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#1
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![]() "Chuck Harris" wrote in message ... Ed Price wrote: Designing and building a product to provide many years of use, and then capable of being repaired without access to unique components and/or exotic service equipment, is a concept so rare as to be thought a scam. Ed wb6wsn Imagine your cell phone if it was designed to be repaired, and used only common components. It would be the size of a briefcase. Do you think cell phones would be popular if they had to be briefcase sized? What about spectrum analyzers that needed to be contained in several 6 foot high rack cabinets? Is the world better or worse now that a 100MHz oscilloscope can be made the size of a paper back book? -Chuck, WA3UQV We were talking about repair and service equipment, not consumer items. A consumer item is expected to have a short life-cycle, and repairability is often not a concern. I never saw "multi-six-foot-rack analyzers"; the oldest & biggest I can recall were Singer FIM analyzers, which were about 24" wide by 30" tall and deep, and took four guys to move them (and the plug-in RF heads were a one-man lift!). OTOH, everything inside was reachable and easily repairable. If that 100 MHz scope can be built to have a reasonable cost to lifetime ratio, then it could be considered a consumer item, and a non-repairable investment. But to me, if I have to pay $10k or more for a piece of test equipment, it had better last quite a few years and allow me to do re-calibration and even moderately severe repair. Ed |
#2
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Ed Price wrote:
We were talking about repair and service equipment, not consumer items. A consumer item is expected to have a short life-cycle, and repairability is often not a concern. If you cannot see the relationship, then you need to stretch a bit. Everything in electronics, test equipment especially has grown in complexity and performance, as it has been reduced in size. Some of the reductions are there to make it possible to fit more test equipment in a given space, and some are there because of necessities of the new technology (eg. microwave speeds and low power consumption are better done with tiny sized components.) I never saw "multi-six-foot-rack analyzers"; the oldest & biggest I can recall were Singer FIM analyzers, which were about 24" wide by 30" tall and deep, and took four guys to move them (and the plug-in RF heads were a one-man lift!). OTOH, everything inside was reachable and easily repairable. Was your life, as a technician that is, made better or worse when that same 4 man lift SA was reduced to one that you could carry yourself with one hand, while carrying your 1G scope with the other? How about performance? Did it help you to have the bandwidth limit of your old 4 man lift SA rise from 1GHz to 300GHz? How about your 30MHz scope that is now 1GHz? Did you notice that the prices went DOWN? How about the heat generation? Have you ever worked in a lab that had no effective air conditioning, and also had a herd of Tek 500 series scopes whirring away?.. in the middle of the summer? I have, and I am quite happy not to do it anymore. We saw temperatures as high as 120F at times. No windows, one door, lots of fans. Turn off the equipment, and the AC did quite fine. And finally, how about the space savings? Does it help you or hurt you to recapture that floor space the old SA, and scope, and signal generator used? Tiny little custom component ridden hard to service test equipment made it possible to move away from that kind of scene. If that 100 MHz scope can be built to have a reasonable cost to lifetime ratio, then it could be considered a consumer item, and a non-repairable investment. But to me, if I have to pay $10k or more for a piece of test equipment, it had better last quite a few years and allow me to do re-calibration and even moderately severe repair. All of the $10K+ stuff I have seen from HP or Tek would easily meet your needs. Calibration? You cannot be serious. Most of this stuff is so finely calibrated that it would be beyond the capabilities of anything but an expert calibration lab to accomplish the task. Just having the standards necessary takes a whole lab... and a whole budget. I know this because I tried to set up a NIST traceable cal lab for my business, and eventually concluded that for me to do that, cal would have to become my exclusive business. I still have all the standards and equipment, but no time to put them to use... No money to keep them in cert with NIST. It is FAR cheaper to send the stuff out and get it calibrated. The "consumer grade" goodies in the test equipment market don't really need more than a simple calibration checking. I cannot tell you the last time my little Fluke DVM needed recalibration... Because it is 15 years old, and it has NEVER needed recalibration. Has something to do with the little fidgety custom components that are inside it. Same goes for my Tek 2465 scope. -Chuck |
#3
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![]() "Chuck Harris" wrote in message ... Ed Price wrote: We were talking about repair and service equipment, not consumer items. A consumer item is expected to have a short life-cycle, and repairability is often not a concern. If you cannot see the relationship, then you need to stretch a bit. Everything in electronics, test equipment especially has grown in complexity and performance, as it has been reduced in size. SNIP The "consumer grade" goodies in the test equipment market don't really need more than a simple calibration checking. I cannot tell you the last time my little Fluke DVM needed recalibration... Because it is 15 years old, and it has NEVER needed recalibration. Has something to do with the little fidgety custom components that are inside it. Same goes for my Tek 2465 scope. -Chuck You keep mixing the needs of an enterprise with those of a hobbyist. True, many of the people on the groups of this thread are electronics professionals who also have an electronics hobby interest. My comments have all been aimed toward the hobbyist. If you have a 2465B scope (one of the finest analog scopes I have ever used), then you are one extremely wealthy hobbyist, and the economic constraints most everyone else lives by must not apply to you. A hobbyist doesn't send anything "out" for calibration; they rely on the ability to cross-check their various gear with everything else in their collection. Sometimes, they might be able to compare one of their items with a professionally calibrated and traceable item. Or maybe they buy a new DMM, that's rated for 0.1% (whatever) and then proceed to adjust the rest of their stuff into agreement with that one new item. My point is that old equipment is repairable. Your point is that newer equipment is chock full of value, more reliable, and is easier to lift. There's no contradiction between these positions. BTW, your DVM always "needs" calibration, even if it is still within tolerance every time it's checked. Nice to know that it's stable, but nothing lives forever. As for "fidgety little components", should you ever apply a few watts of RF to the input of your 2465, you'll find it very difficult to repair by yourself, and the Tek bill for the job could very well approach the replacement cost. If the same had happened to a 465, then you would just be replacing a few small, precision resistors. Ed wb6wsn |
#4
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Hi Ed,
What I am NOT doing is trying to mix the needs of the hobbiest with the realities of companies that build for professionals. You are lamenting the fact that the newer gear is hard for hobbiests to maintain. That argument will go soft on HP or Tektronix, or any of several dozen other equipment manufacturers that make equipment for professionals. The simple fact that your abilities at repair stop at thru hole, technology, doesn't mean that devices that use hybrids, and surface mount technology are not repairable. The hybrid front end on the 2465 is quite repairable, but requires a little optical help, just like watch repair, an 1800's tecnology. From what I have heard, most of the parts in the hybrid are standard off the shelf surface mount faire... I have no direct knowledge of whether this is actually true. I did find it to be the case with the output hybrid in HP's 86222A sweeper plugin. There would be no more point in taking your busted 2465 to Tek for repair than there would be for your 465, they won't work on either. Checked is not the same as calibration. The case doesn't even get opened for "checked". And to your assertion that I am a rich hobbiest, I am not an electronics hobbiest at all! I am a self-employed electrical engineer, and I use the test equipment I own to earn a living. Sadly, for me electronics died as a hobby when I started getting paid to do it. The happy part is I truly enjoy my work! -Chuck, WA3UQV (I will admit that VERY obsolete electronics retains a hobby sort of thrill for me... Old tube gear, and old minicomputers.) Ed Price wrote: You keep mixing the needs of an enterprise with those of a hobbyist. True, many of the people on the groups of this thread are electronics professionals who also have an electronics hobby interest. My comments have all been aimed toward the hobbyist. If you have a 2465B scope (one of the finest analog scopes I have ever used), then you are one extremely wealthy hobbyist, and the economic constraints most everyone else lives by must not apply to you. A hobbyist doesn't send anything "out" for calibration; they rely on the ability to cross-check their various gear with everything else in their collection. Sometimes, they might be able to compare one of their items with a professionally calibrated and traceable item. Or maybe they buy a new DMM, that's rated for 0.1% (whatever) and then proceed to adjust the rest of their stuff into agreement with that one new item. My point is that old equipment is repairable. Your point is that newer equipment is chock full of value, more reliable, and is easier to lift. There's no contradiction between these positions. BTW, your DVM always "needs" calibration, even if it is still within tolerance every time it's checked. Nice to know that it's stable, but nothing lives forever. As for "fidgety little components", should you ever apply a few watts of RF to the input of your 2465, you'll find it very difficult to repair by yourself, and the Tek bill for the job could very well approach the replacement cost. If the same had happened to a 465, then you would just be replacing a few small, precision resistors. Ed wb6wsn |
#5
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Chuck Harris wrote in message ...
Hi Ed, What I am NOT doing is trying to mix the needs of the hobbiest with the realities of companies that build for professionals. You are lamenting the fact that the newer gear is hard for hobbiests to maintain. That argument will go soft on HP or Tektronix, or any of several dozen other equipment manufacturers that make equipment for professionals. The simple fact that your abilities at repair stop at thru hole, technology, doesn't mean that devices that use hybrids, and surface mount technology are not repairable. The hybrid front end on the 2465 is quite repairable, but requires a little optical help, just like watch repair, an 1800's tecnology. From what I have heard, most of the parts in the hybrid are standard off the shelf surface mount faire... I have no direct knowledge of whether this is actually true. I did find it to be the case with the output hybrid in HP's 86222A sweeper plugin. There would be no more point in taking your busted 2465 to Tek for repair than there would be for your 465, they won't work on either. Checked is not the same as calibration. The case doesn't even get opened for "checked". And to your assertion that I am a rich hobbiest, I am not an electronics hobbiest at all! I am a self-employed electrical engineer, and I use the test equipment I own to earn a living. Sadly, for me electronics died as a hobby when I started getting paid to do it. The happy part is I truly enjoy my work! -Chuck, WA3UQV (I will admit that VERY obsolete electronics retains a hobby sort of thrill for me... Old tube gear, and old minicomputers.) Ed Price wrote: You keep mixing the needs of an enterprise with those of a hobbyist. True, many of the people on the groups of this thread are electronics professionals who also have an electronics hobby interest. My comments have all been aimed toward the hobbyist. If you have a 2465B scope (one of the finest analog scopes I have ever used), then you are one extremely wealthy hobbyist, and the economic constraints most everyone else lives by must not apply to you. A hobbyist doesn't send anything "out" for calibration; they rely on the ability to cross-check their various gear with everything else in their collection. Sometimes, they might be able to compare one of their items with a professionally calibrated and traceable item. Or maybe they buy a new DMM, that's rated for 0.1% (whatever) and then proceed to adjust the rest of their stuff into agreement with that one new item. My point is that old equipment is repairable. Your point is that newer equipment is chock full of value, more reliable, and is easier to lift. There's no contradiction between these positions. BTW, your DVM always "needs" calibration, even if it is still within tolerance every time it's checked. Nice to know that it's stable, but nothing lives forever. As for "fidgety little components", should you ever apply a few watts of RF to the input of your 2465, you'll find it very difficult to repair by yourself, and the Tek bill for the job could very well approach the replacement cost. If the same had happened to a 465, then you would just be replacing a few small, precision resistors. Ed wb6wsn does that mean you still have some use for trash 80's? |
#6
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gw wrote:
Chuck Harris wrote in message ... -Chuck, WA3UQV does that mean you still have some use for trash 80's? Way too new! I'm more interested in old PDP 8, stuff, 8/I's in particular. Things that have absolutely no practical use ;-) -Chuck |
#7
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Chuck Harris wrote:
gw wrote: Chuck Harris wrote in message ... -Chuck, WA3UQV does that mean you still have some use for trash 80's? Way too new! I'm more interested in old PDP 8, stuff, 8/I's in particular. Things that have absolutely no practical use ;-) -Chuck So Chuck your looking for a Trash 8/E rather than a Trash 80. BTW my Trash 80 was a real Trash 80. R.S said it was uneconomical to repair, read out of warrenty replaced a bad ttl chip and away it went. A friend reworked the firmware to get rid of the infamous keyboard and cassette problems(we rescued 8 of them from that dumpster). Bill |
#8
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FYI: I still use the Color Computer to do laser light shows.
Steve, k,9,d,c,i "Chuck Harris" wrote in message ... gw wrote: Chuck Harris wrote in message ... -Chuck, WA3UQV does that mean you still have some use for trash 80's? Way too new! I'm more interested in old PDP 8, stuff, 8/I's in particular. Things that have absolutely no practical use ;-) -Chuck |
#9
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Chuck Harris wrote in message ...
gw wrote: Chuck Harris wrote in message ... -Chuck, WA3UQV does that mean you still have some use for trash 80's? Way too new! I'm more interested in old PDP 8, stuff, 8/I's in particular. Things that have absolutely no practical use ;-) -Chuck perhaps one of you guys can tell me this. when you see a unit on ebay and it says fresh calibration, what exactly does this mean to me as the buyer? does this mean it will probably be operating ok for a few years or is this something that has to be done yearly? for the home shop hobbyist ? thanks. |
#10
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![]() "gw" wrote in message om... Chuck Harris wrote in message ... SNIP does that mean you still have some use for trash 80's? Sorry, I never had much use for TRS-80's. But I do have a Commodore PET; a very original one (with the black tape deck). It has an IEEE-488 port, and a Basic that can control any IEEE-488 instrument. And, considering that it has a built-in monochrome monitor, it qualifies as a genuine boat-anchor, since it glows in the dark. g Ed |
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