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Don, I remember the little thrusters and dust kick-up. I thought it
was the 4054 that had the write-thru and didn't remember about the
4081 (glad to finally get that model number!). The write-thru was
orange as I recall.

The tape drives were the DC300's as I recall.

The plotter was likely a 4662 (8.5" x 11") with electrostatic hold-
down with RS-232 or GPIB interface. The 4663 I think was another
plotter in a larger format (11" x 17").

Dean

The main reason tek made the low bandwidth 5100 series (also
identifed as D10/D11/D12, etc.) was to service the
biomedical/research community, that needed high sensitivity and low
speed, and often had small budgets. the storage units sold
especially well into that market, and are still in very high demand
today, incredibly. The big CRT is also a plus for many users,
although I think the over-all product quality is not as good as the
7K series.

the slow frames also worked great for audio (don't forget, HP had
scopes like the 120 that were only 500KHz) and could be configured
with some pretty interesting differential plug ins. They had no fans
(although it certainly would have helped cool the super hot
deflection stages), and were thus favored for audio wiork, as they
were quiet. The scopes are really made from the modular OEM display
and a reconfigured TM503 cage to produce a scope. what is really
puzzling is why tek ever made the 5400 series, high speed with on
screen display. It clearly robbed sales from the 7603. It would
probably have been better off with a less costly 7603 version.

NO, the TM500/5000 plug ins DO NOT work in the frames, but may fit by
accident if the lock outs are missing from the scope's connectors.
the test cables are also NOT interchangeable. The 5100 and 5400's
cannot share plug ins universally. the high speed plug ins
(5x3n/5x4n) fit ONLY the high speed frames, power supplies are
different. The frame standardizer fits ONLY the 5400, so it is hard
to set the low speed plug ins and frames to a universally swappable
setting.

I agree that the TM503/504's sell best because of portability, and
often people have only a few plug ins anyway. The TM506 is quite
massive, and very heavy, so it's not an ideal bench instrument, it's
really meant to be a rack thing.

all for now,
walter

I am also a newcomer to the community. I bought my first TEK in september.
I needed a differential amplifier for triboelectric cable noise measurements
and an oscilloscope for it.
Budget was tight and the system had to be "portable". Before buying I did a
quite extensive research about the TM500 series and am now owner of a TM503
mainframe with an AM502 differential amplifier plug-in and a 10 MHz, 2
channel SC503 oscilloscope plug-in. All the components are in mint condition
and I am very happy with my choice. I know that many of you would have
chosen the 7A22 differential amplifier with a 7K mainframe for the job but
the dimensions and weight of the 7K Series made me desist from that thought.
The specifications of the AM502 are apparently very similar.

Regarding the price differences you mention, I have compared prices on
e-bay www.vaxxine.com/phil/scopes/plugin$.htm and several shops and cannot
share your perception about the TM506. There will always be bargains but
generally the condition and the demand of a unit determines its price. I
could be that the demand for the smaller power supply mainframes is because
people like me need to do a specific job with this equipment rather than
putting together as many instruments as possible in one frame.

I learned that the TM500 series includes oscilloscope plugins up to 80 MHz
(SC504). For ultimate portability there exists the TM515, a hardcase power
supply mainframe. Some have high power compartments and forced air cooling.

Some of the plugins make less sense then others nowadays (i.e. multimeters,
etc.) unless you really need an all-in-one solution for field work.

Here in Europe it is not easy to find good and cheap plugins for this series
and I get water in my mouth when I see the e-bay auctions in the US. Thanks
for any hints. Perhaps the european members or people shipping overseas can
give good advise?

Another thing: there is the TM5000 series, not to be confused with the 5000
series oscilloscopes with their plugins. The difference between the TM500
and TM5000is the GPIB (IEEE 488.1 - 1987) compatibility. TM5000 series
frames accept TM 500 and/or TM5000 series plug-ins.

Matthias Urban
(a german in Spain)


-----Urspr???ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: "Lynn Lewis" <mrzuzu@...>
An: "TekScopes@yahoogroups. com" <TekScopes@...>
Gesendet: viernes, 11 de enero de 2002 0:13
Betreff: [TekScopes] 2 dumb questions

I never owned anything made by Tektronix in my life until December. Now I
have
6 scopes and a bushel of plugins. I have two questions, the answers to

which

are probably obvious to you guys but not to me.

1. Why are people paying from $120 to over $200 for TM503's and TM504's

but

are paying less than $100 for TM506's (of which I got one for $75+S&H)?

2. Will the modules that go into a TM5-whatever also work in a 5000

Series

oscilloscope? If not, then why is the 5000 series so popular? I can't
figure
any other reason anyone would want a 2MHz or 5MHz scope.



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Hi Lynn,

Comments below:

Lynn Lewis wrote:

I never owned anything made by Tektronix in my life until December. Now I
have
6 scopes and a bushel of plugins. I have two questions, the answers to which
are probably obvious to you guys but not to me.

1. Why are people paying from $120 to over $200 for TM503's and TM504's but
are paying less than $100 for TM506's (of which I got one for $75+S&H)?

I don't even have a good guess on this one. I'm with you. I think the best buy
seems to be TM506's if the prices you quoted are accurate.

2. Will the modules that go into a TM5-whatever also work in a 5000 Series
oscilloscope?

No

If not, then why is the 5000 series so popular?

I guess I don't think they are really that "popular". By the way, there is also
a 5400 series that is good for 50 MHz and those are considered by some to be
part of the "5000 series".

I can't
figure
any other reason anyone would want a 2MHz or 5MHz scope.

Well, maybe they are working in audio and need the sensitivity that some of the
5000 series plugin provide . . .

Stan
w7ni@...

I wish I could help with the power supply problem. I bought a 7704 that
works
great and a 7704A (from Ron Kovac) that has some problems. I know the HV
circuit works, however, because the readouts show up. I'm trying to acquire
a
service manual now. Maybe after I get the book and become familiar, I can
help
more.

My guess is that the 503's and 504's are more portable. I have two 503's
and one 5006 (506 on steroids!!). I don't think the 5xx plug-ins fit the
5000 series, but I may be wrong.
I understand that the 5000 series had reliability problems. But then I
find problems in the 7000 series also.
Still trying to fix the 7704A power supply.

73, Dick, W1KSZ

I never owned anything made by Tektronix in my life until December. Now I
have
6 scopes and a bushel of plugins. I have two questions, the answers to which
are probably obvious to you guys but not to me.

1. Why are people paying from $120 to over $200 for TM503's and TM504's but
are paying less than $100 for TM506's (of which I got one for $75+S&H)?

2. Will the modules that go into a TM5-whatever also work in a 5000 Series
oscilloscope? If not, then why is the 5000 series so popular? I can't
figure
any other reason anyone would want a 2MHz or 5MHz scope.

On Thu, Jan 10, 2002 at 12:55:28AM -0800, Stan or Patricia Griffiths wrote:

I think the plotter you are thinking of is the 4662. I have three of those and

I have one of those, too, and would like to be able to use it with some
of today's pc's running Linux, or even Win98. Anybody know of a program
that will handle that? I used to write real neat letters in German
using the 4052 or 4054, and then print them out on vellum using the
refillable drafting pens. They came out really nice. One year we did a
dozen or so Christmas letters using that method. 1981. The TEK 4050
series were really nice, and there was actually quite a bit of software
available. Too bad a raster display wasn't quickly developed to take
advantage of the existing system.

FWIW I produced our wedding invitiations on a 4051, plotting them out on a
Tek x-y plotter - I forget the type number of this unit. However, that too

X-Y plotters are much simpler than the 4662 which is a digital
plotter.
I did a Google search a while back on the Tektronix 4662 and saw a
reference where someone had replaced part of the electronics so it could
be driven with the output of a CAM program...to do something like
engraving or cutting styrofoam...can't remember the details.

--
Ray Menke

I think the plotter you are thinking of is the 4662. I have three of those and
my best one is on display at Building 50 on the Tektronix Campus in their
"mini-museum" history display. I also have a working 4052 with a few games on
it. I liked "Artillery" and my wife's favorite was "Weather War". Another of
my favorites was "Tanks".

Stan
w7ni@...

Craig Sawyers wrote:

I also remember that Asteroids game for the 4051.

FWIW I produced our wedding invitiations on a 4051, plotting them out on a
Tek x-y plotter - I forget the type number of this unit. However, that too
was pretty exotic stuff for 1978!

If I close my eyes I can hear the whirr of the cassette mechanism on the
front of the 4051.

As for lunar lander (haven't thought about that for decades!), when the 4052
came out the program was unusable. The computer was so much faster than the
4051 the trajectory took about 0.2 seconds - all you saw was a flash across
the screen, then the landscape redrew for the next go.

Craig

The 661 is the same physical size as a 545A. There is a picture of one on
page 337 of my book.

Stan
w7ni@...

Michael Dunn wrote:

Hi Michael,

Those are vertical amplifiers for the 661 sampling scope. The time bases for
the 661 had numbers like 5T1, 5T1A, and 5T3. In fact, those three were the
only timebases ever made for the 661. Two other vertical plugins were made,
however: the 4S2A and the 4S3. The 4S3 requires two P6038 active sampling
probes to work.

The sampling diodes were matched sets of 4 used in bridge configuration.
They were Tek-made GaAs and there was a bridge of 4 for each channel. The
4S1 and 4S2 used different diode sets. I think the 4S2A used yet a third
different set and the 4S3 had the sampling diodes located in the P6038 probes
and were different even yet. (P6038's were also used with the 3S3. 4S1
sampling diodes were the same as those used in the 3S76.)

If you don't have the rest of the system, those plugins are pretty useless.
Even then, they might be useless. I have three 661's but none of them have
been turned on by me yet. I suspect they are all badly broken as are
probably 90% of all 661 systems in the world today. I have some interest in
those plugins because they just MIGHT have a good diode set in one of the
channels which I think is going to be the hardest piece to find when I try to
get one of my systems up and running. So, I would be willing to do some
trading with you if your demands are not above my theshold of pain . . . Do
these plugins HAVE sampling diodes in them and what are the serial numbers of
the different units you have?

Stan
w7ni@...

Michael Dunn wrote:

Dean,

Very excellent idea about the two hole 7K plugin portable scope. The more I
think about it, the better I like it!

I remember a lunar lander game for the 4081 workstation which I played while
on a group tour of the Wilsonville facility. The 4081 display was large for
the time (19" diagonal?), and had storage plus "write-through" capability.
The game scenery was written first in storage mode, then the animated bits
(the lander and main engine and maneuvering thrusters, and even the dust the
engines kicked up when it was near the surface!) were vectored using
write-through. Control was via a joystick, which at the time was pretty
exotic. The game and animation worked very, very smoothly with all the
proper ballistics (remember this was about 1976 or so).

The rest of you may remember the 4081 as the display often used for computer
screen closeups on the "Battlestar Galactica" TV show. Can't remember if the
workstation was ever shown as part of the set, but the display write-through
and minicomputer speed made a pretty effective 'tactical sensor display'.

I also remember that Asteroids game for the 4051. Did you also get the tape
(remember those clunky 3M tape cartridges?) with the electronic music
programs on it? Played via the "beeper", with some songs in chords! Ragtime
was particularly effective. I remember being astonished at how good it
actually sounded.

Don

At 12:53 PM -0800 2002/1/9, Jim Reese wrote:

The 4S1 and 4S2 plugins are used with the 661 scope
mainframe along with a 5T1 or 5T2 time base. I

That must be a massive mainframe, to take TWO of those plug-ins! Got a picture? (upload to our Pictures area)

md

The 4S1 and 4S2 plugins are used with the 661 scope
mainframe along with a 5T1 or 5T2 time base. I
believe this was one of Teks first attempts at
sampling technology. I think I have a scope or two and
some plugs if you or anyone else is interested in one
for their collection.

Jim Reese

--- Michael Dunn <mdunn@...> wrote:

I just came across some 4S1s and 4S2s!!!
Dual-channel sampler
plugs w/o timebases. What on earth were these used
in? Anyone have
docs? I'd like to know what sampling diodes are
used in it if
nothing else... One of them actually had a risetime
of 0.1ns (~3GHz)!

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I just came across some 4S1s and 4S2s!!! Dual-channel sampler plugs w/o timebases. What on earth were these used in? Anyone have docs? I'd like to know what sampling diodes are used in it if nothing else... One of them actually had a risetime of 0.1ns (~3GHz)!

Playing with the 4051 was fun. I remember the standard game
was "Lunar Lander". Then the 4052 and 4054 came out and Lunar Lander
became worthless because they were so much faster that all you could
do was crash the lander.

One of our reps got hold of a game ... I think it was something
like "Asteroids" or some other thing and to give it speed, it
accessed microcode rather than Basic. My understanding was that the
program wasn't to be given to customers for then they would expect
the blazing speed increase to be standard stuff for the machine. And
as I recall, it did stuff with the CRT intensity that was hard on the
phosphor.

The 4054, besides having the bigger screen, also had the dual-color
capability for moving objects around before placing them didn't it?
Or was that the 4085 or whatever it was that was a desk-sized unit?

I thought that Tek missed the boat on several occasions and I suppose
that some of them were because of inter-department competition. I'd
always thought it to be a good idea to make a 2-plug-in 7K styled
like a 465 ... a service scope with plug-in versatility and readout.

They did make power supplies for the 1- and letter-series plug-ins so
you could used them as stand-alone amplifiers. Don't know why they
didn't expand that idea with 7K and 5K unless it would have bit into
AM50x sales.

Dean

Stan,

I that book that you look down at, 'Winning with People', there was a
mention of a guy by name Bob Anderson, who was hired from Hughes in 1959
(page 214, right hand column). He started at CRT department, working on
general CRTs, but by late 1961 there was a storage tube, and Bob Anderson
was associated with it. The storage CRT enabled 564 to be brought to market
in 1963.

Maybe that is a link between Hughes and Tektronix storage CRT, that we
speculated about a while back.

Regards
Miroslav Pokorni

Hi Don,

No, I don't think we ever really went into this stuff before and I am sure you
have the attention of a few hundred very interested guys . . . More below . . .

donlcramer@... wrote:

Speaking of prototypes, I am fascinated by them, whether Tek or someone
elses'. They represent someone's vision and generally also a lot of effort,
so it would be nice if something of it could be saved for history. Homage to
those that tried but failed I guess.

Unfortunately, I have a rather small house to be collecting this kind of
stuff. Hopefully at least the literature will end up with Stan for the
future Tek museum.

The main reason I don't (can't) collect many prototypes is that there are
probably about 10 prototypes for every one that actually became a catalog
product. I would need ten times the space to store them. Another reason is that
they are very poorly documented and usually have some serious flaw tht was worked
out later when it advanced to become a real instrument or it was abandoned,
complete with flaw. What I am looking for right now is someone to step forward
and tell me they want to preserve the 4000 Series technology. I have about 20
instruments I would love to give to that person right now to get them started. I
have passed up free gifts of many more 4000 Series because I don't have room to
store them. Step right up . . . please . . .

I vaguely remember seeing a few prototype products from my days at Tek (late
70's). One was the "nanoscope", which was shown at a yearly Tek Labs show
(where the corporate guys got to see what the lab coats were up to). It was
about a third the size of a 200 series handheld (the nanoscope that is, not
the show--the show took up the entire Bldg 50 auditorium). It didn't get
much further than a rough prototype I believe. And the CRT looked nice.

Boy, I don't remember that one.

Another was some pretty densely packed rackwidth size instruments which I was
told were network analyzers. That was back when I thought a network was
something that broadcast TV shows. I would love to hear the story of that
effort (it was adjacent the Spectrum Analyzer group, part of Communications
Division).

I was never privvy to that effort either . . .

Yet another was the 4054, which was a bit slice version of the 4051/4052
family desktop computers. Included a racy fast custom graphics processor,
also bit slice based. I understood it had super, super fast hardware with
real, real slow software. I was told the dozen prototypes were ultimately
bandsawed in the Model Shop. :<

Well, the 4054 actually became an official product. It's in the 1982 Tek Catalog
and perhaps others.

Also something out of the young Digital Service Instruments (DSI) offshoot of
Portables called the PET, which I think stood for Programmable Electronic
Tester. A largish portable scope size enclosure with, I recollect, an 8085
based micro and a bunch of interface cards. As the name implies, you plug
this box into your big system of some sort and it exercises it for you and
tells you what's wrong. I think the problem was defining what it was going
to plug into, and how was the specialized test software to be written? When
the group moved, they left behind a bunch of neat prototype mechanical
enclosure bits which I used to make G jobs out of.

I may have heard of this one . . .

And there was an internal tool called the board bucket, a card cage
microprocessor based computer system. I think it started as an engineering
tool when the 6800 based 4051 was developed, but became an internal entity
all it's own with cards, power supply, firmware, and engineering support.

I have seen these. I think they were mostly for the engineers to play with and
help them develop new products.

Another thing I came across in Tek Labs were 7K scope racks in the style of
TM500. That is, they were nicely built cages with power supplies which took
(6?) 7K type plug-ins. They had no CRT related hardware in them. Perhaps
these were only made for internal use, and perhaps before the real TM500
series came out. I never saw them with real 7K plugins installed. Only 7K
plugin mechanicals with custom hardware (like CRT test electronics)
installed. They were real nicely made, heavy and robust mainframes compared
to the TM500 equivalents, with regulated supplies in them like 7K scopes. I
recollect the plug-in mechanical bits and the blank PCB were available in
engineering stock for those which wanted to build something into them.

I have one of those 7K frames. I think the one I have was used as a "cycle box"
to age new plugins prior to calibrating them. I think they used the same basic
hardware for lots of in-house jobs.

I heard about, but never saw, some higher speed 200 series handhelds. I
believe they attained 35MHz but had dismal battery life. The engineer who
told me about this (I think he worked on it as a matter of fact) said there
was concern in management that that kind of performance would just
cannibalize the sales of the 400 series so the program was never pursued
seriously. Throughout my time at Tek I would hear variations of this kind of
story as a reason promising ideas were stopped. That is, some new idea would
hurt sales of existing products, so was stopped.

That probably happened, but if it did, it was a risky attitude to have. Better
Tek should hurt their own sales than have the competitors do it. If this stuff
could be built by Tek, they HP could probably do it . . .

Of course, now that I'm middle aged, I wish I would have paid better
attention to all this in the first place. Fortunately, there is this news
group now!

Ignore me if this was discussed previous to my joining. Hope I'm not being a
bore here...

Don

One of the prototypes that I have kept is the Tek 537 Storage Scope. It is
really a 531A with a special front panel and retrofitted with a Hughes Memoscope
CRT. I have heard two 537's were built and I have no idea what happened to the
other one.

I have a few other prototypes around but mostly I cannabalize them for parts. If
you are fond of prototypes, I would consider selling some to you . . . Right
now, I have a B Phase 547 that belongs to another guy, who wants to sell it.
$100 with a plugin (can't remember which model . . .).

Any takers? I can give a better description of the 547, scan a picture, and find
out about the plugin, if anyone is interested.

Stan
w7ni@...

I was thinking as I wrote the email last night that I might have gotten the
wrong product number (I recollect now the 4052 was a faster 4051, and the
4054 had in addition a bigger screen). Tonight I'm thinking the product name
was the 4060 or 4062 (I'm hoping I'm not confusing them with the hardcopy
unit numbers, which I think were 46xx). Whatever it was, it was supposed to
be a higher performance, new generation product.

I'm getting further out on a limb here but I think the programming language
used to develop it was TINA. I was told that stood for "This Is Not an
Acronym", which was clever enough that I've never forgotten it. I think TINA
was internally developed as well.

For some reason I kinda miss the early days when everything didn't have to be
Microsoft.

All this 4000 series talk reminds me of some of the shannigans that went on
in Tek Labs when I worked there. The 4K stuff was pretty expensive, so to
save on the capital equipment budget, some of the eng techs would build up 4K
accessories from premade/tested modules and boards ordered through
engineering stock. One would order first the service manual, then from the
parts list get all the major pieces. Engineering stock orders were expensed
so no approvals were needed (and you'd be surprised how low the internal cost
was for board assemblies, etc). The idea was the techs would build up the
instrument during slack times so the labour was 'hidden'. I remember
building up the ROM Module extender for the 4051. It was called a 'toaster'
as it was a metal box with a bunch of slots in the top for plugging in those
plastic cased ROM packs (the 4051 backpack only held two I think, hence the
need for an expansion box). It was simple and cheap to build from parts, but
way expensive if bought from the catalog (I don't think we got a discount
internally from completed instruments--that is, we had to budget catalog
price). The ROM packs were similarly worth doing "Johnny Cash Style". You'd
buy the socketed blank board and plastic case halves, then plug in the
appropriate ROM set, and tah-dah, ROM packs for a fraction of the catalog
price. One tech in another department actually built a hardcopy unit
(remember the dry silver medium?), but it was complicated enough, and took
long enough, that it would have been far better to order it intact. One of
the scientists built a 4051 for himself though most of it came through the
Tek Country Store (where employees purchased surplus) or through engineering
stock via "personal purchases" (gawd, I miss those Tek Engineering
Stockrooms). This kind of thing was usually triggered by someone having a
key part initially, like the jug, for free and then it goes from there.
Well, then Apple II computers came along, followed by IBM PCs, and then the
Tek 4K desktop computers (and for that matter the DEC pdp11 stuff for those
few fortunate groups that could affor them) was history. The Tek stuff and
the minicomputers were just too expensive.


Stan w7ni@... wrote:

"Well, the 4054 actually became an official product. It's in the 1982 Tek
Catalog and perhaps others."