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Old Fluke Multimeters
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GregDunn:

--- Quote from: med6753 on January 12, 2019, 08:34:08 am ---Interesting. I was curious about the original prices too. Even $299 USD for a 8000A was big bucks back then. (That's almost $1600 USD in today's dollars)

That list is too early for the 8010A and 8050A which came out quite a few years later, not until the 1980's. They would be probably roughly equivalent to the 8000A and 8600A in price although the 8050A doesn't have auto ranging.

--- End quote ---

Finally dug through the R-E archive and found a later partial price list which answers your question:
Neomys Sapiens:

--- Quote from: DC1MC on January 12, 2019, 04:55:04 pm ---
Truer words never been spoken  ;D, I've snagged this Fluke 8060A from the Kleinanzeigen for 15 euro coins.
.
.

--- End quote ---
I hope that I find the leftover carry-case until when I finally get that counter ready.


--- Quote from: DC1MC on January 12, 2019, 04:55:04 pm ---Anyways, now he got his place on my desk and you could enjoy some pictures, my mains frequency it's really 50Hz ;).


--- End quote ---

Only when you are looking!
med6753:
Those price lists are interesting and they show what is very typical in the electronics industry...that is....as technology matures the price decreases. Examples:

8000A - 1974 price - $299 USD ($1600 USD today). The equivalent 8010A - 1980 price - $239 USD ($768 USD today).

But the biggest surprise was comparing the 8600A to the roughly equivalent 8050A. (Similar specs but 8050A doesn't have auto range)

8600A - 1974 price - $599 USD ($3200 USD today). 8050A - 1980 price - $329 USD ($1000 USD today).
GregDunn:
Yes, the improvement of chip technology led to economies of scale and reduced prices for quite a while.  I haven't actually tried to swap the chips, but when Fluke introduced autoranging, they started putting the same part number C2506 DVM chip in their DMMs - if you can trust the Fluke part number, it's in both the 4.5 digit 8600A and the 5.5 digit 8800A.  The schematic tends to confirm this.  The way they operate the display, it makes sense that the same chip could be used for both - the actual accuracy was determined by the ADC anyway, so technically I guess they could have made the 8600A a 5.5 digit meter with 4.5 digit accuracy by adding another LED/driver.   >:D

The 8000A has a totally different set of internals - it uses a voltage-to-frequency converter instead of a dual-slope ADC and has a pair of custom ICs to implement that while the range switching stuff is mostly discrete.  So it's kind of the complement of the 8600A where the ADC is mostly discrete.  Must have been cheaper to do that, plus it's only 3.5 digits.

Since I was stuck at home in the snow today, I did an impromptu check of my bench DMMs against my 3 voltage references and my MC-7 resistor "standard".  Considering that none of the Flukes have been adjusted in a long time, they held up pretty well; there was very little to choose between the 8800A and 8600A units on overall DCV accuracy.  I wish I had actual measurements of my MC-7 though, instead of just the accuracy spec - it's really unknown which meters are closer to the accurate value and which are a victim of the resistors being slightly different from the marked value (the eternal metrology dilemma).  Assuming the resistors are spot on, all of the DMMs beat 0.03% and all were very linear over the full range of resistance.  In fact, my $10 8600A converted from battery to line operation "seemed" to be more accurate than the 8800A units, within the limits of resolution.  I wouldn't hesitate to use any of them for bench testing.

40 year old meters.  Great stuff.

DC1MC:

--- Quote from: Neomys Sapiens on January 13, 2019, 02:48:20 am ---
--- Quote from: DC1MC on January 12, 2019, 04:55:04 pm ---
Truer words never been spoken  ;D, I've snagged this Fluke 8060A from the Kleinanzeigen for 15 euro coins.
.
.

--- End quote ---
I hope that I find the leftover carry-case until when I finally get that counter ready.


--- Quote from: DC1MC on January 12, 2019, 04:55:04 pm ---Anyways, now he got his place on my desk and you could enjoy some pictures, my mains frequency it's really 50Hz ;).


--- End quote ---

Only when you are looking!

--- End quote ---

Was it you ?  cool  8), I want that carry case (and the f-meter of course) !!!

And yes, it's a Schrödinger-ian  frequency  >:D




 Cheers,
 DC1MC
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