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Show us your vintage test equipment and tools! :D

bladamson

bladamson

Veteran Member
Joined
Nov 11, 2018
Messages
986
Location
Appalachia
Few things in life are more satisfying than troubleshooting vintage computers using vintage test equipment.

Show us what you've got!

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This is my B&K Precision 1540, circa late 70s or early 80s I think.. I bought it at a hamfest in 1997 for $35, and it was my only scope for years. Not a storage scope, but it does have a trigger circuit built in, which is good enough for me! Really needs a rebuild and is way out of calibration, but it's good enough to see logic transitions! Lol.
EPQ2oPn.jpg


And this is a late 50s era Eico 460 that I just recently acquired. All tube, so that is cool. It needs a rebuild too, although it's actually in better condition than my 1540, heh. I want to make a new cover for it from plexiglass, so the tube glow can come out. <3 I plan to mostly use this one in XY mode, drawing vector graphics on it with a sound card.
izCzgAh.jpg


And that's my great grandpa's persuasion tool on the right there, too. :3
 
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I think I saw one of those on Ebay years ago, but I didn't know what it was or I'd have bought it, heh.

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But cmon guys. I know *someone* has some sweet vintage test equipment out there to post pictures of. I mean, after all, you're not really troubleshooting unless you have to troubleshoot your troubleshooting equipment before you can really start troubleshooting. Am I right? :3
 
I always liked the test equipment I used in Aerospace in the early 1980s, and when I retired I hunted for some of them on ebay, etc where they could be had for a song.

Here is my Tektronix 453 scope, HP1630G Logic Analyzer, and a Interface Technology RS-660 Word Generator. I really wanted the Tektronix 454 or 465B scope, but they were still priced a bit high at the time.

The thing with a logic analyzers are that you must get a good set of pods and flying lead sets with them or they are fairly useless.

This era gear is perfect for troubling-shooting early generation IBM PCs, Commodore PETs, Apple II, etc.

Logic analyzer & Timing Generator1.jpg
 
6kyRR4x.jpg


Quick View from 3 years ago of some (about 30%) of my Vintage Test gear most is Tektronix.

Better view after I had done some cleaning up

NcALpxA.jpg
 
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Awesome!

Do you have a tools for the National Semiconductor 32000 series (ns32k) ?
From the ns32k documentations:
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The GNX debugger also directly supports the HewlettPackard HP64772 NS32532/NS32GX32 in-system emulator. This combination provides powerful integrated support for high-level source debugging and insystem emulation of the NS32532 or NS32GX32 processors.

.....

DBUG, the GNX debugger, currently supports the following target systems:
- NSV-FX-CG-EDB, NSV-CG160-EDB, NSV-GX32-EDB, NSV-GX320-EDB, NSV-FX16-FAX-EDB, AM160-EDB, FX164-EDB and CG160LX-LBP evaluation boards.
- HP64772, HP64778 and HP64779 Hewlett Packard In-System Emulators.

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http://oldcomputers-ddns.org/public...s_series_32000/gnx/series32000ep_gnx_v4.4.pdf

http://oldcomputers-ddns.org/public...and _language_development_tools_for_msdos.pdf
 
shirsch said:
I had a complete soup-to-nuts 64000, complete with apartment-fridge sized 10MB disk drive, 8 linear feet of manuals and software and several ICE pods. Took up way too much space and gave the whole collection away about ten years ago. It was a real tank, as you'd expect from HP.
Click to expand...

I actually have one lurking in my storage space, yes with the half-fridge drive. It was just too big to keep in air-conditioned space, and I never had time to play with it, but I also never had time to get rid of it. I think I also have a vinyl bag with some extra boards. They used it where I worked back in 1999 or so. They were going to toss it and I asked to have it. If nothing else, the console had that nice '80s look. But I never turned it on, partly because...

I preferred the Applied Microsystems EM-189 (we did 6809 stuff) that I found languishing in a corner of the office. It didn't know about bank switching in the target, but I was skilled enough to not care. The best part was that nobody else wanted to use it. I was allowed to keep that too, and ended up buying more models years later. I did some Colecovision development with the Z80 version back in 2008 or so. I also have an 8080/8085 version that I haven't had a use for yet. My EM-189 only has a non-E pod, but holy crap I just found a very nice scan of the 6809E pod boards, maybe I can determine the differences. And all of my "good" sets have a lot of target RAM, which you can use in place of ROM. One has 64K in 4K banks. I also have a null target for the Z80 which just provides clock signals, so you can use it as a trainer along with the target RAM.

Here's are some links. They're both cute and awesome. There's even a 2KB LIF socket for custom emulator-side extensions.
http://www.iobium.com/applied_microsystems_em189_e.htm
http://www.decadecounter.com/vta/articleview.php?item=1063
em188_1.jpg

A long-term dream is to somehow make a pod for 6502, which they had completely ignored, using one of my spare pod-less units. The hard mode is that it uses the pod CPU to run the emulator, switching it back and forth between emulator-world and target-world via registers in the emulator hardware, which needs to be aware of bus cycles. Basically it's a super-deluxe front panel attached to a pod CPU. With two hardware breakpoints too.
 
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