tektronix

25 Articles

An Oscilloscope For The Nuclear Age

May 26, 2018 by 30 Comments

Here at Hackaday, we’re suckers for vintage instruments. More than one of our staffers has a bench adorned with devices spanning many decades, and there’s nothing more we like reading about that excursions into the more interesting or unusual examples. So when a Tweet comes our way talking about a very special oscilloscope, of course we have to take a look! The Tektronix 519 from 1962 has a 1GHz bandwidth, and [Timothy Koeth] has two of them in his collection. His description may be a year or two old, but this is the kind of device for which the up-to-the-minute doesn’t matter.

A modern 1GHz oscilloscope is hardly cheap, but is substantially a higher-speed version of the run-of-the-mill ‘scope you probably have on your bench. Its 1962 equivalent comes from a time when GHz broadband amplifiers for an oscilloscope input were the stuff of science fiction. The 519 takes the novel approach of eschewing amplification or signal conditioning and taking the input directly to the CRT deflection plates. It thus has a highly unusual 125Ω input impedance, and its feed passes through a coiled coaxial delay line to give the trigger circuits time to do their job before going into the CRT and then emerging from it for termination. It thus has a fixed deflection in volts per centimeter rather than millivolts, and each instrument has the calibration of its CRT embossed upon its bezel.

The 519 would not have been a cheap instrument in 1962, and it is no accident that there are reports of many of them coming back to Tek for service with radioactive contamination from their use in Government projects. We can’t help wondering whether the Russian equivalent super-high-speed ‘scope used the same approach, though we suspect we’ll never know.

If vintage Tek is your thing, have a look at their PCB manufacture from the 1960s.

Thanks [Luke Weston] for the tip.

Retrotechtacular: Circuit Boards The Tektronix Way

November 30, 2017 by 39 Comments

Printed circuit boards are a fundamental part of both of commercial electronic equipment and of the projects we feature here on Hackaday. Many of us have made our own, whether done so from first principles with a tank of etchant, or sent off as a set of Gerbers to a PCB fab house.

To say that the subject of today’s Retrotechtacular is the manufacture of printed circuit boards might seem odd, because there is nothing archaic about a PCB, they’re very much still with us. But the film below the break is a fascinating look at the process from two angles, both for what it tells us about how they are still manufactured, and how they were manufactured in 1969 when it was made.

Board artwork laid out at four-times actual size

Tektronix were as famous for the manufacturer of particularly high quality oscilloscopes back then as they are now. The Tektronix ‘scopes of the late 1960s featured several printed circuit boards carrying solid-state electronics, and were manufactured to an extremely high standard. The film follows the manufacturing process from initial PCB layout to assembled board, with plenty of detail of all production processes.

In 2017 you would start a PCB design in a CAD package, but in 1969 the was incredibly manual. Everything was transcribed by hand from a paper schematic to transparent film. Paper mock-ups of component footprints four times larger than actual size are placed on a grid, and conductors drawn in pencil on an overlaid piece of tracing paper. Then the pads and pattern of tracks are laid out using black transfers and tape on sheets of film over the tracing paper, one each for top and bottom of the board. A photographic process reduces them to production size onto film, from which they can be exposed and etched in the same way that you would in 2017.

Pantograph drilling machine uses a manually moved styuls on a template to drill six boards at once

Most of the physical process of creating a PCB has not changed significantly since 1969. We are shown the through-plating and gold plating processes in detail, then the etching and silkscreening processes, before seeing component installation and finally wave soldering.

What are anachronistic though are some of the machines, and the parts now robotised that were done in 1969 by hand. The PCB drilling is done by hand with a pantograph drill for small runs, but for large ones a fascinating numerically-controlled drilling rig is used, controlled by punched tape without a computer in sight. Component placement is all by hand, and the commentator remarks that it may one day be done by machine.

The film remains simultaneously an interesting look at PCB production and a fascinating snapshot of 1960s manufacturing. It’s probable that many of the Tek ‘scopes made on that line are still with us, they’re certainly familiar to look at from our experience at radio rallies.

Continue reading “Retrotechtacular: Circuit Boards The Tektronix Way” →

Decimal Oscilloclock Harks Back To 1927 Movie

February 21, 2017 by 25 Comments

Metropolis is a classic, silent film produced in 1927 and was one of the very first full length feature films of the science fiction genre, and very influential. (C-3PO was inspired by Maria, the “Machine human” in Metropolis.) Within the first couple of minutes in the film, we get to see two clocks — one with a 24-hour dial and another larger one with a 10-hour dial. The human overlords of Metropolis lived a utopian 24 hour day, while the worker scum who were forced to live and work underground, were subjected to work in two ten-hour shifts during the same period.

[Aaron]’s client was setting up a Metropolis themed man-cave and commissioned him to build a Metropolis Oscilloclock which would not only show the 24 hour and 10 hour clocks from the film, but also accurately reproduce the clock movements and its fonts. [Aaron]’s Oscilloclock is his latest project in the series of bespoke CRT clocks which he has been building since he was a teen.

The clock is built around a Toshiba ST-1248D vintage oscilloscope that has been beautifully restored. There are some modern additions – such as LED glow indicators for the various valves and an external X-Y input to allow rendering Lissajous figures on the CRT. He’s also added some animations derived from the original poster of the film. Doing a project of this magnitude is not trivial and its taken him almost eight months to bring it from concept to reality. We recommend looking through some of his other blog posts too, where he describes how oscilloclocks work, how he builds the HV power supplies needed to drive the CRT’s, and how he ensures vibration and noise damping for the cooling fans used for the HV power supplies. It’s this attention to detail which results in such well-built clocks. Check out some of [Aaron]’s other awesome Oscilloclock builds that we have featured over the years.

The film itself has undergone several restoration attempts, with most of it being recovered from prints which were discovered in old archives. If you wish to go down that rabbit hole, check out Wikipedia for more details and then head over to YouTube where several versions appear to be hosted.

Continue reading “Decimal Oscilloclock Harks Back To 1927 Movie” →

Teardown A Classic : Tektronix P6042 Current Probe

October 16, 2016 by 6 Comments

[Paul Rako]’s teardown of his treasured P6042 current probe shows why Tektronix commands so much respect among the old hats of the electronics world.

Built in 1969, the P6042 is pretty sparse transistor-wise when compared a modern sensor. The user would clip the current probe, permanently attached to the case since the circuit was tuned for each one, over a wire and view the change in volts on an oscilloscope. When the voltage division on the oscilloscope was set properly the current in a circuit could be easily seen.

The teardown is of a working unit so it’s not completely disassembled, but it also sits as a nice guide on refurbishing your own P6043, if you manage to snag one from somewhere. Aside from capacitors and oxidized switch contacts there’s not much that can go wrong with this one.

As for how it compares, the linear power supply, analog circuit design, and general excellent engineering has the P6042 coming in with a cleaner signal than some newer models. Not bad for a relic! Do any of you have a favorite old bit of measurement kit?

Repairing 14 Tektronix TLA5202 Logic Analyzers

August 20, 2016 by 18 Comments

[Matthew D’Asaro] was recently entrusted with an entire classroom fleet of fourteen broken Tektronix TLA5202 logic analyzers — a pile of equipment that once was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. His task: Fixing them. He fixed them all, and on the way documented a number of common failure points in these old but still great devices.

Continue reading “Repairing 14 Tektronix TLA5202 Logic Analyzers” →

Fixing A Broken CCFL Backlight

June 10, 2016 by 8 Comments

When you work at Tektronix and they make a difficult to refuse offer for their ‘scopes, you obviously grab it. Even if the only one you can afford is the not-so-awesome TDS1012. [Jason Milldrum] got his unit before cheaper, and better ‘scopes appeared on the market. It served him well for quite a long time. But keeping it switched on all the time took a toll, and eventually the CCFL backlight failed. Here’s how he replaced the CCFL back light with a strip of LED’s and revived the instrument.

Searching for an original replacement CCFL backlight didn’t turn up anything – it had been obsoleted long back. Even his back-channel contacts in Tektronix couldn’t help him nor could he find anything on eBay. That’s when he came across a video by [Shahriar] who hosts the popular The Signal Path blog. It showed how the CCFL can be replaced by a thin strip of SMD LEDs powered by a DC-DC converter. [Jason] ordered out the parts needed, and having worked at Tektronix, knew exactly how to tear down the ‘scope. Maybe he was a bit rusty, as he ended up breaking some (non-critical) plastic tabs while removing the old CCFL. Nothing which could not be fixed with some silicone sealant.

The original DC-DC converter supplied along with his LED strip needed a 12V input, which was not available on the TDS1012. Instead of trying to hack that converter to work off 6V, he opted to order out another suitable converter instead. [Jason]’s blog details all the steps needed, peppered with lots of pictures, on how to make the swap. The one important caveat to be aware of is the effect of the LED DC-DC converter on the oscilloscope. Noise from the converter is likely to cause some performance issues, but that could be fixed by using a more expensive module with RF and EMI filtering.

This is not an original hack for sure. Here’s a “Laptop backlight converted from CCFL to LED” from a few years back, and this one for “LCD: Replacing CCFL with LEDs” from even further back in time. Hopefully if you have an instrument with a similar issue, these ought to guide you on how to fix things.