FS: Various High End T&M Equipment - Auction score

[Ice-Tea]

Hello Folks,

Made a rather nice run on a huge auction the other day, the plan is as I have done twice before: sell the stuff and keep some of it with the profit, so...

*EDIT (corresponds to V1.0)* The below stuff is Pt.1 I'm roughly halfway through the list, more to follow.
*EDIT (corresponds to V1.1)* Added all other stuff except for LA modules. Stricken TDS754D (SOLD).
*EDIT (V1.2)* LeCroy DA1855A sold, added some pics & datasheets
*EDIT (V1.3)* HP8664A added
*EDIT (V1.4)* Some units sold, checked.. Removed stock pics.
*EDIT (1.5)* Modified the table to reflect some newly checked units, cleaned up first post a bit.
*EDIT (V1.6)* Added the LC574 #. Modified the 9210 pulse gen post. Added a price for the TDS6604 and updated that post.
*EDIT: I'm not maintaing this post anymore, but I updated the sold list so people don't get confused

- All units in, not all of them checked.
- Units listed are sold to me as operational, but I'm still checking them. If you're interested in a non-checked unit it will be checked before any payment is required.
- I bought a number of other units with question marks. None of these will be offered before I can check it out for myself.
- Before anything gets shipped out I will do whatever diagnostic the device features plus a simple functional test. Ie: put a square wave on all channels, see if it shows up. Not "Hey, the slew rate here is 625ps and it is listed as 583ps, let's take it apart".
- Non-conformities beyond what such a functional test would show are beyond my responsability. Should there rise issues with the interpretation of this, I'll raise the question here to see what the consensus on the forum is.
- You can ask to do additional testing at no cost within reason and the capabilities of my gear.
- If you are interested in one or more unit, let me know in the thread or per P/M. Please don't use the thread to haggle though.
- No probes or accesoires included unless otherwise stated.
- You will see a "VAT" and "Without VAT" price.
     -> If you are a bussiness inside the EU with a valid VAT registration number, the no-VAT price applies
     -> If you are a natural person inside the EU, you'll have to pay VAT. As the unit will be shipped from Belgium, there will be no import charges, duties, whatever.
     -> If you are outside the EU, the no-VAT price is applied but keep in mind you may be carged import duties/fees. These are all for you, not my responsability
- I may refuse shipping to certain locations
- The listed price includes Paypal charges. If you pay through a regular bank transfer you can substract that amount from the price but the option "originator pays fees" or something like it must be selected. Ie, if you pay 1k€ I must see 1k€ pop up on my account.
- Shipping adds to the price.
- These prices apply to members of EEVBlog in good standing. I set the prices to be lower than eBay prices because I assume decent members here have a good understanding and some trust already exists. I will not sell to one-time posters under the same conditions.
- ALL PRICES IN €

[TheSteve]

Great haul of gear but why list it before you have it? I don't know why anyone would want to put down a deposit for something you don't have yet and can't even show an actual picture of.

[Ice-Tea]

Firstly, forgot to say: obviously if a unit is reserved but it turns out it's in bad shape or there are issues the advance will be returned.

Why I do it has two reasones. 1) This is putting a huge strain on my budget. The auction went a bit better than I thought, so I need to find a way to get some money back in. 2) I'm contacting some second hand T&M dealers right now (they don't seem to mind working with prelim info) but would still prefer to sell this stuff here. As those folks might take a whole wad out of the inventory I'm giving the opportunity to sign in now.

Why you or anyone else might want to do this is also easy: get in first. You help out by aleviating my little cash flow issue, you get first choice.

Or you can just wait untill it all arrives and decent pictures are availble. It's just another choice you have.

[LPaul]

Hello,
Interested in buying one of the sub €1,000 scope instead of a low-end new one. Would pick-up be an option? (gas to anywhere in Belgium would definitely be less than €80 from where I live + no risk during shipment)

[Ice-Tea]

Absolutely. Location is 3945, Ham

[Ice-Tea]

(V1.1)

Added the rest of the stuff. For those playing along: the units mentioned in the score thread and not here have various issues (SW problems, not booting, cracks, bad screens,...). So those will be checked and hopefully repaired before they'll pop up here.

[Ice-Tea]

Thinking about a way to test these units. I guess the Lecroy 9210 pulse gen would come in handy to check the scopes... verifying the slope on all channels. Would also bypass me not having +500MHz active probes, BNC would work just fine.

Any suggestions for the others stuff? What would be an interesting/representative thing to measure with the SIA-3000 units? 

[Ice-Tea]

Also thinking about offering the option to include 500MHz passive probes for those scopes. I could buy a bunch in bulk and offer them at cost to make the package more complete. Would that make sense? Looking at some German probes:


http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/43854.pdf?_ga=1.31028026.469541086.1414004735

Would be able to offer them at 100€ (ex taxes) a pop if people are interested. Thoughts? Suggestions? I'd be interested to hear opinions, not just if you have any intention to buy one of the units..

[Ice-Tea]

Holy F**K!!!

I chartered a local shipping company to pick up my stuff, package it and ship it. That was 6.whole.weeks.ago. 

Today I received an update: stuff is ready to be shipped and will do so... in another two weeks. The ship itself is actually still in Rotterdam atm (Maersk Missouri, if anyone cares). The bloke mentioned it might actually advance a week (this would be the first time they advance anything). Regardless, it will be mid-oktober before I get my mitts on the stuff.

And to think I originally assumed to have it before September.

Now, if you'll excuse me, I'll go work some more to keep the bills payed untill the goodies get here 

[Ice-Tea]

Finally got my gear:





Been wrapping my head around the question on how to "present" al of it around here. Some stuff will just require power-on, quick verification and hopefully a sale, other stuff will probably need some work and effort. Rather than to spam the forum with a gazillion threads for each of the units, I figured I'd just contain it here. A single post in this thread per unit. As some of these posts will be repair rather than sell related, I suppose that strictly speaking it will be posted in the wrong place. As far as I can see, this is the lesser of two evils but it the mods don't agree: let me know!

[Ice-Tea]

HP 8664A #1

I got two of these, both were sold as not powering up. Starting out with them as I am hoping to use them as a verification source for other gear (and because I want to know if the gamble worked out). I didn't pay much for them but...

The two person lift warning is not a joke. You could moore the QEII with this thing. That also means that, while they didn't cost much, the shipping was an absolute killer.

Front is in pretty good shape. This may be my favorite part:

Yes, this is an old machine, but it has been used and maintained untill fairly recent... After a quick check of the fuse (OK) and a check if there's a 110/230 switch (no, universal) I figured I might as well give it a go...

For a unit that doesn't work, this isn't half bad! Nice and bright VFD's as well. And the, uhm, arbitrary code generator seems to work nicecly as well.  . No for the not-so-great news..




Doesn't keep it from working seemingly well. Will have to get the manual for this stuff, I guess. No N-coax here atm (probably Tuesday) so I can only check the audio output (which works well, aparently):

So, will have to dig in the maintenance manual if I can find it and I'll have another go at it when I have a suitable coax adapter. All in all, beats a dead unit by a mile!
For Sale?
No, too many errors and if it works I'll be using it to check the scopes...

[Ice-Tea]

LeCroy DA1855A PR2

It was listed in the price list before, but this was one of the few things that sold "on faith" (and by a very patient buyer). If you look closely, you will see it was listed as a "regular" DA1855 in the list, which was an oversight on my part. The price was set accordingly. I'm not going to backtrack on the sale, so if the unit is good, this should be a very happy buyer (who thusly gets rewarded for his patience!). But, verification first.

Datasheet

Both channels include a precision voltage reference that can be used as one of the inputs. Easy to check:


Close enough!
The top plate at the back is a bit banged up. Nothing life threatning, though. Had a peak inside, there's nothing there untill roughly halfway the case.

That is, unfortunately, as far as I got. Tried to get any kind of trace on the scope, using an input from either the probe comp pins on the scope or the audio output from the HP sig gen. Didn't get anything. My guess: I'm stupid and I don't understand how it works. To be continued.
EDIT: Work continues. Can't get any signal out of the unit except for the reference voltage). Getting rid off the top plate reveals two "standard" DA1855A's, excellent craftmanship and a lot of free space.

Taking off the top (and a lot of other screws that weren't required)... A huge thermal pad (Bergquist by the looks of it) that's kept in place by spacers in the top cover), an RF can (which is closed by the top cover, I would have guessed this would still allow for a substantial gap but the top cover shows where the can made contact so I suppose it's good enough) and some botch work (flying components, 1206 components with two more added in a "tent" configuration),...

So, how to get this started? Well, let's start with the beginning: check where the signal comes in and take it from there! So channel one.. Bingo!

The second schannel is OK, though. So, chances are this is not the "final" solution. One of the reasons I got this heap of gear is not just to make a buck, but also to learn a thing or two. As is the case here. I need to rethink a bit what I know or think I know about differential signals. These coaxes seem to come in without the shield connected at all. Somehow, this does not connect with how a had things in my mind. Which may also be the reason why I never got anything out of Channel 2. Need to think about this a bit.

EDIT: Revisited Channel 2 with a better understanding of the whole thing: got it to work now. Then repaired the coax on Channel 1 (including the shield conection that broke off as well..) and... Still no dice!! So I figured I'd check out other coax connections and sure enough! Another one broke loose. Pictures I took are not good enough but after a quick fix Channel 1 is good to go!
Ready to Ship? Yes! I'm guessing that despite the delay WVL_KsZeN won't be unhappy: he's getting  a 2-channel unit where he (and I) expected and payed for a one-channel device 

[Ice-Tea]

TEK TDS754D 500MHz 4Ch

Supposed to work fine. Boots up nicely, but... Probe call output gives this (when tapping on the channel button, otherwise it stays flat). It is like this for all channels, for the internal probe call and an external one.
https://goo.gl/photos/3esB78Vp3SLLgDNZ7
Hmm, I'm thinking this one may need cracking open.. No time for that now, though...

[WVL_KsZeN]

No hurries here 

but... OMG, that's a HUGE unit, 2 channels! drooling here  my preciousssss

[Ice-Tea]

HP 8664A #2

Well, this seems to be the first truly nice surprise. This one was not supposed to be not working either but boots up like a charm. Nice bright VFD's. Just like the other one relatively recent calibration stickers. No dust buildup visible on the fans or anything. Unlike the other one: no message after boot. Ran the built in test just to be sure and:

Clean sheet! A few dents on top, I pressume from another piece of equipment that sat on top.

Back:

Note: unlike I mentioned in the other post, there is a 110/230V "switch" of sorts. The fuse assembly includes a kind of configuration card you can put in in two orientations thus selecting the voltage. I was just lucky.
EDIT: OK, got my N-Type-BNC pieces and hooked up the generator to the Yokogawa 1.5GHz scope (which is another story). Seems to work fine:

For Sale? Yes, as this is a big hunkin' piece of metal, I'm not adding shipping quotes. Carrier and cost will depend on location.

[Ice-Tea]

LeCroy 9210 Pulse Gen with 9211 module

This unit was supposed to help me check out scopes and other gear, firing up a pulse with a known edge and see how it goes.

See the problem? No? Let me help, with a picture from the auction:

The frontplate from the module is gone. At first I figured this wouldn't help with the resale vale but "oh well, I can still use it for testing". Turns out I can't. There's a "disable" button on the front plate.
A picture from the back and a piece drifting around in the packaging material. No, the frontplate wasn't there. No idea where it could have ended up...

A shame, really, because the self test is fine:

EDIT: For the lovers of fine vintage electronics:

All TH? Not quite... Also: look at that big honkin' LeCroy IC!

For Sale: Sure, but I don't think there are any takers ;-)
What Now: This one is going back to storage. Don't have time to do extensive teardown & repairs, that will be for H1'17. The front connector seems easy to reverse engineer. Maybe make a little breadboard with a connector and a few buttons. Maybe 3D print a front plate. Should be fun, but not now...

EDIT: Yay! The front plate turned up. Was wrapped in with another scope. Still loose, it doesn't snap into place but that's easy enough to fix. Works fine:

Checked it in the post with the second LeCroy LC574.

For Sale: Mhh.. Sure, but I'm not sure it's worth the bother. Probably not worth all that much, but it's still a nice tool to have around. Think I'm gonna hang on to it for my own lab. If you're interested despite this, let me know.

[nctnico]

Too bad about the front plate. I just checked but the Lecroy 9211 module seems to have 1ns rise time minimum so I doubt it is really usefull for checking scopes.

[Ice-Tea]

Well, it beats no rise time 

Figured it was a 300ps module but I just tore it open in the hopes of figuring out the connector but "9211" was written all over the PCB 

[PA0PBZ]

3 Leds and 3 push buttons, that is a limited number of possibilities   

[Ice-Tea]

True. But the 9214 is pretty close.

...

Yeah, I know, but I can dream, right?

[PA0PBZ]

Don't want to end your dream but 1ns? I don't think so:

LeCroy 9211 - 250 MHz, Variable Edge Output Module
• Maximum Rep Rates: Greater than or equal to 250 MHz
• Minimum Pulse Width: Less than or equal to 10.0 nsec
• Output Levels: into 50 ohms
• Output Voltage Range: +/- 5 volts
• Leading Edge: Less than or equal to 6.5 nsec to 95 msec
• Trailing Edge:Less than or equal to 6.5 nsec to 95 msec

 LeCroy 9212 - 300 MHz, 300 ps, Variable Edge Output Module
• Maximum Rep Rate: Greater than or equal to 300 MHz
• Minimum Pulse Width: Less than or equal to 1.2 nsec
• Output Levels: (ino 50 ohms)
• Output Voltage Range: +/- 5 volts
• Pulse Performance, Minimum Transition Time: Less than or equal to 300 psec guaranteed (20-80 percent)

[Ice-Tea]

Eh?

[PA0PBZ]

Eh?

I have no idea... Maybe less than or equal to 6.5 = 1?

[Ice-Tea]

Eh?

I have no idea... Maybe less than or equal to 10 = 1?

Also, 250MHz with a 6.5ns Tr seems unlikely

[Ice-Tea]

Tektronix 5054 4 Channel 500MHz 5GSa/S

Listed as "no display and all lights flashing".


NO DISPLAY?? YOU THINK? Maybe it has something to do with the huge cracks in the screen? Just a thought..

What now? Thing has a VGA output, so the plan is to crack her open, disconnect the display assembly, see if she boots again and attach an external screen. Would still be a nice unit without internal LCD. But that will have to wait. Now: storage...