Hello, and welcome to the group. There's only about 10 of us so far, so if you can dig up some more members, or have ideas on finding more, great! I know there are tons of ham lists on eGroups -- I'll get around to *them* when my spectrum analyzer is ready! :-) Although I've been aware of these instruments for a long time, and even used one about 20 years ago, it wasn't until I found a cheap source (don't ask! :-) that I became interested in acquiring some, more for actual use than to collect. They're just too big to want to have too many! My present "good" collection includes a 502A dual-beam differential (newer version with PCB amps) and a 549 bistable split-screen storage with 1A4 & 1A5 plug-ins. (BTW, can anyone point out any real advantage to a scope like the 502 having dual beams...? On a scope with storage or multiple plug-ins, I can see some advantages, but the 502 has neither.) I also have a 1S1 sampling plug-in, and am awaiting the arrival of a manual to help me get it going again. The main problem might just be the missing diodes (sampling bridge and a few others). I'm hoping these are PIN or Schottky, and can be sub'd with something easily available. My "less-good" scopes include an older 502A (with ceramic-strip amps) and a 556, a monster dual-beam that takes 2 plug-ins. Actually, this one probably just needs a bit of cleaning up to get it into good shape. I have a bunch of 1A1 2-channel plug-ins for it too. As much as I hate to strip equipment like this, I'm certainly willing to do so with at least the older 502 and the 1A1s. If anyone needs parts, or whole units, get in touch. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Dunn | Surround Sound Decoder & Stereo Enhancement Cantares | Self-Amplified Speaker Kits 74 George St. | Ambisonic Surround Sound CDs and Recording Waterloo, Ont. | (519) 744-9395 (fax: 744-7129) N2J 1K7 | mdunn@... Canada | http://www.cantares.on.ca/ -----------------------------------------------------------------

Michael Dunn wrote: > BTW, can anyone point > out any real advantage to a scope like the 502 having dual beams...? Scopes like the 502 and later 502A (and still later 5030) were used a lot in biomedical research. They were cheaper than storage scopes and had enough sensitivity to directly observe a lot of the signals generated by animal muscle movements and brain activity. In order to correlate two different signals in the body (for example, brain activity and subsequent muscle movement) you needed to monitor two points simaltaneously without the lost of signal or noise that might be generated by sharing one beam using the "chopped" mode. The other dual beam scopes like the 551, 555, and 556 found uses in the nuclear energy industry. In these cases, the signals were much faster than those found in the biomedical industry (like in a nuclear blast) and whole events were missed if the "alternate" mode of a dual channel amplifier was chosen. Even in the "chopped" mode whole events could be lost between samples taken at the chopping rate. The answer was to use more scopes simaltaneously, or in some cases, the use of dual beam scopes could save you from having to have multiple scopes. Stan w7ni@...

Well, I finally got the manual for my 1S1 1GHz sampling plug-in. It's filled with exotic diodes. About 5 tunnel diodes of varying type and package. And, nine(!) GaAs (Gallium Arsenide) diodes (5 types!)!!! I had originally thought these were tunnels also, and no, they don't emit light ;-) I've never even heard of such things before - think they were actually made by Tek. Anyway, 6 of them are missing, and I'm thinking that some low-power Schottky diodes might be workable subs. Can anyone comment on this...? thx ----------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Dunn | Surround Sound Decoder & Stereo Enhancement Cantares | Self-Amplified Speaker Kits 74 George St. | Ambisonic Surround Sound CDs and Recording Waterloo, Ont. | (519) 744-9395 (fax: 744-7129) N2J 1K7 | mdunn@... Canada | http://www.cantares.on.ca/ -----------------------------------------------------------------

G'day... :) (I'm sending this to the group as well as direct to you, Michael...) Sometime on Mon, 25 Sep 2000, you wrote: Well, for a while there I was wondering why my email program was sending me a copy of a message I had sent to someone else... The odds must be incredible. And further to stretch things, I have a very good email friend in Sudbury, Ontario, whom I've been corresponding with for many years now. - about the *only* person I regularly correspond with... :) I wonder how far Sudbury is from you...? Good... :) As I may have mentioned, the only Tek gear I have is an old TM503 with a DM501A and three custom plugin kits... :) I have uses planned for all those, for Ham Radio test gear. The DMM was faulty, but fortunately it came with manuals and I was able to repair it. :) It was *very* good. Conditions were excellent, as were the tools and equipment (natch). We were, as I remember then, "committed to technical excellence." I certainly believed so, and (I hope) my work reflected that. Wow! Over here, that's about $400, but allowing for the generally lower commodity prices in the US (about half) I guess I'm getting a good deal at around $600. That's with the 7B53A, and I like a mixed sweep... :) It apparently comes with two 7A26's as well. I'll be very happy if I can arrange it. I bet! :) I understand such things *have* happened here, but you have to be *very* lucky... BTW, I wonder if there are any other Aussies on this list...? Also BTW, I recently came across a site called "Bill & Stan's TEKTRONIX resource site". They have reprinted some of the cartoons from the old service manuals. That was a real "blast from the past" for me. <g> Kind regards to all, :) Michael -- Michael VK2XMD 0404-478-205 http://members.dingoblue.net.au/~mdd/ I used to have a handle on life, but it broke ...

Hello all! First post here for me, but I've been lurking for a little while. I'm the proud owner of a later model 535A, complete with CA plugin, all manuals, probes, and the scopemobile. After getting it home, pulling off all the covers, and getting 40 years of tobacco tar residue off of it (thank goodness for the smoke-free workplace of today), it looks almost brand new. Firing it up had it working well, but I did track down a bad pass tube in the power supply, causing a low voltage on one of the supplies. After that, it works perfectly, and has a very strong CRT. It was used at Eaton here in Milwaukee in it's former life, and did some pulse testing, so it has a camera mount in place of the normal round bezel. It also had the fan replaced with a 5" muffin style unit some years ago, no doubt a common conversion in the later years as the originals went south. It really blows some air, but isn't the quietest thing going. I use the scope for my audio hobby and it's a treat to use. The engineering that went into it boggles my mind. The quality is amazing, and to have it function perfectly after all these years is a real testament to what can be done with "obsolete" technology. I also have a dead 422 solid state scope (power supply) that's in really nice cosmetic condition, but I just don't have the time to fiddle with it. If anyone is looking for one for parts, let me know. I'd be interested in obtaining a proper round bezel for my 535A in trade. That's about it! It's nice to see these technical marvels preserved. Sure, they are hot, noisy, and big, but when I flip that big switch, it is soooo much more satisfying that pushing the little button on my Hitachi 40MHz scope. Chris Beck http://www.execpc.com/~n9zes ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://home.netscape.com/webmail

Is anyone familiar with the characteristics of Nuvistors? I ask because I do have some data sheets, but the curves don't look like normal tubes or FETs. Instead of a mostly constant-current section, the Nuvistor curves are resistive in nature. The grid voltage seems to modulate the resistance somewhat, and also sets the threshold plate voltage at which the tube starts to conduct! Am I missing something, or are Nuvistors really that different? thx ----------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Dunn | Surround Sound Decoder & Stereo Enhancement Cantares | Self-Amplified Speakers, Test Equipment 74 George St. | Ambisonic Surround Sound CDs and Recording Waterloo, Ont. | (519) 744-9395 (fax: 744-7129) N2J 1K7 | mdunn@... Canada | http://www.cantares.on.ca/ -----------------------------------------------------------------

At 8:57 PM +1100 2000/9/28, Michael Dunn wrote: >Ah, I remember repacking many, many fan motors.... <g> Tell us more please! The fans on our 549s don't work too well - they start out seized, and as the scope warms up, they start to spin, eventually reaching a decent speed... ----------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Dunn | Surround Sound Decoder & Stereo Enhancement Cantares | Self-Amplified Speakers, Test Equipment 74 George St. | Ambisonic Surround Sound CDs and Recording Waterloo, Ont. | (519) 744-9395 (fax: 744-7129) N2J 1K7 | mdunn@... Canada | http://www.cantares.on.ca/ -----------------------------------------------------------------

Great stuff Stan! Obviously, a motor rebuilding party is in order here. What is this book of which you speak? p.s., A few tubes in various scopes have Tek labels on them, and the manual points out that they are specially selected parts. Does anyone know what the selection criteria was? I'm guessing it might vary in different applications...? Xconductance here, HV there, matching...??? ----------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Dunn | Surround Sound Decoder & Stereo Enhancement Cantares | Self-Amplified Speakers, Test Equipment 74 George St. | Ambisonic Surround Sound CDs and Recording Waterloo, Ont. | (519) 744-9395 (fax: 744-7129) N2J 1K7 | mdunn@... Canada | http://www.cantares.on.ca/ -----------------------------------------------------------------

Hi Everyone, Well, if we are introducing ourselves, let me have a go... My name is Arnoud van der Wel, and I am situated in Enschede, the Netherlands. My 'discovery' of old Tek scopes started with a 533A/1A4 that I bought at a sale of surplus equipment at my university for about $25. Being too big for most people, apparently, that makes it somewhat 'worthless'? My collection grew steadily, and now I have lots of old scopes... a 515, a 545A and B, a 585, 531, 561, 564 and 564B, and of more recent vintage... a 7514 with a VERY interesting intermittent HT fault :) and a 7904. I used my 533A daily and to my full satisfaction until about a month ago, when someone gave (!) me a 7904 in working condition with a box of 7k plugins, which is now the scope on my bench.. At least the 533A has a worthy successor. :) The best feature of the new scope is actually the fact that it is so quiet... :) I also made a 'Tek scopes museum' website one rainy afternoon, which can still be seen at margo.student.utwente.nl/~wel/tek.htm but which hasn't been updated for (far) more than a year now. A site like that is a lot of fun to make and lots of people come by with enthousiastic comments, interesting anecdotes, parts, stories and pictures.. Not having any time for the website now, and not being likely to in the near future, I am looking for someone who wants to take what's there and give it the care and attention (and updates!) it deserves.. If there are any takers out there who want a good start to their own 'Tek Museum' drop me an email and we'll talk. You start off with (amongst others) a link from the official Tek site to your museum, so you'll have no lack of hits. :) Oh, and on the subject of responses to my site.... This morning someone offered me a 511A by email. I really have no space for it, but we can't let this be thrown away, can we? He has a .nasa.gov email so I take it he is somewhere in the states... So long, Arnoud.

hi, we have a lot of tek parts and tubes, CRT's etc. for 5000/7000 and some 400 series units. you can browse through what's sorted and on line at: http://www.sphere.bc.ca/test/index.html To help with repairs, there is also a CRT cross reference, and tek part number to JEDEC cross reference for many 1N/2N and IC parts. In the tube section, we do have some tek special tubes, selected by whatever mysterious criteria they thought was important, as well as some commonly needed Tek tubes like 7119's etc. for the generators, and some nuvistors for the older 400 series scopes. sadly, we can't be much help with older tube 500 series scopes, except for CRT's and some miniature HV rectifier tubes, and 6080's. we also have the tek cross reference data to 1984 for semis, and can help with some items not listed on oline for cross-reference data, but these requests are done as we have time, so be patient. In the NEW ARRIVALS section, we also just got dozens of Tek precision capacitor kits for time bases and generators, if you need them. I will add a link to this mail list into the Tek section later this month as well. Anybody in Canada may also be interested in the fact we will be moving shortly, and will have a lot of older Tek scrap we have to get rid of. shipping is reasonable within Canada for that kind of stuff, so might be useful to somebody. all the best, walter walter2@...

About the 453.... 'Great' is said with a wink to size and weight... The 453 is not a 'great' scope. :) Secondly, I specifically did not want to include transistorized Tek scopes in the museum because the interest in those is even larger than the interest in the tube scopes. Doing a question-and-answer session with all the thousands of happy users of 5000, 7000, 453, 454, 465, 475, 485 users around the world is not what I set out to do... But of course.... If I had a 453, it would not be for sale... :) Regards, Arnoud. > -----Original Message----- > From: Michael [mailto:mdd@...] > Sent: Monday, October 02, 2000 10:07 AM > To: TekScopes@... > Subject: RE: [TekScopes] Hello World... > > > > Hi again all... :) > > Sometime on Mon, 02 Oct 2000, you wrote: > > >margo.student.utwente.nl has the IP address 130.89.221.72 > > FOUND IT!!! > > Thanks for that. Looks like it was a nameserver problem > after all... Great > pages, but I take issue with your comment that the 453 > "doesn't belong in the > list of the great tek scopes..." The 453 was my scope of > choice as soon as I > could get my hands on it! And the first thing I did was > throw away the mesh > filter and fit a blue one. Lovely! :) > > In my mind, the 453 is the "classic portable" oscilloscope. > > Cheers, > :) > Michael > > > -------------------------- eGroups Sponsor > -------------------------~-~> > Special Offer-Earn 300 Points from MyPoints.com for trying @Backup > Get automatic protection and access to your important computer files. > Install today: > http://click.egroups.com/1/6347/12/_/_/_/970474498/ > -------------------------------------------------------------- > -------_-> > > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > TekScopes-unsubscribe@... > > >

Hi there, in between I reworked my online museum. All visitors are welcome again at http://www.planet-interkom.de/stgraef . You'll find there some service documents about Tek instruments. Maybe someone (Stan ?!) can check for errors or so. I also have a large assortment of spare parts (like the 556 final tubes) - but remember: I'm located in Germany. I will not comment any replys as I'm on buisness trip for the next two weeks. If someone has interesting material which should be published for all of us, please let me know if you have no possibility for an own homepage. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- To Stan: Did you remember all the stuff about the 551/555 interconnection cable? Do you have any backups? It would be a great help for me - otherwise I have to check the whole stuff once more. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- There is a friend of mine (who will also get this message) who obtains an online Tek-only museum too. At the moment he scanned some of his and mine Tek catalogs, and I will convert them to pdf files. If the stuff is available on CD-ROM we'll let you know. Check his collection at http://www.tekscope-museum.de That's all for now. Have a good electron glow! Stefan

At 2:52 PM +0200 2000/10/08, stgraef wrote: > At the moment he scanned some of >his and mine Tek catalogs, and I will convert them to pdf files. >If the stuff is available on CD-ROM we'll let you know. I can burn CDs (and scan pages). I may also have access to some old catalogs. I'll check... ----------------------------------------------------------------- Michael Dunn | Surround Sound Decoder & Stereo Enhancement Cantares | Self-Amplified Speakers, Test Equipment 74 George St. | Ambisonic Surround Sound CDs and Recording Waterloo, Ont. | (519) 744-9395 (fax: 744-7129) N2J 1K7 | mdunn@... Canada | http://www.cantares.on.ca/ -----------------------------------------------------------------

Hi, all. I just purchased a "Tektronix Multiplexer Control Unit", for the huge sum of $2.25. (I guess no one else was paying attention, at the time! (Ebay, last night!)) It includes 23 individual S-1 Sampling Heads plugins, which I think I am somewhat familiar with. But, it also includes 32 individual "S-3260/Mod 20 Compensator" plugins. I have NO IDEA what these are, and can't seem to find ANY information with web searches. I am hoping to help finance my Tek scope lust, with this windfall. I know the sampling heads are worth a little something. But I haven't a clue as to the usefulness of the compensators... Does anyone know what these are good for? (First good answer gets a free Compensator plugin, post-paid...!) Thanks!! Tom Gootee tomg@...

Dear Listmembers! I am interested if anyone knows if the vertical plugins like 7A19,7A24,... work also in the 11302(A) Scopes (The calibration plugin does so) and what disadvantages this would have except that they are not programmable. I am also searching the female 7k scopes plugin connector. (I purchased a 7k rugged plugin extender which is missing the white cover plastic strip and four contacts, but the photograph was taken from the other side so the ..... was not visible to me) Thank You very much Michael B. Haubmann mhaubmann@...

Dear All, is there any one out there who fixes the above in the Toronto area ? The unit is used professionally and is in need of some TLC on the analyser regards Steve _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com.

I have a clean Tek 422 but it does not work. I was told it was the power supply and that there may be a flyback problem. I haven't verified either problem, and just don't have the time or the desire to track it down. I looked around in the power supply and didn't see any obvious signs of distress, so who knows. The fellow who gave it to me is a chief engineer at a TV station, so I would assume he knew what he was looking at. I've got my big 535A anchor and a small Hitachi 40mHz scope for when I need portablilty, so I'd rather see it go to a good home (USA, preferably) as a parts donor or fixer-upper project. The scope is REALLY clean, but the foam lining of the accessory area in the front cover turned to goo long ago. It would need a bit of elbow grease to clean it up and replace it. I think there may even be a probe and power cord in there, I'll have to check. So, it is free for the asking, all I ask is the "buyer" pay the shipping. I'll box it up real well so it won't get wrecked. Thanks, Chris Beck West Bend, Wis. ____________________________________________________________________ Get your own FREE, personal Netscape WebMail account today at http://home.netscape.com/webmail

Hi all, I have just taken delivery of a 7603, and in transit, the intensity/readout controls were damaged. It needs a new ganged pot and concentric knobs. Can anyone recommend a supplier who takes Amex? Thanks and regards, :) Michael -- Michael VK2XMD 0404-478-205 http://members.dingoblue.net.au/~mdd/ I used to have a handle on life, but it broke ...

Hi Michael, Sorry: the request for you address should have gone to you directly, not to the list. I don't need payment; happy to be able to help you out. Regards, Arnoud. > -----Original Message----- > From: Michael [mailto:mdd@...] > Sent: Friday, November 03, 2000 5:58 AM > To: TekScopes@... > Subject: RE: [TekScopes] Re: Parts needed > > > > Hi Arnoud, :) > > Sometime on Thu, 02 Nov 2000, you wrote: > > >-Hi Michael, > >-I have the pot here for you. > >-Can you give me a postal address? > > Sure can. :) > > Michael Dunn > PO Box 103 > Woodford NSW 2778 > Australia > > How would you like me to pay you for it...? > > Thanks and regards, > :) > Michael > > -- > > Michael VK2XMD 0404-478-205 http://members.dingoblue.net.au/~mdd/ > I used to have a handle on life, but it broke ... > > > -------------------------- eGroups Sponsor > -------------------------~-~> > eGroups eLerts > It's Easy. It's Fun. Best of All, it's Free! > http://click.egroups.com/1/9698/12/_/_/_/973227761/ > -------------------------------------------------------------- > -------_-> > > To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: > TekScopes-unsubscribe@... > > >

I have been looking for other fans of vintage tektronix stuff for ages! I have an old 545b unit with ca dual trace plug in module, but I have a few problems with it & have not been able to find a service manual. I am a sound engineer from the U.K & no one seems to know much about old tek gear (including tektronix U.K)! So if any of you guys could lead me to any technical data or service manuals, it would be most helpful. I checked out the SND tube sales site the other day & discovered that Tektronix used to make a valve curve tracer (the 570). I do quite a lot of work on old valve equipment, (usually fixing guitar amps for friends) & it would be great to test the valves I have to see how well they match. Many amps that come in have an assortment of valves where one has been replaced when it has finally expired instead of a new matched set being fitted. Thanks to stefan for the T & M museum, theres some useful & interesting stuff in there, & I enjoyed looking through the exhibits. Bye for now, I shall log on again soon!