Repair And Calibration Of Valhalla Programmable Precision Standard

January 25, 2016 by Anool Mahidharia 5 Comments

Precision standards are the pinnacle of test and measuring instrumentation. Well engineered, sure, but also beautifully built and a feast to look at, no matter how old they are. [Shahriar] at “The Signal Path” often gives us the skinny on such equipment. In the latest episode, we get a look inside a Valhalla 2701C Programmable Precision DC Voltage Standard.

Even by 1990 standards, it is a fairly basic instrument, capable of producing just DC Voltages from 100nV up to 1200V. But it is a reference standard, so the output is highly stable, accurate and precise. He snagged it from eBay on the cheap but transport seemed to have caused some damage. It would switch on and relays would click when he pressed buttons, but the 7-segment LED display was blank. Luckily, opening the top cover fixes that problem – just a loose connection between the front display and the main board. Examination also shows that adding a 120mA DC current range would require adding additional components on the main board so his hope of doing a quick firmware upgrade is short lived.

[Shahriar] takes the opportunity to walk us through the various sections of the well built unit. It’s apparently seen some repairs during it’s life. A few capacitors look changed, and a relay housing has seen damage from a soldering iron. The digital section is mainly the 6800 micro controller, an EPROM and a NVRAM, and it generates the PWM signals needed for producing the output voltages. A highly precise reference signal is essential for such equipment, and this one uses the LM299 with a “custom” suffix meaning it was specially screened and binned. He does a quick calibration run, but it’s obviously rushed and doesn’t produce stable results. But that could also be due to the low quality cables he used, or a number of other factors. Calibrating such equipment is a job demanding both time and patience.

While this may not knock your socks off. For that, check out this post where [Shahriar] does a tear down of the one million dollar Labmaster 10-100zi Oscilloscope, or this other one where he plays around with a half a million dollar oscilloscope you’ll probably never use, much less own.

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Hackaday Links: BSAPEDWLOVKTUB.YBKAB

October 26, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 18 Comments

Here’s something that’s just a design study, but [Ivan]’s Apple IIe phone is a work of art. You’re not fitting a CRT in there, but someone out there has a 3D printer, an old LCD, and a GSM module. Make it happen. See also: the Frog Design Apple phone.

A few days ago we posted something on an old ‘286 machine that was able to load up the Hackaday retro site. For a few people, this was the first they’ve heard about our CSS and Javascript-less edition designed specifically for old computers. They dragged out some hardware, and [WTH] pulled up the site on a Dell Axim.It’s actually somewhat impressive that these machines have SD cards…

[Arduino Enigma] created a touchscreen Enigma machine. Why haven’t we seen an Arduino Colossus yet?

The crew at Adafruit now have a Flying Toaster OLED, which means we now have flying toaster bitmaps for all your OLED/graphic display projects.

[Ian] had an old rackmount programmable voltage standard. This was the remote programmable voltage standard, without front panel controls. No problem, just get an Arduino, shift register, and a few buttons. Video right here.

A few months ago, [Jan] released a neat device that stuffs a modelling synth inside a MIDI plug. He’s selling them now, and we’d love to see a few videos of this.

Hackaday Links: September 28, 2014

September 28, 2014 by Brian Benchoff 46 Comments

Kyocera is vastly expanding their product lineup with the Shop Sink 3530. The perfect addition to your copiers, fax machines, and laser printers.

About a year and a half ago and with objections from the editorial staff, we did a Top 10 hacking fails in movies and TV post. The number one fail is, “Stupid crime shows like NCIS, CSI, and Bones.” A new show on CBS just topped this list. It’s named Scorpion, and wow. Dropping a Cat5 cable from an airplane doing an almost-touch-and-go because something is wrong with the computers in the tower. Four million adults age 18-49 watched this.

[Derek] found something that really looks like the Hackaday logo in a spacer of some kind. It’s been sitting on his shelf for a few months, and is only now sending it in. He picked it up in a pile of scrap metal, and he (and we) really have no idea what this thing is. Any guesses?

[Sheldon] has a teardown of a vintage voltage and current standard. Just look at those hand drawn traces on a single sided board. Beautiful.

[Art] has another, ‘what is this thing’. He has two of them, and he’s pretty sure it’s some sort of differential, but other than that he’s got nothing. The only real clue is that [Art] lives near a harbor on the N. Cali coast. Maybe from a navigation system, or a governor from a weird diesel?

So you have a Kinect sitting on a shelf somewhere. That’s fine, we completely understand that. Here’s something: freeze yourself in carbonite. Yeah, it turns out having a depth sensor is exactly what you need to make a carbonite copy of yourself.