Fluke 190 cable kit purchase and a mystery Fluke board....help ! - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: Fraser
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2012, 07:39:39 pm
content: I have been fortunate enough to win an auction for a pile of brand new Fluke cables and accessories.The package arrived today and I had great fun sorting out just what I had bought. My expectations from the purchase were greatly exceeded as I have a set of leads and accessories that would normally cost an arm and a leg to buy through a retail source. The quality is usual Fluke, with superb finishes on all parts and great design. Many of the accessories are designed for the Fluke 190 series scopemeters.An interesting set of BNC modules caught my eye. They are as follows:50 Ohm Through Termination50 Ohm 10:1 attenuator1 Ohm current shunt for current measurement and monitoring.Nice quality itemsAll have references to the 190 series but should work with my other oscilloscopes. Some research has revealed that these are part of the 190 series M (medical) lead set for working with video signals and current flow measurement in medical equipment.Now the mystery.... included with this lead set was a small PCB that I recognise as a Demo board for an oscilloscope. The unit is marked 'PM8907 only' next to the power connector so it is a Fluke product. The PM8097 is the PSU for the 120 and 190 scopes.I have yet to find any information on the demo board. I can find detail of the older Demo board supplied with the deluxe PM9X series scopes but that may be different to mine as I cannot find a picture to compare.Does anyone recognise this board please ? If so , do you know which scope it was supplied with and/or do you know it's specifications for outputs etc.Any help is much appreciated.Aurora

author: kaz911
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2012, 08:03:02 pm
content: I dont know what the board does - but the ST thing is an eprom - and the you have a flipflop plus a 12 bit ripple counter. So some kind of signal generator based on what is in the eprom?anyway be careful using the fluke stuff on normal OSC since Scopemeters has floating grounds and normal oscilloscopes does not - so BNC connectors etc. are a bit different. Check the BNC connectors outer shield - they are usually plastic.

author: Bored@Work
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2012, 08:24:51 pm
content: What prevents you from just firing up the board? + and - are clearly marked on the board, it has a 78L05 5V voltage regulator on board, so connecting it to a 9V power supply should be ok. Then check the output with your favourite oscilloscope.

author: Fraser
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2012, 10:34:33 pm
content: Thanks for the comments.I was hoping that someone might know the model of scope that this demo board belongs to so that I can see what spec the outputs should be. Sometimes these test pieces are designed to do a performance test as well. I can fire it up and see what it produces but it would be nice to know what Fluke intended it to be used for. Some demo boards produce glitch tests buried in pulse trains....so it's good to know the spec of the unit so as not to miss such test functions. If it just provides a number of different monotonous pulse trains then its not that interesting to me. I shall take a look with a scope and see what it appears to do.I already have an Agilent 54654A Mixed source self training board that is somewhat more sophisticated and has proved useful in both self training on multi channel logic monitoring, glitch detection and basic oscilloscope testing. If anyone wants such a self training course and board, it is still available here at a reasonable price of GBP25 :http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Hewlett-Packard-54654A-Self-Paced-Training-Kit-/370574860539?pt=UK_BOI_Electrical_Test_Measurement_Equipment_ET&hash=item5647fba0fb54654A Training Manual is here:http://www.home.agilent.com/agilent/editorial.jspx?cc=GB&lc=eng&ckey=1000000350:epsg:man&nid=-536902447.0.00&id=1000000350:epsg:manUPDATE:As I suspected, the Demo board produces more than boring monotonous pulses. There is a DC level and 6 very different sets of signals of differing amplitude and composition plus logic 'words'. I will take a look at the signals produced and compare them to those of the PM9x series demo board. They may well be the same.

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 02, 2012, 11:22:07 pm
content: I am pretty sure the board generated 7 different analog waveforms, so it could easily be part of a course in learning how to use an oscilloscope.Just plug in 7 to 15 volts, and look at the outputs! Hours of fun.

author: ron
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 03, 2012, 12:11:14 am
content: FWIW: The PM8907 is15VDC, 300mA with the center contact negative.

author: Fraser
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 03, 2012, 09:29:51 am
content: Many thanks. The reference to the PM8907 was what confirmed that this little board was Fluke. Interestingly there is no other reference to Fluke or Philips on the PCB. As you state, the unit uses center negative on the socket...I hate it when manufacturers do that....most of my kit and standard psis use centre positive. I used a universal PSU plugpack to power the unit last night as you can change the polarity with ease. I am all for standardisation on PSY connector polarity...centre positive seems logical to me as the 'shell' of connectors is usually ground, chassis or 0V.Thanks for the comments though.I would of thought this little board would have been documented somewhere but it seems to be very obscure and Google doesn't fond anything usefull. The PM9x series demo board has only 5 outputs and the training section of the manual used one or more to demonstrate the clever capabilities of the PM9x DSO's for signal investigation and correct triggering etc.As has already been stated by kaz911, the board uses basic logic chips and an EPROM to generate the test signals...no Hi-Tech ATMEL VLSI or custom processors here ! Even a PIC chip could do the job well so I am thinking the board is built down to a budget or just a old design. I don't think anything similar is available from Fluke now. I like the idea of the demo board as it can be used to learn about a new 'toy' in the comfort of your living room and can also be used as a confidence check if the scope appears to be giving unusual readings or behaving in an unexpected manner. Maybe a clever person could design a 2012 version around a more modern chipset as a little confidence check device. HP produced a unit that would serve such a purpose and also acted as a signal source for simple fault tracing I attach a picture of the HP unit (HP AGILENT 53310A-QSSS). It would certainly be a useful bit of kit for the tool boxAurora

author: amspire
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 03, 2012, 12:57:19 pm
content: Quote from: Aurora on February 03, 2012, 09:29:51 amDon't underestimate the use of a ROM chip for storing a fixed waveform. It can hold eight 32,768 bit long samples of PWM and you can probably clock it at up to 100MHz. It never misses a single bit out. It blows any PIC processor out of the water, and it is beautifully simple and cheap.

author: scottsguard2
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: April 09, 2012, 08:20:16 pm
content: PM8907Goes to Scopemeter 97 and some others.Do you want to sell it? E-mail me, I have a Fluke 97