I located another oscilloscope treasure trove through Craigslist, and could not resist the call of the wild... I might refurbish and sell some or all of these, but I also might just refurbish and keep them. Two of them are very cool!
I always get a bill of sale, just in case I happen to get pulled over by a cop. I can just imagine what they would think of a guy in a beat-up old Subaru full of electronics lab equipment. They would probably think they'd caught a junkie with a bunch of stolen stuff on his way to the pawn shop.
Below, ready to unload the loot. Click any image to enlarge.
I picked these up over in Spokane, from a facility that was no longer manufacturing things in the US. Frankly, it was a pretty sad place to visit. You could tell that at one time it had been a very active factory, but was now just a shell of its former self. There was still tape on the factory floor, specifying where to walk, but the room is now empty and silent.
As I looked over the oscilloscopes in the large storage room, the guy I was doing business with mentioned that this room had once been the employee cafeteria. Back in the day, they served the employees biscuits and gravy each morning, gratis. Today, the manufacturing section is quiet. It contains a handful of very large machines that were probably too big to be worth the cost of removing.
That company's current factories are now located in Mexico and Vietnam. It made me sick to think of all the great well-paying local jobs that had been lost. I'm not sure if it's government policy to export all of our good jobs to other countries, but that seems to be a pretty consistent story across a number of industries - steel, automotive, electronics, lumber, aviation maintenance, etc, etc, etc.
This sort of intentional industrial dismantling isn't something I see on a daily basis, so it hit me pretty hard. I don't normally comment on political/economic stuff on this blog, but... why does this only happen to working people who just wanted to do an honest day's labor and to raise a family? Like I said, visiting this zombie of a factory made me really sad.
Anyhow, as a result of these guys deciding to stop inventing and building products here in the US, they no longer needed this stuff. I paid a quarter to half of what you'd pay on Ebay for these oscilloscopes. They were just gathering dust, so they might as well be put to good use. The scopes came with some nice extras - like power cords, probes, manuals, and storage bags. When they were set aside for storage, they were in good working order. I'm really looking forward to checking these out!!!
Unfortunately by the time I returned home from Spokane, I only had time to unload, take a few pictures, and pack lunch before going to work. There was zero time for performance testing.
First up, a Tektronix 2245A. This scope is in excellent condition, and it came with a storage bag mounted to the top, as well as a power cord. This one is very similar to the 2246A and 2247A scopes I already have, but simpler, and with fewer controls. I'm pretty sure it's the base model of this series.
Inside the storage bag of the 2245 was an operator manual for a 2246A. Wrong manual for this oscilloscope. Fortunately I have three 2246A scopes that didn't come with a manual, so this works out OK!
Also inside the blue pouch was a small ziploc bag with a few minor goodies.
Next up, is a vintage (1980-1985) Tektronix 468. This one is an early digital storage oscilloscope (DSO). The top section is the digital controls portion. As an analog scope, this one can deal with up to 100 MHz. In digital mode, it's only good for about 10 MHz, but it can capture and store data that the analog section cannot. I'm really looking forward to playing with this one and learning how the digital section works. It's several inches deeper than the other scopes, and it weighs about 50% more than they do. It's a really heavy sucker, and quite dusty, too. You can see all the smudges in the pic.
Inside the tiny storage bag of the 468 I found an instruction manual, a power cord, and a genuine Tektronix probe. Sweet!
I happened to notice a third oscilloscope after deciding to buy the first pair. It was on a different storage rack, and way down at floor level After noticing it, I asked - and yes, it was also for sale.
The scope below is pretty interesting - it is a Tektronix 2430A. This one is fully digital, meaning that the signal sampling, processing, storage and display is done using binary logic, just as it would with a modern scope. Unlike modern scopes, this one was manufactured before LCD displays became cheap and commonplace, so it still uses a CRT to display wave forms.
Up on top of the oscilloscope is a box with a floppy drive labeled 2402A. I was stunned to learn while researching this oscilloscope, that this is an IBM-compatible 286 AT computer! It looks like it has an installed hard drive too! This piggyback PC was called a Tekmate.
Below, the 2430A and 2402A came with quite a bit of documentation. All of this documentation was handed over to me in a plastic bin, which you can just see at the top left of the picture below.
It may be a decent plastic bin, but its real purpose in life is to be the cover for the 2430A oscilloscope. I only realized that this was a scope cover after removing all the documents from it.
The pouch of the 2430A contained an absolute gold mine of accessories - manuals and several legit Tektronix probes. I have a couple of cheap Chinese-made probes, but the Tek probes are really high-quality stuff, and I'm very happy to have them.
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