What old good equipment I should looking for?

[Fagear]

Hello!
I'm from Russia and I'm not very old - only 26. So it leads to the fact that I was born in the USSR (Soviet Union). And I'm not familiar with old style test equipment like analog multimeters and scopes.
But these old hardware can still be very useful and not so expensive to get. Dave's episode about "50$ CRO" is a good example.

Russia does not produce such equipment now (for scopes I can only find rebadged cheap chinese scopes), all I can find - old soviet devices. And... these are not ones that could make me happy.
These are some oscilloscopes from "C1-" series (C1-54, C1-64, C1-68, C1-81 and so on). They are huge heavy bricks of steel with not very useful interface, small screens and nothing else (no OSD and measurement in any of them). They are pretty dumb, not very reliable and hardly serviceable (they are just scary inside... crap quality boards, cheap parts, mess of one color wiring and steel brackets, no silkscreen or useful test points... I had broken C1-68 for some time - I didn't managed my self get through all this crap to fix the device ).

Now I'm trying to build my home lab and I'm very excited about buying DS2072. But also I had watched many youtube videos about various test equipment.
And that's the question: there are so many cheap and expencive devices out there I'm not familiar with (I was born in USSR, remember? I even did not know about all this for a long time). What good and in some case legendary devices could you recommend to look at? Analog and old DMMs, CROs, old function gens and power supplies?

I already found something about analog scopes like cheap, easy-to-repair and many-times-copied device - Tenma 72-720. That can be good for start. I think most of soviet "C1-" scopes will lose in comparsion to this unit. And I really appreciate Tektronix 24xx series - realy impressive devices, state of art ones. Many multifunction buttons and knobs, real hardware LEDs, tons of them, OSD with cursors and measurements and many features. I want to get one of those! But what else?

[DL8RI]

Hi,

I own two frequency-counters "Tsch3-34" (?3-34).
They are feature-wise not impressive (except the massive OCXO) but the Inside is quite yummy 
Comes in a green military-style wooden box looking like made for a grenade launcher

Here are some Pics of the Unit and the extensions:
http://www.ostron.de/Frequenzmesser/Zeitabstaendeblock-fuer-Frequenzzaehler-Tsch3-34-3-34.html

Not my page! Not my stuff! I got my two für ~20€ each on ebay with Manuals and Cal-sheet (from 1989, right before the end ).

[edavid]

Maybe you should look for a C1-91, it seems pretty nice (similar to a Tek 7603).

Or, if you can find a bunch of Nixie tubes, you can sell them on eBay and buy whatever you want

[Fagear]

I own two frequency-counters "Tsch3-34" (?3-34).
They are feature-wise not impressive (except the massive OCXO) but the Inside is quite yummy 
Comes in a green military-style wooden box looking like made for a grenade launcher

Yes, great typical soviet style device.

Maybe you should look for a C1-91, it seems pretty nice (similar to a Tek 7603).

Or, if you can find a bunch of Nixie tubes, you can sell them on eBay and buy whatever you want

Yeah, feels like ?1-91 is a copy of Tek 7xxx scope. Based on soviet electronic parts. And it actualy has an OSD!
But again I don't want to mess with old soviet devices. Because I already know many of them from inside. I'll attach some photos of soviet test equipment insides' to this post. And also there is russian forum about old test equipment with many photos. Take a look if you want, sometimes it is interesting. There are some kind of teardown photos too.

And what's the deal with Nixie tubes? They are still available (maybe they are still manufactured) in Russia. "??-" ("IN-") series. "IN-1", "IN-12", "IN-13"... all shapes and forms!
??-1

??-13
??-14

I can buy new ones and they are pretty cheap - about 70...150 rubles (~2...5 US$).

I still want to explore whole bunch of "legend" old hardware. Like Tek 24xxx or even Fluke 87. And maybe I will buy some of them later. But I don't know where to look.

[Co6aka]

I'm from Russia...

Privet!    Kak dela?

And what's the deal with Nixie tubes?

Rabid clock fanatics are gobbling them up; for example:
http://www.tubeclockdb.com/nixie-clocks/293-review-mod6-7971.html

But I don't know where to look.

Any hamfests in Rossiya?  (There is of course  eBay.)

Poka!

[neggles]

And what's the deal with Nixie tubes? They are still available (maybe they are still manufactured) in Russia. "??-" ("IN-") series. "IN-1", "IN-12", "IN-13"... all shapes and forms!

They're not still manufactured to my knowledge, but there are enormous warehouses of hundreds of thousands or maybe even millions of them made in the dying days of the cold war just before 7-segment LED displays became a thing - the West never really got into neon digit tubes bigtime, as the nixie was only around for a very small period of time, but the USSR just sat there cranking them out for years and years.

Almost all the nixies you find are labelled as NOS, or New Old Stock - stuff that's been in warehouses ever since it was made, even though that was many years ago.

[Bored@Work]

These are some oscilloscopes from "C1-" series (C1-54, C1-64, C1-68, C1-81 and so on). They are huge heavy bricks of steel with not very useful interface, small screens and nothing else (no OSD and measurement in any of them). They are pretty dumb, not very reliable and hardly serviceable (they are just scary inside... crap quality boards, cheap parts, mess of one color wiring and steel brackets, no silkscreen or useful test points... I had broken C1-68 for some time - I didn't managed my self get through all this crap to fix the device ).

In its days stuff like the C1-94 was so good that it was exported to the capitalistic imperialistic West for some cold hard cash. The C1-94 was light, compact, almost feature-less , and there was always some doubt if the x-rays from the CRT were properly shielded. But for many hobbyists in the West it was the first affordable oscilloscope. Some people collect them or keep them for sentimental reasons.

We also got Russian analog multimeters like Z/U 4312, 4313, 4324 from Mashpriborintorg, Moscow export organization. Bricks with a scale

However, the better stuff we got in the West came from the GDR. I also seem to remember that Czech Tesla exported suff.

[madshaman]

Cobble together a functional Tek7104 with dual 7A29 vertical pluggins.

[ElectroIrradiator]

In its days stuff like the C1-94 was so good that it was exported to the capitalistic imperialistic West for some cold hard cash. The C1-94 was light, compact, almost feature-less , and there was always some doubt if the x-rays from the CRT were properly shielded. But for many hobbyists in the West it was the first affordable oscilloscope. Some people collect them or keep them for sentimental reasons.

I recall a review at the time in the Danish amateur radio rag, 'OZ'. Commentary on the exterior finish included the word 'grindstone', and a summary of the conclusion would be " ". 

Maybe we Danes were just too spoilt or something...

[Stonent]

Slightly OT.  I remember as a kid watching Scientific American Journal on PBS and they had a Russian edition and Peter Graves visited Alexey Pajitnov (?? ) the man behind the game Tetris and they were asking him what it was like and he talked about how hard it was to get technology and how there were so many government restrictions. He said it was legal to own a computer, and legal to own a printer, but not both. Probably to cut down on anti-soviet propaganda.

I found it quite interesting.

As a kid I had the game Welltris and part of the copy protection was they would show you a flag of a Soviet country and ask the name and population and you'd have to look it up in the manual before it would let you play the game.

[Fagear]

Privet!    Kak dela?

Privet! Horosho!.. I mean... good!

Rabid clock fanatics are gobbling them up

Yes, I know about many various designes based on nixie tubes. And often nixie tubes are messed up with VFD ones.

Any hamfests in Rossiya?  (There is of course  eBay.)

I'm afraid to be wrong... but there no "hamfests" in Russia. Or they are very unpopular and local.

Let me tell you something I know about it.
I war born in USSR, but I was a kid. I started to interest in electronics and HAM in middle nineties. USSR came apart in 1991, so there were as we call them here "dashing nineties" ("?? ?": no limits, no laws, no money/or much stolen, misery, gangsters on Mercedeses and BMW with toned windows) and I could not afford anything to my hobbies because of no money.
In USSR HAM were well spreaded everywere. There were such things as... I don't know correct english term... HAM-schools, we call them "?? " (literally "radio-circles" ). Children could go and learn electronics and HAM in groups. But after that you can only forget about it or buy licence, hardware and go to broadcasting. I don't know anything about "hamfests" at that time. It was USSR, you could be spied everywere.

After 1991 all these things almost died. Most of ham-schools closed, there were no money for something.
Now there are still some ham-schools left, but they are small and not well-known (first three attached pictures).

No hamfests. As I understand - it is place were many ham and electronic enthusiasts can meet each other, demonstrate some of their projects to each other, have a conference. I don't know about any of them in Russia and especially in Moscow. It has to be a place, but who will pay rent for it?

In 90th there only were electronics and ham specific flea markets, few of them in Moscow (2-3 maybe). Now they almost collapsed. There only left some general spontaneous flea markets were you hardly can find something electronic, usually nothing (see photos #4 and #5). All you can find - crappy old test equipment I was talking about earlier.

So I really want to know, what was (and actually is) in other countries (not USSR) about good test equipment.

I remember as a kid watching Scientific American Journal on PBS and they had a Russian edition and Peter Graves visited Alexey Pajitnov (?? ) the man behind the game Tetris and they were asking him what it was like and he talked about how hard it was to get technology and how there were so many government restrictions. He said it was legal to own a computer, and legal to own a printer, but not both. Probably to cut down on anti-soviet propaganda.

I can not tell you exactly about computer+printer in USSR. But! There were some very cheap things in USSR (bread, ice cream and other food), free (school, higher education, medicine). But something was way too expensive: computers, cars. Family could only have one car (produced in USSR only of course, and all of them were bad quality... do you know brand "LADA"?.. ) and they must work to pay for it for ages. Similar things with computer. If you had some computer at home - you were very rich then. But computers also can be only soviet. So only places were you could see some computers were computer centers and some schools. Almost all soviet computers were rip off copies of "capitalist west" ones (Atari, IBM XT, ZX Spectrum, you can see some of them: one, two, three, four and so on). But due to well spread eletcronics hobby some enthusiasts made their own PCBs from schematics, searched for deficit parts and built their own variations (ZX was first place in copy rating).

[Mr Simpleton]

Ahhh brings back memories... those 0.1 inch (100 mils) was not quite 100 mils but 2,5 mm  , ok I guess with 14-pin DIL but try mate a 40 pin eastern block CPU in a "normal" socket, that was "fun" 

[Fagear]

Ahhh brings back memories... those 0.1 inch (100 mils) was not quite 100 mils but 2,5 mm  , ok I guess with 14-pin DIL but try mate a 40 pin eastern block CPU in a "normal" socket, that was "fun" 

Right. In all world pitch was 2.54 mm (0.1 inch), but in USSR we had "our own special way" so we had 2.5 mm. It was trouble when you tried to insert i8088 or NEC V20 in soviet XT-clone with 2.5mm pitch socket.

Back to topic. I don't wanna mess with old soviet test equipment, I've already tried.
But when I go to eBay - there are tonns of various equipment. And I don't know their possibilities, features, specs. I have to search and download spec sheets for every of them and compare.
And I even don't know what brands to look at. For scopes: Tektronix - ok, HP/Agilent - ok. But what else? I just recently discovered that Hitachi made some good scopes. Dave was talking about Hameg scopes - it was the first time when i had heard about this brand.
I can easily mix up crappy chinese ones to some others because I don't know brands' histories.
And so on with analog MMs, power supplies and everything else except soviet ones.
I don't know what brand to look at, what models to find or walk by. Maybe there are some buggy or unrelieble models of Tektronics or Agilent scopes, that I must not even touch... And some good ones from not well known brands.

I want some people who know this old equipment to write some short "good hardware" list if they can. I need some baseline to start from.
For exaple: "old good (and still actual) DMM is Fluke 87. It is not ideal, but it is de facto standard." Now I can start my search from 87 and look for similar devices, compare them, make my mind about all them and choose. Something like that.

[Stonent]

Almost all soviet computers were rip off copies of "capitalist west" ones (Atari, IBM XT, ZX Spectrum, you can see some of them:

Digital was getting tired of companies in the USSR stealing their chip designs so they put this on one their CVAX processor:

[dfmischler]

I'm told that says, "VAX - When you care enough to steal the very best"

[Fagear]

I'm told that says, "VAX - When you care enough to steal the very best"

And it was translated from english to russian in the same way as every cheap chinese devices manuals are translated from chinese to english. Words are not even spelled correctly.

[nctnico]

USSR only of course, and all of them were bad quality... do you know brand "LADA"?.. ) and they must work to pay for it for ages. Similar things

Hey! No bad words about Lada! My parents have had two and they never broke down. I also drove around in the last one.

Anyway, with equipment 'old' and 'good' seldomly go hand in hand. Someone already mentioned old cars. Like old cars old equipment often needs a lot of restauration. Sometimes its worth it but in many cases the equipment is just beyond repair. Maybe the best thing to do is to get new gear from Rigol or Siglent.

[edavid]

I want some people who know this old equipment to write some short "good hardware" list if they can. I need some baseline to start from.
For exaple: "old good (and still actual) DMM is Fluke 87. It is not ideal, but it is de facto standard." Now I can start my search from 87 and look for similar devices, compare them, make my mind about all them and choose. Something like that.

It's a good question, but it's hard to know where to start.  Can you say any more about your interests (audio, digital, RF, ), or your budget?

[Fagear]

It's a good question, but it's hard to know where to start.  Can you say any more about your interests (audio, digital, RF, ), or your budget?

My interests are: audio amplifiers, microcontroller stuff (<20 MHz) and sometimes repairing computer parts (motherboards, video/audiocards: clock signals, activity on buses).

I'm just started collecting equipment for my lab: bought good soldering iron - goot PX-201 with ceramic heater and temperature setting on handle, USB programmer - TL866A. I also have DMM, but it is 15-years old Mastech M-838. I need a power supply, an oscilloscope, a signal gen and a good DMM. But all this probably will be modern equipment: I'm aiming to DS2072 scope and Rigols power supplies and wavegens.

My interest is not only in buying some equipment. It also refers to curiosity and history of test equipment. And I will probably buy some analog scope and analog MM (for true analog performance ). But I don't know for now will they be cheap ones or high end.