On 2017-Jan-26, at 1:48 PM, Josh Dersch wrote: Here's a catalog page and pic of the Northern Scientific NS-544 from 1967/8, I wonder if the NS-600 might be a subsequent model: https://books.google.ca/books?id=25-jBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA716&lpg=PA716 This is billed as a Digital Memory Oscilloscope. It sounds like a contemporary of and very similar to the HP5480 Digital Signal Analyser I have, from the same era. The NS-544 and HP5480 are basically precursors to the modern DSO, but rather than being intended as a general purpose scope (too slow and too expensive), they had modes and were targeted for applications that could benefit from the digitisation and (numerical) storage and manipulation of the signal. They could do things like signal averaging and very-slow-signal capture. The HP-5480 had a mode which which would produce histograms of pulse rates (think nuclear decay rates). So they contain AD converters, digital memory (core can be expected as Bill mentioned, if it's from the late 60s, that's what's in my HP5480), adder/ALU, and a whack of hardwired logic to control it all. Pic of the front panel controls would be interesting and might help categorize it.

There is a small chance someone at Nicolet may remember this Tracor/Northern was in Middleton, very near by. I don't remember if this was the origin of their DSO line http://www.theoscilloscopeshop.com/nicolet-oscilloscopes.html On 1/26/17 11:07 PM, Josh Dersch wrote: