Spent some time today trying to reduce the ringing on top of this PWM switching of a 200W load. Nice to be using that oscilloscope again.
#tektronix
Battlestar Galactica (1978)
Tektronix computer 405x series
Direct view storage tube
#scifi #Tektronix
I'm starting to do the repair in this video:
TDS220
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.
#tektronix #oscilloscope #CRT #nixie #1960s #electronics #retroTech
Got time measurements working via manual cursors. Problem was in Stop Comparator card. Did a swap for now, but suspect Q54, will do component level troubleshooting next, but for now happy to get this closer to working.
0% zone still not working, which means no voltage measurements, and thus no automatic risetime measurements; that’s next on the list.
#tektronix #1960s #oscilloscope #electronics #testEquipment #retroTech
Important safety tip, thanks Egon
#tektronix #electronics #1960s #retroTech
Next on the bench, the Tektronix 567 oscilloscope with possibly the first digital readout facility on any oscilloscope.
Swapping a bad tube in the regulator got all the rails up to spec. A few bad Nixie tubes in the readout unit were swapped, and now the real troubleshooting begins.
#tektronix #tek567 #oscilloscope #1960s #electronics #testEquipment #retroTech
This was an easy win. Pulse generator initially had a slow rise time. Some disassembly, cleaning and reassembling got it working properly.
#tektronix #1960s #electronics #testEquipment #retroTech
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
Heck yeah!!!
Finally fixed the slow unblanking issue in this rather unique horizontal plug-in for 560 series #tektronix scopes.
TL;DR, it was R268, which went high. Not so high as to sway the voltage under no load conditions, but squishy enough that it effected the rise time when current was to be driven into a capacitive load.
Thanks for the assist @kurt!
A Tektronix TDS 684B Oscilloscope Uses CCD Analog Memory
https://tomverbeure.github.io/2025/05/04/TDS684B-CCD-Memory.html
#HackerNews #Tektronix #TDS684B #Oscilloscope #CCD #Memory #Technology #Electronics #Engineering
Come to where the flavor is. Come, to Bodgetown.
#electronics #tektronix #1960s #retroTech
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
8/ video showing what may have been the worlds first auto-ranging oscilloscope in action.
#electronics #tektronix #retroTech #vintageTech #1960s
7/ It was the nuvistor. It’s always the f$&king nuvistor. Both autoranging plug-ins are somewhat working.
Vertical plug-in still has some ranging issues, and the horizontal plug-in is slow to un-blank, which becomes a problem at higher sweep speeds. I’ll tackle that next.
#retroTech #vintageTech #tektronix #1960s #testEquipment #electronics
It's a beautiful homage. I've taken a lot of pcb pics but not many are close to hand. e.g. #tektronix #electronics
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
Today i programmed my first grafic with my #tektronix 4051 #basic computer. But i cannot save the programm ....
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.
1/ the #tektronix #tek3B5 auto-sensing horizontal plug-in: this plug-in for 560 series scopes was arguably one of the first to implement auto-ranging, which would select the correct timebase for a reasonable display of a recurring signal at a given frequency.
I own 2; the one on the left I believe is a factory prototype (thanks Kurt!), and the one on the right was a recent purchase, and clearly smoked a pack a day for the last 40 years. It’s not sticky or smelly, but I don’t know if I’ll ever get it really clean.
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