3 ms·
Give it a month and the acquisition ASICs will blow up and the caps will eat through the board traces. Can’t stand these scopes.
by sdcfgy 1mo ago
Give it a month and the acquisition ASICs will blow up and the caps will eat through the board traces. Can’t stand these scopes.
- tverbeure 1mo agoNice, so I'll get even more entertainment out of it! The equipment that's bought and sold at the electronics flea market typically isn't used as a means to an end, it is the end. There's disappointment when you buy something there and it just works. There's no fun in that. I don't really have a use for a R&S AMIQ, but replacing all the PC motherboard caps taught me a lot about good desoldering practices. https://tomverbeure.github.io/2026/06/28/Rohde-Schwarz-AMIQ-PC-System-Repair.html#replacing-the-motherboard-capacitors https://tomverbeure.github.io/2026/06/28/Rohde-Schwarz-AMIQ-...
- sdcfgy 1mo agoYeah agreed. I’ve fixed more Tek equipment than most people out there. In the order of hundreds of units. These are just exceptionally bad.
- drzaiusx11 1mo agoI'm blanking on the exact models I used; I'm fairly certain they were tds700s or tds71xx, but a lab I ran had about a dozen units and we had nothing "fry" in the 4 years I worked there. What applications would result in these catastrophic failures?
- tverbeure 1mo agoOver the years, I've had 5 TDSxxx series scopes, and I still have a few. The common issues are: NuColor CRT displays going bad. Bad capacitors. Dallas NVRAM units battery running out of juice Fried electronics are pretty rare.
- drzaiusx11 1mo agoWe had some "ghosting" on the displays on a few now that you mentioned it, but they were still 100% usable. I guess my expectations were lower since I never had to foot the bill for the lot of em (which at 20k/unit I guess I'd be upset about when one was faulty)
- sitzkrieg 1mo agoi thought maybe it was just something regionally here or the way people stored em, but i was in a position to refab many a few years ago and totally agree. tek had 100% repart rate and seemed like anything else (brand wise) was always in better condition internally even when way older.
- sdcfgy 1mo agoI’ve seen rust in a newish (Danaher era) one.
- wkjagt 1mo agoA little while ago I bought a 386 laptop. It pretty much had everything wrong with it. Spent weeks repairing it. Best $40 I ever spent.
- tverbeure 1mo agoThat feeling when it finally works is great. I spent $40 on this basket case: https://tomverbeure.github.io/2025/12/24/Repair-of-SRS-DG535.html https://tomverbeure.github.io/2025/12/24/Repair-of-SRS-DG535.... Took me ages to figure that one out.
- stmw 1mo agoFor a brief second, I thought this was about an original 7104. Are there specific TDS models that you have found to be better, btw, reliability-wise?
- jhallenworld 1mo ago>an original 7104 I've got one, they are very cool. I also have a 7834 (storage tube), cool in a different way. On the other hand, they are taking up a lot of space... I also have two 485s, one with a broken trigger.
- sdcfgy 1mo agoOther than the very bottom end ones, no. Mostly went to Hp/Agilent instead.
- stmw 1mo agoThanks for answering, not surprising. I think the transition from all-hardware to Windows-driven digital hard on Tektronix and many other storied engineering teams.