Here is my latest Ebay test gear grab, as you will see from the attached before photo it was a bit of a state before I set about cleaning it up a little. The adhesive from the tape has left its toll on the plastic even after soaking it for 30 minutes with "Sticky Stuff Remover" and taking a souring sponge to the top to remove all the glue residue, it seems that there is some more to do yet, perhaps I'll have another go later.
It is capable of running from the mains supply or batteries and has a bar graph, Min/Max, Rel, Hold and Delay functions plus the obligatory range, selector and light switches. Not a HFE tester socket in sight much to some peoples relief.
There seems to be many variations of this meter wearing different badges with slight tweaks to the functions etc on the internet, has a handy lead stowage locker on the top with two removable plates to access both the fuses (600v HRC ones of course) and the 6 x AA cells. Strange thing here is that despite having a neat little power supply circuit they missed obvious, and that is to make the batteries recharge when on mains supply, instead opting for alkaline batteries? Maybe I'll address this in a later project if I ever want something to do.
It seems to be essentially, a really good handheld meter back in the day, adapted to fit into a bench top case and a mains power unit added in to enable it to be used for extended periods without the need to be replacing batteries, something to be avoided if it is being used to capture power supply glitches etc on the Min/Max function.
A couple of strange things I've noticed with is that where most meters will display O/L when an input is beyond the reach of the meter, it flashes the most significant digit on the display. The other is that on the diode test, instead of flashing the digit, it displays the maximum voltage available for diode testing of 3.1V, so on the forward bias it will display .5 or .7V whatever but reverse bias shows 3.1V or whatever the battery voltage is.
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