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New to me Fluke 8502A. Thoughts?

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Stray Electron:
   Yesterday I went and helped clean out the storage shed of an old friend of mine that is getting out of electronics.  Among the boat anchors was a Fluke 8502A that we had picked up in a pile of surplus equipment 15+ years ago and put in a corner and forgot about.  I don't think that we ever even turned it on :-/

  This came from a large US government contractor and has options; 02 Ohms Converter, 04 Cal memory, 05 IEEE-488,  06 RS-232, 09 RMS Converter and 16 Switchable Front/Rear Inputs. It'd dirty but appears to be in good condition but I have not tried to power it up yet.

   The questions are; is this worth keeping? And should I try to revive it and is there anything I should check before I try to power it on?  I already have three working Keithley 196 meters and a working HP 3456.

  OK, Go!

AVGresponding:
Definitely worth keeping!

It's mainly worth checking for bad caps before turning on, ie ones that have obviously spit their electrolyte out, or cracked casing on mains input filter caps (RIFA madness).

Also probably worth checking for damp damage, vermin, loose debris inside.

Stray Electron:
  A quick update:  I got the unit out of the truck this AM and cleaned it up and took a closer look. It has option 08 (Isolator)) and not option 06. The warranty seals on the case are (were) still intact so no one has been monkeying around it :-)  I pulled the top cover and all of the modules that are supposed to be in it are there :-) and it's clean as a whistle inside :)  No signs of water, moisture, rats, mice, roaches or corrosion of any kind :-) I knew that the Cal Memory option used a battery so I pulled that module and opened it and checked it. I was expecting to find battery leakage and corrosion but nope, everything is clean. It looks like new inside :-)  I was surprised to find that it uses a 6V Lithium Sulphur Dioxide battery in it. I checked the battery voltage and it reads 0.5 millivolts! So it will need a new battery.

  I read on the AntiquesRadio.com forum that these typically have shorted tant caps so I will check those and the large electrolytics before I try to power it up. And I will probably just replace the mains filter without even checking the current one.

  All in all, so far, it looks like a keeper!  Now I just need to decide if I want to make room in order to keep it.  I brought home 9 other large rack mount sized boat anchors with it and I don't have room for ANY more stuff so I'm going to have to make some though choices.

bdunham7:
I would just plug it in and see what you have.  If you have a variac, you can bring it up over a 10-15 second period while watching the current, but other than that I wouldn't bother or worry.  Once you see that it functions you can start thinking about tantalum caps and so on.  And if something does pop, just fix it.

If you have a complete set of modules and can get everything working, they're a pretty decent meter, but the performance-to-space ratio is moderate at best.

What else did you lug home?

m k:
And what you're gonna sell.
(since we now have an idea of net expenses)

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