The O’Scope Restoration

August 1, 2021 by Al Williams 8 Comments

These days, a pretty nice oscilloscope can fit in your toolbox and even a “big” instrument is probably something you can tuck under your arm. But that hasn’t always been the case. Consider this old HP 150A, restored by [USagi Electric]. (Video, embedded below.)

The 10 MHz dual channel scope might not seem very high-tech today, but when HP rolled it out in the 1950s to challenge Tektronix, it was quite respectable. The $1,000 price tag just for the mainframe was pretty respectable, too. Unfortunately, the scope wasn’t very reliable with more than 50 tubes in it, and HP quickly had to develop new entries in the scope market.

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Lightwave Multimeter Teardown

July 6, 2021 by Al Williams 2 Comments

You tend to think of test equipment in fairly basic terms: a multimeter, a power supply, a signal generator, and an oscilloscope. However, there are tons of highly-specialized test equipment for very specific purposes. One of these is the 8163A “lightwave multimeter” and [Signal Path] tears one part for repair in a recent video that you can see below.

If you’ve never heard of a lightwave multimeter, don’t feel bad. The instrument is a measuring system for fiber optics and, depending on the plugins installed, can manage a few tests that you’d usually use an optical power meter, a laser or light source, and some dedicated test jigs to perform. Continue reading “Lightwave Multimeter Teardown” →

Ford And HP Teamed Up To Drive Down Plastic Waste

April 3, 2021 by Kristina Panos 25 Comments

This mass manufacturer movement towards electric cars is one thing, but what about sustainability on the plastic part production line? Ford and HP have teamed up to turn used 3D printed parts and powders into pellets that will be fodder for injection-molded parts — specifically the fuel-line clips for Super Duty F250 trucks.

According to Ford’s press release, their goal is to reach 100% sustainable materials in all their vehicles, not just the diesel-drinking Super Duty. Their research team found ten other Fords whose existing fuel-line clips could instead be made sustainably, and the company plans to implement the recycled plastic clips on all future models.

There are all sorts of positives at play here: the recycled clips cost 10% less to make and end up weighing 7% less than traditionally-made clips, all the while managing to be more chemical and moisture resistant.

And so much plastic will be kept out of landfills, especially once this idea takes off and more manufacturers get involved with HP or form other partnerships. One of the sources of Ford’s plastic is Smile Direct Club, which has 60 printers cranking out over 40,000 dental aligners every day.

There’s more than one way to combine 3D printing and sustainability. Did someone say fungal sound absorbers?

[Images via Ford]

This Vintage LED Matrix Lives In A Gold Bathtub

April 3, 2021 by Donald Papp 9 Comments

Early LED displays came in all sorts of configurations. Because the LED was fairly new technology, all kinds of ideas were getting tried, and with all that work there was plenty of opportunity for hardware that didn’t make the cut to fall into obscurity. That’s exactly what happened to the Hewlett-Packard 5082-7002, a 5×7 LED matrix display with something many of its brethren didn’t: an oversized gold tub to sit in.

It doesn’t seem that these displays were ever used in any actual products, and its origins are a mystery, but the device itself was nevertheless assigned an HP part number. Beyond that, not much is known about them, but [Industrial Alchemy] reminds us that many early LED devices were poorly documented and never produced in any real quantities. They became forgotten hardware, waiting to be rediscovered.

The 5082-7002 has a oversized gold tub that makes the 5×7 LED matrix mounted inside look puny by comparison, and reading any display made from these units would be difficult because the large size of the device would mean a lot of empty space between each character or digit. But it’s definitely got a striking look to it, no doubt about that.

What’s neat is that the 5802-7002 actually showed up in a video we featured with a look back at cool old LED technology. If you would like to (briefly) see the HP 5802-7002 a bit closer under a microscope, here is a link to the video, cued to 2:19.

Upgrading A Classic Function Generator

October 20, 2020 by Bryan Cockfield 8 Comments

If you need an oscilloscope, function generator, or other piece of kit for your electronics workbench, there are plenty of modern options. Dropping $4,000 for a modern oscilloscope is nice if you have the money, but if you’d rather put it to better use there are great options that don’t cost a fortune. There are some addons that can turn a smartphone into an oscilloscope but one of the best values out there are older pieces of equipment from the 80s that still work great. You can even upgrade them with some more modern features too, like [NFM] did with this vintage function generator.

This function generator is an HP3325A and it is several decades old, so some work was needed just to restore it to original working condition. The cooling fan and capacitors all needed to be replaced, as well as a few other odds and ends. From there [NFM] set about adding one of the two optional upgrades available for this device, the high voltage output. This allows the function generator to output 40 volts peak-to-peak at 40 milliamps. While he did have an original version from HP, he actually had a self-made design produced that matches the function of the original.

Even if you don’t have this specific function generator, this guide goes into great details about the functioning of older equipment like this. Most of the parts are replaceable and upgrades aren’t completely out of the question like some modern equipment, and with the right care and maintenance these pieces of equipment could last for decades longer.

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Retrotechtacular: The $5,000 40 Pound HP Classroom Computer

October 2, 2020 by Al Williams 21 Comments

See if you can talk your local school district into buying a computer that costs about $5,000 and weighs 40 pounds. That was HP’s proposition to schools back in 1968 so really it is more like $35,000 today. The calculator had a CRT display for the RPN stack that you could mirror on a big screen. You could also get a printer or plotter add-on. Pretty hot stuff for the ’60s.

The 1970 videos promoting the HP 9100, posted by the [Computer History Archive Project], shows something we’d think of as a clunky calculator, although by the standards of the day it was a pretty good one with trig functions and a crude programming capability.

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Cesium Clock Teardown, Or Quantum Physics Playground

March 25, 2020 by Al Williams 20 Comments

Half the fun of getting vintage test equipment is getting to open it up. Maybe that’s even more than half of the fun. [CuriousMarc] got an HP 5061A Cesium clock, a somewhat famous instrument as the model that attempted to prove the theory of relativity. The reason? The clock was really the first that could easily be moved around, including being put on an airplane. You can watch the video below.

According to the video, you can simplify special relativity to saying that time slows down if you go fast — that is known as time dilation. General relativity indicates that time slows down with increasing gravity. Therefore, using airborne Cesium clocks, you could fly a clock in circles high up or fly at high speeds and check Einstein’s predictions.
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