why vintage electronic gear are preferable? - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: 001
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 03:31:42 pm
content: why vintage electronic gear are preferable? and phones not?

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 04:10:22 pm
content: Cheap. Easy to fix.

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 05:11:20 pm
content: Quote from: bd139 on November 23, 2018, 04:10:22 pmMore likely: waste of money, prone to breaking and filled with special parts. The latter shouldn't be underestimated. I have (owned) various bits of older HP and Tektronix gear which have custom chips inside. Often these chips get hot so their expected life span is short already. As a rule of thumb I don't buy anything older than 15 years.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 06:02:28 pm
content: Oh yes you're totally right there. You have to buy 2-3 of everything that's old and spend time on it. If you can afford the time but not the money or if you like playing with the stuff then it makes sense but only then. Hence why I've got a broken Tek 465, 475A and 2235 at the moment. Sometimes I have the time and I'm a cheap arseBusiness end stuff I have is a case of I have something that works until it doesn't, and then if I don't have something suitable as a workaround, or can't repair it reliably or cheaply a shiny new item will arrive the next day.One really important thing to note though: broken things are an intellectual playground with a million things to learn. This week I am learning about SMPS pre-regulators

author: IDEngineer
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 06:40:43 pm
content: There's a school of thought that goes "old enough" to avoid those custom IC's. Basically favors fully discrete designs. Granted even some of those transistors can be hard to find but sometimes more modern substitutes are possible, whereas fully custom IC's are impossible to second source.Tek's custom U800 (?) IC kept me from purchasing a 2465B a couple of years ago. I would've loved to have it, but that chip is legendary for running super hot.I admire those who buy older test equipment as a hobby. Jim Williams was famous for that. But personally I buy test equipment to use as tools for new development. I just don't have the time to debug and repair bargain T&M devices. Someday I need to clean the switch contacts in my original-owner Philips PM3214 analog scope, but otherwise I tend to favor new(er) equipment so I don't have to wonder if what I'm seeing on the screen is my design, or the test equipment. (I might have to make an exception for a 6GHz+ spectrum analyzer, though... I've needed one for a while now but the prices for new ones are staggering.)

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 23, 2018, 06:49:19 pm
content: Quote from: 001 on November 23, 2018, 03:31:42 pmI don't own a cell phone and have no desire to procure one. Vintage gear comes from my desire to push my hobby and this exceeds what I am willing to spend. I use the equipment I have and reliability has not been much of a concern. Most of it I purchased non-working and the time invested in itself was a chance to learn how it worked.If Keysight came to me with a one time offer for a free piece of TE, I would replace my old VNA. On the flip side, owning this unit has provided me with a fair bit of new knowledge. I doubt many people have derived and implemented the SOLT equations. While a new Keysight VNA would be preferable as you put it, the old 70's system I have is still good enough for what I use it for. I looked at getting one from Copper Mountain a few years back but it would still be in the $10K USD.You posted that you are 65 years old. I assume you have built a lot of projects and accumulated a fair bit of gear yourself by now. You should show some of it.

author: Cubdriver
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 07:18:43 am
content: I like it because it gives me the opportunity to own what was at one point bleeding edge, state of the art test gear. And get it for, quite literally, pennies on the dollar relative to what it originally sold for. In many cases, excellent troubleshooting and repair documentation is available for it. There are some unobtanium parts that will relegate something to the scavenge pile, but in most cases with some patience even these will eventually turn up.Finally, I find troubleshooting and repairing such things to be very rewarding, and think it's pretty damned cool to use a fully functioning piece of equipment that's nearly as old (or in some cases older) than I am.Are there downsides? Sure. It's old, and often big and heavy compared to its modern equivalent. As mentioned, some parts cannot be found. Newer gear probably has more features and is faster and perhaps easier to use. But just like on photography forums, when a new camera comes out, it may have better features and better performance, but it doesn't make the old camera you have now stop working.-Pat

author: TERRA Operative
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 07:29:12 am
content: I buy old gear because it's cheap and I'm a masochist for restoration.And nixies, I love nixies.Also, with old test gear, most of it is as relevant today as it was back then. If you need to measure voltages, frequencies, etc, or generate signals, you don't need the latest gear to do it for most stuff.Unlike a phone or computer that needs to be updated to run the latest app or game, good test equipment still works fine if it's 3 or 30 years old.

author: DaJMasta
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 07:52:19 am
content: Lots of reasons for and against it, comes down to budget and personal preference.Older gear is generally easier to understand and fix, and there are more resources to do so. Of course, it's harder to find parts, but it's easier to find parts units and it's more likely that an individual failed part is replaceable with a different equivalent (though there are certainly unobtanium custom chips). They're also going to be cheaper than more modern ones in almost all situations, though not always by a lot.That said, older gear generally performs worse (vs modern equivalents), has fewer features, is harder to use (UI, more parts requirement, less automation), is larger, is less likely to connect to modern PCs or automation setups, or some combination of those. There are exceptions to all of these, and a few select bits of older gear suffer from almost none of them, but generally there are at least a few in play vs. more modern variants.Since we're generally buying and using them as hobbyists, our requirements are probably not bleeding edge and our budgets are finite. We also sometimes have the interest to refurbish a bit of gear or some assurance that we'd be able to attempt it in the future. In a lot of cases, there's a bit of nostalgia there too for the scope you lusted after as a student, the great analyzer you used at your company, or a company since closed that made especially interesting devices.

author: BradC
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 08:05:17 am
content: Quote from: 001 on November 23, 2018, 03:31:42 pmI love my vintage phones, they just won't talk to anything. The analogue network got turned off 20 years ago, and nothing here supports the original GSM or 2G stuff. So I'm stuck with a 5 year old iPhone until that dies or is no longer serviceable, then I'll move up to whatever cast off I can acquire from someone on the upgrade treadmill. My current unit was a water damaged phone gifted to me by my mother in law. It makes and takes calls, so it's fit for purpose.My 80's vintage test gear keeps working, doesn't have to communicate with anything (but when I want it to GPIB is still supported). I have service manuals, schematics and entire mailing lists full of experienced people willing to help. All this at a price point I can afford. What's not to like?Instead of posting seemingly random one line vague observational bait, how about answering some of the questions posed to you about what you have. We've shown you ours, your turn.

author: Ice-Tea
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 08:07:16 am
content: Quote from: 001 on November 23, 2018, 03:31:42 pmDefine "vintage"?QuoteOld T&M gear was built to last. Cell phones not so much.

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 08:16:46 am
content: Quote from: 001 on November 23, 2018, 03:31:42 pma) The two aren't comparable, a better comparison would be with cars.b) Some people enjoy working on their old cars more than they enjoy driving them. Other people want cars that are reliable and have aircon, etc.

author: precaud
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 01:26:45 pm
content: As I transition from professional to recreational uses, as long as it meets my measurement needs, I prefer older gear to the new stuff, with few exceptions. All the gear that I once drooled over catalog pages for in the 80's and 90's, cutting-edge stuff at the time, to own and use it now is like a fantasy fulfilled. Very satisfying in its own right. And without a a work-related income stream to budget for and amortize new gear into, I find it hard to justify replacing most of the the old stuff. If it ain't broke, don't fix it. The learning curve is behind me. Yeah, it's larger and heavier and most often noisier too. But my bench is sized accordingly. And then there's access to service manuals. Good luck with that on the new stuff. Other than finding bad capacitors you won't be doing much component-level troubleshooting and repair on them.But as always, to each their own... and YMMV.

author: stj
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 02:08:12 pm
content: for many of us, it brings the ability to have a piece of equipment that we could never afford new.i wont use a 50 year old AVO meter,but i do have an old tek waveform/vector monitor for analysing video signals that is very usefull.

author: Bud
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 03:11:00 pm
content: Therapeutic effect. You walk in the shack, look at soft glow of nixies, nice buttons and knobs, and your heart rate goes down and irritation goes away.

author: 0culus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 04:37:59 pm
content: Not entirely sure I agree with the UI necessarily being better with more modern gear. I enjoy having all the functions available on the front panel and not buried in menus.

author: schmitt trigger
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 05:10:27 pm
content: What Bud said;Additionally vintage equipment, with all its multifunctional knobs and switches, indicator lights and sturdy electromechanical controls with that satisfaction-inducing CLICK-CLICK-CLICK, have an appeal that touchscreens and multilayer menus simply don’t have.And.....there is the nerdiness factor. An old Tektronix mainframe has this “space age” look which leaves all your friends and relatives in silent admiration at your brainy coolness.Specially if it is displaying a Lissajous pattern.

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 05:13:52 pm
content: Quote from: 0culus on November 24, 2018, 04:37:59 pmAgreed.Two other benefits: beginners learn what's inside (i.e. not just the front panel), and it is easier to teach/learn.The same can be said for flying gliders, as wellFor the record:I like modern high-end scopes (but can't afford one)I like the old high-end scopes (and can afford them)I dislike low-end scopes of any ageI dislike old high-end digital scopes (too many disadvantages)

author: tggzzz
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 05:16:06 pm
content: Quote from: schmitt trigger on November 24, 2018, 05:10:27 pmSome old rotary switches, e.g. on KVDs, have an almost pornographic feel to them! And no, it isn't just me that feels that!

author: Jester
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 06:29:55 pm
content: In my opinion some of the older equipment utilized a often simpler and therefore better user interface. For example most of the old equipment had separate knobs to adjust parameters while the replacements use a single rotary knob that you have to select the parameter it will modify before making the adjustment.Some of my better equipment is > 30 years old and works like new.

author: 0culus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 06:32:21 pm
content: Quote from: tggzzz on November 24, 2018, 05:13:52 pmVery much agree with that list. I would add that since I can get the service manuals for my old HP and Tektronix gear, I have a chance of being able to fix them if they break. Good luck with that on modern "if it breaks, throw it away" gear.

author: SilverSolder
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 24, 2018, 08:05:58 pm
content: The laws of physics haven't changed... older equipment can often measure the same things as newer stuff, albeit with a penalty in size and possibly (not always) less precision/accuracy.Newer equipment tends to rely on computing power for their features (e.g. modern digitizing scopes) and can therefore do much more than older units. But the price for that is a higher learning curve.If you link older equipment to a PC (via serial, GPIB, etc.) you can get close to having the best of both worlds.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 03:19:44 am
content: Over the course of the last 2 years I have bought around $9K of 20 year old HP gear. For the same reasons cited previously I had been leery of older gear. I've got a bunch of it I need to fix including a 465 I had to fix when I got it.But after getting some recent Chinese gear, my attitude changed. The FW bugs drive me up the wall. I now have two 34401As, 3478A, 8560A w/ TG, 438A w/ 8481D & 8482A sensors, 5386A, 8648C, LeCroy DDA-125 (the DDA-120 is a better choice, get one with external VGA out and replace the CRT with a $90 VGA 7" VGA monitor) and a Tek 485. I did buy a Keysight 33622A from their eBay store $$$, but *very* nice. I had finally had all I could stand of doing battle with my F***Tech FY-6600 w/ V 3.0 FW. I also have an Instek MSO-2204EA, nice, but quite buggy. I had to get a FW update from 1.32 to 1.35beta to be able to subtract a reference trace from the live trace.This finally drove me completely crazy and I am working on FOSS DSO FW for Zynq based scopes. Yes, it is a huge amount of work. I estimate it at 2000-3000 hours over the next 2-3 years. But I'm a retired oil industry research scientist and programmer. I've seen more *weird* computer hardware than I can count. And relative to seismic processing algorithms, a DSO is a cake walk.The big issues with older gear are condition, condition and condition. Not cosmetics, but how much was it used? Old CRTs are hard to replace. When was it last calibrated? I've been lucky. And there is a large amount of luck in this. I can also fix things, though replacing old ASICs is probably not worth the agony.Why do I like the stuff so much? Because when I go to do something I haven't done before I don't discover that function doesn't actually work. For example, my Instek's, the Keysight MSOX3104T and the R&S RTM3104 all have an option to display the integral of a trace. But they do *not* have the ability to display channel 1 and the integral of channel 2 in XY mode!!!! So to display a hysteresis curve requires an analog integrator. The LeCroy does. The anti-alias filters are horrible, but there is enough room that I can replace them with something sensible, 750 MHz for 4 channel mode and 1.5 GHz for 2 channel mode. The factory filters are specified at <20% overshoot! These were obviously designed for work where rise time was far more important than waveform fidelity.The gold standard for a DMM is a 3458A which was introduced in 1989 and is still being made. There is actually a surprising amount of T&M gear like that. Not everything can be improved by adding a faster computer.

author: tkamiya
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 03:22:43 am
content: I really don't like modern electronics because their over-use of MENUS. Often times, I have to push 5 buttons up down enter right right, to get to what I want. Older one tends to have one button/dial for one function.

author: xrunner
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 03:37:08 am
content: Quote from: 001 on November 23, 2018, 03:31:42 pmWhy is a '68 Camaro preferable to a 2018 Camaro (to some people)?Perhaps it's harder to fix and maintain, but it's a classic car and an '18 isn't. It's the cool factor.I have a mix of new and vintage test equipment. To me the older hp stuff is an example of the highest art of this type of electronics. I have an hp 5334B frequency counter that came with a stack of manuals with schematics and troubleshooting instructions that are as high as the unit itself. Can that be said of any of the newer Chinese offerings? I don't think they even want you to know how to fix them.

author: bd139
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 10:41:26 am
content: Every time someone says Camero I think of Earl Hickey.

author: rhb
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 01:28:24 pm
content: Quote from: tkamiya on November 25, 2018, 03:22:43 amThe fundamental problem is the UI developers don't use the gear they design UIs for. And then there is the just brain dead factor. Most DSOs have terrible FFTs and to my knowledge *none* of them offer a triangle (aka Bartlett) window which is the best general purpose window because the sinc**2 shape in the frequency domain has very low sidelobes. I spent my career as a research scientist and programmer in reflection seismology which is as mathematically intense as DSP gets. When I looked at the window options on the $20K MSOX3104T my jaw dropped.

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 01:37:22 pm
content: Quote from: rhb on November 25, 2018, 01:28:24 pmDSOs use FPGAs/ASICs to do the processing so theycan'thave every function ever, there isn't space on the chip.USB 'scopes do the processing on the PC end and some of them have a lot of user programmability. I'm not an expert though, ask Wolfie.

author: tautech
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 06:28:32 pm
content: Quote from: Fungus on November 25, 2018, 01:37:22 pmHoly crap ! !From the guy that stalked the first incarnation of MrWolf and incessantly baiting him to have him react for him to then be banned !Now I think I've seen it all !

author: RandallMcRee
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 07:16:38 pm
content: Quote from: rhb on November 25, 2018, 01:28:24 pmjaw-dropped--because it was so good, or was that in horror....we can't tell.(I'm an Engineer, not a mind-reader, Jim!!)

author: 2N3055
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 08:00:06 pm
content: Quote from: rhb on November 25, 2018, 01:28:24 pmI don't know. My 3104T has Bartlett window. Picoscope also does have it, it is called triangular..

author: joeqsmith
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 25, 2018, 08:45:04 pm
content: Quote from: tkamiya on November 25, 2018, 03:22:43 amI am getting old. The first logic analyzer I used was a I thing a 1630A. Since then I have used several HP LAs. Some with a single knob and optical touch screen to the mass of buttons and knobs. The menus and how they drove was always basically the same. I could sit down on any HP LA and run it with little effort.Several years ago I was needing an SA with some options I didn't have and had HP (what ever name they were using at the time) come in with their latest system. I had it for a few weeks which is pretty normal. I flat out could not run it because the UI was so different. I ended spending a fair bit of time reading manuals to just perform some basic tasks. I figured that it must be me and I setup a test where the LA was all connected. I had a couple of pins attached and just wanted to trigger on the rising edge of some channel. Something VERY simple. I then had the young and old attempt to power up the system and show me the data. It was a fun time and I was a bit relieved that not one person was able to sort it out without a manual.My best guess was that their marketing group decided to target firmware developers and tried to provide a UI that would fit them. They had removed some critical features that had always been there and when I asked HP, their response was that customers never used them. Some features that I counted on no longer worked as they always had. They broke a several decade trend on how their LAs drove. I ended up with a used 167xx with all of the features I needed rather than buying a new system. I provided HP with my feedback which they understood.Looking back I wonder if we were seeing the end of the LA era and a last ditched effort to find a new home for their use.

author: Fungus
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 26, 2018, 08:02:40 am
content: Quote from: tautech on November 25, 2018, 06:28:32 pmI guess it's true what they say, no two people see the same story.I guess you didn't see wolfie's provoking because you thought he was "one of yours".