24 Sep
2010
24 Sep
'10
1:59 p.m.
What's the point? If you like the 85, buy two
or three more on eBay
The point is that I don;'t like wating money. And I don't like throwing
stuff away that could be repaired.
I have no particualr love of the Fluke 85, and I don't even have a love
of Fluke. The reason I asked if anyone had a dead 85 was that I have one
with a dead display. If there's been a dead one out there with some other
fault, then either maybe I could have bought it to extract the display
and fix mine, or maybe the owner of that one would want to buy mine for
parts. Either way it wuld seem to get an instrument workign again.
and put them in the closet until you need them.
I'm all for repair
Wait a second. This display fialed for no discenrable (to me) reason. It
was OK one day, I put the meter away fairly carefully (I put it in the
tool drawer, I didn;t drop it, or throw it in), next day it had lost some
liquid crystal. There's no reason to believe that if I'd had a spare
meter it would nevessarily still be good. And ICs do fail even when not
pwered...
repair repair to keep things going, but for very small
and relatively
inexpensive (when purchased used) like handheld DMMs, crap, man...just
get another one. Or three or four, if you like them so much that you
want to make sure you'll never be without one.
(there's a Fluke 85 on eBay right now at $85)
Firstly, I don;t have $85 sprre at the moment. Sad, but true. I
certainly don't have 2 or 3 times that amount. Not to mention shipping
(based on ther things sent to me from the States, I would estimate abotu
$30 per meter). And VAT (tax).
In any case, if I buy 3 old Fluke 85s on E-bay, I am getting towards the
price of a new Fluke (or Agilent) meter. And at least in the case of the
Flike I'd get effective at least a 10 year warranty on it. Not that I
like trusting warranties, and not that I like instruments without service
manuals, but it would seem a lot more sensible ot do that that stock up
on old insterumnwets that may or may not have failed by the time I need
them, and for which spares are unavailable.
It's a pity I am not looking for a benchtop or rackmount instrument.
There are plenty of thsoe from HP and/or Fluke. And they still seem to
ahve real service manuals. The older ones have few, if any, custom parts
(in the case of HP, you might find a 'nanoprocesosr' (HP's
microcontroller), but AFAIK that was always ROMless and was used in
enough other products to be able to find them quite easily [1]. Of course
I can't afford them either, but at least they'd meet my other reuirements.
[1] If anyone has the instruction set for this, I am looking for it...
I don't get it. Some new Agilent bench DMMs have proper service manuals.
With component-level scheamtics etc. They are all SMD inside, the manuals
have warnings that using the wrong tools will ruin the PCB and void the
warranty (which seems reasonable enough). Now why isn't such repair
supported on the hendheld ones? Should I conclude that some of them are
direct-on-board epoxy-capped chips? I'd expect that in a cheapo DMM, I am
not at all happy about it in a 300 quid instrument.
-tony