Ok, fair enough. Postulation: I feed the comparator a reasonably high impedance signal for its inverting input and a slightly higher level signal pulse on its non inverting input it produces a fast

Hello Leetmaster, If you were able to remove the 3-48 set screw somehow, a 3/32 (.0935" across the flats nominally) Allen wrench would not even fit into the empty threaded hole, so something must be

Hi Ancel, Avalanche generators have a limited repetition rate of a few hundred KHz. So unless you were going to drive it with something like a 100KHz Xtal this wouldn't be a good

It will work find for bandwidth checking assuming that the pulse fidelity shown in the datasheet can be maintained. That in itself may not be easy to verify at high bandwidths without a

Nope. Look, there are millions of capacitors in use (for many decades now), in small signal coupling circuits, or in power AC applications, where they see little to no DC bias. Yet they fail to fail

I agree, but aren't you reversing your position? Dave Wise

Not exactly. I'm saying that when trying to find a substitute cap, ESR, ripple current and thermal/size characteristics have priority over exactly matching voltage. Messing those has proven, well

What is needed to get rise times faster than 100 picoseconds with an avalanche pulse generator? Is all surface mount construction sufficient? I suspect the lead inductance is the major limitation.

I didn't. I remembered it wrong. You're saying that with a 100V part, 1V is as good as 100V, are you? Dave Wise

Well with some spec sheet reading: This looks useful: http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/1903291.pdf @$16 ea. Feed it a logic signal and it will sharpen up the rise/fall to the sub 40 ps category with

Where did you see the mention "near rated voltage"? It plainly says: "In electrolytic capacitors, applying DC voltage actually drives a beneficial, on-going electrochemical reaction that heals

Hello-- My thanks go to everyone who inquired. 73-- Brad AA1IP

Hello-- I couldn't locate that list either, but I stumbled across this paper... "Nanosecond switching of power MOSFET" in which the authors use a 2N3904 in avalanche mode to charge a MOSFET's gate

The display button is just fine for me as while I've been learning the equipment its been helpful to have a no questions asked simple OFF button on a module. My 7613 doesn't have em but everything I

Hi David, I looked at that same picture and decided it was a strange way the scope calculated the risetime. First, I think the scope picked the lowest point of the pulse (just prior to the rise the

Hi Lee, Yes, that is the way the entire 5000 series works. Personally I have always thought that the DISPLAY button at the top of 5000 series plugins is weird. But since I did not have to deal with

The screen shot at the end says 200ps: http://www.siliconvalleygarage.com/_Media/screen-shot-2013-11-24-at_med.png

I'm done with this one I think. Until capacitor manufacturers begin mentioning minimum working voltages in their datasheets, some (not you, but you know who) will likely never be satisfied and will

Hi Charlie, Get a can of FreezIt or a can of compressed air upside down will give you the same thing. Warm up the scope so the readout is in the right place on the CRT, then very carefully place a

Hi Roger, As you point out avalanche transistor pulsers are incredibly simple to build. Almost any transistor will work, and a short piece of coax is all you need to stretch the pulse. Plus they