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tverbeureyesterday at 10:25 PM1 replyview on HN

My 54825A had a power-up problem: if you unplugged the AC cord for a few hours, pressing the front-panel button wouldn't power on the scope. But if you plugged in the AC for about 5 minutes, it would work fine again.

That sounds like an easy thing to fix, but the whole power-on architecture was a baffling Rube Goldberg device from the button on a small support PCB to the front panel PCB to the PC plug-in card to the power supply. I've never seen anything like it.

I disclosed the flaw to the buyer (the price was very low) and he was excited to have something to work on. :-)


Replies

wowczarekyesterday at 10:33 PM

There are exceptions to the "Winscopes" from the same era in the 1 GHz+ space (RTOS like VxWorks but with Ethernet and modern goodies) that are not HP/Tek/R&S, but I'm not listing them because I'm out on an active hunt for one ;-)

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