Oh no....... ohhhhh...... noooooooooo.... I did it AGAIN !
Remember just a few days ago I talked about this horrible Gould 1604 scope that drove me nuts when I fixed it a year ago ? How I said it was a horrible experience that brought many grey hair, and how I promised myself I would never, ever buy a Gould scope again ?.....
Well I just bought THE EXACT SAME SCOPE again !!!!!
Just received it this evening, few piccies below.
However there IS a reasoning behind this scope.... kinda.
Previous one, I initially bought for me, I mean, to keep it, add it to my collection, not resell it. Back in the day I remember seeing ads/brochures for these things. The front panel looked like it was off of an alien space ship with its myriad of push buttons, and the built-in printer was like.... just... WOW !!!
Such an extraordinary luxury I thought at the time, so convenient, so insanely high-tech.... a PRINTER INSIDE YOUR SCOPE ?!
Even our fancy Tektronix scopes in the lab didn't have a printer in them !
So when I saw one for only 50 Euros + shipping, defective / no power, I thought cool, quick power supply fix and I can add one of my dream scopes to my collection ! How nice !
Then the thing actually arrived and... oh my god.
Thing was missing the carry handle, didn't pay attention to that in the sellers pictures. Much worse, show stopper : the scope did NOT have the printer ?!
I always assumed it was a standard feature on all these Gould scopes, how foolish of me ! Couldn't tell from the sellers picture as he didn't show even a glimpse of the top of the scope.
Then as I worked on it to fix it, realized the seller took it commmmmmpletely apart, 100%. Absolutely every piece of it had been taken apart. Half the screws were missing, and those that were still there, were usually mismatched and not the correct type of screw in the right place.
Guy made an attempt to fix the corroded traces on the main board from the leaked battery... had to finish the job, took ages to track down the faulty / broken trace... hiding under a big RAM chip of course !
That was too much to take... so flipped it as soon as I managed to get the thing going.
So now, a year later or so, another one pops up, exactly the same model, a 1604 (4 channels, 20MHz, 16MS/s, analog+digital).. but bought it anyway because this one looks to be a much better deal !
- This one I could clearly see it had the printer !!!!
CHECK
- Carry handle NOT missing ! CHECK
- Ad inspired a lot more confidence than the previous scope. Says it worked 15 years ago when he last used it. So most likely the battery leaked and bricked the scope. Except now I now how to fix this... I know where to look and exactly what awaits me, I am "prepared"...
- Comes with a couple probes. A generic unmarked x1/x10 probe, but also a nice looking Lecroy probe, model P9020 which according to Google is good for a wooping 350MHz ?! Scope is only 20MHz !
Cool, I will take that !
It's missing the ground alligator clip and retractable "hook" to grab component leads, but hey, it's not mandatory. I can just stick a ground "spring" around the tip and I will be in business
- Even comes with the front cover !
-.. .cost me only 20 Euros + only 6,5 Euros for shipping ! 26,5 Euros delivered !!!
So really when you add everything up... I just could not say no !
Quick power up. 100% same symptoms as the previous one : Powers up but nothing on the CRT, front panel unresponsive, and only two LEDs that show signs of life : Power ON LED, and the "Triggered" status LED that's blinking randomly.
Been there done that. Scope brain dead because of leaky battery breaking traces in the CPU RAM area. The two "working" LED are driven purely by independent analog stuff, they would still light up even if I pulled the CPU from the scope...
First look at the outside of the scope seems to confirm my good feeling about this scope having NOT messed with this time : all screws are still there, not a single one missing, and they are all identical, no mismatch.
So that one I think is a keeper. With the painful experience from the previous scope, I should be able to fix this one way faster and with way less headaches !!! Then just need to give the plastic trim pieces around the front panel, and printer panel a good "retro-bright" session (worse case paint them...) to make it look good again, and that will be it !
I am exhausted, 2H30 AM here, going to bed. Will open up the scope tomorrow. I don't even have anywhere to store it ! All storage shelf space is already taken ! That scope will have to take up space on the work bench for now...
I may be able to free a spot on the shelves as I have an old Brown Philips scope I bought to fix and flip. So the sooner I get round to fixing it, the sooner I can reclaim the space and put the GOULD in its place...