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Old Fluke Multimeters

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helius:
Hi Drtaylor, one more question:
In the switch test diagnostic of the 8060A, the buttons each have a binary value when depressed, 8, 4, 2, and 1, respectively. The sum of the depressed buttons is displayed, so dB+REL displays a 5 for example. But these can sum together to higher than 9: in hexadecimal notation, you would still have just one digit, but it goes to 0xA, 0xB, etc.
The 8060A doesn't display "A" on the 7-segment display, it looks more like "o". Was this o symbol used for any actual purpose? It seems strange for its only purpose in life to be a diagnostic!

retiredcaps:

--- Quote from: Electro Detective on May 01, 2017, 05:07:16 am ---All the  -guilty till proven innocent-  electrolytic capacitors are Nichicon brand btw, they are the originals and look like they were installed last week!  :o

--- End quote ---
The date code on your main IC is 0696 suggesting June 1996.  So your 8060A isn't as old as some reported here with leaking capacitors.  In Modemhead's blog, his main IC is date coded 8244 suggesting 1982 week 44.

So it is possible that as the 8060A was nearing year 2000 that Fluke starting using name brand capacitors like Nichicon.

drtaylor:

--- Quote from: saturation on May 01, 2017, 05:18:12 pm ---Thanks Dr T, love those those old typewritten app notes

--- End quote ---

Hey Saturation (great handle), That document was actually written in a word processor that ran on a PDP11 minicomputer.  It was printed on a shared dot-matrix printer that you had to walk to the IT department to pick up. I have forgotten the name of the software (maybe Word 11), but it was typical for the time. You had to embed control characters to do things like Bold, italic, change size, change font, etc. Definitely not WYSIWYG. But I wrote all the original text for the 8060 and 8062 on that word processor.

During my packing up I have found documents that include the original specifications write-up, a competitive analysis, an interesting (at least to me) document that was written to describe the new MAC IC. I recall I wrote this because there was an effort to simplify the MAC which would have cut out several features. Luckily that never happened. I'll attach that document since I have it here in my hand. I also found field sales manuals and a bunch of the original sales cut sheets. I'll post those as well. 8050 owners might enjoy the specs comparison in the 8050-8060 Sales Brochure. Early 80s tech at its finest!

I had to split up the 8050-8060 brochure to fit it under 1MB and still have it readable. PM me if you want a higher resolution file.

I remain amazed that there is so much interest in this old stuff.

drtaylor:

--- Quote from: helius on May 01, 2017, 08:03:05 pm ---Hi Drtaylor, one more question:
In the switch test diagnostic of the 8060A, the buttons each have a binary value when depressed, 8, 4, 2, and 1, respectively. The sum of the depressed buttons is displayed, so dB+REL displays a 5 for example. But these can sum together to higher than 9: in hexadecimal notation, you would still have just one digit, but it goes to 0xA, 0xB, etc.
The 8060A doesn't display "A" on the 7-segment display, it looks more like "o". Was this o symbol used for any actual purpose? It seems strange for its only purpose in life to be a diagnostic!

--- End quote ---

Sorry helius, the only purpose is to test the switches. It tests the elastomeric rubber switches and the digital poles on the main mechanical switch. So as far as a test goes, it cannot test all the poles of the Centralab switch, only the poles used by the MAC to set mode and A/D range. There was no attempt to use binary combined switches. I believe the 'o' represented an unsupported combination. Remember how small the code space was. I still consider it a miracle of embedded coding. The late great Tom Weismann (RIP dear friend) was the software engineer, and it was all written in 4-bit assembly! Tom and I bounced ideas back and forth how much we could cram in. I only regret we did not have room for more reference impedances like we did in the 8050 and the 8920. But we did cram a lot of stuff in there.

frozenfrogz:

--- Quote from: drtaylor on May 01, 2017, 06:18:57 pm ---Re 8050 Tick – I too don't hear anything on my 8050 (at 120VAC).

--- End quote ---

Now, that I figured out where the sound comes from, I feel a little stupid. It turns out, the 8050A did not produce the 'tick' :scared:
-> It is coming from my SP-1010DR desoldering station! :palm:

Since I added the 8050A, I had to also add a multi-outlet power strip to have enough free sockets for the meter and some other gear. The 8050A sits right above the SP-1010DR, which was only plugged in when in use (I had to unplug some other device when desoldering, because of to few power outlets). Now with the power strip in place, all instruments are plugged in at the same time and I never suspected the SP-1010DR to be the culprit.
But anyway: Thank you for your suggestions. Hunting down what makes it tick will continue...

Also: Thank you for sharing the old documents. I really enjoy looking into special bonus information like this, plus the way the headlines and texts are set in these old brochures are very appealing :)

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