Re: HP34702A Ohms converter issues
using an ungrounded soldering iron. :-) Another trick along this line is to use a battery with a 500 ohm R in series. It will hold the memory up while you drop out the old and add the new battery. Regards Paul WB8TSL
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Re: HP34702A Ohms converter issues
An interface from HPIL to HPIB (GPIB) did exist for these and low cost calculators and controllers:
HP 82169A hpil to gpib converter. - source Wikipedia.
I have at least one - but I am keeping it for my HP 71B and HP 41CX calculators. There were also some 2225 printers with the HPIL interface, on these, if the interface was parallel then you could convert between GPIB and Centronics parallel by changing the IO port and card, if it was HPIL then you could convert between that and RS232 by changing the IO port and card.
Our retired 3468A design engineer may be able to shed some further light on whether you could do the same on the DMM. The parts or assembly might be available on eBay or from a salvage unit, or from the HP computer forums. I also know that there are HP collectors for the small calculators and controllers - years ago I sold a couple of boxes of the cables adapters and controllers for ridiculous money, hundreds of dollars.
Don Bitters
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Does anyone have the schematics or CLIP for the A10 receiver module of the 89430A analyzer? ?Haven’t been able to find that level of detail. ?Thanks
Jeff
WA2SCL
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Re: HP34702A Ohms converter issues
It was also used on some scientific instrumentation. I have a 5890a gas chromatograph
with an HPIL interface. The serial/GPIB option was an extra on that.
Paul
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On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 09:41:55AM -0600, Glen Hoag wrote: HP Interface Loop. A serial implementation of an instrumentation communication system similar to HPIB. it was designed to use programmable calculators or desktop PCs as controllers and didn’t really catch on.
On Feb 15, 2019, at 09:23, Steve Hendrix <SteveHx@...> wrote:
At 2019-02-15 10:06 AM, Jeff Anderson wrote:
Unfortunately, the 3468B instruments have HP-IL ports in lieu of HP-IB. What is HP-IL?
--
Paul Amaranth, GCIH | Manchester MI, USA
Aurora Group, Inc. | Security, Systems & Software
paul@... | Unix & Windows
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On 2/15/19 12:28 PM, Steve Hendrix wrote: Hence my interest in constructing a 100 psi pressure washer using a
fuel injection pump and a modified airbrush with a gallon or two of
alcohol which gets repurified by distillation.? That should make
cleaning very quick, painless and cheap.? The sole effort being the
disassembly and reassembly. Wow, that sounds powerful, and would really do the job. It also sounds
like smoking around it would be a really BAD idea!
It would just hasten the demise. ;) -Dave -- Dave McGuire, AK4HZ New Kensington, PA
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At 2019-02-15 12:05 PM, Reginald Beardsley via Groups.Io
wrote:
Hence my interest in
constructing a 100 psi pressure washer using a fuel injection pump and a
modified airbrush with a gallon or two of alcohol which gets repurified
by distillation.? That should make cleaning very quick, painless and
cheap.? The sole effort being the disassembly and
reassembly.
Wow, that sounds powerful, and would really do the job. It also sounds
like smoking around it would be a really BAD idea!
Steve Hendrix
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Funny thing, I haven't had that problem here in New Mexico.? - Jim
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On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 08:54 AM, Chuck Harris wrote:
modified version of the
HP software to GW BASIC on a PC
Hi Chuck,
For me it is a pleasure to communicate with people who feel passion for Microwaves, Measuring instruments.
I lived in the US for about 2 years in California for the year 98 and for me it was almost paradise. Hours and Hours visiting junkyards in "El Segundo". I bought a lot, a lot of HP equipment. I have almost everything in Spain in my laboratory. Now almost everything I buy is on ebay and they charge me a fortune in taxes (customs).
I still have some friends in L.A. , but it's not the same..
I will continue with the repair of the HP8412B and check the result of the storage normalizer.
Too bad the version is not available
HP software to GW BASIC on a PC. What a pity!
I will discuss in this magnificent forum my possible achievements.
Rafael.
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Hey Paul, I am sure the bits could be flipped to make an E4432B think it's a E4437B (or firmware swap?), but I don't know if the appropriate hardware is present. Unfortunately, I don't possess an E4436,7B, so I don't know what assemblies make it unique.
Peter might be able to answer that....
Colby
On Fri, Feb 15, 2019 at 5:00 AM doyle.paul48 < doylepf@...> wrote: G'day Colby, Can the Agilent ESG-D3000A be hacked to the E4437 standaed? I understood the ESG-D3000A was equilivant to the E4432 standard. Regards CRO-TEK Sydney, Australia
On Wed, Feb 13, 2019 at 1:53 PM Tom B < tbryan@...> wrote: Hi Tim,
Nice. Interesting that it is that accurate at 4GHz after the conversion.
I have more than several of these generators and I think they are great.
I noticed on mine that if you do a hard reset (I don't recommend that
unless you can't do anything else) that, regardless of model, that they
default to 4GHz until you go below the models frequency and then won't
go back up.
These are not high end generators but good enough and you can't beat the
price for what you get.
Tom
On 2/12/2019 1:11 AM, Tim Tuck wrote:
> Hi Tom,
>
> At 4GHz, using my E4406 to measure its output from -90dBm to +13dBm,
> it appears to be within 0.5dBm of indicated.
>
> Above 13dBm the power doesn't increase and the UNLEVELED indicator
> comes on at about 14dBm.
>
> Using my HP438A and HP8481H to do the same test gives a similar result
> but with an additional -1dB offset.
>
> So its "close" :) ... well at least at 4Ghz
>
> None of this kit has been calibrated in years so take the result with
> a grain of salt!
>
> Given a bit of time I could write a labview thing to make some nice
> measurements and plots some graphs
>
> regards
>
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FWIW I had the solder flux issue arise with a CD player I'd had for many years. It started saying "no disc" because the drive motor was not turning on. I opened it up and found a small area of residue which I cleaned off and it was working again. Probably 6-9 months later the fault reappeared. I cleaned it again and it has now worked flawlessly for several years. So it takes *very* little residue to cause faults in sensitive parts of a circuit.
In this instance, the residue was perhaps 1/4" or smaller spot at the corner of what I think was the MCU. I concluded from this that I had missed a little bit of flux under the chip the first time. Like most consumer gear, board access was awkward.
My mother's VCR/DVD combo developed problems. The construction was such that I was not about to disassemble it for access to the main board which was on the bottom. For that I got a large plastic container to hold the unit and poured 4 pints of alcohol into the container to bring the level up over the board. As there was no way to see, much less scrub the board I left it to soak over night. The next day I poured the alcohol back in to the bottles (marked to indicate it had been used) and let the unit dry for a day before putting the covers back on. It resumed working for a few weeks, so I repeated the process. Once again after the treatment it worked for a while and then the fault reappeared. I had reused the alcohol from the first treatment which may have been my undoing. In retrospect, I think if I had been extravagant and used fresh alcohol it would have worked. After the last attempt the alcohol had a strong brown tint. But each time I treated the unit it worked for several weeks, so I don't think there is any question that the fault was entirely due to "no clean" flux.
Usually I will use either an artist's brush or an old tooth brush to scrub the board and a pump spray bottle of alcohol. I'll spray and scrub for a bit and then make a couple of rinses where I hold the board vertically and let the alcohol run off, shaking off the liquid between passes. I've also used compressed air to blow off the alcohol between rinses.
I think the primary issue is added capacitive loading on logic lines interfering with timing. though that was obviously not the case with the motion sensitive night light as it is entirely analog.
I wish I had a video of the 34401A as received and after cleaning. I'm beginning to think that there are a lot of "for parts only" units that were repaired, but not cleaned properly afterwards. They then worked for several years, but when the flux effect hit they got scrapped.
But of the limited number of repairs I've done in the last 10 years the vast majority have just required cleaning. At this point, I don't even start circuit tracing until I've made a thorough inspection for traces of flux residue *anywhere* on the board. If I see any, I clean the entire board even if it's just a little residue at the edge of a board.
Hence my interest in constructing a 100 psi pressure washer using a fuel injection pump and a modified airbrush with a gallon or two of alcohol which gets repurified by distillation. That should make cleaning very quick, painless and cheap. The sole effort being the disassembly and reassembly.
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Re: HP34702A Ohms converter issues
Daun,
38 years ago I rescued the sample rolls of that special cable we got from Belden with HPIL connectors mounted in the ends.? Still have that cable as well as with many lengths of the standard HPIL cable and peripherals.?
Actually, now that I give it more thought, the shielded cable was not killed but did make it to market but just did not sell well.? The cable was 120 ohm characteristic impedance twisted shielded pair and allowed HPIL to work to 100 meters guaranteed and further unspeced.? It was introduced about 1/2 way into the 3421A data acquisition project around 1982 or so.
George
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Hi Rafael,
What you are doing is very nearly what I did for my master's thesis
back in the early 1980's. I took an 8410A system, and a bunch of
miscellaneous bits of test equipment, synthesizers, voltmeters, and
an attenuator/mux that I designed and built, and made them work with
the Accuracy Enhancement Package that HP did for the 8409 system.
So, I have been through this before in a big way. I even rewrote the
Accuracy Enhancement Package in Fortran, and built a GPIB controller
for an Interdata 6/16... before I scored a 9835A controller, and went
back to the HP Basic Accuracy Enhancement Package.
I was told that an undergraduate translated my modified version of the
HP software to GW BASIC on a PC, complete with the GPIB drivers, but
I never saw that code.
-Chuck Harris
ea7hwx@... wrote:
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Hi Chuck,
This is a complex issue and will require a lot of effort. Anyway for now I am satisfied with being able to process the images on the PC and print them, save them etc. I am aware that the HP8750 (storage normalizer) will improve the errors a bit. To get more accuracy and improvement in errors, you need a computer or save money and buy an HP8510 system.
I have an HP9825A fully restored and working and I have read the AN221 (semi-automatic )where everything is very well explained. Another similar path could be an HPIB PCI card and a copy of Labview.
Well, since this is for fun, I'm going to start with the simple.
I agree with all your comment. Even with the idea of using two Voltmeters instead of ADC. I have even thought of two HP3456As that would do the work to spare.
This is a long-term project, buy, repair etc ...
Thank you so much!
Rafael.
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Hi Chuck,
This is a complex issue and will require a lot of effort. Anyway for now I am satisfied with being able to process the images on the PC and print them, save them etc. I am aware that the HP8750 (storage normalizer) will improve the errors a bit. To get more accuracy and improvement in errors, you need a computer or save money and buy an HP8510 system.
I have an HP9825A fully restored and working and I have read the AN221 (semi-automatic )where everything is very well explained. Another similar path could be an HPIB PCI card and a copy of Labview.
Well, since this is for fun, I'm going to start with the simple.
I agree with all your comment. Even with the idea of using two Voltmeters instead of ADC. I have even thought of two HP3456As that would do the work to spare.
This is a long-term project, buy, repair etc ...
Thank you so much!
Rafael.
|
You are probably aware, but the 8409 ANA system mostly
uses the visual indications on its P-M and Polar screens
for your amusement. It does not use a storage normalizer.
The 8409 ANA system does not have the ability to display
the data after error enhancement, on the 8410 and 8412
screens... relying on the computer for that capability.
The 8409 ANA system uses a MUX to direct the X-Y
outputs from the 8412A display to an HPIB controlled
ADC... though a system voltmeter, like the 3437A,
or pretty much anything that is fast reading works very
well.
Using the 8412A polar display as the source of data instead
of the 8410C's phase-magnitude display is done to allow
representation of an unlimited number of degrees of
phase shift to be observed without loss of resolution.
The digitized X-Y signals, along with a host of others
are fed to the accuracy enhancement software, and
that is where the magic happens.
Any printing that happens is done through the accuracy
enhancement software over the HPIB.
The 8409's accuracy enhancement software is written
in HP98XX series basic, and is easily adaptable to
other languages, and other HPIB controlled instruments.
The Prologix controller would be ideal for running such
an ANA system.
-Chuck Harris
ea7hwx@... wrote:
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I'm updating my old VNA 8410A with the intention of converting it to HP8410C.
The first thing I want to achieve is to print the image of the diplay on paper or computer support. I have decided to implement an HP 8570A and use its XY and PEN output to represent an image on an HP54512B oscilloscope (which has HPIB). Later, using the prologix USB interface, I will be able to deal with it on the PC.
I got an HP8410C, HP8414A, HP8750A on ebay and have them repaired and running. These together with the rest will form the improved VNA with many more possibilities. The new display is an HP8412B that has the normalizer connector (to be connected to the HP8750A).
My problem is with the HP8412B:
-Not respone to Ampl / phase / Dual selector.
To locate the fault I need the manual. I got it original but my display has lost the serial number and model (narrow front and rear aluminum plate)
The pcb where the problem should be is the A3 (Multiplexer and Deflection Amplifier)
which has No. 08412-60047.
The original manual says that the number of the A3 is: 08412-60063
Also a manual downloaded from the web also has the number: 08412-60063
Does anyone have the scheme of my card 08412-60047?
Card 08412-60063 has 2x12 pin
Card 08412-60047 has 2x15 pin
My big problem is that I do not have the prefix of the serial number of the HP8412B.
I appreciate any suggestion.
73's
Rafael
EA7HWX
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Re: HP34702A Ohms converter issues
George, you are bringing back some ancient memories!? Way back then
I was up in the Farmington/Novi offices (near Detroit, MI) and
worked a lot with the automotive companies, before I transferred to
Dayton.
Interesting about the shielded cable... it obviously didn't get far
because this is the first I'd heard about that one.
Daun
Daun E. Yeagley II, N8ASB
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Daun,
HPIL was also designed to go long lengths for remote operation.?
The cable was nothing special, just a two wire parallel cable like
zip cord.? If you needed a longer length, you could simply splice
in a length of cheap speaker cable.? There was a special shielded
parallel wire cable that was looked but never marketed at that
would allow the HPIL to run several hundred feet.? This was going
to be sold into the 3421A data acquisition market that also used
the HPIL interface (IEE488 also an option) and the DC analog
circuity developed for the 3468A.
George
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Re: Looking for silicone HV potting goop
A lot of potting is done with the same wax material that
is used in the medical industry for theraputic things.
It melts at a cozy temperature, and is quite flexible.
Same sort of stuff used for removal of body hair in barbaric
ways.
You could also simply use beeswax, and melt and pour it off
when you needed to do rework. If you mix in paraffin, you
can achieve a mixture where mot much shrinkage happens when
the wax cools... about 70% beeswax seems best.
I use straight hotglue for some things. I made an outdoor
photocell for the Army, and it was potted with straight clear
hot glue. You can't remove it from pvc boxes, though as the
boxes will melt before the glue melts.
-Chuck Harris
Ed Breya via Groups.Io wrote:
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I've been designing up some HV testing circuits, and plan to pot the parts that run up to 30 kV. I'm reusing a couple of plastic HV CRT supply boxes salvaged from old HP scopes, such as the 180. The anode multiplier section in these were potted with a beautiful clear silicone goop that was easy to remove, and in like-new condition after fifty years. I'd like to find the same kind of stuff for this new use. Does anyone know exactly what HP used for these back then?
I definitely want clear silicone, electrical/HV grade. I want it clear because I like being able to see into the guts during potting and operation, and I may have an LED buried inside to indicate current flow. I want it silicone so it can be torn out easily for design modifications - and clearness helps a lot with this.
Online searching seems to indicate RTV-11 is probably about right, if it's available in clear. Any other ideas? I see that the RTVs are pretty spendy nowadays, so I'm looking for reasonable prices on small quantity units, say around 250 ml. The volume to be filled is about 5-6 in^3.
PS: An interesting thing I noticed in searching, was some talk about making cheap (and sort of clear) electrical potting compound by mixing hot melt glue sticks into molten parrafin. Has anyone heard of this, or know more info? Something like this may be OK if it's fairly clear or translucent, and can be blended to be pliable enough for easy removal. Flammability isn't an issue here, since the power levels are low, and it's only for temporary testing hookups.
Ed
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Re: HP34702A Ohms converter issues
Daun,
HPIL was also designed to go long lengths for remote operation.? The cable was nothing special, just a two wire parallel cable like zip cord.? If you needed a longer length, you could simply splice in a length of cheap speaker cable.? There was a special shielded parallel wire cable that was looked but never marketed at that would allow the HPIL to run several hundred feet.? This was going to be sold into the 3421A data acquisition market that also used the HPIL interface (IEE488 also an option) and the DC analog circuity developed for the 3468A.
George
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Re: HP34702A Ohms converter issues
HP Interface Loop. A serial implementation of an instrumentation communication system similar to HPIB. it was designed to use programmable calculators or desktop PCs as controllers and didn’t really catch on.?
toggle quoted message
Show quoted text
On Feb 15, 2019, at 09:23, Steve Hendrix < SteveHx@...> wrote:
At 2019-02-15 10:06 AM, Jeff Anderson wrote:
Unfortunately, the 3468B
instruments have HP-IL ports in lieu of HP-IB.
What is HP-IL?
|
Re: HP34702A Ohms converter issues
Jeff,
If the batteries in circuit are reading 3.03v, then they are in good shape yet.? I would expect them to drop to around 2.7 - 2.8v before going belly up.? A new lithium cell unloaded will read about 3.2 - 3.25v
George
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Re: HP34702A Ohms converter issues
"Hewlett Packard Interface Loop".? It was a very low power serial
interface that formed a loop (all devices in a circular loop).? It
was designed for use with battery operated (i.e. low power) devices
and controllers such as the HP-41 calculator or HP-71 handheld basic
computer.? It was handy for data acquisition in vehicles.
Daun
Daun E. Yeagley II, N8ASB
On 2/15/2019 10:23 AM, Steve Hendrix
wrote:
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Show quoted text
At 2019-02-15 10:06 AM, Jeff Anderson wrote:
Unfortunately, the
3468B
instruments have HP-IL ports in lieu of HP-IB.
What is HP-IL?
|
Dave McGuire
