So here I am, doing variable line frequency test and ... phssss ... PHUT ... *BAM* ... followed by a stench wafting about. I looked at what was supposed to be 265V/50Hz sine and found a totally distorted 1Hz, plus lots of heat in my amp which luckily survived.Turns out the Wavetek 23 function generator became totally "loose" in frequency. Have to wrap up some stuff today so I tried and was able to goose it to 50Hz by cranking it to 995Hz (above 1kHz it completely loses it). But that's a white-knuckle ride because the test runs mostly unattended.Does anyone know whether these things have a typical pathology that can be fixed? Like this or that cable always comes loose, etc.? I have re-seated the EPROM, battery is fine, re-seated connectors, nada. I do have the manual but diagnosing it from synthesizer to the end will take hours because it's a uC driven instrument.-- Regards, Joerg"gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam.Use another domain or send PM.

What smoked, the Wavetek or the Amp? Sounds like a cap let loose.You need to put the smoke back in.T

Wavetek 23 croaks, anyone know of "notorious" falure areas?

May 04, 2010 41 Replies

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Nico Coesel 16 years ago

I agree. Yesterday I clicked on an advertisment for Tek scopes on Farnell's website. It turns out their TDS1000 and TDS2000 series only have 2.5kpts of memory. Even my old 2230 has more memory (4kpts). I really don't understand why they cut back on the memory depth. The

2430 and the TDS200 series have to do with 1kpts which really cripples the usability of a digital storage scope.

Anyway I ended up buying an Iwatsu analog/digital scope from Ebay to replace the 2230.

Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply indicates you are not using the right tools... nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.) --------------------------------------------------------------

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Joerg 16 years ago

I bought an Instek GDS-2204 instead of Tektronix. 25k memory, no nickel-and-dime games on the software (all a free download), its control codes are public, and so on. You simply can't do serious pulse-echo work with 4k or less. Not even have a good look at SPI/I2C/RS232 hickups. What were they thinking when writing the specs? Or, were they thinking?

Did the 2230 die? Those were from the good old days, stuff lasted an eternity.

Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.

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