HP 2100 bulbs

[tony duell]

> 
> Greetings folks. I'm on a mission to get some replacement bulbs for my
> 2100A/S machines. The official part is 2140-0364 (38 of them per machine).
> Google appears to indicate that an identical replacement is CM7361-200. One
> of my old parts donor 2100's has both OL-783BP and OL-783BPC, but I don't
> know if those are completely identical and the previous owner may have just
> put something "close" in them instead (particularly important is estimated
> life, the 2140-0364 are around 10,000 hours I think, other replacement parts
> appear to be a lot less life-hours).

What is the electrical rating?

IIRC these are midget flange bulbs. When I needed one of those for an HP instrument,
I found I could easily get a wire-ended bulb with the same ratings. So I used that to 
repair the old bulb (!). Desoldered the wires from base contact and cap, wrapped it 
in paper and crushed the old glass bulb with pliers. Got rid of the debris and scraped
the cement etc out of the cap. Then inserted the new bulb and soldered the wires down 
(I didn't bother with cementing it in place, there was no need). I susepect on a DC circuit
you could fit a (white?) LED and series resistor into the old bulb cap.

Years ago you could get an adapter over here that screwed onto an LES (E5.5 ? )
bulb and turned it into a midget flange one. No idea where you'd get one now, and
for some odd reason the tap to cut the LES thread doesn't seem to exist. Maybe some
enterprising hacker should make said tap and turn out a load of the adapters.

-tony