I'm
wondering if maybe the grid assembly was knocked loose during shipping
maybe? I'm not intimately familiar with the CRT construction, so maybe
someone more well-acquainted with Tek's CRTs could give me some idea of
what may be going on...

While fixing my newest 465 I recall seeing a post where a 465 had a similar problem. The OP found an internally disconnected Grid pin. Here is the post.

https://groups.io/g/TekScopes/topic/tek_465_intensity_problem/7656664

Hello dear friends,
I own three beautiful oscilloscopes from the series 7000: a 7904A, a 7104 and - the most recent arrival - a 7854.
Some of them had common issues, after powering on (failure at the RC snubber and the AC line filter - which I replaced with new components and everything come back to normality.
I ask you about a behavior that is common to the 7904A and the 7854: at power on, the traces and the readouts are bright, but after some minutes they dim: to restore the brightness it’s a matter of little correction on the related controls.
By the way, I ask you if it is a normal situation (e.g. “normal” at the time that the equipment was younger, by memory of somebody of yours) or if it is a sign of aging of some component in the main power supply or in the HV power supply. In this latter option, I ask you advice to let me get closer to the problem (I have the service manuals).

Tnx es 73 de Alberto, IZ2EWV

Hello,

I have a 7904A and it works exactly as you describe. I consider that
normal, nothing to worry about. Just a minor annoyance.

Tom Bowers


On Mon, Jan 6, 2020 at 8:29 AM Alberto, IZ2EWV <iz2ewv@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello dear friends,
I own three beautiful oscilloscopes from the series 7000: a 7904A, a 7104
and - the most recent arrival - a 7854.
Some of them had common issues, after powering on (failure at the RC
snubber and the AC line filter - which I replaced with new components and
everything come back to normality.
I ask you about a behavior that is common to the 7904A and the 7854: at
power on, the traces and the readouts are bright, but after some minutes
they dim: to restore the brightness it’s a matter of little correction on
the related controls.
By the way, I ask you if it is a normal situation (e.g. “normal” at the
time that the equipment was younger, by memory of somebody of yours) or

if

it is a sign of aging of some component in the main power supply or in

the

HV power supply. In this latter option, I ask you advice to let me get
closer to the problem (I have the service manuals).

Tnx es 73 de Alberto, IZ2EWV

Hello dear friends,
I own three beautiful oscilloscopes from the series 7000: a 7904A, a 7104
and - the most recent arrival - a 7854.
Some of them had common issues, after powering on (failure at the RC
snubber and the AC line filter - which I replaced with new components and
everything come back to normality.
I ask you about a behavior that is common to the 7904A and the 7854: at
power on, the traces and the readouts are bright, but after some minutes
they dim: to restore the brightness it’s a matter of little correction on
the related controls.
By the way, I ask you if it is a normal situation (e.g. “normal” at the
time that the equipment was younger, by memory of somebody of yours) or if
it is a sign of aging of some component in the main power supply or in the
HV power supply. In this latter option, I ask you advice to let me get
closer to the problem (I have the service manuals).

Tnx es 73 de Alberto, IZ2EWV

from Tim P (UK)
The posts re '465M junker' remind me of a post I sent a couple of years
ago. I had a 1S1 plug-in that was intermittent, sometimes OK, sometimes
just would not sample.
Did the usual things, re-seat transistors, clean switches, check sampling
bridge etc. Finally, I lifted the PCBs, thinking maybe a wire-clipping or
solder blob had got between the PCB and the chassis. Close examination with
a jewellers loupe and bright light showed a bad joint, where the solder
seemed to have parted from a transistor socket - there was a visible gap
between the solder fillet and the pin, not broken but as if the solder had
'shrunk'. Found a few other cases also. I guess solder ages like most
things, or sort-of-crystallises.
Tim

On Sun, Jan  5, 2020 at 11:25 AM, Greg Muir wrote:

the vacuum tube equipment still possessed by the military for use when EMP
from a nuclear blast renders a portion of the solid-state hardware useless.

Hi Greg:
Although obviously I am privy to very little information about what the "military" has, or does not have... I am doubtful, if the military keeps any vacuum tube type equipment because of "transistorized" = solid state equipment failing due to NEMP. The reason I say this is that... at least the high EMF generated by the Type 1 pulse of a NEMP event requires relatively long conductors to couple energy. Small conducting paths; small inductor values, fully metallically shielded, and enclosed cases... besides other common EMP hardening measures... significantly null out NEMP effects.
That said... militaries are working on... and due claim to have... EMP weapons that act to produce extremely large local EMP pulse that can disable/destroy EMP hardened gear very locally... or so they say.
Cheers. Best regards and wishes.
Roy

On Sun, Jan 5, 2020 at 11:25 AM, Greg Muir wrote:

the vacuum tube equipment still possessed by the military for use when EMP
from a nuclear blast renders a portion of the solid-state hardware useless.

Hi Greg:
Although obviously I am privy to very little information about what the "military" has, or does not have... I am doubtful, if the military keeps any vacuum tube type equipment because of "transistorized" = solid state equipment failing due to NEMP. The reason I say this is that... at least the high EMF generated by the Type 1 pulse of a NEMP event requires relatively long conductors to couple energy. Small conducting paths; small inductor values, fully metallically shielded, and enclosed cases... besides other common EMP hardening measures... significantly null out NEMP effects.
That said... militaries are working on... and due claim to have... EMP weapons that act to produce extremely large local EMP pulse that can disable/destroy EMP hardened gear very locally... or so they say.
Cheers. Best regards and wishes.
Roy

There are some tests you can do with a partially working scope, but you
are going to be very limited.

1) assuming horizontal sweep problems, you use an external ramp or the
"other" sweep if you have a dual sweep model.

2) if you have a horizontal amplifier problem, using the scope in XY
mode, even with the calibrator, can give you some idea of whether or not
it's the sweep or the amplifier.

3) if you have a dual channel scope, you can use a working channel to
debug the separate part of the vertical amplifier

These generally end up being go/no-go tests and are somewhat crude.

Function generators can make a very crude horizontal sweep. If they're
gated, then a gated ramp might work as a sweep.

Very crude, but better than nothing.

Generally, unless you have a scope specifically designed for self
diagnosis, you're better off with another, completely working, scope.

Even then, a scope designed for self diagnosis makes certain assumptions
about what's working, especially once you get past the "is the CPU
working...."

Harvey


On 1/4/2020 4:29 PM, Panos wrote:

I have read enough service manuals for the oscilloscopes, and till today

I didn't find any of them to mention, that someone can use the same faulty
scope (partially or totally) to repair his self.

But as always we can hope for something like that. After all, don't

they say that hope dies always last? :-)

In my opinion if you have time to play then do it by that way. But if

you want really to repair it, then proceed it with another oscilloscope.

from Tim P (UK)
The posts re '465M junker' remind me of a post I sent a couple of years
ago. I had a 1S1 plug-in that was intermittent, sometimes OK, sometimes
just would not sample.
Did the usual things, re-seat transistors, clean switches, check sampling
bridge etc. Finally, I lifted the PCBs, thinking maybe a wire-clipping or
solder blob had got between the PCB and the chassis. Close examination
with
a jewellers loupe and bright light showed a  bad joint, where the solder
seemed to have parted from a transistor socket - there was a visible gap
between the solder fillet and the pin, not broken but as if the solder had

'shrunk'. Found a few other cases also. I guess solder ages like most
things, or sort-of-crystallises.
Tim

I received a verified-working Tek 454 scope from eBay, and it seems to now,
after shipping, have an issue where the CRT is incredibly bright, like
we're talking burn-a-hole-in-your-vision bright. Naturally I immediately
powered it off, fearing damage to the CRT, and upon turning it back on to
test it, dialing the trace way off the screen, there is still a sizeable,
though not dangerous, glow from electron splash. The grid appears to be at
-150 to -190 volts depending on the brightness setting, and the grid bias
trimmer does essentially nothing, moving the grid bias by around 8 volts
only (not sure if this is a fault or just the design). I checked for a G-K
short, but its about 25 megaohm between (in-circuit), so looks good. I'm
wondering if maybe the grid assembly was knocked loose during shipping
maybe? I'm not intimately familiar with the CRT construction, so maybe
someone more well-acquainted with Tek's CRTs could give me some idea of
what may be going on...

HI Albert,
Groups.io changed my real email address without my knowing it so non-members could not search our posts and harvest our email addresses. I didn't know this is what groups.io did. The only wat I can tell you what the correct email address is if I spell it out like this:
dennis at ridesoft dot com.
You can figure out from this what my email address really is.
Dennis

-----Original Message-----
From: TekScopes@groups.io [mailto:TekScopes@groups.io] On Behalf Of Albert Otten
Sent: Wednesday, January 01, 2020 3:29 AM
To: TekScopes@groups.io
Subject: Re: [TekScopes] My email address was changed by Groups.io my request for contributions

There is one more issue Dennis. I use the website. There @Dennis... is a link which points to https://groups.io/profile/Dennis_Tillman_W7PF . This is not your profile at Tekscopes since /g/Tekscopes is missing from the path. I can read your Tekscopes profile, but I get a "404 not found" error on that link.

Albert