1. TekScopes@groups.io
Topics

'Tektronix Short Destroyer'

Tim Phillips
 

From Tim P (UK)

ebay: 193462625382

Even has a Tek cal sticker on it. I suspect the only thing 'Tek' about it
is the case.
No internal shots either. Anyway Tektronix never got into audio gear ??

curiouser and .......

Tim
Chuck Harris
 

Tektronix employees made lots of special equipment to make their
jobs in manufacturing, testing and repair easier.

And, tektronix most certainly did make a variety of instruments
that were involved in audio, including amplifiers, low distortion
signal generators, and distortion analyzers.

This item is very likely made for use on the factory floor at
tektronix.

Further, like HP, tektronix made their supply room available to
employees for off the books projects using tektronix cabinets,
etc..

-Chuck Harris

Tim Phillips wrote:

From Tim P (UK)
ebay: 193462625382

Even has a Tek cal sticker on it. I suspect the only thing 'Tek' about it
is the case.
No internal shots either. Anyway Tektronix never got into audio gear ??

curiouser and .......

Tim
Tim Phillips
 

yes, of course - I'd forgotten the AA501 and AA5001 distortion analysers.
Tim

On Sat, 10 Oct 2020 at 14:17, Chuck Harris <cfharris@erols.com> wrote:

Tektronix employees made lots of special equipment to make their
jobs in manufacturing, testing and repair easier.

And, tektronix most certainly did make a variety of instruments
that were involved in audio, including amplifiers, low distortion
signal generators, and distortion analyzers.

This item is very likely made for use on the factory floor at
tektronix.

Further, like HP, tektronix made their supply room available to
employees for off the books projects using tektronix cabinets,
etc..

-Chuck Harris

Tim Phillips wrote:
From Tim P (UK)
ebay: 193462625382

Even has a Tek cal sticker on it. I suspect the only thing 'Tek' about it
is the case.
No internal shots either. Anyway Tektronix never got into audio gear ??

curiouser and .......

Tim
greenboxmaven
 

Collins was also very helpful to employees who wanted to build for themselves at home what they built in the factory. At least one person bought the parts over time and assembled their own 75A4 receiver. Such things are probably unthinkable with today's business model, but the benefits in workforce morale and skill are irreplaceable. As far as instrumentation companies building audio gear, Non Linear Systems built and sold stereo receivers for a while, and Rhode & Schwarz built many models of communications receivers and some excellent FM stereo tuners.

Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY

On 10/10/20 9:17 AM, Chuck Harris wrote:
Tektronix employees made lots of special equipment to make their
jobs in manufacturing, testing and repair easier.

And, tektronix most certainly did make a variety of instruments
that were involved in audio, including amplifiers, low distortion
signal generators, and distortion analyzers.

This item is very likely made for use on the factory floor at
tektronix.

Further, like HP, tektronix made their supply room available to
employees for off the books projects using tektronix cabinets,
etc..

-Chuck Harris

Tim Phillips wrote:
From Tim P (UK)
ebay: 193462625382

Even has a Tek cal sticker on it. I suspect the only thing 'Tek' about it
is the case.
No internal shots either. Anyway Tektronix never got into audio gear ??

curiouser and .......

Tim
Chuck Harris
 

When I worked for DEI towards their end, there were some curious
TR711 telemetry receivers that had tuners that went from 50 to 110MHz,
and had stereo multiplex discriminator plugins. They were on the
factory floor, but they weren't where they should be, but rather
were sitting on carts out of the way up against a wall.

I never knew what the real story was on them, but...

-Chuck Harris

greenboxmaven via groups.io wrote:

Collins was also very helpful to employees who wanted to build for themselves at home
what they built in the factory.   At least one person bought the parts over time and
assembled their own 75A4 receiver.  Such things are probably unthinkable with today's
business model, but the benefits in workforce morale and skill are irreplaceable.  As
far as instrumentation companies building audio gear, Non Linear Systems built and
sold stereo receivers for a while, and Rhode & Schwarz built many models of
communications receivers and some excellent FM stereo tuners.

       Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY


On 10/10/20 9:17 AM, Chuck Harris wrote:
Tektronix employees made lots of special equipment to make their
jobs in manufacturing, testing and repair easier.

And, tektronix most certainly did make a variety of instruments
that were involved in audio, including amplifiers, low distortion
signal generators, and distortion analyzers.

This item is very likely made for use on the factory floor at
tektronix.

Further, like HP, tektronix made their supply room available to
employees for off the books projects using tektronix cabinets,
etc..

-Chuck Harris

Tim Phillips wrote:
From Tim P (UK)
ebay: 193462625382

Even has a Tek cal sticker on it. I suspect the only thing 'Tek' about it
is the case.
No internal shots either. Anyway Tektronix never got into audio gear ??

curiouser and .......

Tim
Michael A. Terrell
 

A bit off topic, but are you talking Defense Electronics, Incorporated? A
couple engineers and a salesman from there designed and built the first
Microdyne Telemetry receiver in their garage. That frequency range covered
the Instrumentation data recorders. They output a 70 MHz center frequency.
They recorded the 70MHz IF output for later use, as well as keeping records
on tests. Typically, minr data channels were looked at on individual
channels after a test, to prevent the need for multiple receivers. I had a
pile of DEI manuals. Everything gwas tube based. The Microdyne products
were all Solid State. Their early products were all 1100 series. They were
large, but they could be paired with a combiner to do diversity reception.
The 1200, 1400, 700 and 1620 series were in production when I went to work
there. They were followed by the RCB2000, the first SDR based dual receiver
with a digital video combiner. That was the last project that I was
involved with.

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 10:59 AM Chuck Harris <cfharris@erols.com> wrote:

When I worked for DEI towards their end, there were some curious
TR711 telemetry receivers that had tuners that went from 50 to 110MHz,
and had stereo multiplex discriminator plugins. They were on the
factory floor, but they weren't where they should be, but rather
were sitting on carts out of the way up against a wall.

I never knew what the real story was on them, but...

-Chuck Harris

greenboxmaven via groups.io wrote:
Collins was also very helpful to employees who wanted to build for
themselves at home
what they built in the factory. At least one person bought the parts
over time and
assembled their own 75A4 receiver. Such things are probably unthinkable
with today's
business model, but the benefits in workforce morale and skill are
irreplaceable. As
far as instrumentation companies building audio gear, Non Linear Systems
built and
sold stereo receivers for a while, and Rhode & Schwarz built many models
of
communications receivers and some excellent FM stereo tuners.

Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY


On 10/10/20 9:17 AM, Chuck Harris wrote:
Tektronix employees made lots of special equipment to make their
jobs in manufacturing, testing and repair easier.

And, tektronix most certainly did make a variety of instruments
that were involved in audio, including amplifiers, low distortion
signal generators, and distortion analyzers.

This item is very likely made for use on the factory floor at
tektronix.

Further, like HP, tektronix made their supply room available to
employees for off the books projects using tektronix cabinets,
etc..

-Chuck Harris

Tim Phillips wrote:
From Tim P (UK)
ebay: 193462625382

Even has a Tek cal sticker on it. I suspect the only thing 'Tek' about
it
is the case.
No internal shots either. Anyway Tektronix never got into audio gear ??

curiouser and .......

Tim
stevenhorii
 

I have a Microdyne 1100-series receiver and a bunch of plug-ins. One of
them is pretty interesting - it’s a VLF tuner. I was told that these were
used for telephony monitoring and interception. I first suspected that they
were for listening to submarine communications or VLF frequency
distribution stuff, but those usually had specific frequencies selectable
and some had filters for Omega. I have a couple of Fluke receivers that
have a commutator for Omega and filters for using Omega as a frequency
reference. Not useful now.

Years ago, a friend of mine (the late Bill Scripps) told me that he had
seen a Tek plug-in designed for frequency distribution reception and
comparison. I presumed it had an external receiver, but I never found out
if this thing actually existed. There was a TM500 plug in (Spectracom?)
that was a rubidium frequency reference for a TM500 rack.

Steve H.

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 12:45 Michael A. Terrell <
terrell.michael.a@gmail.com> wrote:

A bit off topic, but are you talking Defense Electronics, Incorporated? A
couple engineers and a salesman from there designed and built the first
Microdyne Telemetry receiver in their garage. That frequency range covered
the Instrumentation data recorders. They output a 70 MHz center frequency.
They recorded the 70MHz IF output for later use, as well as keeping records
on tests. Typically, minr data channels were looked at on individual
channels after a test, to prevent the need for multiple receivers. I had a
pile of DEI manuals. Everything gwas tube based. The Microdyne products
were all Solid State. Their early products were all 1100 series. They were
large, but they could be paired with a combiner to do diversity reception.
The 1200, 1400, 700 and 1620 series were in production when I went to work
there. They were followed by the RCB2000, the first SDR based dual receiver
with a digital video combiner. That was the last project that I was
involved with.

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 10:59 AM Chuck Harris <cfharris@erols.com> wrote:

When I worked for DEI towards their end, there were some curious
TR711 telemetry receivers that had tuners that went from 50 to 110MHz,
and had stereo multiplex discriminator plugins. They were on the
factory floor, but they weren't where they should be, but rather
were sitting on carts out of the way up against a wall.

I never knew what the real story was on them, but...

-Chuck Harris

greenboxmaven via groups.io wrote:
Collins was also very helpful to employees who wanted to build for
themselves at home
what they built in the factory. At least one person bought the parts
over time and
assembled their own 75A4 receiver. Such things are probably
unthinkable
with today's
business model, but the benefits in workforce morale and skill are
irreplaceable. As
far as instrumentation companies building audio gear, Non Linear
Systems
built and
sold stereo receivers for a while, and Rhode & Schwarz built many
models
of
communications receivers and some excellent FM stereo tuners.

Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY


On 10/10/20 9:17 AM, Chuck Harris wrote:
Tektronix employees made lots of special equipment to make their
jobs in manufacturing, testing and repair easier.

And, tektronix most certainly did make a variety of instruments
that were involved in audio, including amplifiers, low distortion
signal generators, and distortion analyzers.

This item is very likely made for use on the factory floor at
tektronix.

Further, like HP, tektronix made their supply room available to
employees for off the books projects using tektronix cabinets,
etc..

-Chuck Harris

Tim Phillips wrote:
From Tim P (UK)
ebay: 193462625382

Even has a Tek cal sticker on it. I suspect the only thing 'Tek'
about
it
is the case.
No internal shots either. Anyway Tektronix never got into audio gear
??

curiouser and .......

Tim
Michael A. Terrell
 

A lot of information about early Microdyne products was lost when they
moved the Telemetry division to Ocala. They announced that they were
closing their original facility on a Friday. Monday morring they came in to
find all documentation had been shredded, and test fixtures destroyed.
There was one working 1100 series receivers left in shipping, along with
some plugins. They had to reverse engineer their own designs to resume
business. The built a fireproof records vault at the Ocala facility to
ensure that would never happen again. I once had to go to the president of
our division to get some documents, because they refused to release them. I
had to verify the procedurs on a special modification for one customer. The
documents were unsigned, because they hadn't been verified. A catch 22!

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 2:43 PM stevenhorii <sonodocsch@gmail.com> wrote:

I have a Microdyne 1100-series receiver and a bunch of plug-ins. One of
them is pretty interesting - it’s a VLF tuner. I was told that these were
used for telephony monitoring and interception. I first suspected that they
were for listening to submarine communications or VLF frequency
distribution stuff, but those usually had specific frequencies selectable
and some had filters for Omega. I have a couple of Fluke receivers that
have a commutator for Omega and filters for using Omega as a frequency
reference. Not useful now.

Years ago, a friend of mine (the late Bill Scripps) told me that he had
seen a Tek plug-in designed for frequency distribution reception and
comparison. I presumed it had an external receiver, but I never found out
if this thing actually existed. There was a TM500 plug in (Spectracom?)
that was a rubidium frequency reference for a TM500 rack.

Steve H.

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 12:45 Michael A. Terrell <
terrell.michael.a@gmail.com> wrote:

A bit off topic, but are you talking Defense Electronics, Incorporated? A
couple engineers and a salesman from there designed and built the first
Microdyne Telemetry receiver in their garage. That frequency range
covered
the Instrumentation data recorders. They output a 70 MHz center
frequency.
They recorded the 70MHz IF output for later use, as well as keeping
records
on tests. Typically, minr data channels were looked at on individual
channels after a test, to prevent the need for multiple receivers. I had
a
pile of DEI manuals. Everything gwas tube based. The Microdyne products
were all Solid State. Their early products were all 1100 series. They
were
large, but they could be paired with a combiner to do diversity
reception.
The 1200, 1400, 700 and 1620 series were in production when I went to
work
there. They were followed by the RCB2000, the first SDR based dual
receiver
with a digital video combiner. That was the last project that I was
involved with.

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 10:59 AM Chuck Harris <cfharris@erols.com>
wrote:

When I worked for DEI towards their end, there were some curious
TR711 telemetry receivers that had tuners that went from 50 to 110MHz,
and had stereo multiplex discriminator plugins. They were on the
factory floor, but they weren't where they should be, but rather
were sitting on carts out of the way up against a wall.

I never knew what the real story was on them, but...

-Chuck Harris

greenboxmaven via groups.io wrote:
Collins was also very helpful to employees who wanted to build for
themselves at home
what they built in the factory. At least one person bought the
parts
over time and
assembled their own 75A4 receiver. Such things are probably
unthinkable
with today's
business model, but the benefits in workforce morale and skill are
irreplaceable. As
far as instrumentation companies building audio gear, Non Linear
Systems
built and
sold stereo receivers for a while, and Rhode & Schwarz built many
models
of
communications receivers and some excellent FM stereo tuners.

Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY


On 10/10/20 9:17 AM, Chuck Harris wrote:
Tektronix employees made lots of special equipment to make their
jobs in manufacturing, testing and repair easier.

And, tektronix most certainly did make a variety of instruments
that were involved in audio, including amplifiers, low distortion
signal generators, and distortion analyzers.

This item is very likely made for use on the factory floor at
tektronix.

Further, like HP, tektronix made their supply room available to
employees for off the books projects using tektronix cabinets,
etc..

-Chuck Harris

Tim Phillips wrote:
From Tim P (UK)
ebay: 193462625382

Even has a Tek cal sticker on it. I suspect the only thing 'Tek'
about
it
is the case.
No internal shots either. Anyway Tektronix never got into audio
gear
??

curiouser and .......

Tim
Richard R. Pope
 

Michael,
It sounds like someone had a hissy fit because they were losing their job. It was a very childish thing to do.
GOD Bless and Thanks,
rich!

On 10/10/2020 5:02 PM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:
A lot of information about early Microdyne products was lost when they
moved the Telemetry division to Ocala. They announced that they were
closing their original facility on a Friday. Monday morring they came in to
find all documentation had been shredded, and test fixtures destroyed.
There was one working 1100 series receivers left in shipping, along with
some plugins. They had to reverse engineer their own designs to resume
business. The built a fireproof records vault at the Ocala facility to
ensure that would never happen again. I once had to go to the president of
our division to get some documents, because they refused to release them. I
had to verify the procedurs on a special modification for one customer. The
documents were unsigned, because they hadn't been verified. A catch 22!

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 2:43 PM stevenhorii <sonodocsch@gmail.com> wrote:
Michael A. Terrell
 

Some were offered jobs in Florida, and no one admitted to the destruction.
I knew one of the engineers who founded Microdyne, and when he would visit
the plant he would share the company history. I wasn't a typical employee.
My title was Production Test Tech, but I worked with problems wherever they
cropped up. I really shocked my boss one day. He asked me to find them a 10
MHz distribution amp. I built a one in, 32 output from a video router that
I had bought at a hamfest for $10. They were expecting to spend over $3000
for one. I traded it for a Tektonix Vectorscope and a waveform monitor.. We
had plenty of them, after shutting down the C-band Satellite production
line.:)

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 6:09 PM Richard R. Pope <mechanic_2@charter.net>
wrote:

Michael,
It sounds like someone had a hissy fit because they were losing
their job. It was a very childish thing to do.
GOD Bless and Thanks,
rich!

On 10/10/2020 5:02 PM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:
A lot of information about early Microdyne products was lost when they
moved the Telemetry division to Ocala. They announced that they were
closing their original facility on a Friday. Monday morring they came in
to
find all documentation had been shredded, and test fixtures destroyed.
There was one working 1100 series receivers left in shipping, along with
some plugins. They had to reverse engineer their own designs to resume
business. The built a fireproof records vault at the Ocala facility to
ensure that would never happen again. I once had to go to the president
of
our division to get some documents, because they refused to release
them. I
had to verify the procedurs on a special modification for one customer.
The
documents were unsigned, because they hadn't been verified. A catch 22!

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 2:43 PM stevenhorii <sonodocsch@gmail.com>
wrote:
John Williams
 

I believe that was the origin of the lunch box. Wasn’t it to bring your lunch into work, and take parts for your project home at night? I think there was a movie about a guy who worked in a car plant who brought home a car, one piece at a time. Just kidding of course, but I bet it happened a lot. Oh well.
Richard R. Pope
 

John,
There is Johnny Cash's song about him bringing home a Cadillac one piece at a time. The title took the whole staff to type it up. LOL! :)
GOD Bless and Thanks,
rich!

On 10/10/2020 5:30 PM, John Williams wrote:
I believe that was the origin of the lunch box. Wasn’t it to bring your lunch into work, and take parts for your project home at night? I think there was a movie about a guy who worked in a car plant who brought home a car, one piece at a time. Just kidding of course, but I bet it happened a lot. Oh well.
-
 

6:34 PM. The listing has already been taken down. No record of it so that
means E-bay took it down for fraud or something similar.

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 7:47 AM Tim Phillips <timexucl@gmail.com> wrote:

From Tim P (UK)

ebay: 193462625382

Even has a Tek cal sticker on it. I suspect the only thing 'Tek' about it
is the case.
No internal shots either. Anyway Tektronix never got into audio gear ??

curiouser and .......

Tim
stevenhorii
 

As a college kid, I had a summer job working at the Newark Electronics
branch in NYC. I was initially hired to do inventory, so I got to see a lot
of boxes full of stuff. I also dds some packaging for US DoD contracts.
Each part went into a bag that had a mimeographed label (yep - we had a
thing that looked like a large rubber stamp, but it was curved and a
mimeograph stencil was placed over the curved surface - an ink pad was
underneath) and was heat-sealed once the part was dropped in. Years later,
I got a laugh when I would see boxes of parts still packed like that turn
up at hamfests.

One thing I did was to take advantage of the policy that Newark had - I
could buy components at Newark's quantity wholesale price. I took home a
fair bit of my paycheck in parts. I had a couple of those parts cabinets
with the plastic drawers and stocked them with various components I would
use over the years. I think I still have some discrete transistors that are
now considered "vintage". Some are still in the small Texas
Instruments boxes or the things that looked like a small matchbook. I
eventually transitioned to being an expediter. I spent the day chasing down
orders and getting shipping dates for the customers. I got to know some of
the buyers for IBM in Fishkill and one of the US Army depots. For some
reason, IBM once sent payment for an invoice to my attention at Newark - in
it was a check for $50,000. I handed it over promptly to our accounts
receivable guy (it wasn't made out to me anyway).

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 6:30 PM John Williams <books4you4@mail.com> wrote:

I believe that was the origin of the lunch box. Wasn’t it to bring your
lunch into work, and take parts for your project home at night? I think
there was a movie about a guy who worked in a car plant who brought home a
car, one piece at a time. Just kidding of course, but I bet it happened a
lot. Oh well.
Michael A. Terrell
 

Some companies would issue a 'scrap pass' for tools or damaged
subassemblies. I got some items that way at Cincinnati Electronics. Their
ham radio club would get whatever was on hand for the Cincinnati Hamfest to
sell so they could buy parts or equipment for the club. They issued the
Diamalloy tools to people in production, so a lot of them ended up surplus.
They also sold surplus test equipment to employees. Mostly HP and DEI stuff
that was in bad shape. I remember getting a HP 606, a 608 and two Panoramic
spectrum analyzers. There were a couple DEI signal sources that I scrapped
for the pairs of HP2355 attenuators. That was over 40 years ago. :(

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 6:30 PM John Williams <books4you4@mail.com> wrote:

I believe that was the origin of the lunch box. Wasn’t it to bring your
lunch into work, and take parts for your project home at night? I think
there was a movie about a guy who worked in a car plant who brought home a
car, one piece at a time. Just kidding of course, but I bet it happened a
lot. Oh well.
Chuck Harris
 

I would have thought DEI and TR711 would have done it for anyone
familiar with the company, but yes, it was Defense Electronics, Inc..

I worked there in 1972, when I was a high school student.

DEI came from Nems-Clarke and Vitro in some way, which is where the
tube receivers came from. The TR711, itself, was entirely solid state,
but there was the odd nuvistor, or WE coaxial triode, in some of the
external preamps, and front end assemblies. Along with a lot of
Mallory inductatuners. Transistors weren't all that good at RF in
1972.

There was tremendous inbreeding between Nems-Clarke, Vitro, DEI, CEI,
WJ, ACL, and apparently Microdyne. Many of them were routinely suing
each other for infringement of this, or that, patent.

After DEI, the telemetry receiver, company folded in 1972 or 73; DEI
continued on as a studio making Hollywood movies for another decade,
or so.

When they found out I was a ham, they kept giving me all sorts of
stuff.

-Chuck Harris

Michael A. Terrell wrote:

A bit off topic, but are you talking Defense Electronics, Incorporated? A
couple engineers and a salesman from there designed and built the first
Microdyne Telemetry receiver in their garage. That frequency range covered
the Instrumentation data recorders. They output a 70 MHz center frequency.
They recorded the 70MHz IF output for later use, as well as keeping records
on tests. Typically, minr data channels were looked at on individual
channels after a test, to prevent the need for multiple receivers. I had a
pile of DEI manuals. Everything gwas tube based. The Microdyne products
were all Solid State. Their early products were all 1100 series. They were
large, but they could be paired with a combiner to do diversity reception.
The 1200, 1400, 700 and 1620 series were in production when I went to work
there. They were followed by the RCB2000, the first SDR based dual receiver
with a digital video combiner. That was the last project that I was
involved with.

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 10:59 AM Chuck Harris <cfharris@erols.com> wrote:

When I worked for DEI towards their end, there were some curious
TR711 telemetry receivers that had tuners that went from 50 to 110MHz,
and had stereo multiplex discriminator plugins. They were on the
factory floor, but they weren't where they should be, but rather
were sitting on carts out of the way up against a wall.

I never knew what the real story was on them, but...

-Chuck Harris

greenboxmaven via groups.io wrote:
Collins was also very helpful to employees who wanted to build for
themselves at home
what they built in the factory. At least one person bought the parts
over time and
assembled their own 75A4 receiver. Such things are probably unthinkable
with today's
business model, but the benefits in workforce morale and skill are
irreplaceable. As
far as instrumentation companies building audio gear, Non Linear Systems
built and
sold stereo receivers for a while, and Rhode & Schwarz built many models
of
communications receivers and some excellent FM stereo tuners.

Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY


On 10/10/20 9:17 AM, Chuck Harris wrote:
Tektronix employees made lots of special equipment to make their
jobs in manufacturing, testing and repair easier.

And, tektronix most certainly did make a variety of instruments
that were involved in audio, including amplifiers, low distortion
signal generators, and distortion analyzers.

This item is very likely made for use on the factory floor at
tektronix.

Further, like HP, tektronix made their supply room available to
employees for off the books projects using tektronix cabinets,
etc..

-Chuck Harris

Tim Phillips wrote:
From Tim P (UK)
ebay: 193462625382

Even has a Tek cal sticker on it. I suspect the only thing 'Tek' about
it
is the case.
No internal shots either. Anyway Tektronix never got into audio gear ??

curiouser and .......

Tim
Michael A. Terrell
 

I know that Microdyne sued, and won against Scientific-Atlanta for cloning
one of our products. Their design replaced the LED displays with a large
flat screen, but the actual circuits were copied from a receiver and maual
they bought directly from Microdyne. I agree about early transistors. Some
were barely good at audio frequencies. Hank Lin was one of the founders of
Microdyne. He sold all his stock to L3 around 1999/2000. He had controlling
interest. Telemetry is a tiny market, and I'm certain that employees
drifted from one company to another. L3 bought Microdyne after wasting
$1,000,000 trying to develop a digital receiving system. We got the
'prototype' after the purchase. It was the cabinet for the design, with an
old laptop inside to mimic the controls. It was too light, so the
'engineer' had wedged a heavy roll of ribbon cable under the laptop.
Microdyne also built and sold some test equipment for Telemetry. The
TSS2000 was in production in the late '90s. I have possibly the only
surviving Microdyne C-band signal generator. They built a handful of them
for final test. They all went into a dumpster when they abandoned Satellite
TV products. A tech had grabbed this one. He gave it to me, about 20 years
ago.

On Mon, Oct 12, 2020 at 12:26 AM Chuck Harris <cfharris@erols.com> wrote:

I would have thought DEI and TR711 would have done it for anyone
familiar with the company, but yes, it was Defense Electronics, Inc..

I worked there in 1972, when I was a high school student.

DEI came from Nems-Clarke and Vitro in some way, which is where the
tube receivers came from. The TR711, itself, was entirely solid state,
but there was the odd nuvistor, or WE coaxial triode, in some of the
external preamps, and front end assemblies. Along with a lot of
Mallory inductatuners. Transistors weren't all that good at RF in
1972.

There was tremendous inbreeding between Nems-Clarke, Vitro, DEI, CEI,
WJ, ACL, and apparently Microdyne. Many of them were routinely suing
each other for infringement of this, or that, patent.

After DEI, the telemetry receiver, company folded in 1972 or 73; DEI
continued on as a studio making Hollywood movies for another decade,
or so.

When they found out I was a ham, they kept giving me all sorts of
stuff.

-Chuck Harris

Michael A. Terrell wrote:
A bit off topic, but are you talking Defense Electronics, Incorporated? A
couple engineers and a salesman from there designed and built the first
Microdyne Telemetry receiver in their garage. That frequency range
covered
the Instrumentation data recorders. They output a 70 MHz center
frequency.
They recorded the 70MHz IF output for later use, as well as keeping
records
on tests. Typically, minr data channels were looked at on individual
channels after a test, to prevent the need for multiple receivers. I had
a
pile of DEI manuals. Everything gwas tube based. The Microdyne products
were all Solid State. Their early products were all 1100 series. They
were
large, but they could be paired with a combiner to do diversity
reception.
The 1200, 1400, 700 and 1620 series were in production when I went to
work
there. They were followed by the RCB2000, the first SDR based dual
receiver
with a digital video combiner. That was the last project that I was
involved with.

On Sat, Oct 10, 2020 at 10:59 AM Chuck Harris <cfharris@erols.com>
wrote:

When I worked for DEI towards their end, there were some curious
TR711 telemetry receivers that had tuners that went from 50 to 110MHz,
and had stereo multiplex discriminator plugins. They were on the
factory floor, but they weren't where they should be, but rather
were sitting on carts out of the way up against a wall.

I never knew what the real story was on them, but...

-Chuck Harris

greenboxmaven via groups.io wrote:
Collins was also very helpful to employees who wanted to build for
themselves at home
what they built in the factory. At least one person bought the parts
over time and
assembled their own 75A4 receiver. Such things are probably
unthinkable
with today's
business model, but the benefits in workforce morale and skill are
irreplaceable. As
far as instrumentation companies building audio gear, Non Linear
Systems
built and
sold stereo receivers for a while, and Rhode & Schwarz built many
models
of
communications receivers and some excellent FM stereo tuners.

Bruce Gentry, KA2IVY


On 10/10/20 9:17 AM, Chuck Harris wrote:
Tektronix employees made lots of special equipment to make their
jobs in manufacturing, testing and repair easier.

And, tektronix most certainly did make a variety of instruments
that were involved in audio, including amplifiers, low distortion
signal generators, and distortion analyzers.

This item is very likely made for use on the factory floor at
tektronix.

Further, like HP, tektronix made their supply room available to
employees for off the books projects using tektronix cabinets,
etc..

-Chuck Harris

Tim Phillips wrote:
From Tim P (UK)
ebay: 193462625382

Even has a Tek cal sticker on it. I suspect the only thing 'Tek'
about
it
is the case.
No internal shots either. Anyway Tektronix never got into audio gear
??

curiouser and .......

Tim
ditter2
 

I suspect this belonged to R. Michael Johnson, who managed TM5000 engineering when I started at Tek. My cube was directly across from his. He may have worked in portables engineering previously, as a label indicates.
There were many versions of “short destroyer” throughout the engineering and production areas at Tek. In the early days of multi-layer circuit boards, registration of the individual layers was not always perfect. Occasionally you would see a board where a ground plane layer is slightly mis-registered to where one or two pads are shorted to ground. The short destroyer could be used to attempt to burn out the short. Most employed a capacitor bank to store a charge to quickly vaporize the short. Applying low voltage at high current continuously tended to burn the board, whereas a quick zap with higher voltage would quickly vaporize the short without burning the board.

Steve
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