(gone) [US] Broken Tek TDS3014 oscilloscope - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / general

author: rthinman
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 18, 2019, 06:40:27 am
content: My trusty TDS3014 was working great until one morning it wasn't. Did some diagnosis: powers on, +/-5V and 15V supplies to probes are good, backlight OK, but doesn't boot. Did not find anything obvious when I opened it up. Needed a functional 'scope for work and had been thinking of upgrading anyway, so now it is another project I don't need.The horizontal scale knob is broken but not lost; you can see it between the scope and the cover. A couple others have been glued back together over the years.Free to a good home if you'll cover shipping. I live in Hawaii, so likely I'm not near you. I looked up costs to ship to a random address on the east coast of the US mainland for reference:US Postal: US$45 - US$55, depending on speedFedEx (account, not retail): US$36Rod

author: giosif
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2019, 08:20:59 am
content: PM sent

author: testpoint1
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: September 18, 2019, 03:59:30 pm
content: Nice, PM to you. your inbox is full, I need it for research.

author: Zucca
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: September 18, 2019, 05:38:17 pm
content: PM does not work for users with less then 5 posts I think.

author: rthinman
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: September 18, 2019, 07:10:31 pm
content: PM works for new members, but it appears that the inbox is limited to 5 messages. It filled up quickly. Perhaps limited until the user posts 5 times?Anyway, thanks for the interest. The 'scope is gone to a new home, and I've modified the title of the thread to reflect that.Rod

author: pamphonica
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 19, 2019, 12:38:04 pm
content: For what it's worth, I have successfully brought a non-booting TDS3054 back to life.It involved replacing every tantalum/electrolytic in the device. The psu board components (through hole) were first, and that got it booting correctly, but only for a few months. Finally I accepted the inevitable and tried changing all the surface mount electrolytics on the main board.It took a while but the scope is now booting fine once more. It's worth it as these scopes are still very good and compact devices.Good luck.Jeremy

author: james_s
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2019, 12:12:02 am
content: Ok so I am the lucky one who ended up with this, it's not often that I end up being the first but in this case I was.I've only had a brief chance to mess with it so far as it showed up while I was busy with my day job and now I have existing plans for this evening however I did take a few minutes to have a poke around inside. Rest assured those who missed out that this is probably not going to be one of those quick and easy fixes. I have verified that the main power supply is producing 15V with no signs of excessive ripple. This feeds another separate regulator board which is putting out multiple voltages, all of which are within the spec listed in the service manual. One that is questionable is 3V which only measures 2.6V, the manual does not list a tolerance for this one so it may not be critical, anyone know what it is used for? On the board I have 5V and 3.3V as expected, and the CPU gets quite warm so it is at least getting power. I see no signs of damage, no cracks or craters in any of the ICs, and while metal parts of the scope do show signs of being in the harsh tropical environment it came from, the board itself looks quite clean.That's all the time I have for now, I will dig into it tomorrow for further disassembly and cleaning and see if I can see any signs of activity anywhere. Just as described, it powers up and the display backlight illuminates but beyond that it appears dead as a doornail, not so much as a glimmer from any of the front panel indicators. I'll probably start a thread in a more appropriate area and see if some progress can be made here. Worst case if I can find a junker that boots I should be able to make one good scope out of the pair.Really appreciate the generosity of people on here, I'm hoping I can get this thing going, it would be great to have a portable scope and a TDS3000 series was the first DSO I ever used, back when they were fairly current and waaaay beyond my means at the time.

author: pamphonica
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: September 21, 2019, 11:12:52 am
content: Good luck with the repair. Perhaps another thread can follow the fun!I measured all my TDS3054 rails as fine but still had to replace all those wretched caps on the main board before it behaved.-Jeremy