On Thu, May 28, 2009 at 11:42 AM, Bill Sudbrink <wh.sudbrink at verizon.net> wrote:
After negotiations with the finance committee (aka
wife),
I bid on and to my surprise won this lot: 390053617609.
It's a Fluke 9010A for those that don't want to bother
to surf it and I got it for $66.56. ?That's right, 66
bucks and change. ?Pictures show it boots. ?So, now I
have to get pods of interest (anybody have a spare 6502,
8080 or Z80?) and read the manuals. ?Is there anything
interesting you can do with one without pods?
I have a 9010A and two pods (68000 and 6502). In my experience,
people buy the pods and get a free 9010A in the box. I would
personally consider finding pods for $50 each to be a great price, but
$75 and up to be a more ordinary price.
You could look over the service manual (PDFs pointed to from
<http://vt100.net/manx/details/59,15572>) and see if there's anything
interesting in there, but there probably isn't much you can do if you
are podless - maybe test internal memory or the tape drive and such.
They are great devices, but the value is in having a pod matched to
your target system. I first used mine with its 68000 pod in 1984 when
it was owned by my employer. It was one of the things I made sure to
rescue when the company closed. It was only a few years ago that
picked up second pod (and I'm pretty sure the seller is/was on this
list). I've been half-heartedly looking for a Z-80 pod for about 3-4
years, but haven't needed one badly enough to spend what it will
probably cost to get one.
When you get a pod, do yourself a favor and get a stack of
machined-pin sockets to match. We broke numerous pins on the sockets,
but never broke a pin on the pod. Typically, we had a stack of 3-4
sockets, both for overhead clearance and for sacrificial pins. We
*never* removed the lower socket from the pod, in part because there
was always at least one more socket below that to take the mechanical
stress of installation/deinstallation several times per day (we used
this Fluke for production testing of every one of our boards before
plugging it into a PDP-11 or VAX).
-ethan