HP 1980B retro scope porn

[Howardlong]

After reading this teardown of a vintage HP 1980B scope some time ago (https://www.eevblog.com/forum/reviews/hewlett-packard-1980b-oscilloscope-teardown/ ) I just had to have one.

A couple of weeks ago I adopted my own HP 1980B, and both father and baby are doing well. We're still getting aquainted with each other, but I'm really quite liking it as a CRO. The waveform storage is a bit rubbish compared to today's DSOs though.

As there's precious little video on this beauty, I did one of my own.

http://youtu.be/Nbig45nkETk

(My comment regarding the trigger level needing to be changed after increasing volts/div is rubbish BTW, that's how most CROs work, I guess I've been spoilt by DSOs and the Auto Level on the Tek 2400 series of CROs).

[G0HZU]

Never seen one of those before...

Presumably its main 'raison d'etre' is that it is possible to control and log it remotely via GPIB? This would have set it apart from mainstream scopes at the time as it could be fully operated without any human assistance.

It looks like something produced by a small design team with plenty of talent for innovation but (dare I say it) it looks like the interface was designed by a nerdy engineer with zero flair for styling. Functional but very bland. However, on the other thread you linked to it seems quite a few people really like the looks.

I like the big 10x10 graticule CRT and the potential for remote operation but not much else...

[Howardlong]

I think it was probably a hard sell for HP, and not just on the pricing either.

Yes, it is GPIB everything. Unfortunately I am totally illiterate regarding GPIB. I have it hooked up to the GPIB port of an Agilent 54831D (a Windows XP oscilloscope) but I can't seem to make it do anything from Agilent IO, but then I don't really what I'm doing anyway.

The big telly is certainly a draw.

I remember being aware of them back in the '80s, it was the Bugatti Veyron of scopes. No-one I ever worked for in those days would've bought one, I do wonder where the market was.

[Electro Fan]

Nice video and nice HP scope - along with the other 11 or so scopes 

[wn1fju]

There's a nice historical perspective on the HP 1980B scope at   http://www.hpmemory.org/news/1980/hp1980_page_00.htm

I also have one of these and while it holds its own as a basic 4 channel 100 MHz analog scope, it eventually became a service nightmare because it uses elastomeric connectors everywhere.  They eventually deform and become intermittent.  I've nursed mine back to health courtesy of some very fine sandpaper (ouch!) and am keeping my fingers crossed.

[Howardlong]

I already had it apart a few days ago to re-align the waveform storage that was working but it was about 10% out of alignment on the horizontal gain with the real time waveform.

As expected, the documentation on the procedure is excellent. Unfortunately it still suffers horizontal position drift a bit so it'll never be perfect, but it's good enough for now. In an analog only scope you'd just not notice the drift, it's about one of the small sub graticule points, so about 2%. But once you take a wavefrom snapshot it's noticable, but it can be corrected by adjustion the horizontal position.

Do you have the waveform storage or gate counter plug in? If so, how do you find them? I only have the waveform storage and I feel it has little value. Perhaps I've been spoilt by modern day DSOs though.

[wn1fju]

My unit has the waveform storage option (and the additional two channels on the front panel instead of the counter).  I'm with you - it's pretty anemic, but it does work and you can make some cursor measurements on a stored waveform.  Like most HP gear of that era, they didn't cut corners.  I guess that's why it was pretty expensive, too!  In addition to the elastomeric connectors which ripen with age (and fail), I've also replaced two leaking electrolytics (at separate times), both of which were right next to the horizontal ASIC.  When I got the piece years ago, about half of the front panel light bulbs had failed.  I dissected everything and replaced them ALL with red LEDs.  There were something like 90 of them.  Other than that, the only thing that doesn't work is the flood gun in the CRT.  The correct voltages make it to the pins on the CRT, but the CRT is dark.  So I'm a bit short of the wonderful light show one can achieve with the 1980B.

[coppice]

I remember being aware of them back in the '80s, it was the Bugatti Veyron of scopes. No-one I ever worked for in those days would've bought one, I do wonder where the market was.

Defence. The market for all expensive instruments was defence. In a large defence company you would have seen quite a few of these machines. The 1GHz bandwidth option was the big seller for most people I knew who had them.

[G0HZU]

I think the main use would be in an automated test environment where lots of critical scope measurements were required. Assuming it offers fully remote control/measurement capability then it would prove to be much more efficient than a skilled human operator armed with a conventional manual scope. So only semi skilled staff would be needed on the production line instead of expensive test engineers. The HP1980B would presumably be fitted in a tall ATE rack system alongside a load of other ATE test gear and it would all work together to provide a highly efficient test system with minimal input required from semi skilled and low paid test operatives.

It will be faster, more reliable and the automated test system will be able to store/log results and work with pass/fail masks etc. The high initial purchase cost would be offset by the vastly improved reliability and efficiency of an automated system.

I've worked in the defence industry all my life and I've never seen one of these. An ATE capable 100MHz scope isn't really that 'special' in terms of defence related technology even by 1980s standards. But I'd imagine these scopes were very well received in the 1980s by companies wanting to fully automate their production line testing for high volume high performance products.

[coppice]

I've worked in the defence industry all my life and I've never seen one of these. An ATE capable 100MHz scope isn't really that 'special' in terms of defence related technology even by 1980s standards. But I'd imagine these scopes were very well received in the 1980s by companies wanting to fully automate their production line testing for high volume high performance products.

Everyone I knew who bought one got it for the 1GHz capability. It only sampled at 50MHz, but it used a really narrow aperture sampler and some interesting timing dithering tricks to achieve a genuine 1GHz performance. That was real leading edge stuff at the time. Come to think of it, I don't recall ever seeing one of these with any other plugins installed.