6 ms·

Cartoons in Tektronix Schematics

120 points by segfaultbuserr 7y ago

moftz 7y ago
I love finding easter eggs in die layouts. Even if it's not an easter egg but just someone's name, it's always nice to see how people have chosen to essentially scratch their name into history.
- bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
  > scratch their name into history. etch their name into history ;-)
microDude 7y ago
To my surprise there is a museum right down the street from my house (Beaverton/Portland, OR USA). That I must have just been missing. Thanks for posting!
- gaze 7y ago
  Absolutely go. I repair these scopes as a hobby and the people at the tek museum have been endlessly helpful. Repairing old tek designs and reading the schematics has made me a much better analog engineer.
- pjungwir 7y ago
  Hey I'm in Cedar Mill and used to live practically across the street from Tektronix. My email is in my profile if you want to get coffee or check out the museum together. :-)
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  Glad to see my post brings a nice trip to you. From the comment sections, it appears to me that Hacker News has no shortage of hobbyists and professional electronics engineers, but when I search relevant terms like "Tektronix", "oscilloscope", "spectrum analyzer", or "SPICE", there's no much information here, only two or three top articles. I guess it's unfamiliar to the Silicon Valley CS majority who doesn't have enough appreciate of hardware engineering. I'll try to post more of them in the future.
Scene_Cast2 7y ago
I wonder if it's easier or harder to do something like this in a modern corporate environment. Wikipedia has a list of software easter eggs, let's see if we'll discover more of them as time goes on.
- minikites 7y ago
  I used to like easter eggs in software but as the security landscape has changed, easter eggs now show a lack of oversight. If a programmer can slip in an easter egg, what else can they slip in? Larry Osterman says it even better: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/10/21/why-no-easter-eggs/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/10/21/wh...
  - mrob 7y ago
    I think the best solution is to add an "easter eggs" section to the manual. Few people read the manual, so they're still hidden enough.
    - ryandrake 7y ago
      If they are documented, as a user I would still think, "What else could they have been improving/fixing if they weren't working on easter eggs?" I wonder if in an alternate world, Excel minus the flight simulator easter egg could have been $1 cheaper or had 5 more bugs fixed.
      - trhway 7y ago
        > I wonder if in an alternate world, Excel minus the flight simulator easter egg could have been $1 cheaper or had 5 more bugs fixed. if anything, i think that Excel would have much more bugs, and would have much tougher time taking off :)
      - makapuf 7y ago
        As a dev, I can relate to working overtime for a small eater egg, or even if I were a manager I could understand those (security implications notwithstanding) if it would boost morale or team cohesion better than an akward social event.
chrisdhoover 7y ago
Back at the hi fi shop in the mid ‘70’s my older brother came over to my bench with a big smile to show me an amplifier schematic with a race car drawn on the arrow indicating an output. We were simple people then finding amusement in the smallest things
- kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
  It isn't such a small thing but rather emblematic of a culture killed off by Danaher.
  - deleted 7y ago
    [deleted]
  - rusk 7y ago
    Man thats just how things are now
pjc50 7y ago
The magnum opus of Jim Williams known as "App Note 47" has a cartoon at the end, and possibly a few more in the middle. As well as a copy of "Murphy's Law". The cartoons in schematics are very much a product of their time - they were hand-drawn by skilled draftsmen who enjoyed drawing. I suspect most of them had a spare pad of doodles next to their work table.
- blattimwind 7y ago
  They also attempted to make schematics logically cohesive, if possible. For example, in oscilloscopes signal paths are typically differential and DC coupled, but there are often sections where high and low bandwidth components are fed through different paths. In Tektronix schematics these symmetries and asymmetries, which paths are critical and which aren't, which things may look symmetric but are not, these are all very visible. This isn't always possible, though. For example, the Z blanking signalling in 7000 series scopes is distributed over approximately six or seven circuit boards just in the main frame, and the schematic drawers clearly came to their limits trying to pull this together into cohesiveness. If you compare this to the schematics of more modern electronics, they are often madness. Even though it is far simpler to re-arrange schematics using EDA, it clearly isn't done a lot, because parts are sprinkled around randomly, everything is just on one enormous sheet or everything is randomly split up across sheets with numbered net names making connections etc.
  - cyanoacry 7y ago
    As someone who's worked on (and drafted!) several schematics in the aerospace industry, I have to say: there's no reason it has to be that way! The places I've worked have pretty rigorous style guides, and I personally try my best to make schematics readable and understandable. I suppose this is the same thing as code quality guidelines: you can set expectations and examples, but folks don't necessarily have to follow them. My cooler projects are all stashed away somewhere in a company drawer, but here's one that I did early on: https://bitbucket.org/cyanoacry/ee91/raw/5d934fdc18e556938dcfda266e9fa5464448b620/docs/documentation.pdf https://bitbucket.org/cyanoacry/ee91/raw/5d934fdc18e556938dc...
raintrees 7y ago
I miss my old Tektronix Oscilloscope... I was learning electronics, a whole new world opened up. That was a great feeling, probably why I keep learning new software languages.
Animats 7y ago
A picture of my old Tektronix 2225's warning tag: https://i.imgur.com/jYNCC4d.jpg https://i.imgur.com/jYNCC4d.jpg
TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
Somewhat distantly related - the Pro One synthesizer from the early 1980s had some "appropriate" graphics silkscreened on the PCB and the copper etch. A list and photos here: https://jamebus.backpackit.com/pub/294552 https://jamebus.backpackit.com/pub/294552
WalterBright 7y ago
I like a bit of whimsy in otherwise dry stuff. We try to enliven the D language spec with a D-Man cartoon here and there. I'd do more if I had any talent for drawing. https://dlang.org/spec/iasm.html https://dlang.org/spec/iasm.html Go's gopher cartoons are a nice touch, too.
watersb 7y ago
Great cartoon overview of switching power supplies from TDK: https://www.global.tdk.com/news_center/publications/power_electronics_world/pdf/aaa60600.pdf https://www.global.tdk.com/news_center/publications/power_el...
- segfaultbuserr 7y ago
  I wonder if cartoons like these (a distinct form of cartoons, unlike Tektronix) is a feature in Japanese media communication culture. I've seen similar comics of this style in Hakko's soldering 101 marketing materials [0], factsheets of Panasonic's solid aluminum capacitors, and user guides of Japanese laptops like Toshiba and Sony. [0] https://www.hakko.com/english/hikaru/pages/ https://www.hakko.com/english/hikaru/pages/ Hikaru's diary on learning to solder. A short story about soldering, from basic tools and safety precautions for getting started to solder things, good and bad solder joints, and the purpose of flux, it later goes on to explain how simple and thermal-regulated irons and how their heating elements work, point soldering and drag soldering techniques for SMD components, wave soldering and reflow soldering, and finally SnPb and lead-free alloy.

I love finding easter eggs in die layouts. Even if it's not an easter egg but just someone's name, it's always nice to see how people have chosen to essentially scratch their name into history.

bcaa7f3a8bbc 7y ago
> scratch their name into history. etch their name into history ;-)

microDude 7y ago

To my surprise there is a museum right down the street from my house (Beaverton/Portland, OR USA). That I must have just been missing. Thanks for posting!

gaze 7y ago
Absolutely go. I repair these scopes as a hobby and the people at the tek museum have been endlessly helpful. Repairing old tek designs and reading the schematics has made me a much better analog engineer.
pjungwir 7y ago
Hey I'm in Cedar Mill and used to live practically across the street from Tektronix. My email is in my profile if you want to get coffee or check out the museum together. :-)
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
segfaultbuserr 7y ago
Glad to see my post brings a nice trip to you. From the comment sections, it appears to me that Hacker News has no shortage of hobbyists and professional electronics engineers, but when I search relevant terms like "Tektronix", "oscilloscope", "spectrum analyzer", or "SPICE", there's no much information here, only two or three top articles. I guess it's unfamiliar to the Silicon Valley CS majority who doesn't have enough appreciate of hardware engineering. I'll try to post more of them in the future.

Scene_Cast2 7y ago

I wonder if it's easier or harder to do something like this in a modern corporate environment. Wikipedia has a list of software easter eggs, let's see if we'll discover more of them as time goes on.

minikites 7y ago
I used to like easter eggs in software but as the security landscape has changed, easter eggs now show a lack of oversight. If a programmer can slip in an easter egg, what else can they slip in? Larry Osterman says it even better: https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/10/21/why-no-easter-eggs/ https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/10/21/wh...
- mrob 7y ago
  I think the best solution is to add an "easter eggs" section to the manual. Few people read the manual, so they're still hidden enough.
  - ryandrake 7y ago
    If they are documented, as a user I would still think, "What else could they have been improving/fixing if they weren't working on easter eggs?" I wonder if in an alternate world, Excel minus the flight simulator easter egg could have been $1 cheaper or had 5 more bugs fixed.
    - trhway 7y ago
      > I wonder if in an alternate world, Excel minus the flight simulator easter egg could have been $1 cheaper or had 5 more bugs fixed. if anything, i think that Excel would have much more bugs, and would have much tougher time taking off :)
    - makapuf 7y ago
      As a dev, I can relate to working overtime for a small eater egg, or even if I were a manager I could understand those (security implications notwithstanding) if it would boost morale or team cohesion better than an akward social event.

chrisdhoover 7y ago

Back at the hi fi shop in the mid ‘70’s my older brother came over to my bench with a big smile to show me an amplifier schematic with a race car drawn on the arrow indicating an output. We were simple people then finding amusement in the smallest things

kevin_thibedeau 7y ago
It isn't such a small thing but rather emblematic of a culture killed off by Danaher.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- rusk 7y ago
  Man thats just how things are now

pjc50 7y ago

The magnum opus of Jim Williams known as "App Note 47" has a cartoon at the end, and possibly a few more in the middle. As well as a copy of "Murphy's Law". The cartoons in schematics are very much a product of their time - they were hand-drawn by skilled draftsmen who enjoyed drawing. I suspect most of them had a spare pad of doodles next to their work table.

blattimwind 7y ago
They also attempted to make schematics logically cohesive, if possible. For example, in oscilloscopes signal paths are typically differential and DC coupled, but there are often sections where high and low bandwidth components are fed through different paths. In Tektronix schematics these symmetries and asymmetries, which paths are critical and which aren't, which things may look symmetric but are not, these are all very visible. This isn't always possible, though. For example, the Z blanking signalling in 7000 series scopes is distributed over approximately six or seven circuit boards just in the main frame, and the schematic drawers clearly came to their limits trying to pull this together into cohesiveness. If you compare this to the schematics of more modern electronics, they are often madness. Even though it is far simpler to re-arrange schematics using EDA, it clearly isn't done a lot, because parts are sprinkled around randomly, everything is just on one enormous sheet or everything is randomly split up across sheets with numbered net names making connections etc.
- cyanoacry 7y ago
  As someone who's worked on (and drafted!) several schematics in the aerospace industry, I have to say: there's no reason it has to be that way! The places I've worked have pretty rigorous style guides, and I personally try my best to make schematics readable and understandable. I suppose this is the same thing as code quality guidelines: you can set expectations and examples, but folks don't necessarily have to follow them. My cooler projects are all stashed away somewhere in a company drawer, but here's one that I did early on: https://bitbucket.org/cyanoacry/ee91/raw/5d934fdc18e556938dcfda266e9fa5464448b620/docs/documentation.pdf https://bitbucket.org/cyanoacry/ee91/raw/5d934fdc18e556938dc...

raintrees 7y ago

I miss my old Tektronix Oscilloscope... I was learning electronics, a whole new world opened up. That was a great feeling, probably why I keep learning new software languages.

Animats 7y ago

A picture of my old Tektronix 2225's warning tag: https://i.imgur.com/jYNCC4d.jpg https://i.imgur.com/jYNCC4d.jpg

TheOtherHobbes 7y ago

Somewhat distantly related - the Pro One synthesizer from the early 1980s had some "appropriate" graphics silkscreened on the PCB and the copper etch. A list and photos here: https://jamebus.backpackit.com/pub/294552 https://jamebus.backpackit.com/pub/294552

WalterBright 7y ago

I like a bit of whimsy in otherwise dry stuff. We try to enliven the D language spec with a D-Man cartoon here and there. I'd do more if I had any talent for drawing. https://dlang.org/spec/iasm.html https://dlang.org/spec/iasm.html Go's gopher cartoons are a nice touch, too.

watersb 7y ago

Great cartoon overview of switching power supplies from TDK: https://www.global.tdk.com/news_center/publications/power_electronics_world/pdf/aaa60600.pdf https://www.global.tdk.com/news_center/publications/power_el...

segfaultbuserr 7y ago
I wonder if cartoons like these (a distinct form of cartoons, unlike Tektronix) is a feature in Japanese media communication culture. I've seen similar comics of this style in Hakko's soldering 101 marketing materials [0], factsheets of Panasonic's solid aluminum capacitors, and user guides of Japanese laptops like Toshiba and Sony. [0] https://www.hakko.com/english/hikaru/pages/ https://www.hakko.com/english/hikaru/pages/ Hikaru's diary on learning to solder. A short story about soldering, from basic tools and safety precautions for getting started to solder things, good and bad solder joints, and the purpose of flux, it later goes on to explain how simple and thermal-regulated irons and how their heating elements work, point soldering and drag soldering techniques for SMD components, wave soldering and reflow soldering, and finally SnPb and lead-free alloy.