I hope your weekend is free because I'm curious why your 53C doesn't support Hz and Surv like my BK 5360?
Oh, H/W hacking on multimeters ! I personally wouldn't want to hurt/damage the original looks of the meter, but I am curious none the less : is there a topic on here detailing these mods he did on you meter ? What does this "surveillance" feature do ?
BTW I don't understand why you say my 53C doesn't support frequency measurement, as obviously it does ? Your rebadged one too it sems, I see the little yellow "Hz" symbol on the front panel, just like on mine. Frequency measurement works just fine... so not sure why you added a second Frequency button ? What does it do that the built-in Freq measurement doesn't ?
PS. Modemhead did all the modifications, without schematics too , on this meter.
Hats off to him for reverse engineering the required portion of the meter.. but I hate going blind, it's limiting and time consuming, I am sure he would have used the schematics if he had them available at the time, unless this was some kind of reverse engineering challenge in its right of course !
Although I don't want to damage the case by doing hand modifications to it, I still like the idea of H/W so long as it's invisible from the outside, or S/W hacking and... actually I am thinking of a little something that I would like to try : I hate the screeching sound of the continuity tester... to me it really makes the meter feel like a crappy/cheap unit, which of course it is most definitely not ! So I am thinking of playing with my second 53C, the one I got for real cheap, to see if I can modify it to get a latched sound. Since the 53C has quite some board space available due to the unpopulated RMS and mA ranges stuff, I guess it could be possible to put some small SMD 74XX logic device and a few passives around it if required, to get a nice latched sound, whilst keeping the fast response of course.
Thanks for the link from Excavatore ! Interesting about the Fluke 10 series ! He says these meters are very prone to developing "black blobs" on their LCD... mine surely does ! I always felt guilty about it, thinking I might mistreated it somehow, but maybe I am not at fault then !
Still, doesn't keep it from working just fine, that's the most important.
Excavatore also makes me feel much better now, too : I was starting to feel guilty and silly for "collecting" a handful of old Metrix 5X... but I see he has around FIFTY units of a GIVEN Fluke model ! So even more if you add all the various models he has ! So, I now feel almost "normal" in comparison ! LOL
Learned about the existence of the 76/79 models too, which are improved /later revisions of the 75/77 which I was fancying, so I will start chasing the 79 instead of the 77 ! LOL But prices seems way above what their specs command : found a couple on Ebay, for 100/120 Euros (say 120/150 USD or about), same price as MX55/56 or so, or my immaculate/brand new 53C. So it would be unreasonable to buy one at this price :-/ For 50 or 75 buck though, I am in.
More generally I am happy to see that I am not alone in being "crazy"/very fond of old meters, and "collecting" them.... I don't feel as strange or lonely any more, thanks guys ! LOL
This latching mod sure will be one of my little winter projects/experiments !