EEVblog #265 - Philips PM6672 Timer Counter Teardown

[quantumfall]

Just the sort of gear I'd like to get from the bay not that I need it its just so nice to own and affordable sometimes.  I would like an old tek scope as well just for the sheer build quality.

Philips made a lot of nice equipment in the years gone by,  are you going to give us a look at it in action ?

I've got an 1960's vintage counter timer with nixie tubes it has a crystal oven with a crystal in a glass envelope not dissimilar to the one in the philips, but its just in an alloy case with a mechanical thermostat and a small filament lamp as a heater.

Nice Dave looking forward to the next installment. schematic almost like Dave CAD.

[Rufus]

I have a PM6672/03 same as the teardown with the next cheaper  OCXO.

Found a copy of the order for it from 1983

GBP 775 + GBP 181 for the OCXO option.

The radio switch contacts needed cleaning a couple of times and the unusual furry plastic coating on the case covers kinda disintegrated. I snuck them in with a powder coating job a few years ago. Otherwise it still works fine.

[quantumfall]

"The radio switch contacts" I almost thort what you on about,  but then it became clear grass hopper. slide switches.

[baljemmett]

"The radio switch contacts" I almost thort what you on about,  but then it became clear grass hopper. slide switches.

Radio switches / buttons are the pushbuttons that are arranged in a group such that when you push one in, whichever one was pushed in previously pops back out.  That's also where the name for the GUI controls with the select-only-one-'checkbox' behaviour comes from, incidentally.

[quantumfall]

Thanks for that, how easy it is to forget / remember the things you have used before.

Perhaps its just me a  dumb arse

[wkb]

The chip in the ceramic DIP with the OQ marking is a custom chip of some sorts.  OQ stood for Outstanding Quality (no kiddin' !) They were designed by the SSP (Solid State Special Products) group of Philips Semiconductor.

I did my graduation work at SSP in Nijmegen, the Netherlands around 1987 

[wiss]

The option port on the back is for GPIB and other options.
The 6671 has a hold of instead of the GHz input, the GHz/hold of are not options but different models using the same board.