Oscilloscope historical price trends - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 02:21:11 am
content: I recently bought a second-hand Tektronix TDS 754C, and I'm really, really curious to know how much it would have cost to buy brand new back in the day. I've managed to figure out that it was in active production in 1998 (http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/Tek_Catalogs), but trying to find historical price lists is just a dead end (it was probably hard enough to find on the internet back then...). A 4-channel, 500 MHz, 400,000 waveforms per second scope costs about US$6500 today, if you get it from Rigol (although even the modern Rigol doesn't hit 400,000; the Rigol has much deeper memory though). Slap on the value of the Tektronix brand name, and reverse the march of technological price cutting, and I feel like it must have costquitea lot, especially if expressed in 2014 dollars.Any tales from greybeards are heartily encouraged!

author: george graves
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 02:31:17 am
content: Would like to know too!

author: liquibyte
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 02:58:22 am
content: I just picked up a 465b and I was wondering the same thing. Mine doesn't have the serial # on the outside anymore so I was trying to find out if it was on the inside somewhere by Google because I haven't opened it up yet. I wanted to find out the serial so that I knew when it was made to figure out what the retail was at that time.

author: Alex Eisenhut
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 03:40:37 am
content: I direct your attention to the Yahoo group "tekscopes".https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/TekScopes/infoI think you need to join but it's worth it. You might be able to get a 1998 price from someone there.

author: T3sl4co1l
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 07:26:20 am
content: Probably worth mentioning, TekScopes is primarily focused on "classic" analog ones. Not much know-how about TDS and newer on there. Unless it changed last I looked.Tim

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 07:35:14 am
content: AFAIK these scopes where in the $15k to $25k price range when new.

author: BravoV
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 07:43:01 am
content: Bookmark this site, plenty of old Tek's Vintage Equipments details including their price when new ->Tektronix Vintage EquipmentLike the legendary 1 GHz analog scope Tek 7104, it was $26,695 back in 1989 ->Tektronix 7104 OscilloscopeAnother example brochure for high end portable 246x series back in 1985, my plain vanilla Tek 2465B which was bought used about < $300 few years ago, was priced $5,850back then, now equivalent price + inflation in 2014 is about $13,000.

author: HighVoltage
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 07:48:21 am
content: I never bought a Tek scope new.But in 1997 I bought a brand new Philips / Fluke PM3394B with all options 4 Channel Combiscope with Autoranging.200 MHz, 3 GSThe list price was closed to $ 12.000 but with discount and so on, I think I paid around $8000High end Tek scopes of those days must have been in the same price range, I would assume.

author: don
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 12:18:15 pm
content: Depends on what options, but a couple years ago I was going through papers and found an old sales receipt for a 754D with 2M mem option that was $23k. Might have been advanced math on there as well , thinking base price was $18-$19k.Back then, 2M really meant 8M normalized to today's memory. It had 8M single channel, 2M all channel but tek called it 2M upgrade.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 12:25:45 pm
content: Quote from: rs20 on October 08, 2014, 02:21:11 amThe later catalogs including the 1998 one have price lists in the back.The TDS784C without any options is listed as $31,195 on PDF page 614 which would be $45,520 now.My late model 7854 with its plug-ins would have been $32,330 in 1990 so $58,835 now.One thing to keep in mind when comparing these old oscilloscopes to modern entry level ones is that they were intended for a very different market. The TDS784C would be the equivalent of a modern oscilloscope costing upwards of $20,000 which is intended for a similar market. That you can get one used for $100s to $1000s of dollars now just reflects supply and demand for such an old instrument.Quote from: T3sl4co1l on October 08, 2014, 07:26:20 amMost of the discussions there are about analog oscilloscopes simply because they are the most common and repairable but discussions about DSOs up through the TDS700 series happen. Everything newer than about the 2465 series analog oscilloscopes and the 2440 series DSOs (about 1990) lacks complete service documentation and there are issues with calibration because of the special software which is required but never made generally available.There are several experts on the early TDS series who monitor the list.

author: rs20
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 01:29:50 pm
content: Thanks everyone for all the responses!Quote from: David Hess on October 08, 2014, 12:25:45 pmAhem, that's embarrassing... thanks for pointing that outOK, so the answer is: US$19,500, before adjustment. You folks have great memories:Quote from: nctnico on October 08, 2014, 07:35:14 amQuote from: don on October 08, 2014, 12:18:15 pmSpot on!Quote from: David Hess on October 08, 2014, 12:25:45 pmJust briefly, how do these intentions map to specific features?Quote from: Alex Eisenhut on October 08, 2014, 03:40:37 amThanks for the tip, I'll definitely consider taking a look. I'm wondering if I have any chance of hacking the 2M option onto it, but I fear it's not that simple, but that should be a good place to ask. I've had trouble figuring out if the option is a totally different processor module/slot in memory/jumpers somewhere...

author: nctnico
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 02:17:10 pm
content: From what I have seen the models with more memory have a differently assembled acquisition board. The layout caters for different size of DRAM to be fitted. Remember memory was expensive in the 90's

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 07:23:03 pm
content: Quote from: rs20 on October 08, 2014, 01:29:50 pmI knew the answer immediately because I made the same discovery a couple weeks ago when oddly enough, I was also looking up the price for the TDS754C. If you look at the ordering information for each product in the 1998 catalog, there is a little note saying:For price information: Outside the U.S. contact your local Tektronix representative, inside the U.S. see the price list in the back of this catalog.Older Tektronix catalogs up to at least 1990 had the prices shown with the instruments.QuoteI wish I knew. I find marketing in both the past and present to be inscrutable outside of shrewd price discrimination and product differentiation.This discussion crops up on the mentioned TekScopes@yahoogroups.com email list occasionally in connection with comparisons between old analog oscilloscopes and new digital ones. Those old analog oscilloscopes were expensive high end instruments so it is not surprising that modern but cheap DSOs suffer in some ways when compared to them. I was extending this to comparisons made between a TDS784C and modern DSOs.QuoteSomeone there is likely to know the details. The way I understand it, later revisions and models of these TDS oscilloscopes had all of the memory included (It was just cheaper to manufacture that way as memory prices fall.) and enabling it is just a non-trivial configuration option while earlier ones had different hardware.

author: David Hess
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: October 08, 2014, 07:27:05 pm
content: Quote from: nctnico on October 08, 2014, 02:17:10 pmThis was certainly true for the earlier models. Often though as memory density increased and price per bit fell, the price premium for the larger capacity memories became so small that it did not make any sense to build hardware with the lower capacity ones. In some cases, late production models may have used the larger memories simply because the smaller ones were discontinued and it was not worth qualifying a new source.