HP/Agilent 3324A teardown - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2013, 12:39:16 am
content: Teardown time ...An Agilent 3324A is ripped apart. The beastie had problems with its power supply. A blown regulator prevented it from starting up. It would go all wonky and sit there flashing its display and clicking its relays. Darn ol lm317 died. For no apparent reason. After replacing it the machine works perfectly fine. This is a kind of an odditiy machine. A direct successor to the 3314A and a crossbreed with the 3325A it sports a mixture of parts making this a funny machine. It has IC's in metal can(TO-100) , Ceramic sidebrazed DIL , Standard plastic dil and SMDA all on the same board. The powerstage is fully descreetly built and even though SMD is employed on the main synthesizer board the controller board is an all thru-hole affair. It almost looks like this thing was slapped together from bits an pieces they had laying around but none of the boards are found in other machines. So it looks like a rewash of some earlier designs. kinda weird machine.This is a 21MHz sweep generator with a couple of specialties not found in other machines. Besides linear and logarithmic sweeps this thing can Step-sweep. you can program multiple begin and end frequencies and the machine will cascade the programmed settings. it can also step through a list of frequencies. It has all kinds of output signals allowing it to intermesh with external equipment.The frontpanel :it shows its selftest screen. This one is kinda funny as well. It will walk the display pixels, then perform a keyboard test where you have to press each button and then it will proceed with a relay test. It says on the display to 'listen for relay clicking' it then proceeds to click each of its internal relays 5 times while showing on the display what relay is switching over. these relays are the mechanical memory type and are high quality RF relays.The bootscreena mixture of fixed texts and alphanumerical dotmatrixThe synthesizer boardat the front middle the TO-99 metal can IC , middle middle the custom ASIC in ceramic sidebraze surrounded with SMD parts. the same ceramic chips are found in the 3314 and 3325a. they form together a DDS ( direct digital synthesizer ). The big guy is the fractional-n divider while the little guy is a sort of PLL linking the fractional-n output to the VCO's in the metal cans. So this machine employs real VCO's that are under control of a DDS.Different view:The endstage poweramp and the RF relaysThe power supplyTHe brains of the outfit : A motorola 68008 based thingI swapped the battery even though it still read 3 volts.Running :

author: bingo600
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2013, 05:40:45 am
content: I just got one of these for 250$ , it's under way.I hope it will be a supplement to my Rigol DG-1022A , but with a cleaner sine.As i read it , it is prepared for taking an ext 10Mhz refclock in , and i have a T-Bolt gpsdoI haven't read the Oper-guide yet , but if anyone has some tips or known oddities.Let me know ...If i had checked the size of it first , i'm not sure i would have bought it.Well .... it should have a very nice Sine out./Bingo

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2013, 03:06:48 pm
content: Its a clean output allright.This thing has a real sine oscillator. Not a fudged dac playing a wavetable.The frac-n drives the vco

author: PA4TIM
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2013, 06:36:38 pm
content: There is a lot of space in that cabinet or is that gezichtsbedrog ? Nice generator.My R&S AGFU is also a mix of through hole and smd, looks a bit the same with those darkgreen pcbs. Probably the same age. Also VFD display but that 19" cabinet is so stuffed with boards there is not even room for dust.

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 02, 2013, 09:34:38 pm
content: no it's not 'gezichtsbedrog' (no direct translation in english. imagination would be the closest and correct usage )the box is fairly empty inside. standard chassis

author: bingo600
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2013, 04:15:55 pm
content: I just got my 3324A ...It's nice & clean inside and "biigg"The fan is isn't that loud , i might get away with having it on during nighttime from "she who must be o...."I have attached some inside pics , and some pics where i compare it to my Freq Cntr.I'm impressed with the ability to generate a 12.3456789 Mhz sine , and be "spot on".Both the Counter and the 3324A (ext-ref) is connected to a 10Mhz GPSDO (Tbolt)All in all not bad for $250 in EU./Bingo

author: bingo600
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2013, 04:21:07 pm
content: And some inside pics , they should solve PA4TIM's question about gezichtsbedrog ?

author: PA4TIM
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 04, 2013, 04:54:53 pm
content: It looks just like Free describes it. After they gathered parts/boards from other projects they found some cabinet in the cellar and dumped all pcb's in there. But it is nice build and probably a very good generator.

author: codeboy2k
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 19, 2013, 09:04:15 pm
content: perhaps an english translation for 'gezichtsbedrog' would be 'illusion' ??PA4TIM said 'There is a lot of space in that cabinet or is that gezichtsbedrog ?' could be said in english "There is a lot of space in that cabinet or is that [just an illusion]" ?@bingo600 : you said you have a Rigol DG-1022A, and now this HP as well. When you set the Rigol for 12.3456789 Mhz does it get as "spot on" as the HP??Also, would you be willing to do a comparison FFT on a scope, or better still feed it into a real spectrum analyzer if you have one? I'm very curious about how the newer digital DDS sine looks on the FFT and/or SA output, compared to the older but better VCO sine from the HP.Thanks if you can and have the time..Cheers!

author: echen1024
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 20, 2013, 04:07:42 pm
content: I would be interested in that as well...

author: bingo600
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 21, 2013, 04:24:06 pm
content: Quote from: codeboy2k on November 19, 2013, 09:04:15 pmI don't have a SA yet .... Working on it ... But may take some time ..I just spend my "toy budget" for some time ...I bought one of these used from a seller i have bought from before : Agilent E4432B (No options though) but i have the 10Mhz , and was told that most of the options were for GSM etc .. so chances are that i's never have any use for them.http://www.home.agilent.com/en/pd-1000002817%3Aepsg%3Apro-pn-E4432B/esg-d-series-digital-rf-signal-generator-3-ghzI had to pay 1000€ (1350 us$) , but that's a very nice price here in EU'land where i have to pay 25% VAT on top of every non EU buy.Back on topic ....I can do a FFT on my Rigol-1102 , but maybe someone has to tell/show me how i do it correctly.I have never used itEdit: What freq and sine vpp should i use (12.3456789 Mhz & 1vpp) ?/Bingo

author: bingo600
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 22, 2013, 10:41:36 pm
content: Here are some FFT's of :HP 3324ARigol DG1022And my today arrivedAgilent E4432BRemeber i have no experience with FFT's , and have just done what' i felt was right.I have used Rectangle FFT on the Rigol DS1102E , as i first later found out there were other.And i have a feeling that i should have used Hanning or Hamming (see middle E4432B pic), as those are much more dynamic (movement in the flat line).On the 3324A & DG1022 i have used 12.34567890Mhz and 1Vpp , on the E4432B the level was 0dBm.The pxx pictures are from the Scope , and the sxx pictures are my camera (showing Generator & Freq-Cntr)All units have ect-ref connected to my T-Bolt 10Mhz GPSDO.And it's super annoying that the DG1022 doesn't remember my choise of ext-ref when i power it off :-(The HP and the Agilent are spot on the frequency set.But it is quite clear that the DG1022 shouldn't be used for super accurate freq generation.The selected 12.34567890Mhz is actually read as 12.34567868 on my PM6680.I hope it helps someone , and that the FFT's are usable , else you should give me clear instructions on what i should select on my DS1102E.Now i must back to my new E4432B toy ...Sorry for the quality of last pict ... Just there to prove i used 50ohm termination at the scope-end./Bingo

author: Mandelbrot
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2014, 07:49:54 am
content: I'm not sure on forum etiquette here for reviving older threads like this, so sorry if this is frowned upon or if I should have started a new thread.I see "AM", "FM", and "PM" lit up on a picture in the first post, but I can't find any mention of them in the manual for the HP 3324A. It seems like it would be modulation types to me, but I don't know how this would be done without an input for it. I'm just starting to research function generators so I'm sorry if this is a stupid question! Also, would this be appropriate for a first general purpose function generator?

author: free_electron
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: February 11, 2014, 02:18:50 pm
content: Thoe connectors are in the back

author: pimarzu
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: August 24, 2017, 10:24:23 am
content: Hallo,does anybody have or knows whwew to find schematics of HP3324A ?Thanks