EEVblog

Dave shows off his loot from a recent auction.
Tektronix TDS3054 500MHz 4 channel oscilloscopes, TDS220's, DMM916 multimeters, Simpson 260 analog multimeters, and an 1960's AVO transistor tester.
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[@k6eep593]

The Simpson 260 with the No Battery warning label was probably used to test weapon systems for stray voltages. They don't want even a remote possibility of any voltage coming out of the meter and setting off an explosive device. I think that makes it an even cooler item.

[@w2aew]

Nice score Dave! Love those Tek DMMs - I wish I had one myself!

[@banj0smah0mie]

Note to self: Hide knobs from Dave.

[@auwdioslave]

Great score Dave! I use the Tek TDS3054 as my daily driver at my job (designing switch mode PSU's). I've tried lots of scopes, but these Tek's with the advanced trigger modules have in my mind the best triggering for analog signals.

[@ian-c.01]

Awesome score ! "Smells as good as it looks" lol ! I'm sure Sagan would love to have that to play with !

[@iSolarSunrise]

Anybody jealous? I certainly am...

[@ViperFallenAngel]

Yeah....>.

[@BenjaminEsposti]

Uziel Capetillo Meee tooo! The hell! That is n insane score...

[@DjResR]

Same thing. Estonia is such a bombhole.

[@MauroTamm]

DjResR pfft bet they still use analog soviet multimeters -_-

[@DjResR]

Mauro Tamm Most likely, some 2 euro crap would be more possible be in use here. I would love to get my hands on one of the soviet analog multimeters, at least better than the cheap chinese crap velleman I currently have with 100 ohm range resistor burned out and case held together with cable tie and insulation tape.

[@12voltvids]

Nice score. And you wonder why taxes are so fucking high. Government waste. Tossing out perfectly good, serviceable test gear and replacing it. Oh well, easy come easy blow as they say. Remember you bought what you already owned. I remember going to an auction after the Olympics and seeing big screen TVs and computer monitors that had 2 weeks of use being auctioned off for between 10 and 50.00. I picked up a couple of nice 50" Samsung LED monitors that had been used for scoreboards for 30.00 each!

[@BlackEpyon]

That's such a fuckin waste... Don't even bother saving them for the NEXT Olympics, or maybe whatever event you've got coming up next year, just throw them out and buy new next time.

[@CortMarshal]

The manufacturers have to make money and ship products too. They're paying taxes and fees, all etc. Oftentimes products will be given for events at cost or as sponsorships. Chalk it up to advertising budget. If you waste a million dollars on a 300 million dollar event, it's practically a rounding error in the grand scheme

[@joshuanorris5860]

CortMarshal yes but they could have done the 300 million dollar event for 100 million if they werent so fucked in the head. Lol I once saw gov employees fixing a pothole in the road. There was a dump truck, a backhoe, a van, and two pickup trucks. It was winter and the snow plow made a special trip to clear the area for them. (Lol a backhoe can clear snow out of its own way...) Which was all very funny. because i could have fixed that hole MYSELF with my backhoe or heck, a shovel. In the same amount of time too. All i would need is to take some pylons with me lol Long story short the gov spends 10 grand on a job that could be done for 1000 bucks. LITTERALLY, THEY DO. LOL!

[@BlackEpyon]

You get a box container, enter the model and serial numbers into an Excel sheet that can be easily refrenced, put the monitors inside, and rent a storage facility that already has it's own staff, and forget about it for the next three and a half years or however long till the next event that needs such monitors, only adding inventory if needed. The 2010 Winter Olympics were hosted near where I live, and they weren't an influx of revenue - they broke even, but this does NOT count all the infrastructure, facilities, and housing that had to be upgraded or created to support the event. As far as I'm concerned, the Olympics can stay in Greece, because I've got better ideas on what my tax dollars should be spent on.

[@gglovato]

repair video on that Tek 3rd channel? usage video on the transistor tester!

[@jamesmaseobrown]

Wow, that is awesome. For many years I worked for the military industrial complex and auctions like that were common place. They would get rid of perfectly good equipment. If no one bought it, then they would have them destroyed rather than let the employees get a hold of them. I worked as a metrology technician in and out the USAF. The first company I worked for was called LORAL back in the 80's into the 90's. That company literately accumulated buildings of fully functional equipment. Again, what they couldn't sell, they destroyed. I remember they were auctioning off spectrum analyzers, microwave generators and counters. Only one guy showed up and took them all away for a dollar. No shit. During those days,every time they won a new contract, they would buy all the latest and greatest test equipment, and last years stuff would be trucked off the wear house.

[@JN.0_o]

31:20 I'm glad you got as much out of that as I did. Beautiful piece of kit and an unbelievable haul. I swear you live on a different planet to me, auctions around here are shit!

[@FantaBH]

Do not complain at my planet there is no Auctions at all . Well I lie , there are some but Cars, Furniture and even houses , apartments but nothing like in this video ever.

[@youtuuba]

This 'find' reminds me of how I got my first oscilloscope. This was in the mid 70's, right after I had moved from Germany to the States, and was attending college in the St. Louis area. I had about zero money after rental of my single room basement apartment and putting fuel in my $100 beater car (luckily I had a couple scholarships that were taking care of tuition, and meals were included in the room rent). My only pieces of test equipment were a $25 Heathkit power supply and a Japanese analog multimeter that I had bought as a teenager. I was using some nice Tektronix scopes in the college lab, but owning any kind of scope was out of the picture, financially speaking. My landlord was a service technician for Honeywell in the St. Louis area. He worked on repairing the Honeywell mainframe computer(s) at Scott Air Force Base nearby, but when not making a call to the base he hung out in the Honeywell building, or retired to his garage TV repair side-business. One day he told me that one the the Honeywell lab's high end Tektronix scopes had been labeled as 'out of service, not repairable' and was supposed to be trashed. But the Tektronix technician who was permanently posted to that Honeywell office had told him that the only thing wrong with it was one of the many secondary windings of the large power transformer had failed. Honeywell preferred to spend the money to buy a newer scope, as opposed to repairing the old one. He arranged to spirit the scope to his home, although it was written up as being trashed. The Honeywell technician, aware that it was actually being 'donated' to a young engineering in training, kindly filled out a form asserting that, aside from the transformer, the scope was still usable and serviceable. My landlord then gave me the non-functional scope, as-is, but armed with the statement of serviceability from the Honeywell tech. One of my professors at the college, hearing of my windfall, showed me a manual for one of the college owned Tek scopes, and on the back cover it said that Tektronix manufactured their own transformers and CRTs, and unlike the other internal components, those parts were warrantied for the life of the scope. I mailed a copy of the Tek serviceability form to the address on the manual that I had perused, requesting a new transformer, but expecting nothing to come of it. A couple weeks later, a package arrived with the transformer. The scope was, if I recall correctly, one of the 560 series models, perhaps a 564, taking plug-in vertical and horizontal amplifier modules. I am pretty sure that it had a 3A1 vertical amplifier module (dual trace), and a fairly high end horizontal sweep module (perusing photos on the web suggest that a model starting with 2B, perhaps 2B07 or 2B67, etc; might have been the one I had. I recall it had delayed sweep, and some other bells and whistles. No circuit boards anywhere in the scope. All discrete components silver soldered into metal saddles in ceramic rails, and beautifully done point-to-point hand wiring between those rails and the many tube sockets located between the rails. Several wiring harnesses snaking all through the scope. The scope and its modules I unwired the old power transformer and removed its many wires from the various harnesses, then mounted and wired in the new transformer, restoring the harnesses as I went along. The repaired scope seemed to work perfectly. The downsides to this scope, besides it very heavy weight and huge physical size, were a fairly long period of warm up before it would become stable (I was told that these were normally just left turned on all the time), and that installed CRT (with variable intensity illuminated graticule) was intended for taking photos of the display, not viewing the display directly....something about the phosphor. The bezel of the CRT display was a special one designed to allow a large Polaroid camera (or other) to snap on to take photos of the display. So the display was rather hard to read. But I used this nice scope for many years until I eventually got tired of waiting for it to become stable after turning on, and squinting at the display. I sold it to a HAM that I worked with in my first engineering job, and bought the top-of-the line Heathkit scope, which I used for many years until replacing THAT with one of the first Tektronix digital scopes. which I hated and rarely used, and actually used a Goldstar analog scope for most things in my home lab. I finally replaced both the early Tek digital & Goldstar with a Siglent SDS1203X-E, but keep the fully-iunctional Goldstar around lust-in-case.....

[@ChrisGammell]

Dave! Stop playing with your knob(s)!

[@scottb721]

The paint strips on the scope are used to identify which toolkit/toolboard they belong too.

[@gregjhill]

The transistor tester is something worth salivating over! The quality in that thing is phenomenal! I'd love to be able to smell its brilliance.

[@scowell]

Finally, someone that geeks out appropriately over this stuff... I'm jealous of the Tek scopes, still making do with my 453... I've used the TMS series at work, really nice. Hopefully you can get the transistor checker working and give a tutorial on it.

[@TheTarHeelTom]

My dad had an on Simson mm, probably from the lates 40's. He really liked it. A solid piece of work.

[@CalcProgrammer1]

We use TDS3034 scopes at work and they're great. Same interface as yours but lower bandwidth. Ours have the Ethernet option and always nag you with DHCP failed screens when you don't plug them in though...that is annoying. Also...floppy drive...haven't seen anything with one of those in years, shows how long the useful life of one of these scopes is!

[@EEVblog]

Would be interesting to try and replace the floppy drive with one of those USB versions

[@ToumalRakesh]

Dave tweaking knobs: "Aaah... aaaah man...." :)

[@MadManMarkAu]

Not sure if this was answered or not, but I'm not reading all the comments to find out. I believe the paint marks on the scope are to show ownership. It's an old-school thing, where each person had their own color combination, and they'd mark their tools so others wouldn't pinch them. My dad's colors were blue and green.

[@MOTOSNOWRIDER]

Dont let "She Who Must be Obeyed" see that transistor tester, she might get jealous hahaha.

[@SimoWill75]

I've had a Tektronix DMM916 for well over a decade, awesome multimeters. The 'Cold' on the screen is actually 'Gold', as in, gold menu option. Press the gold(yellow) button and then select from any of the options in gold(yellow) text above the buttons, as you were doing in the video. To activate the backlight, press and hold the yellow button for approx. 1 second to turn on, press and hold again to turn off. Simplez.

[@michaelhawthorne8696]

That old school stuff....beuuuty. I recently bought a Vellerman PCSU1000, 2 ch 60Mhz 1Gs/s PC scope for around £250, I wished I could have found an auction like the one you did. Those scopes !!! Who needs accurate calibration, as long as it is pretty close you can find out what the circuit is or isn't doing. Coming back to that transistor tester, just look at the condition !! the build quality !! oh...oh...ah nuts..anyone got some tissue paper? You gotta do a teardown of the scope with a dodgy channel 3 input Dave. I doubt you will be doing these great vids for the rest of your life but what's life going to be like after Dave? Keep going mate, ripper !!

[@BruceNitroxpro]

The sight of him hugging and sniffing his transistor checker at the end is worth the whole video! ROFL

[@AureliusR]

Holy crap you lucky bugger... I wish I could hit an auction like that!!!!

[@stevetobias4890]

What an amazing score! That old transistor tester was an orgasmic find!!

[@onepanther69]

watching your videos is better than prime time tv ....... yer a blast to watch and learn from thanks

[@mahmoudgaber5347]

Man you're just awesome, I learned a lot about electronics from you that I made a career shift (I'm actually electrical engineer), but I can't afford for such a HQ tools, so you know I just use what I can afford for, any way you're my electronics hero don't stop

[@boblewis5558]

I still have my old AVOmeter somewhere. People might knock them now but even today a GOOD mirror scale meter can do most of what a modern DMM can do and in certain circumstances can actually indicate problems that are not so easy to see on a DMM.

[@haiaokuwa]

What a fantastic haul. Thank you for sharing.

[@mikeandrewp]

Tektronix TDS series is really nice. I use a TDS3014 at my job, and it works a treat!

[@illustriouschin]

Don't let your wife find out about this video.

[@kyoudaiken]

When he reworked the equipment, it will bring twice the money he spent for it. ;)

[@Wifi_Cable]

She might find out about his affair with the transistor analyser. o.O

[@kyoudaiken]

ciccarello LOL. I can understand his feelings. The smell of very old vintage electronics is just pornographic. ;)

[@maximilianmustermann8172]

***** seriously?^^ Doesn't it smell.. bad?

[@kyoudaiken]

Maximilian Mustermann Try it, it's not nasty. It smells like electronics, but just a bit stronger and it has this undescribeable vintage taste.

[@Bigwingrider1800]

wow brings back memories. grandpa had one in he's basement when i was 7 or so. Now 56 good memories.

[@KeanM]

On the Tek DMM916 multimeters, the "GOLD" label on the LCD indicates you've pressed the Gold/Yellow shift key. I think you hold it down for several seconds to turn on/off the backlight.

[@TheBadFred]

Someone got serious vintage meter fetish ;-)

[@TheOriginalEviltech]

Nothing wrong with that!!!

[@CraigOverend]

Merry TektroniXmas Dave.

[@christurnblom4825]

Maybe those scopes come from Pine Gap and they need the latest greatest thing for their insanely expensive black project stuff. ...Like gravity control and scalar wave weapons. lol

[@electronicsNmore]

Curious how much he paid for all these items. :-)

[@whayden001]

More curious to know how much Dave's gonna charge me to take some of it off his hands! :)

[@electronicsNmore]

If he did not pay too much, then it would be beneficial to his channel, to do a freebie giveaway to one of his subscribers once a certain goal is reached(subscriber count...etc) That is what I would do if I had that many of those blue DMM's laying around. Only problem is, figuring out how to determine who fairly gets the freebie. :-)

[@electronicsNmore]

Simon Ingram LOL. I know plenty of people like that.

[@dedskin1]

i literally got some tears in eyes when i saw that transistor tester, god damn, old audio equipment looks like that also

[@cabe_bedlam]

That Avo is a glorious thing!

[@Eken-Eken]

Really nice stuff you Got there. I remember all of it from the time I managed a tech department. I do have some some dislikes on Tectronix repair department and I know why that one was unserviceable, Tektronix stops servicing equipment that's 10 years old. Still all good stuff and would love to have one on my branch.

[@GadgetUK164]

I am so jealous lol! I would have loved to have picked up a new scope to replace my 60Mhz Hameg :P The Fluke is sweet!!!

[@arcadeuk]

Steady on there, the Hameg's still good :)

[@jero37]

I totally squealed with happiness seeing the Beaverton, OR, USA on the back of the Tektronix meter! Man, would be cool to have one of those, get both Crazy Aussie Bloke & ADF goodness in one fell swoop!

[@sprybug]

No bloody way! I live in Beaverton, OR! I must have not been looking when that popped up.

[@whitehedr]

I am overjoyed that you also enjoy the SMELL of vintage test equipment like I do. You scored quite a haul with that auction. Congrats. Does make you wonder about the mentality of those running the defense programs of our respective countries. R.O.G.

[@Captain_Rhodes]

i think maybe you have enough equipment now

[@haz939]

I like how our winter is your summer I'm freezing my ass off over here.

[@claytonbonser7629]

I think I have one of the DMM's. It was a gift to me. I can see where the ADF silkscreen was scraped away. There was some sticky residue from the cal stickers, one bottom left the other at the R/H side of the screen, just like at 3:02. Came with long grabber probes (Mmmmm) in the carry case, with the book. It's been to Queensland and back.

[@Supze]

Good thing that transistor analyser has some love handles on it as well!

[@michaeltuckey7]

Can't wait to see the AVO teardown!

[@EEVblog]

I've seen images online, not that exciting. Nothing like my Triplett analog meter

[@selwynrh]

Hi Dave, you might want to check the TDS 220's don't fall within the product recall serial numbers

[@RossPotts]

Smells as good as it looks! LOL!!!!

[@serbianknights4988]

He almost have orgasam on end of this video lol 😂

[@DDMT_Development]

Hi Dave, for that scope with the dicky channel 3, you had it set to 1 mV/div whereas the other 3 channels were 50 mV/div...

[@gshew3459]

"Look at that, more knobs than you can poke a multimeter at!" Oh man that made my day lol

[@audiocrush]

Did you notice the 870-2F on the top of the ADC-Board? Seems like they just reused that board from the older model...

[@ashleyhughes398]

The reason we get rid of most old equipment like that is the Cals unit won't calibrate it anymore. In which case we cannot use it. Also cals will only support so many models I.E. if we have 4 models of scope the oldest 5th one goes to make room for a newer model

[@andrewrobotbuilder]

This video reminds me to check out my local auctions more often

[@brandonwarhurst3893]

Check the knobs on your scopes. Most of them looked pretty new, but those tektronics knobs get dodgy after a fashion.

[@beachsandinspector]

good score there Dave, love the fluke 105 scope meter, just the bees knees for a service tech out and about.

[@Romenadan]

Those TDS220s are still >$350 here in the states. Looks like you got one hell of a score! I'm still bodging around on a Goldstar OS-7040 HUGE analog 40MHz scope!

[@Mulletsrokkify]

Its common in public sector to replace when manufacturers end-of-support stuff. But could also be end of financial year nonsense. Good score Dave!

[@DandyDon1]

@31:28 AVO Transistor Analyzer.... Well now you can match transistors. Though my Triplett 3490-A (which I bought for $30US from a University) has a couple more meters.

[@brittisaacrossman]

I love trying to peg the vintage of old gear by the smell! I feel ya, Dave!

[@CheckEmGG]

I have the same Tektronix TDS220 with the GPIB, RS-232, and Parallel port. It's old but does everything i need it to do.

[@gamccoy]

Christmas in Australia, Folks! What a friggin score! Dave I think you have a few stocking stuffers in there for friends and family. Aunt Agnes could use a good DMM.

[@Kennynva]

I would love to have one of those scopes..I have nothing..and learning to use one...getting back into electronics, after being a little out of it for years...I like the MOSFETs...cool device..nice video...

[@billkratzer1]

dude, you are going to award prizes and hold auctions of personally autographed great gear, right? Dave? Dave? are you there? Dave?

[@MysticalDork]

Dave? Can you hear me, Dave? Stop, Dave, I'm scared.

[@EEEnthusiast]

"Ah Look at that! Long GRABBA! Woaaaaaaaahh Beautiful! " I almost died laughing lol..

[@zedvee2668]

One of your best videos yet. :) Awesome score!

[@CollectiveSoftware]

That Transistor Analyzer would be a great toy for Sagan!

[@TheSadButMadLad]

Equip which is still usable and nearly new and only needs a recal or just obsolete being sold at auction means that the Oz taxpayer is paying twice. The tax payer has to pay for more new fancy equipment plus the loss of selling at auction.

[@budi0251]

on Tek DMM916 there looks like an APPA (Appatech) taiwanese mainboard logo. They makes a lot of DMM for other brand as well.

[@Axiomaticness]

This dude is awesome!

[@CPUTests]

Hi. I'm from Portugal and I am an electronic nerd like you, but unfortunately I don't have an oscope. I don't have the money for that, and you know how an oscope is really indispensable to actually see some signals. I usually do it with a very old analog multimeter from Lafayette Model TE-58 (I can take some photos of it) and a 5 € (really cheap) chinese DMM. And that's all I have but if I had just one of those even without buttons or so I would really be the most happy guy on earth if I be able to own one oscope. Even if it was an analog old one I'll be the happiest guy on earth. Sorry about my poor english. I'm gonna try to debug something with my "high end equipment" haha. lol. Regards! Love your teardowns! ;)

[@503jmn]

Dave, on that TDS3054 go to Utilities->Diags->Push Stop 5 times...

[@kane100574]

I share your excitement for that transistor tester!

[@Weaseldog2001]

My High School had one of those style of transistor testers :)

[@stevenallen512]

Looks like a hell of a haul. I've been wanting a good scope for a LONG time. So handy. Should see if the Canadian Forces are about to auction off some gear like this sometime lol. Cheers.

[@porklaser]

There's a saying for bikes. The correct number to own is N+1, N being the number of bikes you currently own. I'm guessing the same applies to oscilloscopes :)

[@dgurevich1]

I know that feeling. We tossed a lot of good equipment when I served.

[@satibel]

I used the same scope in high school (Tektronix ones) , they are really good but they also have their jumping power button

[@danielmelendrez1616]

I almost spit my coffee in the lab I work in with that ending (JFTR, I'm wearing headphones and I felt the stare from my co-workers on me) Cheers Dave!

[@Gunbudder]

I was offered a job at the Tekronix headquarters a long time ago, but I passed it up not knowing who they were. I also didn't want to move to Oregon... if only i'd known lol

[@NullStaticVoid]

that last one is worth is just for the awesome Western Electric style design. Well that and I do actually match transistors for some things.

[@eformance]

Those flukes fry the frontend if you leave them with a dead battery too long. Ask me how I know. It costs about $500 to have both channel frontends replaced by an independent repairman.

[@m0rish]

At 26:45 you can see that channel 3 is set at 1mV/div, while the others are at 50mV. So I'd guess that's why there is all the noise?!

[@m0rish]

Ah, forget about that. Didn't have HD on.

[@jesperkleemann1333]

Wow, I like the 4 channels but the transistor tester is the winner here. I would give an arm and a leg for getting one. In a little country like Denmark, were i live, can it go decades before there is an auction like that. Have a nice time, greetings from Denmark. Ps. thumbs up for your videos.

[@demofilm]

Men you really hit a jackpot......a scopemeter from holland! wow i want one

[@napalms666]

I would love to get one oscilloscope for my beginner lab. BTW Dave You are person who woke my interest in electronic ;) thx!

[@thatroom]

i wouldn't throw any digital tektronix scope out of bed. i have nothing right now save an even slower home made ds0138 one so that would be a huge step up

[@TegFilatov]

31:50 Dave...??? You're frightening me O_o

[@MarkMcDaniel]

For that Tekroniks whose light you were trying to engage. Tapping the yellow button was toggling the Hi/Lo settings. I'm guessing you long press the button to toggle the backlight. How much did the total lot run you, Dave?

[@kibi15]

Nice little score that is. Well done. It's amazing what people deem as rubbish these days. I found a TDS3032B with FFT and advanced trigger in the trash not so long ago, lovely bit of kit, a bit slow but who cares. Mine has the same firmware version as your TDS3054's.

[@r00f]

Congrats, Dave! Also, very creepy ending =D

[@metricmine]

Too bad for little me living on a small Caribbean island. Can't get these things at all here. Have a basic 50 MHz analogue oscilloscope I bought used on ebay, and even though it was fairly cheap, I had to pay a lot just to ship it to my country and pay customs duty and value added tax. Most of my equipment has to be ordered from the US with increased cost due to shipping to my country.

[@Fir3Chi3f]

Got a little worried when the transistor analyser came out. Gonna make it Dave?

[@hokkypro]

i've never seen someone that excited about grabbers before 19:48

[@RichardHeadGaming]

Very nice haul on those, good investment. Probably got a quick turnover as well.

[@Unordung]

Hey Dave, Where are you planning on selling the oscilloscopes and at what price point?

[@EEVblog]

I've got a couple of scopes on ebay now. ID alternatezone

[@FathinLuqmanTantowi]

do you still have your ebay acc active?

[@mrweeninja]

Tektronix is right around the corner from the company I work at.

[@Flapjackbatter]

Sure. Ill buy the 3 channel tectronix scope.

[@redtails]

31:35 wow, just look at all those knobs!