Tek "NetTek" Y350C w/ YBT250 - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / testgear

author: zitt
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: January 28, 2021, 05:30:44 am
content: In a momentary bought of weakness I bought a "for parts" Y350C NetTek Analyzer Platform off fleabay. It didn't have a power adapter; but I did research and determined that I needed a 24VDC / 60W power adapter.Upon powering the device; I was able to get it to boot once. However, upon attempting to boot a second time I got the white Tek splash screen followed by a white screen with three green lines. Now the system won't power on at all. I've left the system "on the charger" for several hours; and the batteries won't register any charge.Does anyone have any troubleshooting documents on this beasty?Did I buy a paperweight with no hopes of resurrecting it for cheap?Anyone know any special "key" combinations which would cause a factory reset? The manual doesn't seem to have any detail on the "reset button" nor how to use it.

author: zitt
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: February 12, 2021, 07:09:08 am
content: Tek was of no help. They stated:"Again sorry there never was a service manual setup for this product, Nor schematics."which is kind of surprising. No service manual... They claim no schematics; which I find odd ... how does one build a product without schematics. At least be truthful; and tell me they don't have externally available schematics.For the second time tonight; I took it appart to try and figure out how to get the Lithium battery out. There is a aluminum plate that "covers" part of the battery making it impossible to swap. I'm guessing they did that to keep the battery in place during shipping.Anyway; this time - I had nothing to lose; so I just removed everything screw I could find on the assembly. The PCMCIA slot was bolted thru the plated to the PCB... so I was able to finally get the plate off with those 4 screws.Once the plate was off; I removed the 3V lithium battery.It's Dead-so. Like as in less that 0.5V.I have a CR2477N on order from Amazon.com two day. I hope a fresh 3V battery will allow any CMOS/NVRAM to stay powered. If there was calibration data in the NVRAM... I guess I'm screwed.I'll post back if I get any life with the new 3V battery.

author: zitt
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: March 08, 2021, 05:07:12 am
content: No joy. If I had infinite time; I'd try to figure out what CPU is on the motherboard and start measuring voltages; but it looks like this is proably a lost cause.Seems like this is a dead product; even for hobbyists.

author: Jaak
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 07, 2022, 01:23:03 am
content: Yeah they didn't sell a huge number of them in the first place, but it's a cool box. Just doing some reading, I see the keycode generator being used for the TDS7000 series scopes is the same, but I haven't figured that out either. I'd love to get my YBT250 optioned out. As for the internals, don't know much about it, other than it runs WinCE. I have a Y400, but also have a Y350 on it's way to me, which I plan on popping apart, as it's got issues... So maybe there will be a memorial for it as well. My Y400 is running fine.

author: El Rubio
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: May 07, 2022, 04:22:35 am
content: I have a Y400 w/ YBA250 &YBT250 modules. I also have the GPS timing receiver as well. I don’t use it much, but last I checked, it still works. If you need any comparison measurements or anything let me know. We had some training from Tektronix on this and I recall the rep saying that the engineers that designed it launched one in a catapult they built. It survived. He said they wanted it to not have moving parts like typical hard drives. I like it for sweeping/tuning filters and antennas, but the YBT250 as a spec analyzer isn’t that great. I had several manuals and guides in pdf format at one time, but don’t recall any service info. I’ll look for those and if anything interesting I’ll post back here.

author: Jaak
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 07, 2022, 04:47:34 am
content: It's been a long time since it came out. Rugged it certainly is, as I recall we could punch the screen and it would take it. I'm trying to recall the detail on the spec A, as it's not a swept tuned, but a time domain, and therefore best performance is achieved differently than what you would expect.Makes me wish I had info from back then... it's biggest problem was being an RF product marketed by a time domain company. So it didn't get the traction it deserved.

author: Jaak
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: May 10, 2022, 07:02:35 pm
content: I think where the Spec A suffers is a lack of preselection. You can easily see -130 dBm with nothing on the input, but as soon as you let the whole spectrum in, the noise floor comes up. I'm going to try some filtering to see how it impacts it for off air use, 'cause there's no reason it shouldn't perform well, if the out of band energy is attenuated.