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jlawrence6809 25 minutes ago [-]
I just had claude walk me through refurbishing a Rohde & Schwarz signal generator from the 90s. It feels pretty cool getting a multi thousand dollar piece of equipment for 60 bucks even if you have no idea what you'll use it for.
tverbeure 23 minutes ago [-]
Was that by any chance the R&S AMIQ that I refurbished in an earlier blog post?
And yes, it's a lot of fun bringing these bargain bin pieces of kit back to life.
jlawrence6809 8 minutes ago [-]
My model is an SMIQ03E actually! I've grown quite addicted to going to my local 2nd hand electronics store in recent months scrounging for anything with an rs232 port!
It can be used a vector RF signal generator with I/Q inputs. The only limitation is the reduced input bandwidth.
hex4def6 4 minutes ago [-]
Is the PC mainboard separate from all the tek ASIC etc stuff? If so, what's the interface? PCMCIA? PCI?
I'm just wondering how difficult it would be to use a more modern bit of kit in there instead of the Celeron.
jhallenworld 15 minutes ago [-]
Yeah 1 GHz is nice, but that tiny 200 MHz Siglent is going to be much more useful in practice for most things.
Speaking of boat anchors, I'm trying to get my company to buy a DSA91304a (13 GHz scope with SERDES debugging). ~$44K with all the options, but still Windows-XP. The Windows-7 ones unfortunately don't have the options I want. Maybe there is a hack..
tverbeure 10 minutes ago [-]
As I wrote: the TDS7104 is now sitting on a shelf in the garage, next to an Agilent 54831 and some other boat anchors. My daily drivers are a Siglent scope and a puny TDS220, which is about to be replaced by a TDS3052 that I'm bringing back to life. Hobbyists rarely need more than 100 MHz BW.
I hope you're able to thoroughly test that DSA91304a before dropping $44k on it!
milleramp 1 hours ago [-]
The TDS500, 600 and 700 series can expand memory by removing zero ohm resistors.
tverbeure 1 hours ago [-]
My TDS754D is waiting for the resistor and capacitor mod that converts it from a 500MHz/2Gsps scope into a TDS784D with 1 GHz/4Gsps.
Still, entering an easy to generate license key is less intrusive than removing a resistor.
sdcfgy 1 hours ago [-]
Give it a month and the acquisition ASICs will blow up and the caps will eat through the board traces. Can’t stand these scopes.
tverbeure 30 minutes ago [-]
Nice, so I'll get even more entertainment out of it!
The equipment that's bought and sold at the electronics flea market typically isn't used as a means to an end, it is the end. There's disappointment when you buy something there and it just works. There's no fun in that.
Yeah agreed. I’ve fixed more Tek equipment than most people out there. In the order of hundreds of units.
These are just exceptionally bad.
slhomme 56 minutes ago [-]
Love this. I knew nothing about oscilloscopes until just a few months ago, when reasearched and bought one from a science lab. It wasfor a personal side project. I gutted it out and installed a mini PC inside, and now i run AI models into it. It's like my personal AI assistance. Hooked up to OpenAI realtime voice, grok bot, claude code, etc so I can command it to do stuff even when my main computer is off.
I just mainly love the retro-moder look of it. Here's a link to how it looks, for those curious:
And yes, it's a lot of fun bringing these bargain bin pieces of kit back to life.
It can be used a vector RF signal generator with I/Q inputs. The only limitation is the reduced input bandwidth.
I'm just wondering how difficult it would be to use a more modern bit of kit in there instead of the Celeron.
Speaking of boat anchors, I'm trying to get my company to buy a DSA91304a (13 GHz scope with SERDES debugging). ~$44K with all the options, but still Windows-XP. The Windows-7 ones unfortunately don't have the options I want. Maybe there is a hack..
I hope you're able to thoroughly test that DSA91304a before dropping $44k on it!
Still, entering an easy to generate license key is less intrusive than removing a resistor.
The equipment that's bought and sold at the electronics flea market typically isn't used as a means to an end, it is the end. There's disappointment when you buy something there and it just works. There's no fun in that.
I don't really have a use for a R&S AMIQ, but replacing all the PC motherboard caps taught me a lot about good desoldering practices. https://tomverbeure.github.io/2026/06/28/Rohde-Schwarz-AMIQ-...
These are just exceptionally bad.
I just mainly love the retro-moder look of it. Here's a link to how it looks, for those curious:
https://x.com/slhomme/status/1965131874734584291
I had now idea there was such a huge second-hand market for those. It was such a great opportunity to learn about this tech.