9/ very confident that it’s a blanking issue with the plug-in - tried it with another horizontal plug-in just to make sure it wasn’t the mainframe.
A few other interesting features of the 3B5:
The delayed magnification feature. Instead of a separate timebase & intensification zone, it has a selectable 10x & 100x magnification, and the delay control changes the point at which the sweep goes into the magnified rate, so you can still accurately zoom into a specific portion of the waveform. I think this is how some of the later 400 series scopes did it. I like it.
The sweep speed goes up to 10nS / division which is the fastest of any of the 560 series plug-ins. Note while it’s labeled 10nS on the silkscreen, the illuminated indicator uses ‘mili micro seconds (m u S)’ to avoid adding a 3rd prefix.
#tektronix #electronics #retroTech #vintageTech #1960s #testEquipment

8/ video showing what may have been the worlds first auto-ranging oscilloscope in action.
#electronics #tektronix #retroTech #vintageTech #1960s

7/ It was the nuvistor. It’s always the f$&king nuvistor. Both autoranging plug-ins are somewhat working.
Vertical plug-in still has some ranging issues, and the horizontal plug-in is slow to un-blank, which becomes a problem at higher sweep speeds. I’ll tackle that next.
#retroTech #vintageTech #tektronix #1960s #testEquipment #electronics

5/ I use brass polish to clean a lot of faceplates, mostly because I once lived in an apartment with all brass door hardware, still have the polish, and one day decided to give it a go.
I’m sure there’s a better thing to use, and someone may tell me why using it is a terrible terrible thing, but it’s doing a heck of a job getting decades of cigarette smoke off the face of this thing, even on translucent plastic.
#tektronix #electronics #vintageTech #retroTech