Try searching for a Mastech MY-64 schematic. There is a current MY64 model, but there was also an older version that looks just like yours.
Ah ha! Thanks for that. And now I feel stupid, because it actually says Mastech MY64 on the PCB. But I didn't recognize the name and ignored it.
RobertoLG, thank you too for the manual.
Readable hi-res schematic here:
http://www.eserviceinfo.com/index.php?what=search2&searchstring=mastech+my-64+schematic.bmpWhy would anyone still use BMP? That's 1778 KB, and simply converting it to PNG makes it 114KB, with zero data loss.
Did I say I didn't want to waste time tracing circuits on a multimeter that probably cost less than $50?
Ha ha, what's a good way to make someone trace circuits when they don't want to?
A: Give them a schematic that is subtly wrong. So they think it will be easy, but then get bogged down and confused. Grrrr...
Anyway, it's fixed now. SeanB, you're just trying to silently remind me about those GaAs bits, aren't you? Don't worry, I haven't forgotten. And it wasn't anything *near* as simple as your "IC2 pins 7&8 shorted."
IC3 is the standard CMOS nand gate astable oscillator, driving both sides of the piezo buzzer. At about 9KHz, which is right on the boundary of what my stuffed ears can hear. Making it super annoying.
IC3 pin 1 is the enable, and sure enough IC2 pin 7 was sort-of high all the time, hence the permanent piezo enable. But it was lower than IC2's +ve supply pin 8, so not shorted.
Looking closely around IC 2 & 3 and under C25 I could see a little bit of corrosion crust I'd missed. So removed all three parts and cleaned them and the board underneath them more carefully. Also noticed that the piezo brass body (which has signal from IC3) is hard against other tracks, relying only on the board resist for insulation. So I removed it too, and bodged insulation with capton tape.
After soldering all the parts back in place, there was no difference whatsoever. Piezo still shrieking all the time.
At this point I decided it would be a good idea to shift the frequency down to something less fingernails-on-blackboard, so I'd still be sane by the time this thing was fixed. So pulled R24, used a decade box to get a less painful note, and soldered in an 820K resistor.
Still thinking it was sure to be easy, I started poking around with the scope.
Right away things got messy. Firstly IC2 pin 8 is NOT the V+ rail the schematic says it is. But it is around 6V, so the op amp should be working. But pin 5 (+input) is way too high for the schematic - it's about half a volt above pin 8. How...?
Pulling pin5 hard down to V- didn't disable the buzzer either. What?
A bit of probing and track tracing discovered that the 'down bar' power rail symbol (eg on R23, near IC2 pin 5) I'd assumed was the same as V-, is not. It's actually Vcom, from the COM jack.
Or it's *supposed* to be, but at that end of R23 it's floating up higher than the +ve supply to IC2.
Much track tracing and confusion later, I'd become suspicious the problem wasn't unwanted connectivity, it's lack of connectivity somewhere. Which, considering there seem to be multiple differences between the PCB and schematic, was hard to zero in on.
But I did have a suspicion. See the pic IMG_3015_spot_missing_track.jpg
Can you see it?
After repairing that, it works. Silently, except when it's supposed to make a noise. DCV, Ohms, Capacitance ranges work; I didn't try the others. As for calibration, as best I can work out the trimmer functions are:
VR1 7106 Ref (pin 36) Adj DCV
VR2 AC V adj
VR3 Capacitance adj
VR4 Temp adj
VR5 7106 'in LO' (zero?) adj. Not sure what this does. Seems to be hard at end stop.
VR6 Frequency span adj.
What's conspicuously missing is a Resistance span adjustment. The meter is not far off on resistance but could be better. In the last pic the "99.6" should be reading 100 K.