Well crap, I just bought my third TDS754D for the last week.
One is smashed to the point of parts mule, one is not working (power supply repair required) and one is working, but
appears to have the hard disk option (from what I can see peeking in the side vents in the listing pictures). Wishing upon a star that at least one of these has the hard disk option. Where's a demon when you need to sell a soul?
I plan to fix the not-working one, unlock options and sell it, then pull the hard disk option from any units that have it for installation into my TDS784C, Spit polish, unlock options and sell the other, and use the parts unit for, well, parts.
I'm tossing up whether I should see if I can mod a 500MHz 754D into a 1GHz 784D and keep it, as it is newer with more fun upgrades/software/etc than my 784C, but my 784C is a
genuine 784C with the matching stickers... Hmm, keep both if the upgrade is successful? yeah, probably.
As for tonight's work, I got a TDS power supply all working again. Blown small 'control' mosfet went bad, causing two large switching mosfets to turn on at the same time, popping one of them.
I also replaced
C13 C17, it is critical for the standby power and as such works hard over the years as it is always in use whenever the unit is connected to mains.
Apparently when it wears out and the ESR rises, it puts stress on some TVS diodes that have to tke spikes and junk that the cap should be filtering. They then die and take out a BU508A transistor that ends up killing your standby power and then your scope goes dark.
The cap is a low-ESR Nichicon (should be 0.39ohms), mine measures 2 ohms, so out with it and in with a new low-ESR cap.
Next for this scope (744A, modded up to 784A) is to make a set of replacement NVRAM chips as the ones in the unit were failing, causing a-little-more-than intermittent boot issues.
So, if you have, or get a TDS500/600/700 scope, go replace C17, along with the four 1000pF Rifa caps in the PSU!
I would be inclined to re-type it on the computer and print it on some laser printer sticker paper, laminate it with some clear book covering sticker sheet (Or get sticker paper with lamination sticker in the pack) and stick on a completely new set of instructions.
That way you aren't sealing in a ratty old bit of torn paper for evermore.
So to do this I'll have to find a serif font that looks close enough. Shouldn't be too hard. Only thing is there are some primitive graphics used consisting of a rectangle with text either above or below it centered with the sentence. Will have to work on how to do that - maybe insert an externally created graphic.
The "sticker" that Boonton made is not paper. It's some sort of very thin metallic sheet laminated with plastic on top. The metallic look isn't so obvious though, it's pretty muted, so that I think light gray paper could be used then the protective clear book covering.
There is such a thing as silver laser paper and silver laser sticker paper. However, many reviews say the text doesn't stick to it well, and I don't want a 50 pack of that just for a couple of prints. Also, I think it will look too flashy or "decorative" for this project. I don't feel like wasting $10 for something that won't work for this.
The first step is just to simply type in the text and get a working document. So let's see what I can come up with using light gray paper with a re-creation of the text and graphics. Hey can it be harder that making 3D buttons LOL ...
Ah yeah, I didn't notice it was metallic. There's some stuff I use for front panels, it comes with matching clear sticky plastic to laminate on top to prevent the print from scratching off, it looks like silver metallic paint and is really nice for front panels, but may be a bit much for your application.
If you can lump it on a scanner (hahahaha) or take a good direct down photo and measure the label size, it should be relatively easy to draw up the graphics to scale. I use Rhinoceros 3D, Illustrator, and Photoshop for my labelling stuffs, but I'm sure they MS Office Suite, or open source software can do the job just fine.