Test Equipment

The electronic test gear I use.

Introduction

Yup, I'm a hardware hacker. And this is a gallery of what I use for electronics.

Hrm, looking at this page I realize that most of my electronic equipment is actually substantially older than I am. That's actually almost sad.

Oscilloscope

The oscilloscope is the centerpiece of any electronic bench. So naturally I've got two ;)

HP1740A

My oscilloscope

My oscilloscope with a square-wave calibration signal fed in

100MHz single-beam dual-trace, although it can do three or four traces when the external trigger inputs are in use. It's not quite the same thing as a real quad-trace scope, or a real dual-beam scope either, but it's fully functional, so I like it. It's a delayed-sweep scope, and I did manage to figure out how to use it, recently at least.

The manual says 1976, so this scope is about 25 years old.

Merlan CHAMP

My Merlan ADC

15kHz ADC, ISA interface, 50kHz max sample rate, 8-bit. It has a box with controls on the front. I actually haven't used this one at all yet, but it'll go into my lab computer eventually.

The manual says 1989, so this is actually substantially newer than the (much superior) scope above.

Signal Generator

Generating standard waveforms is helpful in design and test of filter and amplifier circuits. I've got two now, one is a little old, and the other is about a week old.

Eico 377

My Eico 377. It came minus two knobs, which have been visibly replaced by ones from Radio Shack.

1Hz-200kHz sine-wave or 1Hz-30kHz square-wave audio signal generator. I think it needs calibration, because the waveforms are distorted (I'll put up a pic of the waveforms sooner or later). Probably a bad capacitor, I'll have to trace it sometime soon.

I haven't found any perfect reference on the age of this device (the manual does not say), but it's from somewhere like the early 1950's. Yes, that means vacuum tubes. Even the power rectifier is a tube. All the tubes seem to work fine, though.

Anybody who has one of these can now view the manual online.

Jen's 555 Square-Wave Oscillator

My Square-Wave Oscillator

This is, of course, one of mine. If you would like to build one, click here. Unfortunately, it has no time scale on the knob, so it needs to be adjusted with use of some other device, probably a scope or frequency counter. Mind you, I still don't have a frequency counter.

Jen's 5V/12V Dual-Output Power Supply

My Power Supply

This is another one of mine. If you would like to build one, click here.

This turns out to be a very stable little supply, doing everything I need it to. It was also a lot of fun to make.

Multimeter

Even non-hardware types often have one of these on hand, the ubiquitous multimeter. I actually have a few more than listed here, I'll probably update this eventually.

Radio Shack 22-216

Next on the list of utter weirdness is an analog meter that's autoranging. I thought it was bizarre when I heard of it, but it's got the high impedance of a digital (I forget what it is offhand, but it's in the MegaOhms), it's autoranging, and just a generally strange meter. There's quite a populated PCB inside, so it's assumably got an electronic amplifier circuit like those normally found on the digital meters.

Yes, I know it's from Radio Shack, but I've had it a few years. Specifically, this meter is from about 1997, so this is actually one of the newest things on my bench. I used to have a digital meter when I was a kid, but it got fried. Now I actually kinda like the feel of an analog.

My camera didn't manage to capture this one. Maybe I'll manage later.

Soldering Station

Edsyn Loner 952HA

My soldering station. If you've never owned one, get one.

A nice little dual, temperature-controlled soldering station. The iron on the left does not work, but the place that sold it to me actually shipped me a second, single-iron station because of it, which I will probably list here soon. The iron on the right works quite well.

Computer

An computer is essential for working with programmable devices. Alas, the machine I was using has now been retired, so this section will remain blank for the time being.

Other

Lots of other stuff goes into an electronics lab, but there remains several things I have to replace or acquire. If they should be as interesting as the above (especially if I get pictures) then I should post them too.

All material on these pages is Copyright (c) Jennifer E. Elaan.