Reverse Polish Notation - need to learn.

[miguelvp]

Using the stack for floating point is still in use today for matrix calculations for 3D animation and FPU computation in general, most FPUs are RPN based and have their own FP stack.

For 3D graphics, you push parent matrices and child matrices as you go through the skeleton mesh, then you pop the last child and push the child sibling and recuse through the whole skeleton tree and applying the current matrix through the vertex points taking in consideration the weight of the vertex in regards of the parent and child weight influence on that point.

[TerraHertz]

Well, TH....  I just received my 7854 - which came with a full set of nicely copied manuals.   

Oh, sorry to hear 'copies'. Were you expecting originals? As a collector like me, I expect you'd rather they were.
Not copied in color of course, so they lost a lot wherever color was used, such as in schematics.

In addition to all the info you've compiled for scanned & copied manuals, do you know what the cost is to have such a massive manual professionally copied?  It doesn't seem like there are any high quality PDF format scans of this set.

No idea. But how did they deal with large foldout pages? I have one manual (for a non-Tek scope) from Manuals Plus, that is a careful hand made copy. Done by someone before Manuals Plus got it. It's almost all fold-outs, all stickytaped together. It's a pain to use, and will eventually disintegrate as the tape ages. But it was the only one for that scope I could find anywhere.

One problem with photocopies. If you keep them in any binder with PVC covers, the plasticiser from the PVC diffuses into the thermally melted-on toner deposits, and makes them sticky. Diffusion passes through several sheets of paper, and so the front and rear few pages all get ruined by text contact transferring between facing pages.
A solution is to put some old magazines at front and back, spacing the binder covers away from the photocopied pages.

When stacked and compressed, there is 2.5 inches of manual here.  That's with standard thickness paper, not tek-manual-spec paper.

So, it took someone a loooong time. All for what - a single new copy, way below the quality of the original, and with zero historical value. And there *will* be a few messed-up pages. Waste of effort I think.

[Addicted2AnalogTek]

Well, TH....  I just received my 7854 - which came with a full set of nicely copied manuals.   

Oh, sorry to hear 'copies'. Were you expecting originals? As a collector like me, I expect you'd rather they were.
Not copied in color of course, so they lost a lot wherever color was used, such as in schematics.

Yes, I much rather they were genuine of course.  I don't care if I have copies, I am still going to buy the originals as I find them for reasonable prices. Preferably auctions that start under $10usd..   

But how did they deal with large foldout pages? I have one manual (for a non-Tek scope) from Manuals Plus, that is a careful hand made copy. Done by someone before Manuals Plus got it. It's almost all fold-outs, all stickytaped together. It's a pain to use, and will eventually disintegrate as the tape ages. But it was the only one for that scope I could find anywhere.

Well that sucks!!  I guess you'll be stuck re-taping it sometime since it's pointless to make single page copies out of those...  There are a few pictures of the copied manuals in the listing... here's the link.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tektronix-7854-Oscilloscope-Mainframe-with-Waveform-Calculator-for-Repair-/291679909626?_trksid=p2047675.l2557&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT&nma=true&si=cZheso%252BTqMILxftiQZIuAGiBXu4%253D&orig_cvip=true&rt=nc

They're actually not bad.  Probably the best set of copies I've seen thus far, actually.  Of course there's the ' no color ' issue, but at least they used grayscale and the once-color text is dark enough to clearly read.  -- and they're actually properly bound like originals.

So, it took someone a loooong time. All for what - a single new copy, way below the quality of the original, and with zero historical value. And there *will* be a few messed-up pages. Waste of effort I think.

Ehhh...  at least I have something to go off of for now so I'm not in a huge rush to buy originals! I could EASILY have had to spend more than I paid for the scope and shipping for a set of manuals...

 - I also got a good 7B87 for $30 extra.  Plus another free copied manual.... I suppose at least they knew what they're worth!!  hahaha

[chris_leyson]

TEK 7854 GPIB now working  Took eight MC3448As of two GPIB boards, tested them, all OK, fitted turned pin sockets and put them back onto the boards. Using Agilent 82357B and Keysight interactive IO Version 17.2. Last time I used the 82357B I could only talk to a 7D20 and not the 7854 for some reason.

Over 700Mbytes of software and an 82357B, seems like overkill to send and receive a few ASCII encoded serial streams