A place to share and discuss Cassette Futurism: media where the technology closely matches the computers and technology of the 70s and 80s.
Whether it's bright colors and geometric shapes, the tendency towards stark plainness, or the the lack of powerful computers and cell phones, Cassette Futurism includes: Cassettes, ROM chips, CRT displays, computers reminiscent of microcomputers like the Commodore 64, freestanding hi-fi systems, small LCD displays, and other analog technologies.
See this blog to know more.
Sadly doesn't work anymore as it was dropped and damaged. Found it at an ewaste site with the idea to build an ITX pc inside with a little DIY digital oscilloscope replacing the screen connected to the audio out so you can see the wave form as you listen to music or play games
Sadly doesn’t work anymore as it was dropped and damaged.
Electronics that old are often pretty repairable...
They were designed to be repairable! The manuel shows you how to open everything up. I two very similar ones. (465 with a digital memory and a 475 and checked some manuals online. They're pretty extensive.
Yeah that's another reason that I haven't taken it apart yet because we get a guy once a year come to our lab that calibrated oscilloscopes for us and said this one is super easy to fix and he has parts for them if I ever reach out to him
Be careful, I’m assuming it’s a CRT in there. If you know what you’re doing then don’t let me stop you, but the capacitors and tubes can be dangerous.
BTDT. Nasty burn
Oof, I imagine that could’ve gone south - glad you’re still with us. Most scope CRTs tend to use voltages around 2-3kV (Tek scopes usually use 1.8kV accelerators). I’ve even got a scope that uses a specialized CRT that uses a 9kV tube (Tek 317) - definitely something scary to mess around with!
One thing I miss about working at the place that manufactured those. I had no use for them but it did occasionally make me feel like I was in an old science fiction movie. We'd occasionally get people calling for replacement parts for things like this.
I recently got two oscilloscopes from an estate sale. one is similar to that one and the other is a heathkit from the 60s (tubes!). Haven't tested them out yet, thanks for the reminder.
I’ve got half a dozen of similar Tek scopes myself, along with a number of much older scopes from the 60s and a handful of others as well - they’re very pretty. Easy to work on, too, long as you stay careful around HV parts. You definitely should keep it around and consider restoring it as opposed to putting a PC inside of it, cool as that may sound. But either way, I’m glad it found a better home than a dumpster!
Shit.. I saw a few of these in the Clear Sky base.
Very cool. I've got an HP 1740a, which is pretty similar. The 1740a was introduced in 1967. Mine was dumpster dived from just outside the physics department building at a local university. I was lucky that the only issue it had was just that the power button sticks a little bit. It's barely a problem. I haven't used it as much as I ought to. I really ought to do more hardware hacking projects.
Man, oscilloscopes are fuckin beautiful. The blue screen looks really pretty against the other colors
My friend's father has a working one of these. He's big time into amateur radio, and his garage looks like a 1980's movie mission control.
That was the first oscilloscope I used a lot. I still have a working one.