That is not quite the way it was done at Loveland HP, I'm sure it depended on the division and when in HP history it was designed.? Most instrument division ETs from the 70s and early 80's at least were extensively documented as they were usually designed to support the manufacture of HP products.? Anything used in the manufacturing process had to be documented so it could be duplicated if a new line was needed or for disaster recovery.? Since a lot of the Sources, Analyzers, and Voltmeters were sold under government contracts, documentation was mandatory as all the info had to be preserved.? Some ETs were one-offs, those were often used in the labs, some ETs were done in substantial volumes like the ET1716 variac/hi-pot tester.? Nearly every production tech bench had one so you could test high and low line at 120 and 240 volts plus do hi-pot testing on the primary wiring.? I have a real ET1716 and another that is slightly different that has no ET number assigned.?
? If it has no ET number silk screened on it may not be an actual ET.? It might even contain a board that has an ET number that was used to provide a base function to make the one-off.? The computer division folks had several ET proto boards that were developed for prototyping interfaces for the 200 and 300 series computers for examples.
? I built some one-offs for the clean room equipment I serviced.? They were documented but not formally as ETs.? It was not deemed necessary as obsolescence of the vacuum systems, ovens, RF generators, and such made reproducing a wafer fab line with the same equipment impossible.
? I believe some low volume ETs were built by the special handling group.? If you have an instrument that was built in Loveland that has an Hxx option like a special meter scale or an added range, that was possibly done by the special handling group.? The file cabinets with the? ET documentation lived in their area but later were moved to Electronic Maintenance for storage.? You could pull the documents and copy anything you wanted, but it was tedious.? I believe there was an effort made to microfilm all the old ET documentation.? I don't know where those would have wound up with the spin-offs.? They may have been lost.? I am not sure how any newer digital ET docs would have been stored.? When I was working with the company that did the clean out of the former HP Loveland site, I did not find the old ET documentation.? That is good because it would have had to be destroyed.? But very little of the ET documentation made it out of there, it was work to get copies.? A real shame.
? I have some pretty cool ETs that I may photograph and post someday.?
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Clay Scott
