The Daring Dufas wrote:

On 8/10/2012 7:28 AM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

The Daring Dufas wrote:

On 8/8/2012 6:28 AM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

The Daring Dufas wrote:

The craftsmanship built into a lot of the old gear would be hard to
duplicate today with the corporate pencil pushers involved but IC
chips and surface mount components of commercial and military grade
quality and construction makes for some very reliable gear. ^_^


My hobby was restoring old test equipment, and the occasional high
end radio. My last job was building $80,000 telemetry receivers.


Cool, you know of what I speak. ^_^


At least one of the early units was in constant use over 30 years by
NASA, and had never been serviced. That was in 2000. It may still be
in use, but I no longer work there to find out.


I repaired a bunch of old Tektronix TDR's that had the cute little chart
recorder modules in them. 1502 and 1503's as I recall. ^_^



Tektronix equipment was built to be repaired. Until the bean
counters took over. Then it was module swaps, and short term support
before they are considered scrap. I'd love to have a 2465 series scope,
but there are several high failure rate parts that are only availible
form a donor unit. Kind of like putting old, bald tires on a car an
hoping for another 100 miles.


Have you ever seen any of the Sony/Tektronix equipment? Oddball,
Japanese built things like the 324 scope?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/180743378012


You can't even buy a power cord for them.