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HP 7090A - Measurement Plotting System

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sean0118:
Hi everyone,

My uni happens to be throwing out an old HP 7090A. I'm just wandering whether it's worth trying to save? Do they still have any practical uses? I wouldn't mind getting it for the novelty factor and to tear down, but it's fairly large and I'm short on space...   but at the same time it's a great machine. :(

Dr. Frank:
I ordered and used this plotter around 1987, brand new then, also @ university, for my experiments on High Tc superconductivity.. the physics Nobel prize was just granted to Bednorz and Mueller.

Did cost a fortune, at that time! I think, it was around 10k Deutsche Mark...

I chose this machine (over ordinary DMMs) to please my professor, who was stuck on 'plotters' which had to be used in each physical experiments, but instead I intended to use the 3 12bit A/D acquisiton channels via GPIB, just to automate my measurements, and to plot linearized  plots out of the PC again.

 It's a clumsy machine, that's true, but the plotter function is great, if you still get the pens.
Perhaps the carousel still contains old ones, which may be dried out.

The 3 chan. data acquisition (contains some memory also) is also fine, if you don't have other means of interfacing to your PC, but you also need GPIB.
But it also had a big adavantage, that you could do long term measurements, over many hours, and plot the resultant graph later in a few minutes.
Doing that live with ordinary plotters always tore the plotting paper in pieces, and created a fat inkblot...

Just for the impressing size and action of the plotter, I'd keep it.

Personally, I'd also like to see a teardown, surely brings tears to my eyes...  :palm:

Frank

sean0118:
Thanks for the reply it definitely does sound like an impressive machine.

Unfortunately someone else must have had an eye on it because it mysteriously disappeared quite quickly. It's a shame because one of my friends was very interested but we were too late.

There is still a much smaller HP ColorPro available, but that is more of a basic plotter and surely a teardown of that would not be the same?  :(

TerraHertz:

--- Quote from: sean0118 on July 24, 2014, 11:01:51 pm ---Unfortunately someone else must have had an eye on it because it mysteriously disappeared quite quickly. It's a shame because one of my friends was very interested but we were too late.

--- End quote ---

Ha ha... someone who had the sense to just grab it immediately, *then* agonize later over whether it was a good idea or not. While looking at it on their bench. Take that as a lesson.
I don't know why you were worried about the size; it's not particularly big. Compared to say a HP 7046A, which is sitting on a shelf here till one day I get time to fix it.

Besides, you could have ebay'd it if you'd later decided you didn't need it. Maybe that's what the non-hesitating person mysteriously thought.

Tony_G:
Wanted to resurrect this thread because I just managed to score a 7090A in an auction (I really wanted one of these). I haven't done a tear down and probably won't have time till I get back from the trip to Australia but I did do a quick look at the unit in this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ok2Vzjdvass&feature=youtu.be&t=19m38s

TonyG

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