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Advice on determining a logic analyzer for use with 1980s synthesizers. TLA715?
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bobxyz:
Back in the 1980s and 1990s, if you were doing serious hardware development, you bought HP Logic Analyzers and Tek Oscilloscopes.  The HP analyzers were more polished and more reliable; likewise for the Tek scopes.

To debug electronics from that era, I'd suggest finding a HP165x, HP166x, or HP167x series analyzer with a big set of cables, flying lead adapters, and test clips.  The earlier HP163x series are OK, but limited in channels and the cables are clunky.  The woven ribbon cables from the later series are nicer to work with.  The HP16500 series are big loud boat anchors and always seemed to be breaking.

You really want to find an original set of flying lead adapters so that you won't have signal integrity problems.  I'm not sure if anyone offers cheap replacements, but the originals were special micro coax with integrated compensation.

Screen burn is common with old HP analyzers if they've been left powered on for months at a time.  I don't think I've seen any that are unusable, but it's something to check for and maybe negotiate a lower price.
nctnico:

--- Quote from: bobxyz on June 17, 2024, 04:44:57 pm ---Back in the 1980s and 1990s, if you were doing serious hardware development, you bought HP Logic Analyzers and Tek Oscilloscopes.  The HP analyzers were more polished and more reliable; likewise for the Tek scopes.

--- End quote ---
Not sure if that is still the case with the more modern Tektronix TLA700/TLA7000 series. One feature the Tektronix acquisition modules have is a 56 bit timestamp for each samplepoint. And this timestamp does not eat into the acquisition depth like the HP / Agilent logic analysers do. The timestamped recording is a very nice feature to reach long records (in time) without needing hundreds of megapoints of memory.
artag:
The early HP analysers had some special mode : 'glitch mode' used 2 bits per sample but recorded if the signal changed more than once in that period (whch allowed you to undersample without missing transitions) and 'transitional timing mode' which timestamped the changes rather than recording at sample rate.

This don't seem to exist on more modern large-memory analysers. Perhaps the logic to implement them couldn't keep up with acquisition clock rates, or perhaps memory became cheap enough to throw it at the problem.
nctnico:

--- Quote from: artag on June 17, 2024, 11:42:15 pm ---The early HP analysers had some special mode : 'glitch mode' used 2 bits per sample but recorded if the signal changed more than once in that period (whch allowed you to undersample without missing transitions) and 'transitional timing mode' which timestamped the changes rather than recording at sample rate.

This don't seem to exist on more modern large-memory analysers. Perhaps the logic to implement them couldn't keep up with acquisition clock rates, or perhaps memory became cheap enough to throw it at the problem.

--- End quote ---
Tektronix TLA700 series acquisition modules do support this glitch mode capture.
aeg:

--- Quote from: sku_u on June 17, 2024, 06:48:16 am ---Thank you for mentioning the HP 1630. I really enjoy learning about the kinds of tools and developmental processes the engineers of these synthesizers would have used back in the day. They appear to be fairly inexpensive so I will definitely pick one up in the future!

--- End quote ---

I wouldn't recommend a 1630. These days you can get a more capable 16500/1650/166x/167x for the same price.
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