tell it's a very good resource as I started reading through it.

I'd say you made out quite nicely!

The bag o' probes is a nice addition to the scope!

Here is my Tek mainframe scope with the cart (7904) and the slightly smaller 454A on top.



KC

That's quite the get-up! What's the main difference between such a big unit and what I have?

kcdonahue said:

I'd say you made out quite nicely!

The bag o' probes is a nice addition to the scope!

Here is my Tek mainframe scope with the cart (7904) and the slightly smaller 454A on top.

KC

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That's a nice collection. My first scope was the same vintage as your 454A. I was working at GM Research and they marked it as scrap. I talked to the disposal guy and he said I could have it if I kept my trap shut. Well now I will tell the rest of the story. The statute of limitations has run.

It was about 1988 and I carried it out the front door. As I walked by the security guard he smiled at me and said, "Cleaning the place out before Christmas, are you?" I nodded yes with a feeling of guilt for taking out trash. That was weird. Whatever.

After I got the scope home I troubleshot it using the Heathkit DMM that I built in high school. Best I could tell the scope had a problem in the trigger circuit. The faulty device looked like a transistor but it was called a unitode. I had no idea WTF that was. Still don't. Anyhow I called TEK and they told me that the part was no longer available and neither were substitutions. I was disheartened and let the scope collect dust in my basement for five years or so.

One day I needed more room for new stuff and some old stuff had to go. That day two things went out to the curb. They were the TEK scope and a TASCO telescope that my dad bought for me at the PX when I was a kid. Both of them had served their purposes and I hoped someone would garbage pick them. No one did. :tears:

Congrats! Looks like a nice one. Have fun with it - I'm just getting used to mine.

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk 2

The nice thing about the 7904 is that a majority of ICs are somewhat available/common. I've contemplated selling it but I always come back to the scenario where my other scope takes a dump and I cant fix it.

KC

canuckaudiog said:

That's quite the get-up! What's the main difference between such a big unit and what I have?

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In the audio realm... not too much other than size.

The 7904 is really nice for RF work as it goes up to 500MHz with the right plugin. The plugins are just below the scope and allow it to do an assortment of measurements.

KC