Just curious as to the level of potential interest in a pair of retrofit modules to replace the now virtually unobtainable, TEK-specific parts U400 & U800 which often seem to fail in these otherwise superb scopes. I'm not an electronics engineer, but a good friend of mine, himself an electronics design engineer, has many of these scopes often purchased to cannibalise for spares to rebuild 465/2465s with lower hours. He is in the process of prototyping a pair of retrofit modules for these two chips which can be retrofitted by anyone with a moderate moderate soldering skill. He and two of his colleagues between them have over 30(!) of these instruments all needing these replacement chips, so this project has a fair chance of becoming a reality in the next few months. If the volumes are realistic, a ceramic hybrid-based module will be commisioned, or if low volumes, a pcb with identical footprint to the existing chip outlines. If there's any interest in this project, let's have your thoughts. Regards, JB
If you and/or your friends haven't done this already, place a note to the guys in the Tekscopes group on Yahoo. So far, my 465B and 2467 are fine (fingers crossed).
I've fixed about 50 465's and 15 465B's and have never seen one of these chips fail. Lots of shorted tantaalum caps, open power supply diodes, and 5uf capacitors that used to be 5000uf.
"Ancient_Hacker" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@g44g2000cwa.googlegroups.com:
2445/65 series had problems with the horizontal output amp IC.(TEK-made)
465's,an entirely different scope series,really did not have any specific Tek-made ICs that had high failure rates. I wonder if they are referring to the sweep logic IC,155-0049-02 ?
FYI,all TEK 155-xxxx-xx and 234-xxxx-xx ICs are TEK-made(only,no subs).
What are the specifications for the hybrid module. It seems like with current current and voltage mode opamps that are available, building a PCB based module to replace the hybrid would be a good idea. I think there would be a market, but in the end it depends on the cost of the module. I would also be happy with design that I could build myself.
Already done this on a recommendation form another NG. Simply *amazing* response! There really must be an awful lot of old TEK scopes under benches out there just waiting for a U800 to come along..... I'll keep people posted on ths project.
I know many people who would probably think that that would be quite a wonderful type of thing to have available.
If you haven't, already, then you should definitely also post your message in the "TekScopes" discussion group, at
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.
You might also want to post it in sci.electronics.repair, since there are lots of message-threads, there, about repairing older Tektronix oscilloscopes.
I imagine that certain people, such as Walter Shawlee, owner of Sphere Research (see
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), who sells gobs of used (and new) Tektronix scope parts (mostly for 2400-series and earlier scopes), among others, might want to help SELL them, too. (He and some others who might be interested frequent the TekScopes group that I mentioned.)
And, of course, you could contact the major used and surplus test equipment dealers, to see if they would be interested, and to get a little better feel for how large a market there might be for them.
I hope that you/they find that the potential market is large-enough to justify producing them, with a price that would sell enough of them.
And, there are also probably at least a few OTHER commonly-needed bits of Tek "unobtainium" that it could be very useful to have available. Walter and the TekScopes gang, as well as people like Jim Yanik (an ex-Tek tech) on sci.electronics.repair, should be able to clue you in about what parts, e.g. Tek-made ICs, might be the most-needed. In my opinion, it would be GREAT if a business of the right size could be developed that could be successful in designing, producing, and selling some of them. (Gee... Maybe someone could even buy the original Tek IC designs from Maxim, or whoever it was that Tek sold their IC business to, who then refused to make the (smallish) quantities Tek wanted, which forced the discontinuation of the 2400-series scope line.)
(Hmmm... I wonder if the military would keep more of their older Tek scopes, if only the common-failure, unobtainable PARTS were available... Just a random thought. But it might at least be yet-another potential market niche to look into... assuming they even still have very many old Tek scopes left, in their inventory... You could probably find out, more or less, by keeping track of which Tek models they're currently dumping, at
Thanks for kind words of support and the most excellent ideas Tom. This started out as a little project to produce a retrofit for my friends own older TEK scopes. His company does a lot of very interesting small volume custom electronics work, both analogue & digital, from ultra low power hybrids to multi-kW monster lighting ballasts, and is happiest designing and producing innovative solutions to often very awkward technical challenges. As with all us engineers (especially here in the UK) he will never be rich! I will forward this post on to him. I'm sure it will get his imagination going! Regards, JB
That'd be a great thing, but I don't see it generally happening. The price of used working scopes sets a very real upper bound on the price you could sell the unobtanium at. And if anything the prices of used Tek scopes have been falling steadily over the past 5 years or so (if maybe the absolute quantity isn't quite as big as right after the telecom bust).
And at the other end you've got the engineering and business costs of developing and selling the obtainable unobtanium. Unfortunately in most cases this is going to be way higher than the upper limit set by the above constraint.
Now, in the hobby realm, these rules of economics can be bent (e.g. it doesn't matter that you could make more money pushing carts at Wal-Mart than doing the engineering and sales legwork.)
And once the used equipment market really does dry up then the price of used working scopes could go up by a factor of 10 or 20 and *still* make a lot of this older Tek equipment a good buy. (I bought my 465B for about $100 a few years back, and you could argue that it's value is easily 10 times what I paid and I'd have to agree with you.) This would drive the economics well into viability.
Correction to the scope types (havving talked to the designer last night): The 465B is not included. My mistake. The actual scope types the retrofit modules are designed for are TEK2445/2465/2467.
"JB" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@individual.net:
Well,there are "A"and "B" versions of the 2445/2465 that use the same ICs. Interestingly,it's the main PCB that determines the bandwidth of the scope,not the IC's.(elements etched on the PCB,actually)
, if you scroll down a bit, it looks like the asking price on some of these items is $ 0.00 !??? ...... Oh. Never mind. That's just the "current bid" - apparently they expect a minimum bid of $50.00. Kinda makes me wish I had $50.00, except that it's in Virginia somewhere. :-)
Yeah. A zero price usually just means that bidding hasn't yet opened for that item.
To try to find out if you're lucky-enough that one of their warehouses that sells a lot of test equipment is near-enough to your location, you can go to the Advanced Search link and scroll down to the Location/Warehouse selector, and then peruse the list. They have sites all over the USA, as well as in some foreign countries. You can click the ones near you (Use Ctrl key to select more than one) and then either just go to the bottom and click the search button, which would bring up "everything" currently listed for the selected locations, or, fill in some of the other search criteria, to narrow it down. (e.g. FSC "6625" for test equipment, or a keyword such as "Tek")
I just noticed the $50 minimum, recently. It was $35 the last time I looked. Bummer.
NOTE that you DO usually have to be pretty darn careful. Nobody is saying that the stuff even WORKS. And the Condition Codes are not always to be believed, for various reasons (although that's sometimes actually in our favor: for example, maybe they had money in the "new equipment" budget but not in the "calibration" budget, heheh. And their "cal" (and "shelf life", e.g.) regulations can apparently sometimes be our best friend...). Also, basically, the only way to REALLY know what is included in an auction lot is to personally go and inspect it, ahead of time (which can be totally **COOL**, at some of the facilities!). The itemized lot descriptions, and the photos, cannot always be trusted.
Back when I bought a LOT of stuff from them, I got, if I was pretty diligent about checking the physical condition of the equipment (without powering it up, which none of the warehouses I ever went to would allow), good working equipment about 70% to 85% of the time. (So just buy two or more of whatever it is you want, heheh.) BTW, If you DO go to inspect the stuff, first, always ALSO look at the REAR of each piece. I remember being burned, once, when one lot of mainframe scopes I bought had many units that had the rear covers missing, ALONG WITH their power supplies! (And take a digital camera, so you don't have to make hand-written notes of flaws, etc.) And also remember to read any TAGS that are attached. RED ones are usually "Bad". Yellow ones are often good. Some of them even actually SAY things like "Unit is perfect. No money for Cal." Or they'll sometimes have details of a minor problem, if you're into repair...
Of course, nowadays, since they've sort-of wised-up and made the quantities in each lot so small, and have gone to "live" on-line bidding instead of sealed bids, prices are MUCH higher than they used to be, at least for the more-sought-after stuff. But, you can still occasionally get incredibly lucky, there, especially if you personally go inspect the stuff, first (and pull through everything in the large "tri-wall" boxes of elctronic equipment; I once found one (at Redstone Arsenal, in Huntsville, AL) that had three late-model top-of-the-line HP power meters (and sensors), BRAND NEW, and a high-priced (and also a brand-new late model) HP pulse gen, NONE of which were listed in the internet lot description! I was buying the box mainly for the brand new 7L13 spectrum analyzer plug-in that WAS listed, and had NOT inspected it prior to bidding, so it was a VERY nice surprise! I think I paid about $800 for the box, and sold about 1/2 the contents for about $4000, heheh.
Anyway, sorry to have blathered-on for so long about all of that. I do think it's a good place to keep an eye out for neat "stuff", and that it's *definitely* worth going to a pre-sale inspection at a site with a few hundred lots of test equipment, even just for the fun of it. LOTS to see! Good luck!
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