Fixing/uses for an oscilloscope?

Mike Danger

My friend just dropped by my house and handed me an old oscilloscope he found at his job working for the school district. It doesn't seem to be working (I plugged it in and fiddled with the knobs but nothing happens).

How can I get it working, and, once working, what can I do with it? It's an awesome looking piece of tech, and I'd love to get it running. The problem is that I have no knowledge of what exactly it does or what I can do with it.

It's an Eico--I believe the model number is 4XX, but I don't recall exactly.

Edit: It's a 460.

DanMach

You can fedex that to me.

Or.. you can use it to do a billion low level eletrical tests. The osciolloscope is good at measuring an eletrical output and its associated pattern. Among other things. An example is maybe you built a circuit to transmit digital signals, high of 4+ v's, low of 2.5v's and under. Now lets believe that you want to make sure it is actually 4+ or 2.5-. You can hook it up to a multimeter and view its "steady state"(If you just had it sit there at a certain level), but you could never really view it change from 4.3v to 2.1v(made up #'s). Why would you want to see it change? Lots of reasons but generally you would want to see it change because it has an issue somewhere.. if that is the case, you may find out that while you have the setup clocked to a baud rate of 4800, the actual signal is performing around 5000.. causing timing issues.

Or another billion issues.

It is an AMAZING tool to diagnose low level eletronics. Thats it.

Also, you can have it make pretty images if you get really bored.

Dark_Side

Dan got it right, and if you're looking to get rid of it....boy I sure could use such a tool for working on amps. As to getting it working, that may be a different scenario...

ecco the dolphin

When you say it's not working, do you mean that it's:

1.) Broken?
2.) You can't quite get it to trigger properly?

Either way, I've found what appears to be the manual for it linked from this site.

It might have a calibration procedure that you can go through to make sure that everything is working properly.

HalberdBlue

A lot of older oscilloscopes don't display anything unless there is actually a signal coming in.

Mike Danger

Got it working today! The fuse in the back needed replacing.

Next task: getting a test probe for it. It didn't come with one...I've contacted my friend to see if he can scout around where he found the unit and see if the probe is somewhere nearby.

StuffGuy

Oh wow. My job is actually calibrating (and aligning/repairing) test equipment for the Airforce, which includes osillioscopes. I think that one is older then anything we actually use now though, and being relativly new at the job, im only really familiar with the tektronix 2246. However, messing around with an old piece of equipment like that would be awesome.

Were moving the lab we work at right now, but sometime this week once were setup I might be able to see if I can pull up anything on that part number on our computer system during break.

Btw, did it have any sort of labeling or tags on it that might indicate its been certified cal'd at any point?

Mike Danger

There's absolutely no tags on it whatsoever--the only markings are the writing on the front and the little "FUSE" label on the fuse.

He found it in an elementary school science classroom. What the hell they were doing with it there, I have no idea.

Thomamelas

I use one at work sometimes to test video signals to make sure they are clean and the right strength. Also it impresses customers and gives me a bonus to attempts to make management go away.