Not to seem overly dramatic, but I'm quite sad at my stupidity. I'm actually a software engineer, and recently I started a hobby of learning electronics. I've been buying vintage audio stuff and restore, fix some, clean up, etc... for sort of fun...as the case usually ends up being, eventually my nature demands that I have ALL that's necessary in terms of tools and equipment, talk about going overboard.
Long story short, I had been doing fine without an oscilloscope, but by hook or crook, I must have it. I bought a 475, the lady that sold it said she got it at a estate sell and didn't know what to do with it, got it for $80 bucks taking a risk that it may not work, oh well, so be it. Got it home, started messing with it, read the manual a bit watched some videos, bought a signal generator and was able to see the long awaited sine wave.
So far so good. Then, since I had been doing clean up of audio equipment, the genius in me decides to 'clean it up,' turns out that it had several broken knobs, I think the shipping agency likes to play soccer with the items, to kill the boredom. So... I decide to buy a 'broken' one of the same model for $50 and then it turned out to be newer a 475A, I contacted the guy and he said he had no idea what to do with it or even the state it is in, he actually sold it as non working. Eventually found out that it does display a sweep line, but did not test it otherwise, since it was, the 'bad one.'
I then proceed to cannibalize from the bad one and put the good controls, knobs, including some connecting rods from the knobs to the pots that were broken on the 475 one, so far so good. Then, totally ignoring at my peril coming first to this site and reading, had the great idea to.... deoxit the oscilloscope, since I've become used to it and now I wanna put deoxit on everthing...not content enough with this, I also reach for the can of pressurized air and have a good go at it on the scope. Now I was happy, to have a nice oscilloscope that was wholesome and clean. I put it back together, and end up with a voluminous paper weight. Ok! no worries, I just gotta wait 'til the good ol' deoxit dries off, sure, that must be it, at this point it is *not* conceivable that my hard earned oscilloscope could be damaged, I mean these things are built like tanks. Right!?
Several hours go by, couple of days later, after more reading of the manual, trying this, doing that...BIG WTF!!! Ok, come on, why did this happen to ME.
So, I'm at a cross roads, here is some data that I can use to reason with on how to proceed:
1) The bad scope is newer, I can see the circuit boards, etc... it's the A model, it *did* appear to work
2) The good scope (now a big paper weight) is toast, what do I gotta do to get this beast to wake up? It turns on, but no matter how I fuss with the knobs, no scan line, nothing at all on the CRT.
3) I've watched these youtube vids where this guy is doing a restoration on a dumped 475 and apparently it had been damaged by getting hit in the knob that you can pull out a bit and it has like 3 axis and it goes into a big rectangular box, he found a micro switch that came off, and the back pot was broken inside and he said it was for a timing something something and he decided to remove the broken pot and disable that functionality and bridge it through a wire, ok, to each his own, I guess, then he was actually able to make the thing work and it started slinging sine waves like the best of them... ok that was awesome. However! in my scope, no such microswitch was ever found, could it be it fell off when I stupidly took out the knob, I was just trying to remove the face plate and polish it, but abandoned the idea due to the damn complexity of it, just to get it clean. So... I don't know if there's something to it about a micro switch which because if there was and it's not activated, apparently the guy said that it would have the wonderful effect of no signal on the CRT.... Anybody has ideas about this, is it supposed to have this switch, for my model
4) At this point, I'm thinking, well, the 'bad one' *is* newer, and it *does* appear to work... why not just use the bad one and put the good knobs on it, and... BE DONE WITH IT?
In any case, been reading the manual, but it is huge, and I'd rather not spent too much time on it, since I'd really like to get back to the audio equipment...
Please share any advise on what to do, what would you do? Would you fix the 'good' scope or just give up? I mean the NOT giving up demon in me already cost me about a week and I've done jack about the vintage audio equipment.
Thanks for reading this sad sad story...