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#tektronix

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Paul

Voltage measurements starting to show signs of life after swapping out a few bum transistors in the 0% zone card. The 0% cursor isn’t working yet, so I don’t know where it’s measuring from, but I can get changing readings by moving the 100% cursor. The change roughly corresponds the peak to peak amplitude, which is promising.

A 1960s oscilloscope with red and black knobs, a blueish square wave trace on the CRT, and a Nixie tube readout
#tektronix#oscilloscope#CRT
Public
Paul

Look at this sexy-ass piece of engineering. Check out what happens when smart people harness downright magic.
It reminds me of the onion headline “Humanity Still Producing New Art As Though Megadeth’s ‘Rust In Peace’ Doesn’t Already Exist”.
Imagine seeing this and thinking “oh sure, but I’ll make something better”. GTFO, no you won’t. It’ll be faster and more accurate and cheaper and lighter and have a fucking touchscreen and USB, and a fucking subscription, and it’s going to have the soul of a republican, and every time you touch it, an MBA will get an erection.
GAH, this is just so damn pretty.
(And Rust in Peace is an epic, seminal album)
#tektronix #electronics #1960s #retroTech #rant #oscilloscope

The inside of a 1960s hybrid solid state / vacuum tube oscilloscope plugin.
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Public
Paul

9/ very confident that it’s a blanking issue with the plug-in - tried it with another horizontal plug-in just to make sure it wasn’t the mainframe.
A few other interesting features of the 3B5:
The delayed magnification feature. Instead of a separate timebase & intensification zone, it has a selectable 10x & 100x magnification, and the delay control changes the point at which the sweep goes into the magnified rate, so you can still accurately zoom into a specific portion of the waveform. I think this is how some of the later 400 series scopes did it. I like it.
The sweep speed goes up to 10nS / division which is the fastest of any of the 560 series plug-ins. Note while it’s labeled 10nS on the silkscreen, the illuminated indicator uses ‘mili micro seconds (m u S)’ to avoid adding a 3rd prefix.
#tektronix #electronics #retroTech #vintageTech #1960s #testEquipment

The oscilloscope displaying a waveform where the right hand portion of the display is magnified
A closeup of the incandescent indicator showing the current sweep speed of 20 mili microseconds per division (i.e. 20 nanoseconds)
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Public
Paul

5/ I use brass polish to clean a lot of faceplates, mostly because I once lived in an apartment with all brass door hardware, still have the polish, and one day decided to give it a go.
I’m sure there’s a better thing to use, and someone may tell me why using it is a terrible terrible thing, but it’s doing a heck of a job getting decades of cigarette smoke off the face of this thing, even on translucent plastic.
#tektronix #electronics #vintageTech #retroTech

Two identical oscilloscope plug-ins, one in the process of being cleaned.
Public
Paul

2/ One of the curiosities on the prototype of this #tektronix plug-in is the elapsed time meter on the bottom. It is not present on the production unit. There is a note that I cannot decipher with a date or February 16 1966.
This type of indicator is a Mercury Coulometer, and shows time elapsed using a chemical reaction which moves a drop of mercury in a capillary tube slowly and linearly as chemical reaction is caused by the passage of a small, fixed current.
This unit has a large number of reed relays, which have a finite lifespan, and I wonder if this meter was there to measure usage during testing.

A view of the bottom of the plug-in showing an elapsed use time gauge
A close-up of the elapsed time indicator. A grey block or plastic approximately 1” long with a slender glass tube down the side. As this tube changes color along it’s length, it indicates the time in use.
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