Products > Test Equipment

Why did Tektronix stop making the great scopes?

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Rupunzell:
Steve Jobs learned this from Bill & Dave's hp and experience from starting and failing at his other companies.

The story of Steve Jobs calling up Bill Hewlett asking for some 7400 series logic chips to make a frequency counter was all true. With that Bill offered a summer job for Steve at hp.


Bernice



--- Quote from: Richard Crowley on January 17, 2015, 06:22:40 pm ---
Reminiscent of reports of Steve Jobs.  While I do not admire Apple's "walled garden" philosophy of creating appliances for dumb users, you can't deny their sense of style and marketing genius.

--- End quote ---

nctnico:

--- Quote from: G0HZU on January 17, 2015, 01:58:10 pm ---
--- Quote ---Like it or not, the vast majority of time domain instrument operation and theory of operation are based on the basic frame work and foundations created by Tektronix decades ago. aka, Tektronix 500 series.

--- End quote ---

Agreed. What is saddening is the disrespect for what was achieved in the golden era from the 50s through to the early 70s. It's easy to laugh at old technology. But in those days test gear was conceived and designed by engineers of the highest calibre and there would have been very little influence from corporate beancounters. This shows in the fabulous build quality and attention to detail in test gear from this classic era. The associated technical documentation easily reveals the calibre and passion of the engineers that designed and influenced every aspect of the manufacturing of the test gear.

--- End quote ---
I'm not sure whether designs where entirely left to engineers. That way no product would ever be finished. I don't think much has changed except that time-to-market is much shorter nowadays and new technologies evolve faster.
Still I wouldn't rule out the designs made by Tek in the 80's and 90's. The 2200 series and TDS500/600/700 series where also very well designed. I had to fix the time base divider circuitry in my Tek 2230 (broken trace from a dodgy repair job by someone else) and I was pleasantly surprised by the elegance of how it was designed from TTL logic chips.

Martin.M:
213, my little problem solver  :)


that little scope portable includes a accuracy true rms on screen dmm what can read voltage directly from the probe. So it have a switch scope/dmm.  The battery charger is also included in the case. Tek engineering, 1975...  wired parts, no smd, easy to repair.


greetings
Martin

Rupunzell:
When to stop and call it done depends on engineering experience and how many products or projects a given engineer has complete over their years of working experience. This makes the difference between a strict engineer and the VP of engineering. The VP of engineering better have a broad view of what is important and what is not in the marketable product. Get that wrong and everyone in the company and related will suffer.

In the case of digital stuff, designs can be more defined in their functionality. There is often the option of altering the firmware-software to allow fixes on the fly if needed.

Analog stuff is never simple as there are many shades of gray when it comes to making judgement and choices as to what is good enough. Really well seasoned and experienced analog design folks know when to quit as further efforts are not going to result in significant gains. Further  performance gains are going to be really, really difficult as the limits of semiconductor device physics are near and performance limits of passive components become a serious problem.

Having been in this industry for decades, it has changed a great deal. These days it is much about rapid product cycles with "good enough" being the norm. This leaves little room for proper refinement and development of product design. This was the barrier between the instrumentation world and consumer electronics world. The current low cost DSO's and all related are an example of how this barrier between consumer electronics and instrumentation has been mostly removed. Vintage test gear was designed and built to be in service for a long time (often decades), repairable, well supported and more. Lab grade instrumentation was also expected to feel precision and be precision in how their controls worked, operated and overall ergonomics. As one who grew up on this stuff, the current plastic wonders of instrumentation gross me out in many ways even if their electrical performance is good.

All of which brings up the business aspect of this industry. The electronics industry has evolved into to more of the computing and consumer techno-widget industry for mass consumption. All intended to be low cost, highly profitable with a service life not much beyond it's warranty period. Marketing is forced using features and how many more features the new techno widget has to offer and how the previous techno-widget is now obsolete due to the leap in technology. Stoking buyers to toss out the old thing and purchase the new thing... Even if the old thing solved their real need for that technological solution extremely well.

Make no mistake, technology has progressed in many ways and has resulted in rather amazing stuff. Except, there is a balance to this and a need to separate the fact from marketing hype. As marketing and business folks know moving merchandise means profits and company growth. This appears to be the primary driving force behind today's electronics industry.

In many ways, the electronics industry has matured an become a commodity market.


Bernice




--- Quote from: nctnico on January 17, 2015, 10:02:01 pm ---
I'm not sure whether designs where entirely left to engineers. That way no product would ever be finished. I don't think much has changed except that time-to-market is much shorter nowadays and new technologies evolve faster.
Still I wouldn't rule out the designs made by Tek in the 80's and 90's. The 2200 series and TDS500/600/700 series where also very well designed. I had to fix the time base divider circuitry in my Tek 2230 (broken trace from a dodgy repair job by someone else) and I was pleasantly surprised by the elegance of how it was designed from TTL logic chips.

--- End quote ---

rgarnett1923:
Tek stopped making good scopes and over-priced average ones when Danaher, the "Rent Seekers" bought them out and sacked all their highly paid competent engineers, replacing them with cheap graduates ruled by extravagantly paid accountants and lawyers.

I had an 200 MHz MDO 3024.  It had mixed signal, a few of the serial decodes and whilst the interface was a bit slow it did everything I needed. The triggering was great.

Problem is it failed after seven years and was going to cost $10,000 Aus. fixed price to fix.  To purchase a new equivalent with the same options was going to cost over $30,000 Au. That is just BS.

I paid less than half that for that for the original one.  Tek are dead to me now. They were a good company, but now they are a milking cow for the greedy US oligarchs who wouldn't know an oscilloscope if it fell on them.  What Danaher did is what is wrong with America today.  Everything they touch turns to lead.

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