On Wed, 13 Oct 2004 08:35:25 -0400, Chuck Harris
wrote:

wrote:

Let's have a show of hands.... How many really find a curve tracer to be
a piece of test equipment you use regularly and would dearly miss if you
didn't have one.


I remember the first time I used a curve tracer at work. Took me a
long time to realize that little line running out past 12 volts was
the whole show.

Later on, I got cheap kicks watching the temps scratching their heads
after hours of sitting in front of the Tek with the ludicrous
operation manual open next to them.

The books for the Tek 577/177 are sure a piece of .... work.
They don't even have one example of how to trace a transistor, and
have it survive... I guess you are just supposed to know.

Did anyone ever write a decent book explaining how to get the
most out of the Tek curve tracers?

-Chuck Harris

OBTW, I have used my 577/177 more for tracing tubes than for tracing transistors.


Yeah, now that I think about it, transistors did have a penchant for
dying Hot suckers too if you grabbed them too fast. As I recall,
keeping some transistors alive meant you might need to use heatsinks
and fans on the test device.

Never saw a good publication on the 577/177 myself, but I wouldn't be
surprised if there was one somewhere. I recall getting it to work was
mostly a process of elimination with the controls. You set the
obvious ones, and experimented with the mysterious ones. There were a
few bread crumbs scattered in the lousy manual. Just a few

Tek manuals for other models must have been better I once saw a
nice Tek GPIB curve tracer at a trade show. Bit expensive though.

I found out later when I got into purchasing test equipment that Tek
had a very helpful salesman assigned to our company who was only too
happy to run over any time. I could have called him up and had him
test the parts for me Something they don't teach you in business
school.