List your test equipment "scores" here!

[kaz911]

Latest score - 3D Systems Projet 1500 FTI (SLA) type printer with wash system and curing UV oven. Price was so low that transport was GBP 2,- more than I paid for the printer. And I did not overpay for the 200 mile transport....

After some really needed TLC it now prints fine - parts washer needed some TLC as well - so now that works as well.

Unfortunately the included print cartridges are quite a bit out of date - so material is not as "liquid" as it is supposed to be - so the small holes are not perfect as material has issues running "out". But most other print details are superb. And new cartridge cost the same as a small house... (or so it feels)

[Johnny10]

Picked up a Tektronix 7934 with TDR and Vertical and Horizontal plugins.

For the price of walking it out to the parking lot.  It was a long walk...  :-)

2nd is closeup of TDR in my 7854

[Cubdriver]

Sweet score!!  Very cool.  Sounds like the price was acceptable, too.   

-Pat

[kcbrown]

Sweet score!!  Very cool.  Sounds like the price was acceptable, too.   

Is that before or after the hospital bill for throwing out your back?       

[Cubdriver]

Well, you could pull the plug ins out to lighten it a little bit and make multiple trips...  I think the adrenaline high from getting that nice piece of gear for the effort of taking it to the car would give at least enough short term strength to get it safely out the door...

-Pat

[Tom45]

Well, you could pull the plug ins out to lighten it a little bit and make multiple trips...  I think the adrenaline high from getting that nice piece of gear for the effort of taking it to the car would give at least enough short term strength to get it safely out the door...

-Pat

Even better, get one with a cart. Then he could just roll it to his car. That's what I did when I got my 7854 with cart.

[Johnny10]

I now have three carts and three 7000 series scopes.
These things are getting very inexpensive.
I enjoy using my big heavy monstrous obsolete scopes.

[nctnico]

I've got a project on the horizon involving some old phone standards so I got myself a Tektronix / Siemens K1297 protocol tester with a 4 channel simulation board for E1 (2Mbit digital stream with 30 phone lines) and another 4 channel board for monitoring E1 and T1 (1.5Mbit). This protocol tester goes way beyond the common handheld protocol testers. It is able (designed) to test interaction between various telephony switches at telecom operators and supports many different protocols and flavours. This machine must have cost a fortune when new! The only price I've found online is over $160000 for the GPRS software.

It is a compact PC based system with VME slots. The PC is a Pentium 1 with 64MB running NT4. Actually it doesn't run that bad but it could do with more memory. I paid 130 euro including shipping.


The screen is the dimmest TFT screen I have ever seen (later more about that):


The E1 interface board:

Look at that fat 68040 processor and extra goodies. Handling four 2Mbit streams with a protocol stack is not a small task.

There is also an extra board to offload the PC's processor:

Another 68040 and the Cypress chip in the bottom right corner is a VME controller.

I did play around a bit with this machine to see what it can do. My main interest is creating calls between two E1 ports which is a rather mundane task. I managed to get the links up and get a test scenario going but unfortunately the documentation is very poor. The manual literally refers to the online help for precise information on how to operate it! Still it seems this machine can do a lot and for just ISDN alone it supports many different flavours. The downside is the poor screen and loud fans or hard drive (either way it makes a lot of noise). Normally I would have taken it apart, cloned the hard drive to have a backup and cleaned it up a little. However in this case I also spotted a much newer one on Ebay with a much faster PC (with USB ports) and working screen so I decided to grab that one too for a similar amount. I'll just swap the E1 simulation board over and hopefully I'll have a much nicer system with less effort and spare parts as a bonus.

[skylinrcr01]

Correct, an invisibility cloak! (*mumbles* stupid apple egg tablet crap thing, never does what I want... *tries uploading again*)

edit: seems to have worked now...

Never mind, it's already been guessed correctly. Little late to the party I guess haha

[james_s]

That pair of 68040's alone is worth a sizable fraction of what you paid for the whole machine. Pretty cool piece of gear.

[usagi]

needed some stuff for the arduino workbench and HAM use.

for HAM spectrum analzyer - got a Rohde & Schwarz CMU200 for $800 and an Agilent E7495A for $470.
a GDM-8251A for $103. a step up from the crusty old Fluke 45 i picked up at the local surplus store for $140.
a Rigol 25mhz DG-1022a to replace the weapons grade chineesium 5mhz func gen - $170.
an Agilent U1252B so I could have a legit handheld DMM. Couldn't resist at $200!   

[Cubdriver]

  . Sounds like a nice haul.  Congrats!

-Pat

[Ysjoelfir]

Speaking from Big equipment on carts: That thing is occupying my lab quite a while, scored it for free!
Comes with its own cart and is heavy as hell. Sadly, I have no idea what kind of strange mains plug that is - a normal IEC plug doesn't fit, even after trimming the excess plastic of, the slots are just a few millimeters off... Would love to try it out though.

If it is not readably from the crappy pic taken without the tongue in the right angle but instead me twisting around a bunch of stuff to reach it - it's a Bruel & Kjaer 2034 Dual Channel Signal Analyzer. Anyone an Idea what to do with it nowadays, as every cheap scope has analyzing functions built in? 

[nctnico]

That pair of 68040's alone is worth a sizable fraction of what you paid for the whole machine. Pretty cool piece of gear.

Wow! You are right. I see these things fetching around $40 to $50 each on Ebay but there are many for sale.

[Smith]

I've been looking for a harmonic distortion meter just to play with for years, but most of them are to expensive for me. Just got a HP 332A yesterday for 20  bucks including shipping  .

It seemed to be in kind of a rough shape cosmetically, but after arrival everything seems to be intact, just dirty. A quick rub with some water & soap revealed it to be pretty nice. It will still need lots of hours of TLC though. It supposedly stopped working about 25 years ago, so it might take some work. I have already checked some caps, and a lot of them seem to be bad. 

[rastro]

I've been looking for a harmonic distortion meter just to play with for years, but most of them are to expensive for me. Just got a HP 332A yesterday for 20  bucks including shipping  .

It seemed to be in kind of a rough shape cosmetically, but after arrival everything seems to be intact, just dirty. A quick rub with some water & soap revealed it to be pretty nice. It will still need lots of hours of TLC though. It supposedly stopped working about 25 years ago, so it might take some work. I have already checked some caps, and a lot of them seem to be bad.

I didn't even think you could ship it for $20.00.

[bitseeker]

Yeah, that's a good deal, even if it's in need of TLC. Hope you start a thread on its restoration.

[Berni]

I did buy things before where shipping cost 2x the actual item price due to being some obscure piece of boatanchor gear that nobody else wanted.

[Cubdriver]

I keep thinking that I need to find lighter things to collect, but of course it's the old heavy stuff that interests me.  New stuff is blah.

-Pat

[Cubdriver]

I've been looking for a harmonic distortion meter just to play with for years, but most of them are to expensive for me. Just got a HP 332A yesterday for 20  bucks including shipping  .

It seemed to be in kind of a rough shape cosmetically, but after arrival everything seems to be intact, just dirty. A quick rub with some water & soap revealed it to be pretty nice. It will still need lots of hours of TLC though. It supposedly stopped working about 25 years ago, so it might take some work. I have already checked some caps, and a lot of them seem to be bad.

I didn't even think you could ship it for $20.00.

Yeah, huh?  That's quite the deal!  Nice find!  I hope you can get it up and running without too much difficulty.

-Pat

[amc184]

Sadly, I have no idea what kind of strange mains plug that is - a normal IEC plug doesn't fit, even after trimming the excess plastic of, the slots are just a few millimeters off... Would love to try it out though.

Might be an IEC C10?

[Smith]

Yeah, huh?  That's quite the deal!  Nice find!  I hope you can get it up and running without too much difficulty.

-Pat

Shouldn't be a real problem, just need to replace some caps and the mains cable. Then I can start debugging.

[Smith]

Sadly, I have no idea what kind of strange mains plug that is - a normal IEC plug doesn't fit, even after trimming the excess plastic of, the slots are just a few millimeters off... Would love to try it out though.

Why not change it for a normal C14 connector? Or a  C18 as the ground connector is unused. I replaced the connector of my HP 332A today. The old one was crusty as hell, and someone glued the cable and connector together. I replaced it with an 30 year old C14 connector. Really looks original, but works nice too.

It's so convenient to use one type of connector on your bench.

[bitseeker]

I've contemplated modernizing a couple of instruments that have the old PH163. But, the other side of me likes to keep things original.

However, that old C14 looks great and maintains the look and feel of the original. What did you use to enlarge the panel opening?

[Smith]

What did you use to enlarge the panel opening?

Just a round and a flat file. Only took a few minutes of work, I even reused the original holes.