EEVblog® Electronics Community Forum
Products => Test Equipment => Topic started by: Ecklar on December 24, 2014, 12:11:36 am
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Why did Tektronix stop making scopes like the venerable 2465 or 2465B? What changed? With the recent EEVBLOG tear down exposing the solid build and ability it seems like Tek could have updated with a little modern tech and kept improving these things. Some may say that the rise of the digital caused the demise but I'm hearing all over the place just how great the analog scopes are and that the digital can't replace the feel and response. So if they are so great then why doesn't Tek or someone else use modern tech, and cheap Chinese labor and grind out these scopes at one quarter the price?
Eck
Or were they really not that great and we are just like babying old English sportscars? You you? They're fun and we love them but the modern stuff is just more dependable and funtionable.
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I'm going only from memory so it may not be all correct,
I heard that it was an ownership change, from an engineer to a standard CEO type, so money was diverted from R&D into marketing and sales, for an already stong brand,
As well that they started to rebrand things,
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Can't find the 2465B list price but the 2467B with a different CRT cost in 1990 was $13,045
Source:
http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/2467 (http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/2467)
So think of how cheap they are now taking into account inflation (around $24,100 in 2014 money)
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Because there is no way to make these for the 300 USD price point. Not enough market for high quality CRTs to make a 100$ Bill of materials. Shipping costs. Oh, and sever lack of functionality.
I love (and use) old test equipment. But there is no market for 300MHz analog scopes.
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The Tektronix campus is practically a ghost town anymore. More and more of the buildings appear to be leased (or sold?) to other companies.
I doubt that the master craftspeople who made the CRTs are even around anymore.
Does ANY modern equipment still use CRT technology?
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Ecklar seems to be trolling the forum for blatently obvious replies. Check his posts.
His threads should be in general chat, they are of little use in test equipment.
I won't even offer a reply to this subject.
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Those mentioned Tek scopes are the swan song of CROs, the best they could do, and I'm still a bit angry at myself for missing that local auction for a 2465B a while ago.
But... I'd be willing to pay the equivalent of a modern low-end scope's price for one of those old CROs. I certainly wouldn't pay what it would actually cost to make, even with modern parts.
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Tektronix made their own CRTs, and closed the CRT operations when the bottom fell out of analog scopes in the 1990s.
http://www.vintagetek.org/crt-a-look-back/ (http://www.vintagetek.org/crt-a-look-back/)
They used to make all their own custom ASICs right on their Beaverton campus, but sold off the semiconductor operations to Maxim, IIRC.
Once Danaher took over, they began dismantling the company, outsourcing as much as they could, and left the company a shell of its former self.
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They used to make all their own custom ASICs right on their Beaverton campus, but sold off the semiconductor operations to Maxim, IIRC.
Yes, the former Tek fab was sold to Maxim who use it for production to this day.
(http://www.rcrowley.com/images/TekMax.png)
I remember visiting there back when Tek was operating it. They used tiny cute little 2 or 3 inch wafers.
By comparison, just 3-4 miles east of there, I work at a campus that has probably the planet's largest collection of 300mm (12 inch) wafer fabs.
And we are doing research on the next step: 450MM/18 inch wafers.
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Tektronix never really recovered from the fall of the Berlin wall.
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Tek suffered from a massive amount of brain drain as well as the inefficiencies of total vertical integration. It seems like the whole Portland industrial economy was centered around Tek. One can't hardly swing a dead cat around Portland or Vancouver and hit a former Tek facility or a spinoff started by former employees. Between the management changes and the burden of building every, single component in-house, the burden switched from innovation to a struggle just to manage it all. I started my career in two of the spin offs, and the legacy management issues from Tek were really obvious.
One company had a truly bizarre leftover rule - I shit you not - a let-it-burn policy. In other words, if a fire started, one was not allowed to use a fire extinguisher, no matter how minor it was. You were to turn around, walk away, and call the fire department while the building burned to the ground.
The vertical integration was just a huge albatross. Owning dedicated facilities for everything from PWBs to CRTs to plastics shops that not only molded every knob and case part, they even built all the tooling in-house. The overhead costs were ridiculous - and only a ridiculous price tag could support it.
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Why did Tektronix stop making scopes like the venerable 2465 or 2465B? What changed?
Do you have any idea how much the 2465B was priced back there ? It was $5850 !! :o
The 2465B's equivalent price + inflation at 2014 is now about $13,000. :palm:
Suggesting you to skip calculating the equivalent 2467B's price in these days, afraid you will have the heart attack. >:D
(https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/oscilloscope-historical-price-trends/?action=dlattach;attach=112212;image)
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Lots of good points covered already, but the short answer is mature industry + "Danaher".
Danaher a conglomerate that buys up mature industries typically and operationalizes them for efficiency plays. In the case of T&M there is a lot of commoditization, but IMO there is still a need for investment in high end capabilities and software. I think Danaher is more interested in milking tek then investing in innovation based on recent product offerings, but it may just be a lull caused during the take over.
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One last point, don't underestimate the allure of the PC market of the mid 80s through the 90s. Tek had a market-leading color printer in the Phaser series, and like HP, they wanted out of the fuddy duddy T&M business and into the "gold-mine" PC market. That's where the focus was for long enough for HP/Agilent to leave Tek in the dust in T&M.
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Why did Tektronix stop making scopes like the venerable 2465 or 2465B? What changed?
For example that it's no longer 1986? No-one really wants to buy some large boat anchor with a fish glass and primitive functionality in 2014. Especially when the price equivalent in today's money can get you some really nice digital scopes.
With the recent EEVBLOG tear down exposing the solid build and ability it seems like Tek could have updated with a little modern tech and kept improving these things. Some may say that the rise of the digital caused the demise but I'm hearing all over the place just how great the analog scopes are and that the digital can't replace the feel and response.
Sounds like you spent too much listening to people stuck in yesteryear who have never really used a modern advanced scope.
The thing is that scopes no longer are devices for looking at waveforms. These days they have become complex signal analyzers. Often enough just staring at the screen doesn't really reveal anything, and only with advanced maths and measurement capabilities which are only available with a decent modern DSO culprits in complex signals can be found. And then there's stuff like bus decoding which is impossible with an analog scope.
Don't get me wrong, back in the days these scopes were great, and even today they still could be used for some simple tasks. And an analog scope can be a nice addition for any hobbyist shop if it's free or for a few bucks only. But apart from pure nostalgia the time of analog scopes has passed long ago.
So if they are so great then why doesn't Tek or someone else use modern tech, and cheap Chinese labor and grind out these scopes at one quarter the price?
The Chinese did exactly that, over a decade ago, along with several Eastern European manufacturers. The reason they stopped is that analog scopes were already a dead end 20 years ago. And because of the high integration which is possible with modern technology, simpler DSOs can be made at very low costs, and even those already vastly exceed the capabilities of most analog scopes.
Or were they really not that great and we are just like babying old English sportscars? You you? They're fun and we love them but the modern stuff is just more dependable and funtionable.
That's probably much closer to the truth. The build quality of these scopes may have been pretty solid overall but they still have mechanical switches that show wear and cause problems after all these years. And not all Tek scopes were that great, i.e. we had lots of issues with their 7000 Series and its flakey plugins back in the old days. These days, even a modern low end scope is very likely to exceed the time without repair of most analog scopes by a big margin.
The thing with Tek is that back in the old days they produced some really good and advanced scopes, but after the shift to DSOs Tek started to loose their edge against HP/Agilent and LeCroy. And when Danaher finally took over Tek in 2007 and introduced them to their Danaher Business System (DBS) (which is basically a system of micromanagement and extreme cost cutting) they essentially strangled the last bit of technological creativity left in Tektronix.
Today the only people buying new Tek scopes are either old-timers stuck in the old days or corporate buyers who have no real clue what they're buying. In terms of scope technology they are pretty much behind anyone else.
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Take a look at AMPEX in the same generation of companies - and a very similar outcome.
Interestingly - both companies had a very large stake in broadcast video equipment (SONY too), and they have all felt the earth move drastically since the mid-90s with the shift to digital technology.
Plenty of people pushed them t respond earlier in the 90s, but by then they were all dropping into the US groove of money-money-money / shareholder returns etc. Nothing to do with innovation. Sadly, as much as I loved all three - they got what they deserved.
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One last point, don't underestimate the allure of the PC market of the mid 80s through the 90s. Tek had a market-leading color printer in the Phaser series, and like HP, they wanted out of the fuddy duddy T&M business and into the "gold-mine" PC market. That's where the focus was for long enough for HP/Agilent to leave Tek in the dust in T&M.
Not quite. Tektronix had some advanced printers (i.e. solid ink printers, which is what the original Phaser Series was)
but the color printer market belonged to ink jets and later color lasers which both were cheaper than solid ink. When it turned out that solid ink wasn't the commercial success Tek had hoped they started making laser printers under the Phaser moniker as well. The commercial failure of solid ink was a problem for Tek as they did invest quite a lot in this technology.
However, Tek never had illusions that the printer business would become more profitable than their T&M division, and certainly didn't want to get out of the (at that time) more profitable T&M business. The fact that they struggled with their printer business was the reason they eventually sold the whole division to Xerox in 2000.
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Why did Tektronix stop making scopes like the venerable 2465 or 2465B? What changed?
Danaher.
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Why did Tektronix stop making scopes like the venerable 2465 or 2465B? What changed?
Danaher.
Subtle. :box:
This has happened to so many innovative leaders. Somehow, the MBA's are only taught to milk the cow without any understanding that they also need to feed it.
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If they switched from making good analog scopes to good digital scopes, then fine, but their digital scopes leave much to be desired. I use an MSO2024 at work as my everyday all-round scope and almost everything leaves a feeling that "it could work better". Software is slow, settings are not stellar (eg vertical offset adjustment range depends on volts/div), logic analyzer is slow and has peculiar setup. It just seems like this is some sub-standard product, not a name brand. I've worked with Agilents (mainly MSO3xxx models) and they just work better.
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This has happened to so many innovative leaders. Somehow, the MBA's are only taught to milk the cow without any understanding that they also need to feed it.
Indeed. LeCroy had more luck, though. They were taken over by Teledyne in 2012 but unlike Danaher Teledyne seems to leave LeCroy a lot of leeway to do their own thing, and the takeover hasn't hampered their capability to innovate.
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I wouldn't mind having an MDO3000 series but to rich for my pocket ;)
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One last point, don't underestimate the allure of the PC market of the mid 80s through the 90s. Tek had a market-leading color printer in the Phaser series, and like HP, they wanted out of the fuddy duddy T&M business and into the "gold-mine" PC market. That's where the focus was for long enough for HP/Agilent to leave Tek in the dust in T&M.
Not quite. Tektronix had some advanced printers (i.e. solid ink printers, which is what the original Phaser Series was)
but the color printer market belonged to ink jets and later color lasers which both were cheaper than solid ink. When it turned out that solid ink wasn't the commercial success Tek had hoped Tek started making laser printers as well. The commercial failure of solid ink was a problem for Tek as they did invest quite a lot in this technology.
However, Tek never had illusions that the printer business would become more profitable than their T&M division, and certainly didn't want to get out of the (at that time) more profitable T&M business. The fact that they struggled with their printer business was the reason they eventually sold the whole division to Xerox in 2000.
Mmmm...ok...but we worked directly with every major printer company besides Canon and as far as as print quality and speed at that time, Tek ruled. Of course inkets were much higher volume and killed everyone on price with the advent of the sub-$100 printer.
We worked direct with Tek and what I saw in development was printers printers printers. T&M felt like a sideshow in that era. Just my perspective from the cheap seats.
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This has happened to so many innovative leaders. Somehow, the MBA's are only taught to milk the cow without any understanding that they also need to feed it.
Indeed. LeCroy had more luck, though. They were taken over by Teledyne in 2012 but unlike Danaher Teledyne seems to leave LeCroy a lot of leeway to do their own thing, and the takeover hasn't hampered their capability to innovate.
lecroy's low end is kind of a joke though.
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Why did Tektronix stop making scopes like the venerable 2465 or 2465B? What changed?
Danaher.
Working for Danaher has to absolutely suck and I'm sure they're nailing the last of the coffin shut, but Tek was massively contracting at least a decade and a half prior to that event (in 2007). Tek hosed itself over before anyone else had a chance to assist.
By the late 80s / early 90s cash flow was essentially non-existent at the satellite shops. Tek literally had toolmakers cutting fasteners out of hexagonal bar stock because there was no money to buy them. I wish I would have kept some of those. It was hard to convince the old timer toolmakers that it was OK to buy nuts and bolts again, so they kept making fasteners by hand.
I just checked the news and it sounds like Tek is down to well under 1000 employees now. :(
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Tek hosed itself over before anyone else had a chance to assist.
Not really. The end of the cold war was a very difficult period for any maker of mostly defence industry instruments to survive. HP also went through a traumatic period, but bounced back better as other opportunities for exotic instruments, such as fibre communications, opened up.
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lecroy's low end is kind of a joke though.
Indeed, everything below the WaveSurfer Series is a sad joke. I don't think they actually know how to handle the entry level market properly.
Fortunately there are lots of better low-end scope alternatives out there.
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Why did Tektronix stop making scopes like the venerable 2465 or 2465B? What changed?
Danaher.
Sad that Fluke is next to suffer this fate. Right? :scared:
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Some may say that the rise of the digital caused the demise but I'm hearing all over the place just how great the analog scopes are and that the digital can't replace the feel and response. So if they are so great then why doesn't Tek or someone else use modern tech, and cheap Chinese labor and grind out these scopes at one quarter the price?
Because that's not quite true... Digital scopes from that era weren't particularly nice to use, and that's putting it mildly. They didn't sample fast either, they didn't have long memory, they needed a lot of recovery time between triggers. Current entry-level digital scopes still have some of these disadvantages, or just poor quality.
However, if you're prepared to spend the cost of, say, a 2467B on a recent DSO, you can get something that's almost as good at the things the 2467B was excellent at, and can also do a lot of things the 2467B couldn't do at all.
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Why did Tektronix stop making scopes like the venerable 2465 or 2465B? What changed?
Danaher.
Sad that Fluke is next to suffer this fate. Right? :scared:
I had to Wiki this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluke_Corporation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluke_Corporation)), but it turns Danaher bought Fluke in 1998. So, it seems that whatever is going to happen has already.
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Mmmm...ok...but we worked directly with every major printer company besides Canon and as far as as print quality and speed at that time, Tek ruled. Of course inkets were much higher volume and killed everyone on price with the advent of the sub-$100 printer.
The thing is that it was Canon who actually was the technological leader in laser printing, not because of their own printers but because they developed very advanced printing engines and sold it to the majority of laser printer manufacturers (i.e. HP, QMS and many more).
Tek didn't even enter the printer business before (if I remember correctly) 1986 and came out with their original Phaser solid ink printer in 1989. At that time color laser printers didn't exist yet, and the inkjet printers of that time were pretty bad at image reproduction. Solid ink was quite good for reproducing images, and so lots of Phasers found their way into pre-press/proofing applications. However, solid ink just sucked at reproducing text, was very expensive (much more than laser printers and ink jets) and came with some other shortfalls (i.e. the requirement to keep ink temperatures high which meant high energy consumption), so Tek couldn't get into the much larger office printer market (and pre=press was too much of a niche to be sustainable as a sole business). To address this, Tek later added laser printers to their portfolio, but aside from one or two models which were good most of them couldn't really keep up with other printers using Canon engines.
We worked direct with Tek and what I saw in development was printers printers printers. T&M felt like a sideshow in that era. Just my perspective from the cheap seats.
The printer division was separate from the T&M part, so it's not surprising that they felt they were the important part than the "other" BU. That's pretty common in most divisions of large companies. I also wouldn't expect the printer division to have much insight into what's going on in the T&M division.
However, the reality is that printers were more or less loss-leaders, and that Tek couldn't really compete with companies like HP who flooded the market with cheap and reliable laser printers and later also with more advanced ink jets. That's why Tek's printer business was sold off in 1999, only about 13 years after they started it, while the T&M part lives on for almost 70 years. This shows pretty clear which part of Tek was bringing in the bacon.
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The printer division was separate from the T&M part, so it's not surprising that they felt they were the important part than the "other" BU. That's pretty common in most divisions of large companies. I also wouldn't expect the printer division to have much insight into what's going on in the T&M division.
Since we were a former Tek shop, we actually worked with both T&M and the printer division. I'm sure we didn't see everything going on. But the noise certainly came from the printer side.
It was notable that in the "Silicon Forest" of Portland and Vancouver during that era, virtually every other tech company was growing while Tek continued to shrink. Before Tek, Portland was basically a big logging/timber town with surrounding agriculture in the Willamette Valley and Vancouver was a shipyard. Tek changed everything there. It's sad to see them essentially gone.
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... I'm hearing all over the place just how great the analog scopes are and that the digital can't replace the feel and response. So if they are so great then why doesn't Tek or someone else use modern tech, and cheap Chinese labor and grind out these scopes at one quarter the price?
What counts is not what people say but what people buy new. Is there would be a serious market for new analog scopes somebody would fulfill it.
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I'm hearing all over the place just how great the analog scopes are and that the digital can't replace the feel and response.
Digital can be as good as analog if you spend as much on a digital scope as the original buyer of your used analog scope spent on it. Sure, used analogs (which were originally sold at a cost of exp(holyshit)) can be better than cheapo digitals, but that's not of much concern to a company that only makes new equipment and doesn't generally cater to hobbyists... :P
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Digital can be as good as analog if you spend as much on a digital scope as the original buyer of your used analog scope spent on it. ...
This is an extremely good point. My 465 sold for $1825 when it was new. Corrected for inflation that's about $8000 in today's money. For that I could get a rather nice Agilent MSO which would be as nice to use, never mind that it is far more capable in every respect.
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I think danaher had not to do with the demise of the 26. Danaher came much later.
The reson these machines disapppeared is because we switched to digital scopes.
Get rig of that costly custom tube, plonk in a computer monitor or lcd. No need for lots of complicated analog stuff. Sample it as early in the chain as possible, dump it in memory, process it.
No need for power supplies that make 20 different voltages for all the differnt blocks including high voltages for deflection. +/- 12 and 5 is all you need.
When tek released ther first digital machines (tds500 series, not the 420 that was a sony product) the market shifted very quickly. Then agilent came along with the infiniium machines and basically stomped al over teks traditional hunting grounds. The idea of combining pc hardware with a samp,er board to make a machine was unheard of in tek land. Hp had both a pc and a tm division so they could do it.
Tek hurt .. Bad .. Divested abunch of its stuff and got borged... Game over.
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Making a CRT is easy. But to make a CRT that has 1GHz bandwidth, has less than 1% non linearity over the full brightness range, and which will give a similar brightness irrespective of the beam speed, and where you have amplifiers which have a 1GHz bandwidth and both DC stability and still can drive a 200pF load at 1GHz with 400Vpp and do so linearly is hard.
Using digital sampling to make use of a fast memory, and then simply using a much slower processor to average or something else, and then use a regular 50/60Hz monitor to display ( colour CRT, cheap off the shelf module, god life and no problems with drive to it) the signal, along with info on sweep and such and voltages, is a lot cheaper if you only have to have blistering fast and linear up to an ADC, and afterwards you use fast digital logic which is cheap to make and has no adjustments in production.
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When tek released ther first digital machines (tds500 series, not the 420 that was a sony product) the market shifted very quickly. Then agilent came along with the infiniium machines and basically stomped al over teks traditional hunting grounds.
Don't forget LeCroy who put on a lot of pressure in the high end, not just on Tek. Even in the 90's the 9300 Series already topped out almost any scope made by Tek and HP (with the exception of MSOs, where HP had a head start).
The fact that the first Infiniium scopes running Win95 were shit didn't help HP/Agilent either.
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There was another player in the scope market in the mid 90th. It was Philips (Later Fluke) with the Combiscope that could switch by the push of a button from analog to digital. And these Combiscopes offered more in features and bandwidth and memory and clearness of the CRT than any other scope on the market. This must have hurt Tek and HP big time in those days.
For me, Tektronix never really recovered from that downfall.
The old Video of the story of Tektronix is great!
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There was another player in the scope market in the mid 90th. It was Philips (Later Fluke) with the Combiscope that could switch by the push of a button from analog to digital. And these Combiscopes offered more in features and bandwidth and memory and clearness of the CRT than any other scope on the market. This must have hurt Tek and HP big time in those days.
For me, Tektronix never really recovered from that downfall.
The old Video of the story of Tektronix is great!
We had Kikusui in that timeframe.
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There was another player in the scope market in the mid 90th. It was Philips (Later Fluke) with the Combiscope that could switch by the push of a button from analog to digital. And these Combiscopes offered more in features and bandwidth and memory and clearness of the CRT than any other scope on the market.
Certainly not. The top of the line of the Combiscopes was the PM3394B which offered a mere 200MHz and 200MSa/s with 32k sample memory, and this was at around 1999. At the same time there were scopes like the HP 54542C (500MHz 2GSa/s, 32kpts and color LCD) or the LeCroy 9384AL (1GHz 4GSa/s 8Mpts) or LC 684DXL (1.5GHz 8Gsa/s 16Mpts), all which were far more advanced than the simple Combiscopes. And then there were scopes like the HP 54752A which went to 50Ghz.
There were plenty of scopes that offered more features, bandwidth and memory than the Combiscopes.
This must have hurt Tek and HP big time in those days.
Again, not really. The Combiscopes were great scopes (we had several of them at that time and most engineers preferred them over Tek analog scopes) but at the end of the day they were not much better than an old analog scope. The screen was tiny and basic when the competition already had color LCDs and better GUIs, and the maths and measurement capabilities were pretty basic even back then.
These Combiscopes didn't hurt HP and Tek because when the CombiScopes were made analog scopes were already a dead end, and HP and Tek focused their efforts on the DSO which was clearly the way forward.
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Why did Tektronix stop making scopes like the venerable 2465 or 2465B?
Disruptive technology advances, from analog to digital, more specifically. Just like chemical to digital, or analog copiers to digital copiers killed Kodak, analog cell phones to digital cell phones killed Motorolla, the transition of analog to digital scopes has significantly lowered the hurdle for a new comer to get into the scope business and upset the paradigm.
The old players suddenly find out that 1) their low-end products cannot compete with the imports; and 2) they cannot keep up with the pace at which their digital competitors are updating their product lines.
The next wave is going to be faced primarily by the new comers, however, as new display technology and data processing technology get more integrated and scopes will become more and more of two loosely integrated parts: data acquisition, and data processing / display. Guys like NI went down that path a couple decades ago but they are well positioned now for the next decades.
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Ugh, a scope running LabVIEW. God help us all.
I'm a big fan of Tek, they've been very generous as a sponsor to me. That said, I use an MSO2024B as my day to day scope, it works OK, but it's not something I would have paid money for, especially not the MSRP. (My Tek DMM and function gen are awesome though!)
Hmmm, I wonder why the Danaher acquisition of Fluke and Keithly haven't affected them nearly as much?
Sent from my Tablet
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Some may say that the rise of the digital caused the demise but I'm hearing all over the place just how great the analog scopes are and that the digital can't replace the feel and response. So if they are so great then why doesn't Tek or someone else use modern tech, and cheap Chinese labor and grind out these scopes at one quarter the price?
Because that's not quite true... Digital scopes from that era weren't particularly nice to use, and that's putting it mildly. They didn't sample fast either, they didn't have long memory, they needed a lot of recovery time between triggers. Current entry-level digital scopes still have some of these advantages, or just poor quality.
However, if you're prepared to spend the cost of, say, a 2467B on a recent DSO, you can get something that's almost as good at the things the 2467B was excellent at, and can also do a lot of things the 2467B couldn't do at all.
That's a pretty fair appraisal IMHO. As an example, given the choice between a 2467B and a basic ten year old TDS 2024B 2Gs/s 200MHz real time DSO I'd choose the TDS 2024B. Having single shot storage even with the crappy 2.5k memory that the TDS 2024B offers is probably the single most valuable feature, overriding the superior bandwidth capabilites of the 2467B.
Having said that, the immediacy at which you can control an analogue scope through its plethora of knobs and switches makes them an absolute pleasure to use, in comparison to the modern DSO with many functions hidden away in a multitude of menus.
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It was notable that in the "Silicon Forest" of Portland and Vancouver during that era, virtually every other tech company was growing while Tek continued to shrink. Before Tek, Portland was basically a big logging/timber town with surrounding agriculture in the Willamette Valley and Vancouver was a shipyard. Tek changed everything there. It's sad to see them essentially gone.
It's funny because whenever I see one of their old scopes advertised as e.g. "portable, technician, maintenance, logging", I think... why would you need a scope with your chainsaw? ;D
Tim
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Making a CRT is easy. But to make a CRT that has 1GHz bandwidth, has less than 1% non linearity over the full brightness range, and which will give a similar brightness irrespective of the beam speed, and where you have amplifiers which have a 1GHz bandwidth and both DC stability and still can drive a 200pF load at 1GHz with 400Vpp and do so linearly is hard.
Nah, they never had it that hard. Even in the toob days (no shortage of deflection voltage there), they moved to distributed deflection -- it's just so much better. And more sensitivity means less voltage, means less power needed and no need for matching between a row of tubes (high impedance outputs) and the transmission line. Practically just drive the thing with a cathode follower, and you're there!
Probably the big crusty electrostatic picture tubes needed voltages like that, but scope tubes have always been in the 200Vpp range max. Which is 100Vpp per plate, so you only need a 150-250V supply to do a good job of it.
Combined with distributed deflection and the deflection-enhancing shield mesh, I think they got down to something like 20Vpp in the 475, and less in the faster and special purpose units. All made with normal (30-60V?) transistors, hybrids and ASICs.
Since scopes long since moved away from high vertical deflection voltages, the only remaining application for high voltages at high bandwidths -- were actually high resolution CRTs, because the video bandwidth is upwards of 100MHz (e.g., >163MHz pixel clock for 1600 x 1200 x 85Hz refresh), and the cathodes must be driven with about 50-100Vpp. Late model CRTs used monolithic chips; possibly some of the best discrete transistors ever made were Sanyo parts, used in the early and mid model Trinitrons (and other high res CRTs), a typical example being 1GHz fT, 100-160Vceo and 200mA Ic (e.g., 2SC3995 I think?).
Today, such transistors are all but unheard of. A shame, because they're still handy for niche applications.
There are RF parts available for voltages like that, but it's usually because you get more power at higher voltages. There are some industrial 13.56MHz (and such) applications where a bus over 100V is desirable, so there are some parts made for those sorts of applications. There's some interest in SiC and GaN for faster power switching applications as well (pushing 1 or 2 MHz, nothing crazy), but it's still very early.
Tim
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It was notable that in the "Silicon Forest" of Portland and Vancouver during that era, virtually every other tech company was growing while Tek continued to shrink. Before Tek, Portland was basically a big logging/timber town with surrounding agriculture in the Willamette Valley and Vancouver was a shipyard. Tek changed everything there. It's sad to see them essentially gone.
OTOH Intel has effectively replaced Tek as not only the largest employer in the state (with roughly equivalent # of workers), but Oregon is the largest Intel site on the planet. All of the microprocessor processes were developed here, and every Intel CPU since the 386 saw "first silicon" here in our development fabs in Aloha and now in Hillsboro, Oregon.
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It's funny because whenever I see one of their old scopes advertised as e.g. "portable, technician, maintenance, logging", I think... why would you need a scope with your chainsaw? ;D
Tim
Because you bought a fancy, new Husqvarna saw and need to probe the uC. ;)
The old Tek had a great corporate culture. I think it was a magical place to work while it lasted.
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Oregon is the largest Intel site on the planet. All of the microprocessor processes were developed here, and every Intel CPU since the 386 saw "first silicon" here in our development fabs in Aloha and now in Hillsboro, Oregon.
I don't think that's true. For example, the original Pentium-M (Banias) saw "first silicon" in intel's Israel R&D fab in Haifa where the processor was also developed. The same is true for the mobile Core 2 (Merom) and Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge.
What has been developed in Oregon however is the architecture that was about to kill intel in the mobile/desktop/server CPU market for good: Netburst. The Israeli engineers essentially saved intel at that time from the Netburst disaster and laid the foundation for subsequent processor series (Core, Core 2, Core i) which brought intel back to success.
The truth is that without the R&D fabs in Israel there's a very good chance that intel would have become irrelevant in the general purpose CPU space.
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That's a pretty fair appraisal IMHO. As an example, given the choice between a 2467B and a basic ten year old TDS 2024B 2Gs/s 200MHz real time DSO I'd choose the TDS 2024B. Having single shot storage even with the crappy 2.5k memory that the TDS 2024B offers is probably the single most valuable feature, overriding the superior bandwidth capabilites of the 2467B.
I'd go further than that and say I'd rather have a TDS220 than a 2465/7 if that's the only scope I could have for day to day use. That's saying something, because I love analog scopes.
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Danaher.
Sad that Fluke is next to suffer this fate. Right? :scared:
Every company that gets acquired by Danaher must follow the Danaher Business System:
http://www.danaher.com/our-culture/danaher-business-system (http://www.danaher.com/our-culture/danaher-business-system)
Fluke will continue to get squeezed more and more as Danaher extract every last drop of efficiency over decades until the company dissipates is but a shell of it's former self.
It's what they do, and they are damn good at it. If you want solid performing shares, buy Danaher.
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Fluke will continue to get squeezed more and more as Danaher extract every last drop of efficiency over decades until the company dissipates is but a shell of it's former self.
It's what they do, and they are damn good at it. If you want solid performing shares, buy Danaher.
It is kind of scary, when you read the long list of all the companies that belong to Danaher
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danaher_Corporation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danaher_Corporation)
One has to wonder, why they placed Keithley under Tektonix and call it "A Tektronix Company"
May be a sign that Keithley will become Tektronix one day and the name will vanish in to thin air.
All only for shareholder value!
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Oregon is the largest Intel site on the planet. All of the microprocessor processes were developed here, and every Intel CPU since the 386 saw "first silicon" here in our development fabs in Aloha and now in Hillsboro, Oregon.
I don't think that's true. For example, the original Pentium-M (Banias) saw "first silicon" in intel's Israel R&D fab in Haifa where the processor was also developed. The same is true for the mobile Core 2 (Merom) and Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge.
The truth is that without the R&D fabs in Israel there's a very good chance that intel would have become irrelevant in the general purpose CPU space.
IMHO it shows good management: don't put all your eggs in one basket and therefore have two seperate teams work on different strategies. The roles of the two team may as well have been reversed.
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Oregon is the largest Intel site on the planet. All of the microprocessor processes were developed here, and every Intel CPU since the 386 saw "first silicon" here in our development fabs in Aloha and now in Hillsboro, Oregon.
I don't think that's true. For example, the original Pentium-M (Banias) saw "first silicon" in intel's Israel R&D fab in Haifa where the processor was also developed. The same is true for the mobile Core 2 (Merom) and Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge.
What has been developed in Oregon however is the architecture that was about to kill intel in the mobile/desktop/server CPU market for good: Netburst. The Israeli engineers essentially saved intel at that time from the Netburst disaster and laid the foundation for subsequent processor series (Core, Core 2, Core i) which brought intel back to success.
The truth is that without the R&D fabs in Israel there's a very good chance that intel would have become irrelevant in the general purpose CPU space.
It is true that the low-power designs from the Haifa Design Center probably saved Intel's bacon and we wouldn't be here today without them.
However, the device development and process development has been based in Oregon since the late 1970s when the Logic Technology Development operation moved up from the Silicon Valley. At any given time we have 100s of people from all the high-volume manufacturing fabs all over the planet are here in Oregon to transfer each new process from D1 to their respective factories from Dalian to Leixlip and Kiryat Gat and points in between. The product development is done by groups in many places (like Haifa) using the design rules we develop for each succeeding process.
The Ronler Acres campus in Hillsboro is the home of all the development fabs: D1C, D1D, and D1X
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sites (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Intel_manufacturing_sites)
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It's funny because whenever I see one of their old scopes advertised as e.g. "portable, technician, maintenance, logging", I think... why would you need a scope with your chainsaw? ;D
Tim
Because they are referring to "well logging" in the oil and gas industry, where analog TEK scopes were a well established standard, and are apparently still in demand (even the lousy 900 series stuff):
http://www.logwell.com/tech/oscilloscopes/Tek_T922R.html (http://www.logwell.com/tech/oscilloscopes/Tek_T922R.html)
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I don't think that's true. For example, the original Pentium-M (Banias) saw "first silicon" in intel's Israel R&D fab in Haifa where the processor was also developed. The same is true for the mobile Core 2 (Merom) and Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge.
The truth is that without the R&D fabs in Israel there's a very good chance that intel would have become irrelevant in the general purpose CPU space.
IMHO it shows good management: don't put all your eggs in one basket and therefore have two seperate teams work on different strategies. The roles of the two team may as well have been reversed.
Yes, if that were the case. The truth is however that there wasn't much forsight. Intel's US teams still clinged to Netburst long after it was clear to world and dog that the architecture was a failure, and only when (despite some overly optimistic marketing campaigns and borderline illegal incentives paid to system vendors) AMD successfuly ate away their market share in processors for notebooks, desktops and especially servers they started to realize what's wrong. The Pentium-M (Banias) was more or less a last-minute design, based on Haifa's experience with the P6 architecture for Timna (another of intels dead-ends).
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It is true that the low-power designs from the Haifa Design Center probably saved Intel's bacon and we wouldn't be here today without them.
However, the device development and process development has been based in Oregon since the late 1970s when the Logic Technology Development operation moved up from the Silicon Valley. At any given time we have 100s of people from all the high-volume manufacturing fabs all over the planet are here in Oregon to transfer each new process from D1 to their respective factories from Dalian to Leixlip and Kiryat Gat and points in between. The product development is done by groups in many places (like Haifa) using the design rules we develop for each succeeding process.
Understandable, considering that general purpose CPUs are only a part of intel who also makes chipsets, network processors and adapters, WiFi controllers, Embedded stuff and much more.
The Netburst/P-M era stuck to my head as intel's processors were of particular relevance for my work at that time. That even included Itanium (another sad story).
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Because they are referring to "well logging" in the oil and gas industry, where analog TEK scopes were a well established standard, and are apparently still in demand (even the lousy 900 series stuff):
http://www.logwell.com/tech/oscilloscopes/Tek_T922R.html (http://www.logwell.com/tech/oscilloscopes/Tek_T922R.html)
It's hard to believe that no-one has come up with a solution based on a modern DSO, which I'm sure would be much more reliable and economical than buying and canibalizing old analog bangers.
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I don't get it either. :-// But that industry seems to thrive on obsolescent technologies judging from the rest of the gear discussed on that site. An interesting niche area in electronics that not many are familiar with.
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Take a look at AMPEX in the same generation of companies - and a very similar outcome.
Interestingly - both companies had a very large stake in broadcast video equipment (SONY too), and they have all felt the earth move drastically since the mid-90s with the shift to digital technology.
Plenty of people pushed them t respond earlier in the 90s, but by then they were all dropping into the US groove of money-money-money / shareholder returns etc. Nothing to do with innovation. Sadly, as much as I loved all three - they got what they deserved.
Ampex is another company that was badly hit by the end of the cold war. Defence companies spent a lot of money on instrumentation tape systems from Ampex and a few others (e.g. Schlumberger and Honeywell), and that business collapsed with the Berlin wall.
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Because they are referring to "well logging" in the oil and gas industry, where analog TEK scopes were a well established standard, and are apparently still in demand (even the lousy 900 series stuff):
http://www.logwell.com/tech/oscilloscopes/Tek_T922R.html (http://www.logwell.com/tech/oscilloscopes/Tek_T922R.html)
It's hard to believe that no-one has come up with a solution based on a modern DSO, which I'm sure would be much more reliable and economical than buying and canibalizing old analog bangers.
What do they use them for? "Well logging" sounds at least to me like a job that a Yokogawa scopecorder is the ideal tool for.
I "grew up" with an analog scope (single channel Hameg from the 60s), liked it, very easy to use, very reliable and solid. Bought another Hameg (2ch 35 MHz) a few years ago, liked it too, machine built in the 2000s. Lot more plastic, but still good mechanical construction. Made the switch to a cheap DSO a while ago, never looked back, never missed anything feature-wise. Sold the 2ch Hameg (no personal connection), kept the 1ch, still use it sometimes to monitor signal generator outputs when DSO is occupied. Still works. Dust everywhere inside, some botchjob inside at the HV PCB (yes, they used all silicon and FR-2-like (Hartpapier) PCBs), no leaked caps, nothing. Never removed the dust in fear of disadjusting one of the great many trimpots in there.
I think, in conclusion, that there are lots more useful analog T&M devices than scopes, which are not overly useful today, except for nostalgia. A nice analog function gen, pulse gen, filter, RMS meter ... (wave analyzer, love my 3581a) has a lot more use today. There are no digital generators, for example, that can match the signal purity of a good LF gen. Even some >30 year old LF gen can achieve less than -80, -90 dB THD. Try that with a 9, 12 ... 14 bit DDS gen...
(If you don't know Hameg, they're a German T&M manufacturer now bought by R&S. They mainly did low-end stuff for small companies and hobbyists. They have quite a reputation in Germany for their good value for money ratio and the robustness of their devices. Most of their stuff is based entirely on off-the-shelf components, so unlike Tek and HP devices you'll seldom run into issues with replacement parts availability — no custom chips, elaborate hybrids etc etc. But to be fair, their stuff, especially their scopes, have much much lower specs than what Tek did back in the day.)
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What do they use them for?
I guess this is it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_logging (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Well_logging)
Seems like a pretty standard logging task that could easily be done with any decent logger, DSO or acquisition card.
"Well logging" sounds at least to me like a job that a Yokogawa scopecorder is the ideal tool for.
You're right, Yokogawa is probably one of the names that would come to mind for tasks like these.
It seems the main issue is that the scope has to be somewhat rugged as it is mounted in a truck, but that should be doable with a modern scope (which should be a lot less sensible to vibration than the old Tek bangers they seem to use).
I think, in conclusion, that there are lots more useful analog T&M devices than scopes, which are not overly useful today, except for nostalgia.
I fully agree. It's certainly nice to get an analog scope for nostalgia, especially if it is free or really cheap. But in this day and age I think it's silly to invest serious money in an analog boatanchor or buy one as primary scope.
A nice analog function gen, pulse gen, filter, RMS meter ... (wave analyzer, love my 3581a) has a lot more use today.
Yes, because (as you state correctly) an analog function generator can still offer some serious advantages over a digital one. The same can't be said for analog scopes, which lack in performance and capabilities compared with modern DSOs.
(If you don't know Hameg
I know Hameg quite well, the first scopes I ever used were Hameg analog scopes (HM203, HM205 and such).
They mainly did low-end stuff for small companies and hobbyists. They have quite a reputation in Germany for their good value for money ratio and the robustness of their devices. Most of their stuff is based entirely on off-the-shelf components, so unlike Tek and HP devices you'll seldom run into issues with replacement parts availability — no custom chips, elaborate hybrids etc etc. But to be fair, their stuff, especially their scopes, have much much lower specs than what Tek did back in the day.)
Their reputation wasn't limited to Germany, they're known pretty much throughout Europe.
Hameg's reliance on standard parts was indeed a big plus and made them easy to repair. I wouldn't say they were lower specs than comparable Tek scopes, it's just that Hameg stayed within the lower bandwidths while Tek also made high-end scopes. But a 100MHz Hameg could hold its own very well against a comparable Tek or HP scope.
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Hameg's reliance on standard parts was indeed a big plus and made them easy to repair. I wouldn't say they were lower specs than comparable Tek scopes, it's just that Hameg stayed within the lower bandwidths while Tek also made high-end scopes. But a 100MHz Hameg could hold its own very well against a comparable Tek or HP scope.
Indeed, I did mean this and not that a Hameg scope is worse than a comparable Tek :)
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The death of CRT O'scopes is directly related to the rise of DSP and computing in general. As the electronics world became more and more data centric and digital, the need and understanding of all that analog stuff fell by the way side along with the appreciation of what analog CRT based O'scopes do best.
For most users, interpreting the CRT display can be tiresome with much hassle and futzing. If one is dealign with repetitive pulses, what matters most is on-off, time, amplitude and at time maybe spikes, glitches and noise. For the analog folks, that CRT display can contain a host of extremely important information that can tell much about what is actually happening.
One of the core and key technologies for tek was their CRT expertise and vertical integration allowing them to build everything from the ground up. This worked against them as low cost and "cheap" instruments began to flood the market. To this day, I'm not fond of these low cost alternatives for a host of reasons. This along with the rise of DSO and digital and being purchased by Danaher Corporation has turned tek into a zombie company. All that has happened is a reflection of how the electronics industry has changed over the years.
Most every company purchased, run by Danaher Corporation has become second-rate. They are much about profit for their share holders and little about actual product.
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Does ANY modern equipment still use CRT technology?
It depends on what you call modern. http://www.gwinstek.com/en/product/productmcategory.aspx?pid=3&&mid= (http://www.gwinstek.com/en/product/productmcategory.aspx?pid=3&&mid=)
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The death of CRT O'scopes is directly related to the rise of DSP and computing in general. As the electronics world became more and more data centric and digital, the need and understanding of all that analog stuff fell by the way side along with the appreciation of what analog CRT based O'scopes do best.
For most users, interpreting the CRT display can be tiresome with much hassle and futzing. If one is dealign with repetitive pulses, what matters most is on-off, time, amplitude and at time maybe spikes, glitches and noise. For the analog folks, that CRT display can contain a host of extremely important information that can tell much about what is actually happening.
One of the core and key technologies for tek was their CRT expertise and vertical integration allowing them to build everything from the ground up. This worked against them as low cost and "cheap" instruments began to flood the market. To this day, I'm not fond of these low cost alternatives for a host of reasons. This along with the rise of DSO and digital and being purchased by Danaher Corporation has turned tek into a zombie company. All that has happened is a reflection of how the electronics industry has changed over the years.
Most every company purchased, run by Danaher Corporation has become second-rate. They are much about profit for their share holders and little about actual product.
Thank You for all the great answers to my query on the why behind Tek's slow slide and why the change in product focus. As someone with very little experience but a great deal of interest and curiosity in the subject, I'll speak up and say what may be old news and obvious to many of you, is totally new and informative to most of us. Also, I believe if I learn a little about as to how and why technology has changed over time; it will give be a better understanding and appreciation of the modern digital scopes I buy and use today.
Eck
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If possible purchase a classic tek O'scope like a 547 or even a 465, get a tek service manual then proceed to cal or repair it. These classic tek scopes are excellent teaching tools. There is MUCH that can be learned by working of these classic tek instruments.
The circuit design, mechanical design and overall consideration for serviceability and longevity was second to none. Back then tek built stuff to last, to be easily repaired and to stay in cal, in service for a very, very long time. Much of this is no longer true today for a host of reasons.
The price one pays for smaller, lighter, portable and all that (modern DSO) comes with a cost and it is not initially apparent.
If you're really curious spend some time at the on-line tek museum photo and video gallery as there are quite a number of historically significant films available there.
http://www.vintagetek.org/video-gallery/ (http://www.vintagetek.org/video-gallery/)
I'm still using a tek 7104 at work, there is nothing modern that can replace it for the work I'm doing.
Bernice
[/quote]
Thank You for all the great answers to my query on the why behind Tek's slow slide and why the change in product focus. As someone with very little experience but a great deal of interest and curiosity in the subject, I'll speak up and say what may be old news and obvious to many of you, is totally new and informative to most of us. Also, I believe if I learn a little about as to how and why technology has changed over time; it will give be a better understanding and appreciation of the modern digital scopes I buy and use today.
Eck
[/quote]
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Does ANY modern equipment still use CRT technology?
It depends on what you call modern. http://www.gwinstek.com/en/product/productmcategory.aspx?pid=3&&mid= (http://www.gwinstek.com/en/product/productmcategory.aspx?pid=3&&mid=)
Have you seen the prices on those CRT scopes?!? Shocked. I am sure they are still sold though.
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I have a theory about the mass:information ratio.
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This is an interesting thread. The topic is "why did Tek stop making great scopes". Great scopes in what category? True that Tek is not leading in the $300k tier. But at the low end, the MDO3000 is very hard to beat. I would say class leading in it's tier, especially with it's integrated SA (3GHz capture BW!) More so when 3GHz SA was free with last promotion.
I have dozens of scopes to choose from for my day job. Typically 1GHz is more than needed. My everyday scope is an MDO4000. If I was greedy and were to pick from our lab I'd choose a lecory 8zi first. Though I do not need high bw for day to day so would likely pass to get a simpler probing solution. Next I would choose a tek 7000/4000 or mdo3000, followed by an agilent (4000/6000/7000/9000/90000). So from my perspective, Tek scopes are still very competitive and I see they are preferred by a very large percentage of my peers at the low to mid end. They need to beef up their high end scopes but low end is looking very good, mid range is still meeting needs.
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If possible purchase a classic tek O'scope like a 547 or even a 465, get a tek service manual then proceed to cal or repair it. These classic tek scopes are excellent teaching tools. There is MUCH that can be learned by working of these classic tek instruments.
The circuit design, mechanical design and overall consideration for serviceability and longevity was second to none. Back then tek built stuff to last, to be easily repaired and to stay in cal, in service for a very, very long time. Much of this is no longer true today for a host of reasons.
I'm sorry but that sounds like a lot of tosh. A 547, really? Don't get me wrong, this was a great scope in 1968, and it's still a nice collectible for someone interested in vintage T&M gear, but no sane person can reasonably suggest that this is a great every-day scope or techning tool half a century later. You must be kidding, right?
For example, your claim that "the circuit design, mechanical design and overall consideration for serviceability and longevity was second to none" which is bogus. The epoxy HV transformers in these scopes was a pretty poor design which attracted moisture, which over time killed (if I remember right, it's been a very long time since I had one) the oscillator driver valve. The valves in these scopes also didn't appreciate short operating cycles, it took forever to stabilize, and the overall MTBF was pretty low, which is one of the main reason why Tek went from valves to transistors. The 465 runs circles around the 500 Series in terms of reliability, which is still worse than what can be expected even from older DSOs.
Your claim that these scopes were designed "to stay in cal, in service for a very, very long time" is tosh as well. Despite the low bandwidth of these scopes they actually needed regular re-adjustment because of the aging (which was accelerated by the heat pumped out by all the valves) of many components. The 500 Series was pretty bad, later scopes built on transistors and ICs where much more long-term stable as they didn't produce a similar amount of heat and thermal stress. The 465 is much better than the 500 Series, but still has many analog components that age and shift the calibration over time, which is much less of a problem for any newer DSO because they automatically compensate for the shift of the few analog components they have.
And as a teching tool, serious? Unless you want to train museum curators the idea of using a 547 or 465 for teching EEs is bonkers. These scopes tech them very little that is relevance to a job as EE in 2015, these boat anchors are useless dealing with any of the complex signals modern technology works with. Using them as teaching tools would be a huge dis-service to your students because the time wasted on teaching how life was in the 60's could have been used for actually useful stuff like how digital scopes work, what their limits are and how to employ them for signal analysis. It may be nice for a short demo on how life was back then but that's about it.
The price one pays for smaller, lighter, portable and all that (modern DSO) comes with a cost and it is not initially apparent.
What price? Not buring 1kW for a primitive 50MHz scope which takes 20mins to stabilize to become usable? Not having mechanical switches which corrode and fail over time? Not having to re-adjust tons of analog trimmers and potentiometers to compensate for the shift due to aging (something modern DSOs compensate for automatically through self-adjustment)? Not needing to hunt for obsolete components which are out of production for decades? Not having to guess what the signal parameters are because the modern scopes can actually analyze it?
I'm honeslty curious, what is this non-apparent price one pays for modern scopes you're talking about?
I'm still using a tek 7104 at work, there is nothing modern that can replace it for the work I'm doing.
No offense, but unless your work is fixing vintage scopes or doing some simple analog audio work this says much more about you being stuck in the past than about the qualities of the 7000 Series.
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This is an interesting thread. The topic is "why did Tek stop making great scopes". Great scopes in what category? True that Tek is not leading in the $300k tier. But at the low end, the MDO3000 is very hard to beat. I would say class leading in it's tier, especially with it's integrated SA (3GHz capture BW!) More so when 3GHz SA was free with last promotion.
The MDO3k are interesting scopes, at least on paper. But they are apparently still pretty buggy (I know two labs who bought a few of them). The standard 100MHz SA bandwidth however is pathetic, and the 3GHz option is pretty expensive. It's also only useful if you don't need to use scope and SA at the same time.
I have dozens of scopes to choose from for my day job. Typically 1GHz is more than needed. My everyday scope is an MDO4000. If I was greedy and were to pick from our lab I'd choose a lecory 8zi first. Though I do not need high bw for day to day so would likely pass to get a simpler probing solution. Next I would choose a tek 7000/4000 or mdo3000, followed by an agilent (4000/6000/7000/9000/90000).
Sometimes I can choose what to buy, sometimes not (depending on where I work), but if I have to choose then for an entry level scope I'd probably go for a Keysight DSOX2k/3k or a Hameg HMO3000. The 4 channel Rigols (DS1000z, DS4000) are just too buggy and Rigol's support is still questionable. The Tek TBS1000 is a bad joke, and the MSO/DPO2k is slow and buggy.
For everything above that I'd just go with LeCroy. Their bought-in low end scopes (WaveAce, WaveJet) are pretty pathetic but the WaveSurfer and higher scopes are LeCroy developed, and these scopes are usually the best that's available in that class. And not to forget that for some stuff LeCroy is the only game in town anyways. Keysight makes great scopes but their UI is horrible (I've worked with all the Agilent scopes up to the 90k Series), they lack many of the capabilities I can get with LeCroy, and they are regularly more expensive than LeCroy. In addition, LeCroy supports all their scopes for 7 years after end of production, and on a "best effort" basis long after that (they still repair the 9300 Series which was EOL'd in 1998). With Agilent we had issues in the past with kit which was only a bit over 4 years old.
Tek I would not even consider. I agree that the MDO3k is a pretty unique scope, but the rest of the offerings are pretty poor. Tek's low-end is a joke, and the high end is stuck at a level where the competition was around 2009. Processing on the 7k and 70k scopes is pretty slow as well, which is embarrassing in that class and price range. And they are still more expensive than LeCroy.
So from my perspective, Tek scopes are still very competitive and I see they are preferred by a very large percentage of my peers at the low to mid end. They need to beef up their high end scopes but low end is looking very good, mid range is still meeting needs.
I can't agree. As said above, the MDO3k is nice but the limitations in that scope make it attractive to very few customers only. The Tek low end is pathetic, and aside from the idea to stick a spectrum analyzer into a scope they haven't come up with something remarkable for a very long time. It also doesn't help that (according to some customers who were long-term Tek buyers) their support has followed the "Danaher Business System" (i.e. it's cut down) and their sales staff now remind me to used car salesmen.
There's very little that Tek does in scopes that others don't do better. In fact, the whole scope line seems to be a re-hash of old technology. But that's signature Danaher.
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Many places I go in Germany in to large factories and laboratories and I find that they have all upgraded to Keysight scopes in the last few years and not Tektronix. One of the reasons behind this is a terrible Tektronix customer service in Germany and on the other hand an excellent customer service by Keysight (Agilent)
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Many places I go in Germany in to large factories and laboratories and I find that they have all upgraded to Keysight scopes in the last few years and not Tektronix. One of the reasons behind this is a terrible Tektronix customer service in Germany and on the other hand an excellent customer service by Keysight (Agilent)
That mirrors what I'm seeing in the UK (and some other countries I visit through work). In the rare case I see a newer Tek scope in a lab I'm usually told that this has been bought because of management or a corporate buyer with no clue thought "buying Tek is like buying IBM - it won't get you fired". I yet have to meet an EE who actually wants a modern Tek, or prefers it to scopes from other manufacturers.
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What specifically do the high end Lecroy scopes offer that is unique? (I don't know the brand at all.)
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What specifically do the high end Lecroy scopes offer that is unique?
For example, highly advanced maths and signal analysis capabilities which generally exceed what you can find in Agilent/Keysight and Tek scopes. And this is even true for older LeCroy scopes.
LeCroy is also the only manufacturer that offers stuff like a 100GHz real-time scope (Agilent/Keysight only do 63GHz, and Tek is still stuck at 33GHz). They are also the only company offering scopes with up to 80 channels (at 36GHz) or 40 channels (50GHz):
http://teledynelecroy.com/oscilloscope/oscilloscopeseries.aspx?mseries=390 (http://teledynelecroy.com/oscilloscope/oscilloscopeseries.aspx?mseries=390)
Admittedly their low end offerings (rebranded Siglent scopes) suck but their midrange scopes are top-notch, and their highend is different than what other vendors consider "highend".
(I don't know the brand at all.)
They're not as mainstream as Tek or Agilent/Keysight, but LeCroy has always been considered "the Mercedes amongst scopes". Their origin is high power physics and there are some conceptual differences in their scopes, but the analysis capabilities in LeCroy scopes is and always has been second to none. Their other advantage is their long-term support (any scope is fully supported for 7 years after end of production, and on a "best effort" basis after that; LeCroy even repairs the old 9300 Series for which production was stopped in 1998!).
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LeCroy has always been considered "the Mercedes amongst scopes".
Does that mean the electrical systems start crapping out after 18 months? Not something I'd want in a scope...
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Like it or not, all that analog stuff is the foundation of all electronics. If there is a lack of understanding of how it works, basic problem like why a simple voltage regulator IC does not work.
As for "modern" complex signals and systems, what are the very basic foundations upon these complex signals made from?
It is easy to be critical of stuff one does not understand with no interest when the topic is out of their expertise, yet the very foundations of modern electronics is built upon these foundations.
Bernice
And as a teching tool, serious? Unless you want to train museum curators the idea of using a 547 or 465 for teching EEs is bonkers. These scopes tech them very little that is relevance to a job as EE in 2015, these boat anchors are useless dealing with any of the complex signals modern technology works with. Using them as teaching tools would be a huge dis-service to your students because the time wasted on teaching how life was in the 60's could have been used for actually useful stuff like how digital scopes work, what their limits are and how to employ them for signal analysis. It may be nice for a short demo on how life was back then but that's about it.
The price one pays for smaller, lighter, portable and all that (modern DSO) comes with a cost and it is not initially apparent.
What price? Not buring 1kW for a primitive 50MHz scope which takes 20mins to stabilize to become usable? Not having mechanical switches which corrode and fail over time? Not having to re-adjust tons of analog trimmers and potentiometers to compensate for the shift due to aging (something modern DSOs compensate for automatically through self-adjustment)? Not needing to hunt for obsolete components which are out of production for decades? Not having to guess what the signal parameters are because the modern scopes can actually analyze it?
I'm honeslty curious, what is this non-apparent price one pays for modern scopes you're talking about?
I'm still using a tek 7104 at work, there is nothing modern that can replace it for the work I'm doing.
No offense, but unless your work is fixing vintage scopes or doing some simple analog audio work this says much more about you being stuck in the past than about the qualities of the 7000 Series.
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LeCroy has always been considered "the Mercedes amongst scopes".
Does that mean the electrical systems start crapping out after 18 months? Not something I'd want in a scope...
I'm pretty sure that's not what is meant. It also doesn't mean the bodywork will start corrode within the first 2 years and that you'll need a new door or hood after 4 years :)
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LeCroy has always been considered "the Mercedes amongst scopes".
Does that mean the electrical systems start crapping out after 18 months? Not something I'd want in a scope...
I'm pretty sure that's not what is meant. It also doesn't mean the bodywork will start corrode within the first 2 years and that you'll need a new door or hood after 4 years :)
At least you didn't call it the Jaguar of scopes, because then I'd ask you if it had a glove box for all the knobs that fell off.
Thanks for the insight.
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Like it or not, all that analog stuff is the foundation of all electronics. If there is a lack of understanding of how it works, basic problem like why a simple voltage regulator IC does not work.
As for "modern" complex signals and systems, what are the very basic foundations upon these complex signals made from?
It is easy to be critical of stuff one does not understand with no interest when the topic is out of their expertise, yet the very foundations of modern electronics is built upon these foundations.
It seems the lack of understanding is on your side if you believe that one needs an antique analog scope to understand what's going on, or that knowledge about 60's technology makes one an expert about analog stuff. Believe it or not but around the world skilled EEs have no problem developing complex analog systems without using one of your antiques. In fact, modern DSOs allow EEs to see stuff you'll never ever know is there with your analog boatanchors (try a modern SMPS for a start).
I'm sorry but all I see in your posts is the rambling of someone who seems to be stuck in the 60's and who is incapable to make the jump to the modern day (this is actually not a rare phenomenon btw, I see that quite often with older engineers who stuck at what they learnt in their youth, neve followed changes in technology and eventually become frightened by how the world has changed around them). You're mumbling about how great the 500 Series was and that there's a price to pay with modern scopes, but so far you have not explained what you think that price is or what you believe are the problems are with modern scopes.
BTW: it would be great if you could take a bit more care with how you quote because so far it looks retarded.
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Like it or not, all that analog stuff is the foundation of all electronics.
I love to read the old Bell Labs journals as much as anyone, but One of my biggest gripes to my alma mater is how antiquated our curriculum was. EE history is great and fascinating, but higher ed needs to focus on preparing students for the modern age. We can talk about EE yesteryear in an engineering history course that replaces some BS core curriculum requirement.
Students need modern tools.
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At least you didn't call it the Jaguar of scopes, because then I'd ask you if it had a glove box for all the knobs that fell off.
Funny that you mention knobs, falling off knobs was a typical LeCroy illness with their older scopes (9300 Series, LC, WaveRunner 1 LT) ;)
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Laws of Physics has changed?
This is not about 60's technology, this is about understanding at the most basic level which is often taken for granted.
Does modern tools mean students no longer need to understand the very basic foundations of how their technology works with these modern tools doing the work for them?
What is not understood here is how problems are solved and the total lack of appreciation of how problems can be solved in an effective and creative way.
Like it or not, all that analog stuff is the foundation of all electronics. If there is a lack of understanding of how it works, basic problem like why a simple voltage regulator IC does not work.
As for "modern" complex signals and systems, what are the very basic foundations upon these complex signals made from?
It is easy to be critical of stuff one does not understand with no interest when the topic is out of their expertise, yet the very foundations of modern electronics is built upon these foundations.
It seems the lack of understanding is on your side if you believe that one needs an antique analog scope to understand what's going on, or that knowledge about 60's technology makes one an expert about analog stuff. Believe it or not but around the world skilled EEs have no problem developing complex analog systems without using one of your antiques. In fact, modern DSOs allow EEs to see stuff you'll never ever know is there with your analog boatanchors (try a modern SMPS for a start).
I'm sorry but all I see in your posts is the rambling of someone who seems to be stuck in the 60's and who is incapable to make the jump to the modern day (this is actually not a rare phenomenon btw, I see that quite often with older engineers who stuck at what they learnt in their youth, neve followed changes in technology and eventually become frightened by how the world has changed around them). You're mumbling about how great the 500 Series was and that there's a price to pay with modern scopes, but so far you have not explained what you think that price is or what you believe are the problems are with modern scopes.
BTW: it would be great if you could take a bit more care with how you quote because so far it looks retarded.
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[
If you're really curious spend some time at the on-line tek museum photo and video gallery as there are quite a number of historically significant films available there.
http://www.vintagetek.org/video-gallery/ (http://www.vintagetek.org/video-gallery/)
I'm still using a tek 7104 at work, there is nothing modern that can replace it for the work I'm doing.
Bernice
That website has really good historical info. If I lived in that area I'd for sure go to the museum and meet the guys running it. Meanwhile, I'm running thru the videos and stuff. Very interesting. TY
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Why did Tektronix stop making scopes like the venerable 2465 or 2465B? What changed?
It's amazing how companies that at one time had leading edge technology can stagnate and falter, but it happens throughout history. Tektronix, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Kodak ... on and on.
They get big and fat and slow and lose vision. There's always somebody waiting in the wings with the ability to beat them with new concepts and ideas.
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Why did Tektronix stop making scopes like the venerable 2465 or 2465B? What changed?
It's amazing how companies that at one time had leading edge technology can stagnate and falter, but it happens throughout history. Tektronix, DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation), Kodak ... on and on.
They get big and fat and slow and lose vision. There's always somebody waiting in the wings with the ability to beat them with new concepts and ideas.
There is an old saying: Every dog has it's day. (no reference to Tek)
Us older ppl have seen brands come and go, some are lucky enough to re-invent themselves, but why any think a name change could help in that regard escapes me. :palm:
There are literally thousands of examples of this in all facets of industry.
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Like it or not, all that analog stuff is the foundation of all electronics.
I love to read the old Bell Labs journals as much as anyone, but One of my biggest gripes to my alma mater is how antiquated our curriculum was. EE history is great and fascinating, but higher ed needs to focus on preparing students for the modern age. We can talk about EE yesteryear in an engineering history course that replaces some BS core curriculum requirement.
Students need modern tools.
Did you learn the Routh–Hurwitz method? Most useless POS I ever learned in a class, and willfully forgot immediately after.
Tim
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Like it or not, all that analog stuff is the foundation of all electronics.
I love to read the old Bell Labs journals as much as anyone, but One of my biggest gripes to my alma mater is how antiquated our curriculum was. EE history is great and fascinating, but higher ed needs to focus on preparing students for the modern age. We can talk about EE yesteryear in an engineering history course that replaces some BS core curriculum requirement.
Students need modern tools.
Did you learn the Routh–Hurwitz method? Most useless POS I ever learned in a class, and willfully forgot immediately after.
Tim
That and how to synchronize phases onto the grid using three incandescent lamps. God forbid any mention of sychroscopes or synchrophasors be uttered, lest one suffer the eternal wrath of the prof.
Glory days...
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Something really good, that came out of this thread is the link to the Tek museum pages.
http://www.vintagetek.org/video-gallery/ (http://www.vintagetek.org/video-gallery/)
I had no idea that Tektronix had made so many great educational videos in the 60'
Thanks for this great info.
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Why, it is a matter of management and specific individuals involved and changes in market demand.
Tektronix began to seriously un-wind after Danaher took over an began to run it like any other organization taken over via LBO. Soon as this happened, Tek's best individuals began to leave to start other other companies. Adding to this problem is the way Danaher cut personal, cut cost and made management choices for product offering. No cutting edge technology company can survive without specific intellectual talent.
http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2012/12/tektronix_five_years_after_sal.html (http://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/index.ssf/2012/12/tektronix_five_years_after_sal.html)
LeCroy got a boost after they settled their legal dispute with Tektronix over specific patents and intellectual property. This allowed LeCroy to move on and grow to what they have become today.
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/lecroy-corporation-history/ (http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/lecroy-corporation-history/)
Danaher is just one example of how greed drive investor types have completely changed the world economy. They do not value innovation, technically gifted individuals and technical innovation or the future of companies or individuals they control. It is much about short term returns for their investors.
Kodak invented the digital camera in 1975, yet Kodak management choose not to develop this technology as it as viewed as a threat to their mahogany row management who was deeply vested in film. Kodak got into the magnetic tape business later than they should, while their product was good, their marketing and inept management doomed this effort to expand into other markets. Much the same applied to Kodak's copier business. Specific Key individual responsible for these technologies often move on to either start their own business or become key individuals at other established companies.
Ampex was another Mahogany-row, Glass-place-inept management style company that spawned more than a few companies. Key individuals who got fed-up with Ampex management simply moved on and started their own. Memorex, IVC, Macrovision, and others were a product of abuse-inept management at Ampex.
Fairchild semiconductor which began with the traitorous eight died again from Mahogany-row-inept-abusive-greedy east coast management. Intel, National Semi and others are a product of key individuals leaving Fairchild Semi.
For those who might be interested in what has happened to American industry and why once great companies can go so very wrong, this book, "When The Machine Stopped." By Max Holland is a must read.
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-03-26/books/bk-741_1_machine-tool-industry (http://articles.latimes.com/1989-03-26/books/bk-741_1_machine-tool-industry)
There was a time when Tek was a very different company, a company that fostered creativity innovation and tried to build the very best product possible with lasting and real value. This why lessons within vintage Tektronix instruments like the 547 are so very important. While more than a few here appear to view the 547 as a technological extinct and useless dinosaur, few here appears to appreciate the company environment, the individuals who were allowed to express their creativity and encouraged to do their very best work in design and production of Tek offerings. As mentioned before, has the laws of Physics changed since the Tek 547?
Compare the Tek 547 to the mass produced, lunch box DSO so very common today (mass produced, disposable not really repairable, commodity based products) what are the real differences beyond electrical specifications? How many here know a 574 will trigger out past 200 Mhz due to it's tunnel diode triggering circuits with a vertical BW spec of 50 Mhz? How many are really aware of the inherent limitations of DSOs? They both have their place and both technologies can complement each other as analog-vs-digital is not a contest.
In the current world of technology where the past of what has been accomplished is expected to be "obsolete" and replaced with what appears to be an improvement, the foundation for what appears to be innovation is not always appreciated. There is a so much more to all this technology business than just intellect and innovation, there is a humanity factor and historical factor that is often NOT appreciated.
Howard Vollum & Jack Murdock wanted Tektronix to remain a small company, they did not intend for Tektronix to become the technological and industrial giant it became. With this in mind, both Howard and Jack encouraged Tektronix employees to start their own companies using Tektronix as a foundation. The results of this became what is known as the "Silicon Forest" in Oregon.
http://www.pdx.edu/sites/www.pdx.edu.ims/files/ims_siliconforestuni2.jpg (http://www.pdx.edu/sites/www.pdx.edu.ims/files/ims_siliconforestuni2.jpg)
It is myopic in the extreme to judge a company on just their product offerings, as what they do for the community and society they live in says much about who the founders and management of any specific company.
And yes, I'm extremely offended by those who labeled me a "Retard", these words posted also says much about the individual who wrote that word.
Bernice
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It's probably useless, and a huge waste of valuable time to try to defend yourself in here. Much better to ignore, and concentrate on the good. Let them find someone else to pick on. Don't make yourself a target.
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Within this reply are many of the reasons why the current electronics industry has the problems it does today.
Kinda sad, really.
Bernice
It's probably useless, and a huge waste of valuable time to try to defend yourself in here. Much better to ignore, and concentrate on the good. Let them find someone else to pick on. Don't make yourself a target.
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While Danaher was no doubt responsible for their decline, it was a trend well before that sealed the deal. Can you explain their unwieldy design changes in the early TDS series?
Or perhaps a better question: does anyone know if the TDS series was consistent with their interface design methodology historically? Are the big mainframes as clunky to drive? What about their monitors, printers, computers and other assorted computer and aerospace related equipment?
Tim
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However, the reality is that printers were more or less loss-leaders, and that Tek couldn't really compete with companies like HP who flooded the market with cheap and reliable laser printers and later also with more advanced ink jets. That's why Tek's printer business was sold off in 1999, only about 13 years after they started it, while the T&M part lives on for almost 70 years. This shows pretty clear which part of Tek was bringing in the bacon.
Tek made printers for a lot longer than that. Its only the colour printer business which was 13 years old in 1999. When Tek 4010 an 4014 graphics displays became the standard for CAD at the end of the 70s, Tek made hard copy printers to go with them. For example the 4631, which would rapidly print an image directly from the storage screen of the graphics terminal, using a dry silver paper technology. Tektronix moved in and out of several computer peripheral areas before the phasor printer business began. As with their T&M business, their big sales were in defence, and if defence customers wanted some computer related stuff they looked seriously at making it.
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The Tek 4631 "Hard Copy Unit" used a technology that Tek was well versed in--the CRT. They used a strange looking flattened CRT with a fiber optic faceplate (made by Tek, of course) as a sort of line scan array to directly record the image onto the photosensitive paper.
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The Tek 4631 "Hard Copy Unit" used a technology that Tek was well versed in--the CRT. They used a strange looking flattened CRT with a fiber optic faceplate (made by Tek, of course) as a sort of line scan array to directly record the image onto the photosensitive paper.
I don't remember there being any fibre optics involved, but it was s single line green phosphor screen pressed tightly against a sheet of photosensitive paper, which slide past to make a 2D image. It took a few seconds per page, and gave very good resolution - it matched the 4k x 3k resolution of the screens. This was the main graphics printer of its day.
Tektronix made XY plotters, full computer versions of the 4010 and 4014 graphics terminals (the 4051 and 4052), and many other computer related bits and pieces through the 70s and 80s. The colour printers were certainly not taking them into a whole new area.
I think the 4051 and 4052 were mostly a response to the momentum HP were getting with the HPIB/GPIB, offering a reasonably compact basic programmable machine to control instruments. After that point a serious T&M maker couldn't really divorce themselves from the world of computers.
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For those who might be interested in what has happened to American industry and why once great companies can go so very wrong, this book, "When The Machine Stopped." By Max Holland is a must read.
http://articles.latimes.com/1989-03-26/books/bk-741_1_machine-tool-industry (http://articles.latimes.com/1989-03-26/books/bk-741_1_machine-tool-industry)
Bernice
The book is a great read. Also, an online article by the same author is here:
http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2007/03/phil_oreilly_re.html (http://www.washingtondecoded.com/site/2007/03/phil_oreilly_re.html)
The machine tool industry is the subject. A company called Houdaille bought up a number of smaller machine tool companies in the 1960's. By 1979 the CEO of Houdaille and a handful of executives decided to take the unbelievably sweet deal offered by the justly infamous financial LBO comany KKR. It made these few executives and KKR extremely wealthy at the expense of the engineers and machinists who had built the company and who got zero.
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http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/lecroy-corporation-history/ (http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/lecroy-corporation-history/)
Interesting article, although a I don't think that in 1996 a scope like the LeCroy 9384 (a 1Ghz 4GSa/s 8Mpts scope) ever qualified as "mid-range". I'm not sure even Tek had anything that came close to it (a scope that aside from the specs offered very advanced maths and analysis, even for specialty applications like hard disk analysis).
And yes, I'm extremely offended by those who labeled me a "Retard", these words posted also says much about the individual who wrote that word.
I said your quoting is retarded, and it is. It's like you take a dump on other people's dinner table and then feel offended when you're called out for it.
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To gain a proper understanding of what happened to Tektronix one needs to study and learn about how this legal dispute between Tektronix and LeCroy was resolved and how it affected both companies. The legal ramifications has little to do with if the LeCroy 9384 is current. There continues to be a failure to see and understand beyond the obsession of current offerings which are very much products of a companies history, business-managment practices and specific individuals who invented and originated the intellectual property.
Focusing purely on what is current and most modern will NEVER allow a full and deep understanding of any companies current products. To learn, understand and appreciate that requires studying history. This means learning about who were directly involved with the companies founding, what they created, how the products they introduced affected the market, what the market climate was like, what the social-cultrual environment was like at the time, business practices and a LOT more.
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.
When YOU label an individual as a "Retard" YOU are committing an act of verbal and abusive violence upon that individual. The lack of understating appears to stem from wanting to see things the way you would like to see, hear and read it. Rejecting and discounting what has been presented to you as bunk as what was presented did not fit your expectations. It was not even worth your effort to gain any understanding of what was written.
All of which says much about who you really.
Bernice
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/lecroy-corporation-history/ (http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/lecroy-corporation-history/)
Interesting article, although a I don't think that in 1996 a scope like the LeCroy 9384 (a 1Ghz 4GSa/s 8Mpts scope) ever qualified as "mid-range". I'm not sure even Tek had anything that came close to it (a scope that aside from the specs offered very advanced maths and analysis, even for specialty applications like hard disk analysis).
And yes, I'm extremely offended by those who labeled me a "Retard", these words posted also says much about the individual who wrote that word.
I said your quoting is retarded, and it is. It's like you take a dump on other people's dinner table and then feel offended when you're called out for it.
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Wuerstchenhund is right, there is a problem with some of the old high voltage transformers. It is a thermal problem, they are sitting in a plastic case and warm up, after 40 years of working it may be possible a lost of isolation and the transformer fail... typical for 547 and 556.. :)
The best idea is to insert a little CPU-fan on that box, so the replacement transformer will work the next 50 years without problems.
healthy 556 serial 700444, plugged 4 channels + spectrum analyzer
(http://www.wellenkino.de/556/556.jpg)
I have a lot of fun to make a Tek Show in any radio museum and see there old engineers who remember what they have done.
Last month I was in a music studio to look for a mixing console. The little 213 found the problem faster then the time I have to use on a DSO to tell him what I want to test now
And next month I need to visit Tek at the "embeddet systems", with my 310A to get a family picture :-DD
In 40 years we will see if there are still DSO made in 2014 what are allready working or only some informations about them.
I am collecting this nice old instruments, restoring, repair, use them sometimes, its my hobby.
The most old Tek will be destroyed by any tube vultures who want to sale the tubes in the bay to make a win.
So enjoy them now, we have saved some old Tek for you to remember the old times of a greatful engineering. See my site for some of them.
greetings
Martin
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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.
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.
Today, the clever technology is hidden deep inside modern ICs and much of the test gear today is designed by people 'groomed' to
exploit the technology inside these chips. i.e. the test gear will be designed by people sat all day at a computer using somebody else's CAD tools. The beancounters have a say in the build quality and the user interface won't be designed by high calibre engineers anymore. So you end up with cheap, buggy, low build quality (disposable) stuff made in the far east.
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Heat is one of the root problems that result in the HV transformer failures.
Take a closer look at the soft ferrite core of a failed HV transformer. It will have a change in color and visible crystalline structure when compared to a new or properly operating transformer. This is due to the stress from heat and magnetic field cycling over decades of service. The soft ferrite no long has the same characteristics as it once did (increased losses in the soft ferrite results in more heat compounding the problem). Other problems would be insulation break down from high voltage stress combined with moisture retention within the core. Both results causes internal arcing and further insulation break down and eventually a failed transformer.
It would be wise to put these tek transformers into a slow bake to significantly remove and lower their moisture content before trying to power them up slowly. This does help reduce the risk of HV break down of these transformers if they have been in storage un-used for a very long time.
These problems can and do happen to many high voltage components. While design, materials used and production techniques can mitigate many of these inherent problems with HV bits, these Tek transformers dying after many decades of constant service is not all that bad.. long after the current generation of disposable bug ridden software driven devices have been ditched into the land fill or recycled into who knows what as these devices are generally not really repairable.
As for the fire bottle (tubes) robbers, they can get plenty of new ones from Russia, China and other nations that still produce them. These thieves need to leave vintage test gear alone. Tek & hp aged then tested their tubes to reduce their failure rate. Some of these tubes are made into matched pairs for specific applications.
Bernice
Wuerstchenhund is right, there is a problem with some of the old high voltage transformers. It is a thermal problem, they are sitting in a plastic case and warm up, after 40 years of working it may be possible a lost of isolation and the transformer fail... typical for 547 and 556.. :)
The best idea is to insert a little CPU-fan on that box, so the replacement transformer will work the next 50 years without problems.
greetings
Martin
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There is an awful lot of intellectual honesty, intellectual discipline and most of all creative problem solving fully supported by management at the time when Tek was creating that stuff. Beyond that, they were built to last and be repaired and intended to be used by folks who understood how to use them properly.
The individuals who designed and created instrumentation at Tek at that time were folks like Richard Ropiequet that invented wide range sweep aka that 1-2-5 sequence so very common on time domain instruments to this day. Richard start out as a Chemist, moved to the plastics industry and eventually did work in particle and quantum physics. These folks were more scientist than the modern "electronics engineer" which became specialized in a specific area. Folks like Richard had the broad and diverse background to draw from all of which allows them to solve problems in creative and innovative ways.
http://www.worldsci.org/php/index.php?tab0=Scientists&tab1=Scientists&tab2=Display&id=182 (http://www.worldsci.org/php/index.php?tab0=Scientists&tab1=Scientists&tab2=Display&id=182)
Richard Ropiequet also studied psychology. Ponder for a moment why Richard had an interest in this subject along with science and technology?
Then there were individuals like John Kobbe who out of sheer frustration and desperation from reflections caused by a probe coax cable ripped out the center conductor and replaced it with a section of resistive wire. This damped out the reflections significantly, then adding a lead-lag network resulted in the ubiqutious and very common passive scope probe of today.
Engineering students today are often driven to study stuff that is rather specialized and marketable when they graduate. These highly specialize skills are quote marketable and in demand upon their graduation. After they have worked in industry for some number of years or decades these skill-sets can easily become obsolete and no longer marketable. This often pushes them out of their technical work and relegates the to the pension farm.
No too long ago, Silly Valley lost another significant individual, John Hall. Another individual who had a diverse background and great creativity and passion for this work.
http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4438149/In-memory-of-John-Haslet-Hall--Intersil-co-founder (http://www.edn.com/design/analog/4438149/In-memory-of-John-Haslet-Hall--Intersil-co-founder)
Lastly, one more story.
Bill Hewlett had the idea of creating a "shirt pocket" scientific calculator on day and put that challenge to Barney Oliver and his group at hp labs. For several tries, Barney presented Bill with a prototype calculator only to be met with a flat out NO, not gonna work. The proto was too big, too clunky, buttons in the wrong place, buttons did not feel right, display quality poor, shape of the case awaked or other. After much frustration and efforts to make a prototype that would be acceptable to Bill, Barney and crew finally succeeded. This became the hp-35 scientific calculator. There was not design by committee, marketing studies, marketing research, bean-counter intervention. just Bill's innate sense for what the product had to be. This was the way things were.
Bernice
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.
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.
Today, the clever technology is hidden deep inside modern ICs and much of the test gear today is designed by people 'groomed' to
exploit the technology inside these chips. i.e. the test gear will be designed by people sat all day at a computer using somebody else's CAD tools. The beancounters have a say in the build quality and the user interface won't be designed by high calibre engineers anymore. So you end up with cheap, buggy, low build quality (disposable) stuff made in the far east.
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Bill Hewlett had the idea of creating a "shirt pocket" scientific calculator on day and put that challenge to Barney Oliver and his group at hp labs. For several tries, Barney presented Bill with a prototype calculator only to be met with a flat out NO, not gonna work. The proto was too big, too clunky, buttons in the wrong place, buttons did not feel right, display quality poor, shape of the case awaked or other. After much frustration and efforts to make a prototype that would be acceptable to Bill, Barney and crew finally succeeded. This became the hp-35 scientific calculator. There was not design by committee, marketing studies, marketing research, bean-counter intervention. just Bill's innate sense for what the product had to be. This was the way things were.
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.
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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
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.
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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.
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.
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.
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213, my little problem solver :)
(http://www.wellenkino.de/213/02.jpg)
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
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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
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.
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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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Yes, Danaher killed Tek. I was at Tek from 2000 to 2012 and went through the painful experience of seeing excellent engineers and resources removed by Danaher, effectively destroying Tek's competitive advantages and leading edge expertise. My major customer was AMD (former ATI in Canada), and when you get answers like "We have to prioritize what we work on" and see technology innovation and customer response times balloon, you start asking questions. Danaher screwed Tek and it seemed they wanted to turn it in to a Fluke where they just milked the brand for profit, instead of being a bleeding edge innovator.
It was painful to experience at the leading edge. Especially when you were used to "I need a PCI express GenX solution to test some hardware" before Intel was even past simulation of it. The evaporation of development sucked to watch.
Double whammy, I was in Hewlett-Packard Test and Measurement when the Real HP was spun off as Agilent. That sucked huge too. We had to practice saying the new name, it was weird. It wasn't revealed and the new company was just called NewCo until the name was announced. (At which point one of the inside guys said, hey, anagram of Agilent is genital, now I know why we feel this way...)
But Hey, my love for the real HP and Pre Danaher Tek lives on!
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(At which point one of the inside guys said, hey, anagram of Agilent is genital, now I know why we feel this way...)
:-DD
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Yes, Danaher killed Tek.
Did they kill Tek, or just buy it cheap because it was already falling into a bad state? Both Tektronix and HP were hit badly by the end of the cold war, and the reduction in their lucrative defence sales. HP recovered. I'm not sure Tek ever did.
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My coworker loves the MSO 6 series he's been using at work lately. I haven't used it myself, but the TPP1000 (10x, 1Ghz, 10MΩ, <4pF, 300V) and TPP0502 (2x, 500MHz, 2MΩ, 12.7pF, 300V) passive scope probes look simply incredible. I don't know how they do it. At first, I assumed the 1GHz probes were active, but then I pulled the datasheet.
I'm really happy with my Siglent SDS2000X+ scope, but man, I wish it could use the passive Tek probes.
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I'm really happy with my Siglent SDS2000X+ scope, but man, I wish it could use the passive Tek probes.
The 10x 350 MHz SP2035A and 500 MHz SP5050A autosense SDS2000X Plus probes are nice and a step up from those supplied with the 100 and 200 MHz models. Their timmers are in the BNC so they can be miniaturized some.
https://siglentna.com/product/sp2035a-auto-sense-350-mhz-oscilloscope-probes/
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Oh, I've already upgraded to Cal Test CT4207 probes (and CT4200 and CT4206 for more special purposes). They have good specs and come with nice accessories. They're still not as good as the Tek probes, which seem to need some kind of fancy compensation.
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Once Danaher took over, they began dismantling the company, outsourcing as much as they could, and left the company a shell of its former self.
Tek suffered from a massive amount of brain drain as well as the inefficiencies of total vertical integration.
...
The vertical integration was just a huge albatross. Owning dedicated facilities for everything from PWBs to CRTs to plastics shops that not only molded every knob and case part, they even built all the tooling in-house. The overhead costs were ridiculous - and only a ridiculous price tag could support it.
The extreme lack of vertical integration was a failure as well.
One of the things Danaher got rid of was the wire and cable division. They could just buy wire and cable from others, right? The employees were laid off or transferred and the equipment sold for junk before someone noticed that *nobody* could provide cable for oscilloscope probes at any price. The market simply did not exist, with the result that Tektronix lost the capability of making probes as well.
I think they ended up paying even more for custom cable production after a delay of months where no probes were made.
The plastic shop also made the custom rotary cam switches so when that was lost, so was any design which relied on those switches, and those switches replaced the very expensive relays used on earlier designs. So they traded the expense of making their own switches with the greater expense of buying RF relays, since at that point they no longer made the relays either.
This was also when Tektronix stopped publishing service documentation.
There were other changes. Employees were no longer allowed "time off" to work on personal projects using company resources. They were no longer allowed to buy parts or equipment from the company store. Tektronix instead paid for surplus equipment to be ground up and thrown into a landfill.
Danaher screwed Tek and it seemed they wanted to turn it in to a Fluke where they just milked the brand for profit, instead of being a bleeding edge innovator.
I saw something about Danaher and Fluke a couple years ago that would explain what Danaher was doing.
They would buy companies and extract the value of the company's brand, ruining it, by loading the company with debt. Stripping the company of vertical integration would then just be a way to lower costs in the short term before they sold or bankrupted it.
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However, the device development and process development has been based in Oregon since the late 1970s when the Logic Technology Development operation moved up from the Silicon Valley. At any given time we have 100s of people from all the high-volume manufacturing fabs all over the planet are here in Oregon to transfer each new process from D1 to their respective factories from Dalian to Leixlip and Kiryat Gat and points in between. The product development is done by groups in many places (like Haifa) using the design rules we develop for each succeeding process.
Bob Colwell said that besides two major design teams which would alternate because the design cycle was twice as long as the production cycle, individual fabs had design teams doing shrinks and such because it was very very expensive to have a new process come online without a design immediately available for production.
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My coworker loves the MSO 6 series he's been using at work lately. I haven't used it myself, but the TPP1000 (10x, 1Ghz, 10MΩ, <4pF, 300V) and TPP0502 (2x, 500MHz, 2MΩ, 12.7pF, 300V) passive scope probes look simply incredible. I don't know how they do it. At first, I assumed the 1GHz probes were active, but then I pulled the datasheet.
I'm really happy with my Siglent SDS2000X+ scope, but man, I wish it could use the passive Tek probes.
The TPP0250/0500/1000 10x probes all have 3.9pF loading, and will only work with compatible scopes with TekVPI standard, so you're tied to Tek.
TekVPI uses a one-wire interface and each probe has a serial number, so the scope remembers the calibration parameters once you've run a cal. I've always assumed that there's some kind of smart equalisation goes on in the scope front end that's proprietary to Tek, and that's how they manage to get a 3.9pF load.
By the way, the internal construction of the TPP1000 TekVPI connector is definitely different to that of the TPP0250 and TPP0500, so if you have any ideas thatg you could fool a 250MHz probe to work at 1GHz you have some work to do.
So in short, while I agree these passive probes have great loading characteristics, the compromise is that they'll only work with certain compatible Tek scopes.
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i feel like their shit like the MDO SA is glitchy and im not happy with the performance so price is not the problem. freezing trying to take a simple measurement. |O
if I was seriously dependent on that capability there would be some old HP there. why do I have the feeling the wire and cable guys were the brain of the operation :-DD . I saw a opportunity once to make a board to get rid of some cables and a very experienced engineer was like NO. I thought OK maybe he has a point. years later I see yeah he had a damn good point. I see now just cost pressure was driving me crazy into trying to implement a undesirable design that would basically constrict product development to save a few wires by making everything into a fucking broadway production. Now it translates to me like "KILL THE FUCKING SYSTEMS ENGINEER WITH A CRACKER"
Oh yeah I see nothing great about the 'board mount' modules either that they tried to push to get rid of another cable. Header pin stacks for a power supply for 60 amps. They seem to break. Why do I think if they had a big cable in the back it would be fine? chassis is also paper thin
Also its just a stack of pins on a board that you need to seat a module on. There is also a sticker that says "danger 60 amps" on two exposed rows of header pins. Lose wire in that chassis goes BOOM
they tried really hard to get rid of cables but its still bloody expenisve and it just pisses people that have to work with it wayy the fuck off.
as for the buttons yeah their shit too. I want plastic buttons that click. You graze the fucking rubber on the MDO and it will switch coupling etc. I had about 200 recordings go to AC coupling (for a big shot multi big company evaluation thing! nice delay to explain to my boss you cheap ass mother fuckers!!!! when you work fast to get stuff done your counting on not having to look at the fucking screen to see if settings change) . I don't feel confident at all using that god damn shit no matter how expensive it is
and something is fuked up with the memory too I had it change settings on me when i was away from it. I go through a check list every time I use that thing to make sure its all good now because you can't trust it.
also for some devices during aging studies you gotta get it right or the sample is fucked!!!!!!!! their one time only measurements!!!!!!!! oscilloscopes can be super critical you can't be doing this crap with them!!!! with how god damn unreliable those new switches are I would prefer a fucking matrix board to solder jumpers on to configure the god damn scope, at least I am not worried it will try to fuck me!!!!
and sometimes it failed to trigger when I had other equipment hooked up to the same node that showed me it should have triggered! WHAT THE HELL TEKTRONIX??!?!! DO I HAVE TO SOLDER A MULTIMETER WIRE TO THE CENTER PIN TO PREVENT YOU FROM BLAMING THE GOD DAMN PROBE ? I WANT TO SOLDER A FUCKING ANALOG DIRECT CONNECT MONITOR PORT ON THE SCOPE (DAMN THE SIGNAL INTEGRITY) TO VERIFY THAT THE TRIGGER DID INDEED FAIL AND ITS NOT MY FAULT!
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My coworker loves the MSO 6 series he's been using at work lately. I haven't used it myself, but the TPP1000 (10x, 1Ghz, 10MΩ, <4pF, 300V) and TPP0502 (2x, 500MHz, 2MΩ, 12.7pF, 300V) passive scope probes look simply incredible. I don't know how they do it. At first, I assumed the 1GHz probes were active, but then I pulled the datasheet.
I'm really happy with my Siglent SDS2000X+ scope, but man, I wish it could use the passive Tek probes.
The TPP0250/0500/1000 10x probes all have 3.9pF loading, and will only work with compatible scopes with TekVPI standard, so you're tied to Tek.
TekVPI uses a one-wire interface and each probe has a serial number, so the scope remembers the calibration parameters once you've run a cal. I've always assumed that there's some kind of smart equalisation goes on in the scope front end that's proprietary to Tek, and that's how they manage to get a 3.9pF load.
By the way, the internal construction of the TPP1000 TekVPI connector is definitely different to that of the TPP0250 and TPP0500, so if you have any ideas thatg you could fool a 250MHz probe to work at 1GHz you have some work to do.
So in short, while I agree these passive probes have great loading characteristics, the compromise is that they'll only work with certain compatible Tek scopes.
Oh, completely understood. There's no way to get those kinds of loadings and bandwidths on a passive probe without some really fancy software-involved compensation, and only Tek scopes have the interface and software to do it. So I'm sticking with my Siglent scope and ordinary probes. It's still cool technology though!
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After 5 years (at 2012) evil Danaher Corp. had canned half the Tek employees, 5 rounds of layoffs, 1,000 people out the door.
https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2012/12/tektronix_five_years_after_sal.html (https://www.oregonlive.com/silicon-forest/2012/12/tektronix_five_years_after_sal.html)
This is how a mega-conglomerate makes money, clear-cutting yet replanting nothing.
I could go on about the president of Tektronix at the time Amir Aghdaei, formerly VP of Fluke, a Danaher slasher now CEO of some dental :o Envista Holdings $8M/year compensation, as yet another MBA decimator of great brands. The worm moves on when things go sour.
I thought one of Tek's missteps was going full in on Power PC for the CPU choice, and it's kind of a slow dog and lagged for clock speed, memory and features.
Then I remember their scopes had a built-in spectrum analyzer focusing on cellphone communications use, and it was not useful yet very expensive. Went with Agilent that year.
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I thought one of Tek's missteps was going full in on Power PC for the CPU choice, and it's kind of a slow dog and lagged for clock speed, memory and features.
Given how much heavy lifting ends up in the asics or fpgas on modern digital scopes, that seems like a pretty minor concern. Not to mention that if you ignore the 30 year old freescale designs for the land that time forgot automotive industry and actually look at modern ones (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Power10#Design)... I'd be impressed by a scope that needs more compute than that.
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Can't find the 2465B list price but the 2467B with a different CRT cost in 1990 was $13,045
Source:
http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/2467 (http://w140.com/tekwiki/wiki/2467)
So think of how cheap they are now taking into account inflation (around $24,100 in 2014 money)
13 grand in 1990 was the hospital bill for 3 standard no complication pregnancies. As in the full 9 months not just the hospital bill.
Its like 150 today.
24 grand will barely buy me a bathroom remodel. In 1990, half of a house.
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damn machines are not doing their job to give us more free time and make our lives cheaper to maintain
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I thought one of Tek's missteps was going full in on Power PC for the CPU choice, and it's kind of a slow dog and lagged for clock speed, memory and features.
What were the better alternatives?
Tektronix was using custom logic in their digitizers as far back as 1990 with the 2232, which is the second oldest DSO worth having and embedded the 80188. I do not remember what the TDS series used. PowerPC seems like a reasonable choice for the system processor since it had good embedded support, unlike x86 by that time.
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I think there was a period Tek went dead or turtle slow on development after the evil Danaher acquisition of late 2007. Who wouldn't be shell shocked and in a coma over there with layoffs and "milk the cow faster" mentality these mega-conglomerates have.
Single-core PowerPC used in their MSO/DPO2000, 3000 (PowerPC 440EP), 4000 (PowerPC 460EX) lineup. These were already at least 5 year old CPUs for the era of the product.
(We aren't including the OS which is part of the performance).
Got a Tek MSO3000 and Agilent MSO-X-3014 to evaluate around 2012.
The Tek was solid but sluggish sometimes, sort of mentioned here (https://www.keysight.com/us/en/assets/7018-04570/data-sheets/5992-0140.pdf) when the logic analyzer or spectrum analyzer running.
I find whenever the UI processor has work to do- measurements, math, FFT, logic channels - things would get too slow. Yeah the selling features are there, but not so usable.
Up against Agilent running i.MX6SRSFS ARM A9 was fast and sexy big LCD screen.
BUT the Agilent crash and burned on firmware bugs, at the time I couldn't believe it - blank trace so a BNC tee running both scopes proved the Tek was a faithful horse and displayed the signal no problem. Tried to tell Agilent about the bugs and it's the usual "are you using it correctly?" and then layers of hassle as time-wasting demoralizing support requests. So, did not buy the Agilent.
Did not buy the Tek for the lab either actually, it was a bit slow and the built-in spectrum analyzer limited and who really designs cellphone equipment it seemed intended for.
This is not about buying a new scope today but looking at Tek's products lagging years after the acquisition while Agilent was rolling out new products, not necessarily better by any means but... looking fresh.
Danaher is not at all about doing R&D or product development beyond the absolute minimum to keep a brand appearing alive.
Fluke is in the same boat as Tek, old dead brand names, test equipment zombies in a way.