What do you want to see?

[T4P]

wow. an lm301 opamnp in metalcan to99 .. made by AMD ...

The weirdest stuff you expect in modern day ... fair enough back then they weren't broke and did have their own fab

Now they are with Advanced Technology Investment Co. for fabbing and etc. back in their old fab ...
Ah, how nostalgic

[lowimpedance]

Are those rear connectors standard and easy/affordable to acquire?

[/quote]
I seriously don't even know what they're called. They look similar to Amphenol's PT series but are threaded and not bayonet locking. I suppose they chose these connectors for a reason. I was thinking of replacing them with DB-9 connectors.

Any suggestions for future teardowns?
[/quote]

They look like the GH series from Positronics Connectors, (the outside collar is perhaps a custom addition to prevent pin damage and provide a secure connection!).
http://www.connectpositronic.com/products/51/CircleHex/

[tekfan]

I'm glad that people still like to see the insides of old stuff. Probably because it's much more interesting than a big green surface mount board we see today.


Tektronix 7613 storage oscilloscope mainframe

I got this mainframe off German ebay several years ago. It was advertised as defective, but when I got it there seemed to be nothing wrong with it. This scope is from around 1983. It is an analog storage scope meaning that it can retain the image on the screen untill you hit the erase button. There is also a variable persistance function that will slowly fade away the traces. This is a very nice scope for low frequency measurments, The bandwidth is 100MHz, has room for 3 plugins (2 vertical amps + 1 timebase).

Front panel of the scope


Typical display for the Tek 7000 series. Readouts display vertical sensitivity and sweep speed.


With the sides removed the blue CRT shield and deflection amplifiers can be seen.


Vertical amplifier board. The differential signal comes to the amplifier trough a delay line which is wound around the CRT.
A lot of gain and compensation trimmers can be seen.


Closeup of the driver stage. It's really hard to get a picture that shows all the free standing components.


Vertical output transistors. These are connected directly to the vertical deflection plates of the CRT.
They are mounted on a ceramic substrate that dissipates the heat and reduces capacitive coupling which would decrease the bandwidth.


Horizontal deflection amplifier.


This is probably something that most analog oscilloscopes don't have. This is the storage board.
It controls the CRT target and storage grid and erase voltages.


Front panel controls and calibrator board. Very high quality Bourns potentiometers were used.


Now that's a real mains switch. None of that standby nonsense.


Readout board. This is proabably what made the 7000 series special (that and the vast range of interchangable) plugins.
This generates the characters for the various control settings. The small board on the left with the diodes is for protection.
The early versions didn't have it. Behind the readout board is the HV power supply for the CRT.


Low voltage regulator board. This supplies +5, +15, -15, +50, -50 and +130 volts to the entire mainframe and plugins.
The series pass transistors are mounted between an aluminium plate for heat dissipation.


So it had to come to this. Looks like I can't stand the fact that I don't know how a CRT in a scope looks.
Remove a couple of screws and it comes out. Simple as that. Very nice construction.
For some reason it looks like they haven't painted the ceramic part of the CRT with the usuak Tektronix blue color, but rather left it bare.


The electron gun and the segmented deflection plates can be seen in the neck of the CRT.


Comparison of two electron guns. Tektronix 7613 on the bottom and Hewlett Packard HP1741A on the top.
Looks like HP got away with not using segmented deflection plates. For some reason it looks like HP always made all-glass CRTs rather than the more rugged Tektronix glass ceramic type.


And the front of the gun assembly (HP1741A). The horizontal deflection plates and the two flood guns can be seen.
This should give an idea on how a storage CRT looks inside.

They look like the GH series from Positronics Connectors, (the outside collar is perhaps a custom addition to prevent pin damage and provide a secure connection!).
http://www.connectpositronic.com/products/51/CircleHex/

Thanks for that link. Yes, they may be just those connectors. Time to get out the calipers to measure them.

[muvideo]

Coincidence that just now I was playing with a broken 7A22 and you posted these photos.
Nice unit and nice plugins, the 7A13 and 7B15 in particulare are interesting.

Interesting also the tube particulars, there was a discussion on TekScopes some time ago
about why Tek used composite tubes, very expensive i think, this is a video about them
from classictek.org:
http://tinyurl.com/csv4lgu

Fabio.

[Lukas]

Thanks for all your great reviews and teardowns, tekfan!
I'm interested in seeing the DSA602A and the 1502 TDR.

[FenderBender]

This equipment is beautiful. As you said, older equipment is just so much more interesting than newer equipment, well at least at first glance. Usually, no cut corners, overbuilt, and well constructed. And with really cool looking components. Yeah, even though an Agilent MSO might outperform most of the 20-40year old scopes available, those older scopes are just lovely.

Please continue. We are blessed to have someone with such a vast collection of equipment!

[tekfan]

Tektronix Type 106 Square-Wave Generator

This is basically a generator with outputs for a very fast rise time signal (below 1ns) or a high amplitude square wave (120 volts). It was made around 1969. You can still see many elements of the tube era Tek equipment. Although this generator is mostly solid state it still has 6 tubes in total.

Front panel view. Sadly I don't have the enclosure for this generator. Maybe that's not bad at all since I can always look at the lovely construction inside.


The connectors on the front panel are General Radio Type 874. These provide excellent high frequency performance. They were commonly used in high BW equipment at the time.


View from the top. The big power transformer, filter caps and the tubes can be seen.


Frequency selection switch and the vernier potentiometer at the back. The two small tubes are part of the osillator circuit.


These four tubes are part of the amplifier circuit which outputs up to 120 volts.
The tubes are connected in parallel to provide 240mA maximum current.


The tubes run very hot so they have a metal sleeve that touches the tubes and dissipates heat from the glass.
I think audiophiles like to use these tubes in preamp designs, but let's not go there.


Fan, thermal shutdown and part of the low voltage power supply.
The components are mounted on ceramic terminals. Classic Tektronix construction right there.


Business end of the generator. The two fast rise time circuits.


The fast rise time is achieved with two fast turn-on GaAs diodes.


Power transformer with many taps and windings for all the supply voltages.


Bridge rectifiers and filter capacitors for the power supplies.


Overvoltage protection neon bulbs, high amplitude output connector and a few melted capacitors.
Looks like someone was in here before.

[T4P]

That's an actual fan 

[Kevin.D]

Beautiful .I love looking inside 50's 60's vintage electronics ,they are like the steam engines of the electronics world ,so much to see .

[FenderBender]

Brilliant. Hand made goodness.

[vk6zgo]

Beautiful .I love looking inside 50's 60's vintage electronics ,they are like the steam engines of the electronics world ,so much to see .

You would have loved the 50s vintage Broadcast Transmitters I used to work on.
You could walk around inside them!