For those of you still following along at home, I brought the Tek 3054C back up, figured I should take another look at it. I thought if I left it in the lab on the top shelf for too long, I'd never fix it. Found the repair manual. Interesting that most if not all of the DC voltages are right behind the BNC connectors where the little pin on the probe gets power, if needed, or the scope reads the probe.
I started checking the voltages, one after the other, and since the unit was powering off immediately, I had to keep hitting the power button. I noticed that each of the voltages came up and then dropped. I had to put my meter in manual range to catch them. They all looked fine from what brief view I could see, but they just wouldn't stay up to boot.
Drum roll...
After one of the quick power cycles, I noticed the voltage stayed up. Next thing I saw the splash screen and it's been working ever since. I mean, WTF?
Not going to complain. It must of somehow scrambled its memory or calibration being turned off for so long, pre-covid I think now, because when it did come up, it seemed the like the measured voltages were all over the place. So I ran auto calibration, and all seems well.
Now, if I could only get the back cover on right!
That thing is a royal pain in the butt. I can get one side or the other, but it just seems like something isn't right. I played with it for 45 minutes before I started looking for the duct tape to hold it together. I'll have to go back and watch Dave's teardown video and see how he made out. I probably have some expensive, unobtainable part wedged against something hot and sharp.
I've been using a Siglent 1104X-E that I had upgraded. It's a nice scope, I bought it primarily for the decoding and bode plotting. I wrote code for a couple of my signal generators that work with the bode plotting function and then bought their ARB unit, also upgraded. So the pair are pretty decent tools. This Tek scope is only 9bit, I think, but I grabbed it when I wanted to scope a mixer in my limping HP 3325b. I just wasn't getting the Siglent scope to trigger when the DC was at 3.6v with about 600mv of sine sitting on it. I played with the triggering levels, etc., tried everything, just couldn't get a stable picture. I needed it because the last problem on the 3325B is that the DC offset changes with the frequency. It's almost a log scale, so that 1K is fine, 10k is also, and like that up to around 1Mhz where you can see it going up, then 2Mhz is higher, 5Mhz it is about 3/4 of the sine amplitude above zero and at 20Mhz, the signal sits on the zero line instead of looking like AC. So yes, maybe the Siglent can trigger that level if I play with it more but I shouldn't need to do anything other than set the trigger level in the sine upper quadrant. But after you use this 3054, you can tell it was a good scope for its day. Picture is clear, lots of options loaded (all of them), separate knobs for acquisition, trigger, timebase and voltage so you don't have to go digging for acquisition changes. OK, so what was I working on before this scope broke?
End of story, thanks for reading.
Jerry
p.s. I got the Sig triggering by hitting the noise button. Funny though as the signal is a sine wave and it looks like it is stair-stepped a little, not as smooth as the Tek though it could be because the Tek has lower resolution. Not trying to start a war, I love my Siglent scope. The Tek 3054C, though old, was still current up to 5yrs or so ago.
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