4 ms·

Also lots of boards had transparent solder mask after that (Tektronix did this) which was great for debugging! Examples here: http://golddredgervideo.com/kc0wo

• userbinator 8y ago
  Wow, gold everywhere. Even the ICs have gold-plated pins... that's not something I've seen before.
  • dkersten 8y ago
    I’ve only seen one such circuit before and it was some kind of radiation hardened thing. It looked cool though!
  • jacquesm 8y ago
    They're beautiful. Good luck oxidizing any of that in normal environments, those scopes will outlast the people that built them. Old computer hardware used to be just like that, I would buy the boards by the pound in the 70's for parts. Gorgeous stuff.
    • setquk 8y ago
      Annoyingly the IC sockets tend to oxidise if the board doesn’t! I’ve lost count of the number of them I’ve had to replace in my life. If it wasn’t for mechanical switches, pots, contacts and some dubious thermal design I imagine the kit would last for 100 years easy. I have 40-50 year old stuff on my bench in daily use.
      • jacquesm 8y ago
        There are sockets with gold plated turned inner pins, those do not oxidize. Cost a pretty penny though.
        • setquk 8y ago
          Yeah the Tek scopes were made before they came up with them though which is annoying. I usually replace them with the Harwin gold plated turned pin ones as I got a massive box off them from eBay for virtually nothing :)
  • duskwuff 8y ago
    It's pretty common in older test equipment. The production cost was phenomenal, of course, but the equipment was expensive too.
• bdavis__ 8y ago
  That was a very high end scope for it's day. It probably had to go in for calibration to a standards lab every 180 days.