RCT Swap Report (Long)

This year's Radio Club of Tacoma (WA) swap was both a miracle and a disappointment. It's rare that the two go together, I know, but it did in fact happen that way this year. I claim "appropriate posting" to the list for this because what I brought back is over ten years old, and can most definitely be used to troubleshoot computer systems. The miracle: Every so often, someone will show up with one or more pieces of hardware or test gear that are incredibly useful, are either working (but may be out of cal) or have only minor problems, are priced to move rather than at "E-pay average," and where the seller has little knowledge of just what it is they're moving. Such was the case yesterday morning, and the fact that I had gotten seller space this year, and was as a result able to walk around the place before they let the general public in, is the key reason I think I scored the following for all of $250. Two Tektronix digital scope mainframes: An 11401 and its GHz-capable counterpart, an 11402. Along with said mainframes came a total of four 11A32 plug-ins (two-channel vertical, 400 MHz official spec, but you know Tek always rates conservative), an 11A72 (up to 1 GHz two-channel vertical, 50 ohm inputs), and a big operator's manual about 2.5 inches thick. After I picked up my jaw off the floor, and wrote the guy a hasty check, I found, in the operator's manual, a postage-paid reply card from Tektronix that offered a free service manual for the whole works simply by filling it out and feeding it to the nearest USPS drop box. The 11401 mainframe had only one minor problem: It failed it's self-test at the A/D converter section. Said problem was completely cured by the simple expedient of disassembling the unit, vacuuming out the dust, and reseating the few socketed chips on the analog board. As for the '402, I'll try the same tactics on it 'cause I don't think anyone's tried it as yet. It's fine for the first hour or so. After that, if you power-cycle it, you get a failure in the timebase section for the 20 MHz clock. If you let it cool down a while, the failure goes away. I wager 1,000 Quatloos that this is another case of 'press the chips back down and vacuum.' Even if it's not, it still sounds like a minor part. As for the plug-ins, two of the four 11A32's fail their self-test with gain calibration errors for Channel 1. I'm not sure what's causing this, but I hope it's minor. My only other complaint: The '402 has some light screen burn. Fortunately, the CRT is nothing really special: Just a mono-green tube made by Mitsubishi. Bet I could even find a generic replacement. And now, the disappointment(s): The event was supposed to go until 15:00 local, but by 13:15 or so, everyone but the commercial sellers had cleared out. Also, the event itself was not well attended. I'd be surprised if we broke 1,000 people the entire day. As for variety of stuff, that worked out pretty well, but even here in the NW I'm starting to see less of people that want to tinker, and more of people that just want to 'plug-and-play.' I base this on the fact that I saw a LOT of "interesting" items in terms of older test gear, but practically none of it sold even though the prices seemed pretty reasonable (to my eyes). There was more than adequate seller space (three buildings worth), but the buildings were separated by several hundred feet of distance, and required considerable walking to cover. While the walking itself was not a problem, I found it annoying that everything was not all in one place, as it is with most other swaps. Finally, I think the club's timing was bad. There was a major computer swap meet (the AM Northwest people) held in Kent the same morning as the RCT event. They even started at the same time. I'm sure this was a drain on attendance because I've been to the AM-NW events, and they definitely run all day and are often quite packed. I'll be forwarding feedback to RCT on the above, along with suggestions for better timing and some other minor improvements. 'Til next time... -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Bruce Lane, Owner and head honcho, Blue Feather Technologies http://www.bluefeathertech.com // E-mail: kyrrin(a)bluefeathertech.com Amateur Radio: WD6EOS since Dec. '77 (Extra class as of June-2K) "Our science can only describe an object, event, or living thing in our own human terms. It cannot, in any way, define any of them..."