Vintage teardown- Keithley 130A

[reagle]

Just finished a writeup on a Keithley 130A teardown on my blog:
http://kuzyatech.com/vintage-keithley-130a-teardown
A few post-cleanup  pictures for your enjoyment:




On a related note, does anybody know a good resource for history for Keithley DMMs? Tried looking on their page without much luck

[BravoV]

Thanks for sharing, very unique DMM you got there especially with that 2 dials. 

Is that 7106 socketed ? Can't see it clearly.

[don.r]

I know I'm in a minority but I love the Keithley brown era. Cheers for the vintage through-hole tech porn. 

[retiredcaps]

Modemhead has a non working Keithley 135 DMM (lcd is bad).  His pictures are at

http://mrmodemhead.com/blog/gallery/keithley-135-dmm/

PS. I dislike the brown color scheme.

[retiredcaps]

Is that 7106 socketed ? Can't see it clearly.

In his text description, it says

Surprisingly, there is not much there: A Maxim ICL7106  of 1985 vintage in a socket, Ti TL061CP JFET opamp, and a Motorola MC14070 Quad X-OR gate.

[BravoV]

Thanks retiredcaps, I missed that.

Surprisingly, there is not much there: A Maxim ICL7106  of 1985 vintage in a socket, Ti TL061CP JFET opamp, and a Motorola MC14070 Quad X-OR gate.

I guess the most expensive part is that precision voltage divider resistors on ceramic substrate, isn't it ? 

[retiredcaps]

Thanks retiredcaps, I missed that.

You were probably staring at the porn pics and didn't read the text!!  Sort of like buying Playboy for the articles. 

[retiredcaps]

Just finished a writeup on a Keithley 130A teardown on my blog:

Thanks for the teardown.   I just love these type of blog entries/articles.   

I can spend hours reading/looking at the stuff.

[BravoV]

Thanks retiredcaps, I missed that.

You were probably staring at the porn pics and didn't read the text!!  Sort of like buying Playboy for the articles. 

Damn ... I'm busted !   

[retiredcaps]

On a related note, does anybody know a good resource for history for Keithley DMMs? Tried looking on their page without much luck

I don't know the history and would love to find out more later on my own time, but I found an 1980 ad for the Keithley 130 here

https://archive.org/stream/radio_electronics_1980-04/Radio_Electronics_April_1980#page/n19/mode/2up

In the same magazine, it is clear that Fluke is still selling the old 8000 series with the pushbuttons and Keithley takes a shot in their ad by stating "Both range and function are easily selected with one hand - no complicated pushbuttons."

Notice the big "And that's no fluke".

Like I said, I just love researching and reading all this multimeter stuff.

drtaylor who worked at Fluke on the 8060A stated that it was Beckman (on the very next page of the radio electronics magazine) that forced Fluke to switch to a rotary design.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/old-fluke-multimeters/msg320145/#msg320145

Perhaps, it was also Keithley that forced Fluke to get away from the push buttons?

[reagle]

Thanks for the links! It looks like 135 is a rather different beast, older too.
I added the archive link to my post
 

Modemhead has a non working Keithley 135 DMM (lcd is bad).  His pictures are at

http://mrmodemhead.com/blog/gallery/keithley-135-dmm/

PS. I dislike the brown color scheme.