DER EE DE-5000 Serial Number question - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: fitch
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2016, 02:25:23 am
content: I just received a supposed new De-5000 meter. Everything appears to be in order but the serial number is < 4000, and that seems incredibly low for an instrument in production for more than a few months. Anyone else receive one with such a low serial number?Thanks!

author: Fgrir
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2016, 03:09:11 pm
content: I just bought one a couple months ago and it has a 4xxx serial number. There does appear to be an underlined letter O at the beginning of my serial number, maybe that is significant as well?

author: luckyflyer
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2016, 03:10:27 pm
content: Received mine yesterday, serial 4105.

author: fitch
author_rank: Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2016, 04:31:19 pm
content: Thanks all! My s/n also starts with an O with an underline and 3xxx at the end. Close to the numbers you are talking about. Maybe theOindicates year or batch or something.At any rate my meter seems to be new. I opened it up and the PCB is rev 8. Will give it a workout.

author: jitter
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2016, 04:52:54 pm
content: Serial numbers may sometimes not mean that much.One of our customers specializes in laboratory instruments (as you can guess not mass produced stuff). They used to use a chronological serial numbering system with the serial number actually meaning the nthunit produced. At one point in time they decided to add a few letters and numerals. The extra bits helped identify equipment better, but the customer admitted that the main purpose was actually to create confusion among the competition!Other customers that let us put on serial numbers often have us start at a number far removed from 1, presumably for similar reasons.

author: evava
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: August 02, 2016, 05:10:08 pm
content: Not trying to steal the thread, but would you (all?) be so kind and try to measure 1 Ohm resistor with 10mm of wire,like herehttps://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/strange-behaviour-with-my-de-5000/Quoteand tell me (us) please, what your results are?I am about buying this Der EE, but I must admit that this behaviour I do not like at all.I hope that maybe this was solved?No one knows whether there exist other values of resistance and other lengths of wire cause same false results.I realize that it is not typical problem, but why e.g. Applent AT826 does not suffer with this? Or Applent has other hidden "features" like this?

author: eKretz
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 03, 2016, 11:25:36 pm
content: I picked one of these up a couple years ago - mine has a 6XXX serial number preceded by an 'L' so I'd presume that the letter is pertinent.

author: jitter
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2016, 05:26:19 am
content: Are you sure it's the same one? OP wrote that it has been in production for a couple of months... not years...

author: CustomEngineerer
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2016, 06:18:55 am
content: Didn't sound like OP was trying to say that it had only been in production a couple of months, just that he would expect anything that had been in production for a least a few months, to have more than 4000 already be produced.

author: jitter
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: August 04, 2016, 10:53:29 am
content: You're right, I misunderstood!Sorry for the confusion.

author: fanOfeeDIY
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: August 04, 2016, 01:31:58 pm
content: My DER EE DE-5000 has serial number:L00068**