And here it is in all its glory, a 99.9% functional 3570A, sitting atop the world's fugliest 3330B. I used this combo (not these exact units) for a number of years back in the 80's and 90's and this brings back some good memories. Performance-wise, they really are quite good.
As I mentioned last post, after getting the power supply up, the displays were frozen. A week or so later, after moving the inputs from the rear to the front panel, moments after powering it up again, smoke started pouring out of a board in the test channel analog card cage. I guess such things are to be expected when a unit has sat untouched in the garage/warehouse for over a decade. Surprise, surprise... a shorted tantalum cap. Replaced it, and the choke that precedes it (which is what burned), and it powered up again, display still frozen. Went through the troubleshooting tree, found an out-of tolerance frequency on the clock board (A32). Pulled the board, examined it, didn't see anything obvious, plugged it back in, powered it up, and now the display is working, though some digits drop in and out at random. I like them kind of fixes. Checked the levels on each channel and they were not even close. Signal paths checked out OK, so I troubleshooted the A/D boards, didn't find anything wrong, plugged them back in, and the levels are now in the ballpark but phase is off.
At this point it was clear that there were intermittent contacts between the boards and their edge connectors, so I pulled each one and cleaned the gold fingers and the sockets too. This thing is in meticulous condition inside. With a last cal date of 1989, I wouldn't be surprised if it had sat unused for a decade or two before I got it.
After the great cleaning, powered it up, and there it is, working fine. The only remaining problem to solve is an intermittent in the 2nd digit from the right in the phase display. It will stay stuck on either 4 or 6 for a while, and then work fine. I suspect the DIP sockets for the ribbon connectors, they're the old tall ones that make side contact with the pins. Will replace them with better ones.
After warmup, tweaking the mag and phase adjustments (I must say, I LIKE having level and phase trims on the front panel... who needs thru sweeps?), and measuring some familiar things, this rig is as good or better than any other VNA I've used in this freq range. Noise floor -108dbV with 100Hz RBW. Phase stays within 1/2 a degree even with signals 80dB down. Impressive.
The only thing that would stop me from using this on a regular basis is the 3330B. Not the unit itself, it's actually quite good. It's the fan noise The 3330B fan is ridiculously loud. It's even louder than my 3577A's fan, which I find intolerable for bench use.
Has anyone found a quieter fan with the same airflow?