[not at all OT since it's over 20 years old]: Tektronix 466 - spares needed

For anyone willing to invest the time and effort into a Tek storage scope, of which I've looked at over a dozen in the last decade, yet never yet seen one that worked properly, I'd certainly recommend investing in the "real McCoy" probes, i.e. Tek P6106's or the like, and I'd not buy them unless they're complete with everything that came with them when sold new. An old TEK catalog will clear up what that is, but I've often bought stuff that was incomplete, only to find that it cost more to make it complete than it would have cost to buy it complete in the first place. The probes that were shipped with the 465 and 466 were 2-meter probes with the very useful end-clips and a couple of replacement probe tips. Be sure that they have the black plastic sleeve with the ground contact that tells the 'scope that it's a 10x probe that's attached, so that it will correctly display the voltage setting at the attenuator. There should also be both a long and a short groundig strap with a 'gator clip at the end. This should have a polyethylene boot on it so it won't contact other equipment. It should also have a few plastic identifier rings that snap at each end of the probe, so you can tell which trace you're going to impact with whatever you're doing with the probe. When you've got a probe on each channel, one on the external sweep input, and one on the 'Z' modulator at the rear of the instrument, it's pretty important to keep track of who's who. The Z-modulator, BTW, requires a 1x probe, so the ones shipped with the instrument won't be useable in that context. It's primarily useful for putting timing markers on the display when you're operating in uncalibrated timing or doing something else that's out of the ordinary. Generating high-speed timing to check the 'scope's calibration against a typical 100 ppm is quite straightforward. IF you have a 100 MHz oscillator and a 4.5ns GAL, you can double the frequency and generate /2 /5 and /10 outputs, which will line up (VERY nearly) with marks on the display on a properly calibrated instrument. If they don't line up precisely, you can make note and "live" with the uncalibrated instrument, which is not impossible, or you can get someone to help you with the calibration procedure. You can even spend a fortune to have it done, but it may not be worth it to you. If you make a table of deviation on each attenuation and each timing scale, you can pretty reliably interpolate the correct values. This will be less convenient if the linearity of the sweep is out of whack. Check your local libraries for information about the TEK 4xx series of solid state 'scopes. Other (5xxx, 7xxx)-series scopes don't work exactly the same and most universities have at least a few of this series in house, having stashed the user manuals somewhere. Perhaps, if you have a contact at the computer science lab in one of the local colleges, you can get a look at the user manual, which is not a huge document. You might even be able to arrange to photocopy it. Dick ----- Original Message ----- From: Loboyko Steve <sloboyko(a)yahoo.com> To: <cctalk(a)classiccmp.org> Sent: Tuesday, July 16, 2002 2:14 PM Subject: Re: [possibly OT]: Tektronix 466 - spares needed