HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .

[Paul Richer]

Check out this YouTube video about the 35660A FFT Analyser that many of us worked on.  It is a recent tear-down and repair of an old unit with lots of comments of how well the product was designed.  

EEVblog #523 - REPAIR: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNsJ8qSk6CI

 

Paul Richer
paul_...@yahoo.com

[Irma Lam]

Thanks Paul!

Sweet memory. Electronics these days no longer get designed, built and mfg with pride like this any more. HP is not like what it used to be either.

I know I sound old :-)

Irma

Paul Richer <paul_...@yahoo.com> wrote:

>--
>You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "exlks" group.
>To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to exlks+un...@googlegroups.com.
>To post to this group, send email to ex...@googlegroups.com.
>Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/exlks.
>For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[Fred Cruger]

Thanks, Paul! 

 

[Inga Johnson]

Great team. Great product. Great fun.

Missing all of you!

---

From: Paul Richer <paul_...@yahoo.com>
To: "ex...@googlegroups.com" <ex...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2013 9:31 AM
Subject: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .

[Paul Richer]

BTW, I do know how to spell analyzer... That's what I get for using copy/paste. Maybe that's how Aussies spell it. Sent from Yahoo! Mail on Android

---

From: Paul Richer <paul_...@yahoo.com>;

To: ex...@googlegroups.com <ex...@googlegroups.com>;
Subject: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .
Sent: Tue, Sep 24, 2013 4:31:00 PM

[Rich Mills]

Bob's your uncle, that is how the Aussie's spell it.

Thanks for sending this out. If you read the comments, our own Tom Bruins has some informative posts scattered in among the noise (I think the noise in these comments is more random than in the analyzer!)

Rich

---

Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 13:44:32 -0700
From: paul_...@yahoo.com
Subject: Re: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .
To: ex...@googlegroups.com

[Bill Smith]

I wonder if it came with the little crow bar we shipped with it to get the cover off?

[Rich Wilson]

Here is the followup where he corrects the vignetting,

complete with a tutorial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhXueY3FW6s

Rich

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "exlks" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to exlks+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to ex...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/exlks.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

--
Rich Wilson
ric...@gmail.com
425-337-7129 (land line)
425-374-4760 (Google)

[Jim Cauthorn]

Very fun.  Thanks for forwarding!   Funny to see Gazelle (which never quite lived up to the name) after all these years.   We should find this chap a nice .. what was it called? ... Roadrunner or something?  (the much faster successor to Gazelle)    

Since Gazelle was one of the first honest-to-goodness industrial applications of Objective C, perhaps it would merit a berth in a curiosity niche in an Apple museum somewhere...   :)

Best regards to all,

Jim

---

Date: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 17:45:20 -0700
Subject: Re: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .
From: ric...@gmail.com
To: paul_...@yahoo.com
CC: ex...@googlegroups.com

[Mike & Jody McGrath]

I agree, very fun!  My recollection is that Gazelle was the overall project name and Roadrunner was the subgroup that designed the firmware.  I was on Roadrunner...

 

Jody McGrath

[Tom Bruhns]

The follow-up went under the umbrella "Wonderland."  I think we had "Mad Hatter" and "March Hare" under it, but those got kind of lost in the noise.  I think it's fair to say that Wonderland was started because my Instrument Basic team convinced me that we could use the Gazelle platform and make something a lot better.  I recall trying to sell that idea at division staff meetings and being frustrated because "staff" weren't seeing the value in doing it...it took several meetings to finally be accepted.  We ended up changing more than we originally planned, and the project team grew considerably...but I think it was worth it.  We added measurements (rotating machinery/computed order tracking comes immediately to mind), increased dynamic range by increasing the bits in the DSP processing, improved the floppy drive, got rid of the silly arrow buttons in favor of a know/RPG, ...  And of course, the 4-channel portable HP35670 grew out of the Wonderland project.  (At the end of the Wonderland project, we actually did a quick mock-up of how you could add a couple input boards in the empty slots and make a 4-channel instrument.)

Cheers,
Tom

"Weird hou men maun aye be makin war insteid o 
things they need." -- Tom Scott (1918-1995)

[Paul Hall]

I remember that 4 channel demo quite well!  Those were definitely the days.

Good times, Tom, good times.

                Paul.

[Wayne Smith]

Salsa (35670A) was the third and final evolutionary step for the Gazelle/Wonderland platform. The last time I looked (within the last year) they were still selling it. For roughly half (?) the project’s life, it was just a two-channel analyzer, but there was strong customer demand for four channels and the team wanted to intro with four channels. Management was unconvinced because they thought it would delay the project too long. Gaylord and 3 or 4 of the affected team members worked over the weekend to mock-up a four channel Salsa for management to see on Monday (perhaps based on the mock-up your team put together Tom). The effort paid off, and the Salsa we know was born. That team, headed by Gaylord, was fantastic!

 

Wayne (who the hell is he?) Smith

 

---

From: ex...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ex...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tom Bruhns

Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2013 5:17 PM
To: ex...@googlegroups.com

[craig...@agilent.com]

As part of the program Tom mentions, we in marketing had a fantastic time getting “real signals” to use for Demonstration of our products….

 

You may all remember the dynamic signals CD’s….with our Road T-Shirts for intro which said….

 

A demo that’s loud attracts a crowd…

 

Regards,

Craig Short

 

From: ex...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ex...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Tom Bruhns

Sent: Wednesday, September 25, 2013 5:17 PM
To: ex...@googlegroups.com

[Fred Cruger]

The two memories I carry most from those projects are:

1). The first time the Objective C code actually came together in the box, it took so long to respond to the first button push that most of the team had gone to lunch and realized it had worked only after they got back.  There was certainly some "overhead" involved in the new SW structures!.

2). The first time Gaylord gave the "It can stand on it's end and work" demo . . and then pushed it over in a loud tabletop tip-over test.  The folks in the video think the 35660A was well-built - imagine the comments for the 35670A!

There's still a big world of physical measurements out there, and the DSP created by the LKS teams spawned product breakthroughs from DC+ to RF/uW.

Great memories, great technology.

Fred

Sent from my iPhone

[Glenn Engel]

We used to joke the startup screen should say 'Creating billions and billions of objects' while it was off preparing to run.  Many of us were relieved to switch to C++ (aka g++) for the 35670 and 89400.

Perhaps in a bit of bad karma coming back at me I've had the misfortune to code a fair amount in Objective-C over the last year for an iOS app.   In a bit of rare luck, Apple introduced Automatic Reference Counting (aka automatic garbage collection) in 2011 so I didn't get the full experience dealing with memory allocations gone awry.  Hard to believe it took them 20 years to add what Java and C# have had all along.  

--

G

[Ken Blue]

Whoa!  I am having flashbacks.  One of my first jobs on the Gazelle team was looking at object garbage collection on power-up!  After viewing the YouTube video, I also remember seemingly endless sessions programming sets of ROMS in front of the lab's Data I/O burner.  As I recount my 29+ year bio with HP/Agilent (while still here at HP), I consistently call out my time @ LKS as the best! 

 

Ken

Jim

To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to mailto:exlks%2Bunsu...@googlegroups.com.

To post to this group, send email to ex...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/exlks.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

[Keith Bayern]

Yes, Ken you were the object policeman.  I was working on the display code (harmonic markers, etc) and you were appointed the object policeman.  There we were, trying to use the new-fangled object paradigm, and you came along and rapped our knuckles for using objects.  I have spoken about that many times thru the years when needing an amusing story about object oriented software. (yes, I am a hoot at parties)

keith

---

Date: Thu, 26 Sep 2013 09:30:11 -0700
From: blue_ho...@yahoo.com

Subject: Re: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .

To: gle...@engel.org
CC: ex...@googlegroups.com

[Rick Kunin]

My recollection is that the first objective-C project, Tsunami(the 3562A) was started in Santa Clara.  I remember that the compiler company was still writing the compiler and that they had one or two engineers working full time in SC for awhile.  One was a scraggly beard, sandal-wearing infrequently bathed guy who often took naps on one of the tables in the computer room.

Rick Kunin
rku...@alum.mit.edu

[mike...@agilent.com]

Hi Rick,

 

Tsunami was written in a UCSD Pascal variant ported to the HP 1000.  I supported the compiler after we cut off the compiler company (Renaissance Software Inc.) for not ever finishing the compiler port.

 

Mike Hall

[Rick Kunin]

Sigh... Right recollection, wrong language.  It was 30 years ago....

Rick Kunin
rku...@alum.mit.edu

[Jim Waite]

If we're after the roots of Objective-C use at LSID, does it not start with the host side of the HP3565 Paragon system?  This was known by the project names Stamp (modal analysis), and Envelope (DSA), which eventually were obsoleted in favor of third-party software applications?

Jim

[Neel Malik]

Wow, lots of familiar names from a long time ago.  I remember Gazelle for its Smart Units (in addition to Objective-C), which were really cool.  But, they were deemed too cool for our users and were turned off in the final version.  I remember having to figure this out when a customer complained about saved traces being remembered incorrectly.  Since Gazelle only stored the units string with saved traces, when it recalled a trace it had to covert the string to a smart unit.  This worked fine for most normal units, but not so well for Power Spectral Density units (which don’t follow the normal rules). 

 

While I came up with a solution to the specific problem, there wasn’t a really good solution to the general problem.  And, the development system did not generate the same bits twice, so it was really hard to be confident that the only change was the intended one.  In the end we bought the device back and the customer traded up to a Salsa and was very happy. 

 

Gazelle also had an RS-232 port which provided access to the command line/interpreter which made it possible to interact with the objects, which made it much easier to figure things out.

 

Neel Malik / Senior Program Manager / Direct (425) 703-4332

Click in and do more.

 

Make the lawyers happy and read this:

This email message may contain confidential and privileged information.  Any unauthorized use is prohibited.  If you are not the intended recipient, please contact the sender by reply email and destroy all copies of the original message.

[HN]

Wow, watching the guts of this instrument in the YouTube video, the many familiar names (project and team member's names) and the many diverse applications this "kitchen sink" DSP 

tool can be used in (accelerometer, rotating machinery/computed order tracking algorithm, automatic System's pole and zero calculation..) brings back so many (positive flashbacks) . Cannot believe it has been almost 3 decades since LSID introduces DSP techniques in signal analyzers  design.

Hoang

On Sep 26, 2013, at 1:50 PM, Neel Malik <ne...@microsoft.com> wrote:

Wow, lots of familiar names from a long time ago.  I remember Gazelle for its Smart Units (in addition to Objective-C), which were really cool.  But, they were deemed too cool for our users and were turned off in the final version.  I remember having to figure this out when a customer complained about saved traces being remembered incorrectly.  Since Gazelle only stored the units string with saved traces, when it recalled a trace it had to covert the string to a smart unit.  This worked fine for most normal units, but not so well for Power Spectral Density units (which don’t follow the normal rules). 

 

While I came up with a solution to the specific problem, there wasn’t a really good solution to the general problem.  And, the development system did not generate the same bits twice, so it was really hard to be confident that the only change was the intended one.  In the end we bought the device back and the customer traded up to a Salsa and was very happy. 

 

Gazelle also had an RS-232 port which provided access to the command line/interpreter which made it possible to interact with the objects, which made it much easier to figure things out.

 

Neel Malik / Senior Program Manager / Direct (425) 703-4332

<image001.png>

[smoo...@juno.com]

Tom,

Didn't you do a presentation as the March Hare -- I just remember you had a great top and the cutest pink nose!

 

Hope all are well!

 

Cheryl

---------- Original Message ----------
From: Tom Bruhns <k7...@msn.com>
To: ex...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .
Date: Wed, 25 Sep 2013 17:16:39 -0700

The follow-up went under the umbrella "Wonderland."  I think we had "Mad Hatter" and "March Hare" under it, but those got kind of lost in the noise.  I think it's fair to say that Wonderland was started because my Instrument Basic team convinced me that we could use the Gazelle platform and make something a lot better.  I recall trying to sell that idea at division staff meetings and being frustrated because "staff" weren't seeing the value in doing it...it took several meetings to finally be accepted.  We ended up changing more than we originally planned, and the project team grew considerably...but I think it was worth it.  We added measurements (rotating machinery/computed order tracking comes immediately to mind), increased dynamic range by increasing the bits in the DSP processing, improved the floppy drive, got rid of the silly arrow buttons in favor of a know/RPG, ...  And of course, the 4-channel portable HP35670 grew out of the Wonderland project.  (At the end of the Wonderland project, we actually did a quick mock-up of how you could add a couple input boards in the empty slots and make a 4-channel instrument.)

Cheers,
Tom

"Weird hou men maun aye be makin war insteid o 
things they need." -- Tom Scott (1918-1995)

On 9/25/2013 1:34 PM, Mike & Jody McGrath wrote:

I agree, very fun!  My recollection is that Gazelle was the overall project name and Roadrunner was the subgroup that designed the firmware.  I was on Roadrunner...

 

Jody McGrath

-----Original Message-----
From: Jim Cauthorn <jim_ca...@hotmail.com>
To: Rich Wilson <ric...@gmail.com>; Paul Richer <paul_...@yahoo.com>

Cc: exlks <ex...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tue, Sep 24, 2013 11:24 pm
Subject: RE: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .

Very fun.  Thanks for forwarding!   Funny to see Gazelle (which never quite lived up to the name) after all these years.   We should find this chap a nice .. what was it called? ... Roadrunner or something?  (the much faster successor to Gazelle)    

 

Since Gazelle was one of the first honest-to-goodness industrial applications of Objective C, perhaps it would merit a berth in a curiosity niche in an Apple museum somewhere...   :)

 

Best regards to all,

 

Jim

---

[Tom Bruhns]

Seeing Jim Waite's name reminded me that one of the very big additions we made in the HP35665 over the 35660 was octave/third-octave/twelfth-octave measurements, meeting industry standard definitions (as I recall with a small caveat with respect to the top frequency band, but my recollection about that detail is pretty fuzzy, >20 years later).  Thanks to Jim for the implementation of the measurement and the understanding of how to get it right so it would be accepted, and I believe to Gary Anderson and David Bakeman for integrating it into the user interface and display in a really nice way.  I remember somewhere along the way working on pink noise myself, but don't recall for sure if it was to go along with the octaves stuff in Wonderland, or for a later project.

Cheers,
Tom

"Weird hou men maun aye be makin war insteid o 
things they need." -- Tom Scott (1918-1995)

[Tom Bruhns]

Jeez, that sounds more like something Gaylord would have done!  But I might have.  Every once in a while, I step out of my shell and do something off-the-wall like that.  Heck, I was even a villain in a melodrama once--well, for four performances (back when I worked for one of the "beltway bandits").  I do remember that we did some skit-like things on that project.  Of course, that was back in the time when we still had release dinners and found other reasons to celebrate things.

Cheers,
Tom

"Weird hou men maun aye be makin war insteid o 
things they need." -- Tom Scott (1918-1995)

[john_g...@agilent.com]

Since we’re wandering down memory lane . . .

My special memory from back in those days was my gjob of changing the coprocessor from the TMS32010 to the TMS320C25.

I can’t imagine doing something rebellious like that these days.

 

As Fred said, great memories and great technology.

 

--John

[James Vasil]

@Hoang: As fondly as I remember my days at LSID, I feel obliged to pay respects to those who paved the way for us..  So let’s also remember the HP 5420 (1977) and HP 3582 (1978) that introduced these techniques (and the phrase Dynamic Signal Analyzer—I think) MORE than 35 years ago!

 

@Mike: I never knew that the Pascal we used was based on UCSD Pascal!  Perhaps because all the tools weren’t ported?  Didn’t we call it “Modular Pascal” or something like that? Anyhow, thanks for this bit of trivia!!

 

@Jim: Wasn’t the overall Paragon SW called “HP Vista”?  I’m surprised no HP lawyers went after Microsoft for “Vista” OS but I guess the current “HP” people probably don’t think about instruments too often L.

 

Take care,

James

[David Rasmussen]

Tom, I do remember at some checkpoint you quoting from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. (Might have been someone else but in my mind I hear it in your voice.) I believe it was the following:

`Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

`That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

`I don't much care where--' said Alice.

`Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

`--so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.

`Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, `if you only walk long enough.'

 

Alice felt that this could not be denied, so she tried another question. `What sort of people live about here?'

 

`In THAT direction,' the Cat said, waving its right paw round, `lives a Hatter: and in THAT direction,' waving the other paw, `lives a March Hare. Visit either you like: they're both mad.'

`But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.

`Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat: `we're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'

`How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.

`You must be,' said the Cat, `or you wouldn't have come here.'

 

I'm amazed at how applicable it remains :-)

David

[moo...@comcast.net]

It's great to see all the names of folks who were involved with this project! What a great time and era to have been a part of HP!

After a great experience working with Object-Oriented technology using Mainsail for our work with Analog Design Tools and the Design Capture System, it was a good learning experience that Gazelle provided in how OO should probably not be used. Though I worked on low level hardware diagnostics and test programs for Gazelle, the performance of our first 35660 application is a lesson, that I found (and continue to find) software development programs (e.g. Boeblingen - semiconductor test - and other recent server based programs I've managed), seem to forget. Glenn, I think that was my line. :) It of course must be said with a Carl Sagan accent...

Again, great hear from everyone!

Best,

Moots

---

From: "Glenn Engel" <gle...@engel.org>
Cc: "<ex...@googlegroups.com>" <ex...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2013 8:37:27 AM

[mike...@agilent.com]

Hi James,

 

Not all the UCSD P-system tools were ported for use by Tsunami (HP3562).  RSI wrote/adapted an M68000 P-Code Translator,  Assembler, and Linker to go with the compiler.  The “Modular Pascal” (aka Modcal) you remember was the compiler toolset used by Atlas (HP3561) which was also based upon the UCSD P-system.

 

Good Luck,

Mike

[Williams, Laura M]

I have to say that I worked with some of the intelligent people in my life at Agilent and HP.  I figured out how to get people talking again you just talk technology.  What great discussions!  Hope all of you are doing well both professionally and personally.  Laura

[Rick Kunin]

I believe that credit for the entire FFT/DSA business at HP/Agilent is mostly attributed to Ron Potter, probably the best engineer I have ever met, and one of the nicest.   The legend was that Dr. Bunsen Honeydew of Muppet fame was partially based on Ron.  The muppeteer that did Dr. Honeydew, and Gonzo, had been an engineer at the Santa Clara division before he got his break with the Muppets.

Rick

Rick Kunin
rku...@alum.mit.edu

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 12:45 PM, Yuji Kobayashi <ykoba...@vtiinstruments.com> wrote:

HP5420A was called “Digital Signal Analyzer”.  It’s origin is HP5450/51 “Fourier Analyzer”.  I thought HP3562A was the first product that started to use the name “Dynamic Signal Analyzer”.

 

Jim Waite is right about Stamp & Envelope project.  Stamp was canceled, but Envelope became HP-Vista. These projects started in Pascal.  If I remember correctly, Dennis Obrien came up OOP scheme in Pascal, but later changed to Objective-C.

 

So nice to hear from you, all!

Yuji

 

From: ex...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ex...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of James Vasil

Sent: Thursday, September 26, 2013 6:25 PM

To: 'HN'; 'Neel Malik'

Cc: 'Jim Waite'; mike...@agilent.com; rku...@alum.mit.edu; keith...@hotmail.com; blue_ho...@yahoo.com; 'Glenn Engel'; 'exlks'

[Fred Cruger]

Of course, given our advancing ages, most of us technical types wish we had paid more attention to what Finance folks could have taught us about managing our money!

 

Fred

[Fred Cruger]

. . . and speaking of age and longevity and the changes it sometimes brings, someone sent me this earlier today, and I thought I'd share . . . hope I offend no one . . .

 

Why old men don't get hired:

 

 

The Job Interview

 

Human Resources Manager: "What is your greatest weakness?"

 

Old man: "My honesty."

 

Human Resources Manager: "I don't think honesty is a weakness."

 

Old Man: "I don't really give a shit what you think."

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Scott Scheirman <scott.s...@gmail.com>
To: Fred Cruger <abbot...@aol.com>
Cc: laura.williams <laura.w...@fluke.com>; mootsi <moo...@comcast.net>; glenne <gle...@engel.org>; exlks <ex...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Fri, Sep 27, 2013 3:16 pm
Subject: Re: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .

Great to hear from all of you!

Lots of good memories about working with you on Paragon, Rambo, Vista, Audible and other projects.  "We didn't know it was impossible, so we just did it."

I'm still at HP.  7 years with HP Medical, followed by ~19 years with printers.

Best to all of you!

Scott Scheirman

Sent from my iPhone

[Scott Scheirman]

Great to hear from all of you!

Lots of good memories about working with you on Paragon, Rambo, Vista, Audible and other projects.  "We didn't know it was impossible, so we just did it."

I'm still at HP.  7 years with HP Medical, followed by ~19 years with printers.

Best to all of you!

Scott Scheirman

Sent from my iPhone

On Sep 27, 2013, at 2:24 PM, Fred Cruger <abbot...@aol.com> wrote:

[Gary Heimbigner]

This is really stretching some old memory cells, but the HP 3582A was formally called a Spectrum/Network Analyzer.  The origin of the term Dynamic Signal Analyzer was the exceptional HP application note AN-243 titled The Fundamentals of Signal Analysis, which was primarily written by John Gibbs.  The first products to use the Dynamic Signal Analyzer nomenclature were the HP 3561A (single channel started at LID) and the 3562A (dual channel started at Santa Clara).  Those were fun times coordinating projects across three states.

Gary Heimbigner

 

Sent from my iPad

[Evan Gander]

I actually own a 3561A. It was sold as salvage by the medical device company I work for. The amazing resolution was used to test the ECG front end impedance flatness. It's an impressive machine.

[Gary Heimbigner]

Rich, 

You prompted me to go back and pull out my old 3582A training material.  It turns out that I had a "senior moment" in my original response.  The 3582A was actually called a Spectrum Analyzer to minimize the confusion in the transition from the HP 3580 which was an older low frequency swept spectrum analyzer. 

I'll be damned if I can remember the code name for the 3582A, but I seem to recall that the DSP filter chips were the ones referred to as BUFFALO.  Nick Pendergrass and John Farnbach were the key players on the chip set.  Anyone who remembers those two will appreciate how the idea of the "buffalo chips" came about. Talk about a couple of characters!

Let me also add a bit of distant history.  It seems that Santa Clara wasn't terribly excited to see Loveland (LID) doing a low cost FFT analyzer and sent a letter to the Division manager suggesting (demanding?) that we cancel the project.  I will always remember Cullen Darnell who was the Section Manager explaining to the Division Manager in a meeting that he would "eat glass before he would cancel the project".  That ended the conversation.  Those were the good old days!

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 27, 2013, at 9:14 PM, Rich Wilson <ric...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 7:17 PM, Gary Heimbigner <gary_he...@soron.com> wrote:

This is really stretching some old memory cells, but the HP 3582A was formally called a Spectrum/Network Analyzer.  

As I recall, the 3582 was also called BUFFALO, as in

Barely Usable Fast Fourier Analyzer Like Object.

 

The ASIC (or buffalo chip, I presume) had a buffalo in the artwork, 

and each time the ASIC was turned, they added another buffalo 

chip to the artwork.

(third hand information held for a long time in volatile memory;

please correct me if I'm wrong!)

Rich

-- 
Rich Wilson
ric...@gmail.com
425-337-7129 (land line)
425-374-4760 (Google)

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 27, 2013, at 9:14 PM, Rich Wilson <ric...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 7:17 PM, Gary Heimbigner <gary_he...@soron.com> wrote:

This is really stretching some old memory cells, but the HP 3582A was formally called a Spectrum/Network Analyzer.  

As I recall, the 3582 was also called BUFFALO, as in

Barely Usable Fast Fourier Analyzer Like Object.

 

The ASIC (or buffalo chip, I presume) had a buffalo in the artwork, 

and each time the ASIC was turned, they added another buffalo 

chip to the artwork.

(third hand information held for a long time in volatile memory;

please correct me if I'm wrong!)

Rich

[Rich Wilson]

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 7:17 PM, Gary Heimbigner <gary_he...@soron.com> wrote:

This is really stretching some old memory cells, but the HP 3582A was formally called a Spectrum/Network Analyzer.  

As I recall, the 3582 was also called BUFFALO, as in

Barely Usable Fast Fourier Analyzer Like Object.

 

The ASIC (or buffalo chip, I presume) had a buffalo in the artwork, 

and each time the ASIC was turned, they added another buffalo 

chip to the artwork.

(third hand information held for a long time in volatile memory;

please correct me if I'm wrong!)

Rich

[kev...@comcast.net]

So good to see all these names come up in my inbox again and to hear more about the early days of DSA. But I just have to say -- How about that 89400!
The highlight of my career was having the privilege of working with the team that brought DSA to RF. I found myself talking the ear off a 20-something EE about the development of the 89400 at my son's engagement party just last weekend. Poor guy. I don't get out much.

Kevin

----- Original Message -----
From: ric...@gmail.com
To: gary_he...@soron.com
Cc: james...@gmail.com,hoan...@yahoo.com,ne...@microsoft.com,jwa...@ieee.org,mike...@agilent.com,rku...@alum.mit.edu,keith...@hotmail.com,blue_ho...@yahoo.com,gle...@engel.org,ex...@googlegroups.com
Sent:Sat Sep 28 07:02:18 UTC 2013
Subject: Re: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .

[David Bennett]

Wow – I created the CAD Build Documentation for this product and still have a couple of drawing print outs.  Great memories!

 

Thanks,

Paul.

 

From: ex...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ex...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Paul Richer
Sent: Tuesday, September 24, 2013 9:31 AM
To: ex...@googlegroups.com
Subject: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .

 

 

Check out this YouTube video about the 35660A FFT Analyser that many of us worked on.  It is a recent tear-down and repair of an old unit with lots of comments of how well the product was designed.  

 

EEVblog #523 - REPAIR: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNsJ8qSk6CI

 

 

Paul Richer
paul_...@yahoo.com

--

[Gary Heimbigner]

John, 

It was only five fingers for the filters. The other five were for the matching pseudorandom noise source spectral components.

Gary

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 28, 2013, at 11:01 AM, John Gibbs <ja_g...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Hi Gary and Rich and all the gang,
 
Good to hear from you all and recall the good old days.
 
I have attached a highly magnified picture of the HP3582A digital filter chip from the HP Journal.  You can actually see the buffalo.
 
To add to the story: As I recall, Management had decided that we needed to have code names for all the projects.  They came up with some awful names and some nameless group of engineers decided one weekend to fix that.  Monday morning each of the project modules had a name posted along with the explanation.  The only one that really stuck was 'Buffalo' and as Rich said 'Barely Usable Fast Fourier Like Object'.  Of course the fact that we were developing a chip for the project had something to do with the popularity!
 
Of course Gary introduced the 3582 to the world.  I remember him standing with all 10 fingers in the air saying "256 parallel filters."
 
I am afraid that I was the one responsible for 'Dynamic Signal Analyzer'.  When I took over the 3582 from Gary, I was working on a seminar with Santa Clara who called their product line 'Digital Signal Analyzer', even though it did not analyze digital signals. To keep the same initials and distinguish from swept spectrum analysis (which required quasi-static signals) I came up with Dynamic Signal Analysis.  Mea Culpa....
 
John
 

 

---

CC: james...@gmail.com; hoan...@yahoo.com; ne...@microsoft.com; jwa...@ieee.org; mike...@agilent.com; rku...@alum.mit.edu; keith...@hotmail.com; blue_ho...@yahoo.com; gle...@engel.org; ex...@googlegroups.com
From: gary_he...@soron.com

Subject: Re: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .

Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 21:50:00 -0700
To: ric...@gmail.com

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "exlks" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to exlks+un...@googlegroups.com.
To post to this group, send email to ex...@googlegroups.com.
Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/exlks.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.

<Buffalo Chip.jpg>

[Galen Wiles]

Now that was funny. Great to hear all the discussion.  

Galen Wiles, Director of IT

KrollFactual Data

www.krollfactualdata.com

[atkin...@comcast.net]

Hello all,

This is a great trip down memory lane! I'll "pile on" with more history. The very first FFT-based product was the 5450A Fourier Analyzer described in an HP Journal Article published in 1970. It was featured in Bill Hewlett's book "Inventions of Opportunity". The article(s) were written by Pete Roth and Ago Kiss. Quoting Ago: "The original idea of the 5450A and much of the initial groundwork is due to Ron Potter". 

The 5450A, developed at the Santa Clara division, was a system, taking up an entire rack based on the 2115A mini-computer, which had 8K of magnetic "core" memory. It took Cooley & Tukey's FFT algorithm coupled with the mini-computer to make Fourier Analysis practical. The 5450A performed power spectrum, correlation, tri-spectrum averaging, transfer function (later known as frequency response), coherence, and histogram measurements. All in 8K!

HP may have been the first in the industry to provide the coherence function. Our major competitor at the time was a company called Time Data.

Later the 5420A was developed at Santa Clara. This was a 3-box "instrument", where the middle box was a 21MX computer from the Computer division in Cupertino. To improved measurement speed, a "bolt-on" arithmetic co-processor was developed that interfaced directly to the computer backplane. The co-processor didn't just do FFT's. It did a lot of the complex math required for tri-spectrum averaging, frequency response and coherence functions. All of the software in the 5420 was written in assembly language and micro-code! Webb Mckinney was the software project leader.The 5420 was aimed at the mechanical vibration market, including modal analysis.

About that same time Loveland (LID) was developing the HP3582, which John and Gary describe. It is true that Santa Clara management tried to get the project canceled. Kinda silly!

The best way to end this battle was to merge the two divisions forming Lake Stevens Instrument Division. We had started the Tsunami (3562) project in Santa Clara and trasferred it to Lake Stevens. Our first proto was wire-wrapped! I think the 3561 (Atlas) was started in Loveland and transferred to Lake Stevens. I remember Mike Aken, Glenn Engel, Bryan Hoog and others working on the 3561 project.

MIke Hall, James Vasil, Rick Kunin and others worked on the Tsunami project. Most of the software was written in Pascal, as Mike described. But we also called assembly language functions from Pascal. I remember that MIke implemented "wait" and "signal" semaphores so that we could have a multi-threaded OS. Since the product had a separate FFT board and separate bit-slice processor for doing floating-point operations, we truly had a multi-processor system. I still have a Tsunami (an environmental unit) that I bought for $100 at one of our auctions. It actually worked about 20 years ago!

It was great working with all of you back in Lake Stevens' glory days!

Sandy Atkinson

---

From: "Rick Kunin" <rku...@alum.mit.edu>
To: "Yuji Kobayashi" <ykoba...@vtiinstruments.com>
Cc: "James Vasil" <james...@gmail.com>, "HN" <hoan...@yahoo.com>, "Neel Malik" <ne...@microsoft.com>, "Jim Waite" <jwa...@ieee.org>, "mike hall" <mike...@agilent.com>, keith...@hotmail.com, "blue household" <blue_ho...@yahoo.com>, "Glenn Engel" <gle...@engel.org>, "exlks" <ex...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, September 27, 2013 10:14:29 AM

[Rich Wilson]

He's added another followup, this time speculating on improving the

front end performance:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNDisp8IKe0&feature=em-uploademail

[Dave and Vera Nunnally]

This trip down memory lane is wonderful.  Rich is correct, the Buffalo chip used in the 3582 did have a buffalo on it, and behind that buffalo was a pile of chips designating the revision.  The pile had gotten quite tall the last time I saw it years and years ago.  I remember this little factoid because I was working in the old Loveland IC facility at the time, and walked over to the layout area one day to ask what all the laughing was about.   We worked hard, but we did have fun! 

 

Another interesting thing that Gary brought up was application note AN-243.  When I left Agilent back in 2003, I hunted high and low for some of those classic notes, AN-243 being one of them.  When I wound up at Tektronix, they actually became quite handy as educational aids to new engineers (and old engineers stuck in the time domain).  We wound up doing some very interesting work using Tektronix ultra high speed 8 bit ADCs in a prototype for a digital high speed fiber data transmission network.  Not much dynamic range, but oh how fast it was.  When I retired, I had to go around and collect some of the old HP classics that had been loaned out.  As with HP/Agilent, a complaint at Tek was the fact that there were so few really good applications notes being made anymore, as they were looking more and more like glossy sales brochures.

 

Start the rumor that Danaher (the company that bough Tektronix and Fluke) is going to buy the new EMG spinoff from Agilent!  The headquarters will be in Everett (Fluke).  Use Fred's theory that if it comes back around from a different source, it must be true.

 

Dave Nunnally-Class of 2003

[Tom Bruhns]

FYI:  It appears the AN-243 series of ap notes is available as PDFs on the Agilent website:

• AN 243, Fundamentals of Signal Analysis
• AN 243-1, Effective Machinery Measurements Using Dynamic Signal Analyzers
• AN 243-2, Measuring Switching Power Supply Stability with the HP 3562A
• AN 243-2 (again), Control System Development Using Dynamic Signal Analyzers
• AN 243-3, Fundamentals of Modal Testing
• AN 243-4, Fundamentasl of the z-Domain and Mixed Analog/Digital Measurements
• AN 243-7, Bearing Runout Measurements

Some of you may wish to snag them while they are still there.  ;-)  Just search for AN-243 at the Agilent home page, and you should get the same list I just did.

Cheers,
Tom

"Weird hou men maun aye be makin war insteid o 
things they need." -- Tom Scott (1918-1995)

[Mike LaMothe]

Actually Lynn Schmidt was the key player on the development of the digital filter IC and as the HP Journal article says, “Lou Scheffer (who) performed most of the chip device design and layout.”

Mike LaMothe

On Friday, September 27, 2013 9:50:00 PM UTC-7, Gary Heimbigner wrote:

Rich, 

You prompted me to go back and pull out my old 3582A training material.  It turns out that I had a "senior moment" in my original response.  The 3582A was actually called a Spectrum Analyzer to minimize the confusion in the transition from the HP 3580 which was an older low frequency swept spectrum analyzer. 

I'll be damned if I can remember the code name for the 3582A, but I seem to recall that the DSP filter chips were the ones referred to as BUFFALO.  Nick Pendergrass and John Farnbach were the key players on the chip set.  Anyone who remembers those two will appreciate how the idea of the "buffalo chips" came about. Talk about a couple of characters!

Let me also add a bit of distant history.  It seems that Santa Clara wasn't terribly excited to see Loveland (LID) doing a low cost FFT analyzer and sent a letter to the Division manager suggesting (demanding?) that we cancel the project.  I will always remember Cullen Darnell who was the Section Manager explaining to the Division Manager in a meeting that he would "eat glass before he would cancel the project".  That ended the conversation.  Those were the good old days!

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 27, 2013, at 9:14 PM, Rich Wilson <ric...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 7:17 PM, Gary Heimbigner <gary_he...@soron.com> wrote:

This is really stretching some old memory cells, but the HP 3582A was formally called a Spectrum/Network Analyzer.  

As I recall, the 3582 was also called BUFFALO, as in

Barely Usable Fast Fourier Analyzer Like Object.

 

The ASIC (or buffalo chip, I presume) had a buffalo in the artwork, 

and each time the ASIC was turned, they added another buffalo 

chip to the artwork.

(third hand information held for a long time in volatile memory;

please correct me if I'm wrong!)

Rich

-- 
Rich Wilson
ric...@gmail.com

425-337-7129 (land line)
425-374-4760 (Google)

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 27, 2013, at 9:14 PM, Rich Wilson <ric...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 7:17 PM, Gary Heimbigner <gary_he...@soron.com> wrote:

This is really stretching some old memory cells, but the HP 3582A was formally called a Spectrum/Network Analyzer.  

As I recall, the 3582 was also called BUFFALO, as in

Barely Usable Fast Fourier Analyzer Like Object.

 

The ASIC (or buffalo chip, I presume) had a buffalo in the artwork, 

and each time the ASIC was turned, they added another buffalo 

chip to the artwork.

(third hand information held for a long time in volatile memory;

please correct me if I'm wrong!)

Rich

--
Rich Wilson
ric...@gmail.com

425-337-7129 (land line)
425-374-4760 (Google)

[Bob Cutler]

It has been fun, and great to hear from everyone.

FYI The guy is looking at upgrading Gazelle's front end for better noise
performance in his latest video.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MNDisp8IKe0

Back on the objective-C topic, also seem to remember Glenn or someone
describing the code as having "an object per bit". It certainly felt like
that to me one time when I was simply trying to figure out how two number
got added together.

I also remember that the "must" requirements were 10 screen updates per
second.

Bob

> blue_ho...@yahoo.com; Glenn Engel; exlks%0

[Tom Bruhns]

I think he'll be disappointed in trying to make changes to the input
circuits in Gazelle. The problem is that the input buffer stage was
designed with no voltage gain. That means that the noise will be
dominated by the noise in the output stage of the op amp, not by the
input noise in either the FETs or the op amp. It would not be at all
easy to add gain to that input buffer. I built a very low noise (low
voltage noise, for low-impedance sources) low distortion external preamp
when we got a field request for lower noise. You can use the instrument
to measure the preamp's gain, store it in a register, and use it to stay
calibrated through math functions.

Cheers,
Tom

"Weird hou men maun aye be makin war insteid o
things they need." -- Tom Scott (1918-1995)

[smoo...@juno.com]

Ah, the Fundamentals of Signal Analysis -- helped me "graduate" after getting my Electronics Technical Certificate from North Seattle CC

 

Was a savior to becoming a "Learning Products Engineer,"  aka Tech Writer  (Along with additional tutoring by several of the EE's in R&D)

 

Cheryl Marks

 

Another Ron Potter story ...

I had never meant Ron before I had to interview him to get some information for one of the "learning products" I was writing.  I was totally intimidated by his technical brilliance and acumen.  I was positive I would not understand a word he say only to be totally won over by his patience, kindness and commitment to teaching me what I needed to know.  What a wonderful man.

---------- Original Message ----------
From: Tom Bruhns <k7...@msn.com>
To: ex...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .
Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2013 12:49:30 -0700

FYI:  It appears the AN-243 series of ap notes is available as PDFs on the Agilent website:

• AN 243, Fundamentals of Signal Analysis
• AN 243-1, Effective Machinery Measurements Using Dynamic Signal Analyzers
• AN 243-2, Measuring Switching Power Supply Stability with the HP 3562A
• AN 243-2 (again), Control System Development Using Dynamic Signal Analyzers
• AN 243-3, Fundamentals of Modal Testing
• AN 243-4, Fundamentasl of the z-Domain and Mixed Analog/Digital Measurements
• AN 243-7, Bearing Runout Measurements

Some of you may wish to snag them while they are still there.  ;-)  Just search for AN-243 at the Agilent home page, and you should get the same list I just did.

Cheers,
Tom

"Weird hou men maun aye be makin war insteid o 
things they need." -- Tom Scott (1918-1995)

On 9/30/2013 10:09 AM, Dave and Vera Nunnally wrote:

This trip down memory lane is wonderful.  Rich is correct, the Buffalo chip used in the 3582 did have a buffalo on it, and behind that buffalo was a pile of chips designating the revision.  The pile had gotten quite tall the last time I saw it years and years ago.  I remember this little factoid because I was working in the old Loveland IC facility at the time, and walked over to the layout area one day to ask what all the laughing was about.   We worked hard, but we did have fun! 

 

Another interesting thing that Gary brought up was application note AN-243.  When I left Agilent back in 2003, I hunted high and low for some of those classic notes, AN-243 being one of them.  When I wound up at Tektronix, they actually became quite handy as educational aids to new engineers (and old engineers stuck in the time domain).  We wound up doing some very interesting work using Tektronix ultra high speed 8 bit ADCs in a prototype for a digital high speed fiber data transmission network.  Not much dynamic range, but oh how fast it was.  When I retired, I had to go around and collect some of the old HP classics that had been loaned out.  As with HP/Agilent, a complaint at Tek was the fact that there were so few really good applications notes being made anymore, as they were looking more and more like glossy sales brochures.

 

Start the rumor that Danaher (the company that bough Tektronix and Fluke) is going to buy the new EMG spinoff from Agilent!  The headquarters will be in Everett (Fluke).  Use Fred's theory that if it comes back around from a different source, it must be true.

 

Dave Nunnally-Class of 2003

 

From: ex...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ex...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Gary Heimbigner

Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2013 12:59 PM
To: John Gibbs

Cc: Rich Wilson; James Vasil; HN; Neel Malik; Jim Waite; mike...@agilent.com; rku...@alum.mit.edu; keith...@hotmail.com; blue_ho...@yahoo.com; Glenn Engel; exlks
Subject: Re: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .

 

John, 

 

It was only five fingers for the filters. The other five were for the matching pseudorandom noise source spectral components.

 

Gary

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 28, 2013, at 11:01 AM, John Gibbs <ja_g...@hotmail.com> wrote:

Hi Gary and Rich and all the gang,
 
Good to hear from you all and recall the good old days.
 
I have attached a highly magnified picture of the HP3582A digital filter chip from the HP Journal.  You can actually see the buffalo.
 
To add to the story: As I recall, Management had decided that we needed to have code names for all the projects.  They came up with some awful names and some nameless group of engineers decided one weekend to fix that.  Monday morning each of the project modules had a name posted along with the explanation.  The only one that really stuck was 'Buffalo' and as Rich said 'Barely Usable Fast Fourier Like Object'.  Of course the fact that we were developing a chip for the project had something to do with the popularity!
 
Of course Gary introduced the 3582 to the world.  I remember him standing with all 10 fingers in the air saying "256 parallel filters."
 
I am afraid that I was the one responsible for 'Dynamic Signal Analyzer'.  When I took over the 3582 from Gary, I was working on a seminar with Santa Clara who called their product line 'Digital Signal Analyzer', even though it did not analyze digital signals. To keep the same initials and distinguish from swept spectrum analysis (which required quasi-static signals) I came up with Dynamic Signal Analysis.  Mea Culpa....
 
John
 

 

---

CC: james...@gmail.com; hoan...@yahoo.com; ne...@microsoft.com; jwa...@ieee.org; mike...@agilent.com; rku...@alum.mit.edu; keith...@hotmail.com; blue_ho...@yahoo.com; gle...@engel.org; ex...@googlegroups.com
From: gary_he...@soron.com
Subject: Re: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .
Date: Fri, 27 Sep 2013 21:50:00 -0700
To: ric...@gmail.com

Rich, 

 

You prompted me to go back and pull out my old 3582A training material.  It turns out that I had a "senior moment" in my original response.  The 3582A was actually called a Spectrum Analyzer to minimize the confusion in the transition from the HP 3580 which was an older low frequency swept spectrum analyzer. 

 

I'll be damned if I can remember the code name for the 3582A, but I seem to recall that the DSP filter chips were the ones referred to as BUFFALO.  Nick Pendergrass and John Farnbach were the key players on the chip set.  Anyone who remembers those two will appreciate how the idea of the "buffalo chips" came about. Talk about a couple of characters!

 

Let me also add a bit of distant history.  It seems that Santa Clara wasn't terribly excited to see Loveland (LID) doing a low cost FFT analyzer and sent a letter to the Division manager suggesting (demanding?) that we cancel the project.  I will always remember Cullen Darnell who was the Section Manager explaining to the Division Manager in a meeting that he would "eat glass before he would cancel the project".  That ended the conversation.  Those were the good old days!

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 27, 2013, at 9:14 PM, Rich Wilson <ric...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 7:17 PM, Gary Heimbigner <gary_he...@soron.com> wrote:

This is really stretching some old memory cells, but the HP 3582A was formally called a Spectrum/Network Analyzer.  

 

As I recall, the 3582 was also called BUFFALO, as in

Barely Usable Fast Fourier Analyzer Like Object.

 

The ASIC (or buffalo chip, I presume) had a buffalo in the artwork, 

and each time the ASIC was turned, they added another buffalo 

chip to the artwork.

 

(third hand information held for a long time in volatile memory;

please correct me if I'm wrong!)

 

Rich

 

-- 
Rich Wilson
ric...@gmail.com
425-337-7129 (land line)
425-374-4760 (Google)

 

Sent from my iPad

On Sep 27, 2013, at 9:14 PM, Rich Wilson <ric...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Fri, Sep 27, 2013 at 7:17 PM, Gary Heimbigner <gary_he...@soron.com> wrote:

This is really stretching some old memory cells, but the HP 3582A was formally called a Spectrum/Network Analyzer.  

 

As I recall, the 3582 was also called BUFFALO, as in

Barely Usable Fast Fourier Analyzer Like Object.

 

The ASIC (or buffalo chip, I presume) had a buffalo in the artwork, 

and each time the ASIC was turned, they added another buffalo 

chip to the artwork.

 

(third hand information held for a long time in volatile memory;

please correct me if I'm wrong!)

 

Rich

 

--
Rich Wilson
ric...@gmail.com

[Glenn Engel]

The object per bit reference was to a product from the Santa Rosa division that abstracted their hardware down to that level.  Fortunately nobody at LKS ever considered such silliness but instead made interfaces more functionally abstract (mostly) than being directly tied to hardware bits.  This allowed us to easily adapt to the many hardware versions of boards during development!

--

G

[Scott Scheirman]

/ Slight drift/

At a (nameless) HP division after I left Lake Stevens, "it was decided" (for a C and DSP 56K project) that all code would be modular.

Gee, that sounded good, until I understand that he meant that every each and define (e.g., #define TRUE 1) would be in its own file.  Oh, and the file needed to be named cryptically.

That resulted in maybe 50,000 files to compile.  As a result 'nightly' builds took 36 hours or so.

Somehow I ignored that silliness to get my job done. :)

That's one of the many reasons I missed Lake Stevens.  As others have mentioned many times here, it was also the people.

Best,

Scott Scheirman

The object per bit reference …

--

G

[smoo...@juno.com]

Let me be explicit, I've never been one for subtlety ...

THANK YOU JOHN

 

Cheryl

---------- Original Message ----------
From: John Gibbs <ja_g...@hotmail.com>
To: "smoo...@juno.com" <smoo...@juno.com>, "k7...@msn.com" <k7...@msn.com>
Cc: "ex...@googlegroups.com" <ex...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: RE: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2013 20:08:21 -0700

You guys really made my whole week.  It is great to hear that Fundamentals of Signal Analysis has helped so many and is still available.  I thought maybe I was the only one still teaching engineers from AN-243.
 
I burned a lot of midnight oil writing that note 30+ years ago!
 
Thanks for the memories!
John Gibbs
 

---

From: smoo...@juno.com
Date: Tue, 1 Oct 2013 17:28:34 +0000
To: k7...@msn.com
CC: ex...@googlegroups.com

This trip down memory lane is wonderful.  Rich is correct, the Buffalo chip used in the 3582 did have a buffalo on it, and behind that buffalo was a pile of chips designating the revision.  The pile had gotten quite tall the last time I saw it years and years ago.  I remember this little factoid because I was working in the old Loveland IC facility at the time, and walked over to the layout area one day to ask what all the laughing was about.   We worked hard, but we did have fun! 

 

Another interesting thing that Gary brought up was application note AN-243.  When I left Agilent back in 2003, I hunted high and low for some of those classic notes, AN-243 being one of them.  When I wound up at Tektronix, they actually became quite handy as educational aids to new engineers (and old engineers stuck in the time domain).  We wound up doing some very interesting work using Tektronix ultra high speed 8 bit ADCs in a prototype for a digital high speed fiber data transmission network.  Not much dynamic range, but oh how fast it was.  When I retired, I had to go around and collect some of the old HP classics that had been loaned out.  As with HP/Agilent, a complaint at Tek was the fact that there were so few really good applications notes being made anymore, as they were looking more and more like glossy sales brochures.

 

Start the rumor that Danaher (the company that bough Tektronix and Fluke) is going to buy the new EMG spinoff from Agilent!  The headquarters will be in Everett (Fluke).  Use Fred's theory that if it comes back around from a different source, it must be true.

 

Dave Nunnally-Class of 2003

 

From: ex...@googlegroups.com [mailto:ex...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Gary Heimbigner

Sent: Saturday, September 28, 2013 12:59 PM
To: John Gibbs

[hoang nhu]

Thanks Glenn for the encouraging feedback and the funny reason you gave for posting this message ! It reminds me of a line Fred Cruger used to say (at one of the rounds of

layoff at LSID ?) : "There are only 3 things that are certain: Death, Taxes, and Layoffs"  :)

Hi All,

   A late Merry XMAS and Happy New Year wish to you.

  Please take a look at my email and Glenn's reply below, and help spread the words about ...... the NEW 4th element after Death/Taxes/Layoffs : the Birth/Arrival of the "Internet of Kool Things"

  Thanks

Hoang

BTW, KoolThings would not have been made possible without much of the DSP fundamental knowledge acquired in HP LSID DSA projects/product lines

Begin forwarded message:

From: Glenn Engel <gle...@engel.org>
Date: December 27, 2013 10:32:06 PM PST
To: hoang nhu <hoan...@yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: HP 35660A Dynamic Signal Analyser .

Hi Hoang,

This looks like a very ambitious project.  Many "Kool" applications!

I think you should feel free to send something to the group to let them know what you're working on.  People are interested in what our old workmates are doing these days so will find it of interest.  In fact I'd like to hear more about what people are up to these days instead of waiting for funeral notices!

Best of luck to your project!

--

Glenn

On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 7:56 PM, hoang nhu <hoan...@yahoo.com> wrote:

Hi Glenn,

  A late Merry XMAS and Happy New Year wish to you.

  Not sure if you remember me, but I remember you and the nice memories when I worked at LSID (1984-1992) in various teams under Howard Hilton, Gaylord, Tom Bruhns, Fred Cruger, Phil ....

  This recent email thread  on LSID HP DSA rekindled lots of our early work on DSP which has followed me since then  

I am in a team that just launched on Kick Starter.com this "Internet of Kool Things" product which has quite a bit of DSP content, and the fundamental knowledge was acquired when I worked on HP LSID FFT-based DSA.

 http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/koolthings/koolthings-smartphone-new-koolapplications-for-iot

I'd like to know if there is any rule in this exlks email group (I'm assuming you are the admin?) that prevents members from sending email to promote/market the sales of a new product or not?

If not, I'd like to share the above link with the group to request help on "creating the buzz" for this KickStarter KoolThings campaign (by sharing the link via emails, facebook, Twitter messages to friends).

This would allow us to mass produce this product with richer apps and cloud services.

Please let me know

Thanks

Hoang

[Fred Cruger]

Hi Hoang,

 

"Kool Things" looks exciting!  Thanks for letting everyone hear about it.  Happy New Year!

The days in Lake Stevens were special, for sure, and it's great to see an update without a funeral announcement, as Glenn says.  We'll know in a little over a week what the "new" company name is going to be . . . but whatever it is, it won't have the same feeling we had as an HP product division pushing the state-of-the-art in DSP.  It's a real challenge to build the same level of camaraderie in a geographically-dispersed organization. 

 

Best regards,

Fred

[hoang nhu]

Hi Fred,

  Great to hear back from you , even without your usual joke :) 

"to build the same level of camaraderie" ===> agree, and such camaraderie was built through a combination of great teamwork (I remember many very long nights with Mike Hall, Dave Shoup... debugging

elusive HP3562A "triggering phase" bugs)  and good joke-telling skills/magician's tricks like yours in times of (project) stress.

Thanks for the update on the "new" name search for the company! I am so surprised the dear old HP way is still searching for a new name/identity. Best wishes.

Hoang

---

From: Fred Cruger <abbot...@aol.com>
To: hoan...@yahoo.com; gle...@engel.org
Cc: ex...@cutler.ws; dvnun...@gmail.com; gary_he...@soron.com; ja_g...@hotmail.com; ric...@gmail.com; james...@gmail.com; ne...@microsoft.com; jwa...@ieee.org; mike...@agilent.com; rku...@alum.mit.edu; keith...@hotmail.com; blue_ho...@yahoo.com; ex...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Saturday, December 28, 2013 8:28 AM

[Mark Borys]

Hi all –

Hope you are all doing great and had a incredible Christmas!

 

I concur about the teamwork at LSID… I often point to it as a great example of cooperation and accomplishment… and some great stories!

 

Take care and Happy New Year,

Mark

[Wahls]

Happy Holidays everyone!

Some great memories below!  We had some great times and incredible results at Lake Stevens. I've been on a lot of teams since those days and none have compared to what we had back then. 

Hope all of you are doing well!

-Gaylord

Sent from my mobile phone

[Daniel J Wisehart]

Happy Holidays to all, indeed.

My time at LSID and then HP Labs was regrettably very short, but it was unforgettable.  As you know better than I, the HP Way attracted and then retained the people who worked there, but it is the individuals we worked with who made the experience special.

So the multi-million dollar question is: why aren't we still together?  Sure, there are some things that were out of our control, but what could we have done to help make LSID a growing concern?  I heard someone once say that LSID was best at analog solutions and it is now a digital world.  I replied that this is non-sense: digital is easy (easier); all of the interesting problems are still in the analog realm and any hard problem those digital boxes have likely requires an analog solution.  I am not that young, but I figure I will still be doing the same type of work for another 20 years or so, so it is a question I ask myself all the time.  It is not enough to put together a awesome team; you have to retain and grow the team if you are going to be successful by all measures.

Thanks for everything,

Daniel

[Scott Scheirman]

HI Daniel,

Nice insights.

In my case, I only left b/c I was bribed to do so. ($$$ package enabled me to purchase a house in McMinnville.)  Then again, what culture shock is was to go to a decidedly lower tech R&D environment.  Although I am still at HP, I miss those LSID days, facility, and people.

Scott

[Bill Harris]

Fred Cruger <abbot...@aol.com> writes:

> The days in Lake Stevens were special, for sure, and it's great to see
> an update without a funeral announcement, as Glenn says. We'll know
> in a little over a week what the "new" company name is going to be
> . . . but whatever it is, it won't have the same feeling we had as an
> HP product division pushing the state-of-the-art in DSP. It's a real
> challenge to build the same level of camaraderie in a
> geographically-dispersed organization.

Hi, all. It feels a bit like old home week here recently. As everyone
else has said, the time at Lake Stevens was indeed special in many ways.
For those of you with experience in other parts of HP / Agilent /
NewerCo, I'm curious how unique LSID / LSD was and what your conjecture
is as to why. At least by the time I joined in 1981, it felt like the
culture came from all over the Division, not just from a few select
leaders. Was it that way universally in the HP of the time?

I'm curious, because I'd like to see that culture--or the evolution of
that culture--in other places, and I suspect we carry part of the germ
of that with us.

Bill

PS: Have you all read Chuck House's _The HP Phenomenon_ yet?
--
Bill Harris
Facilitated Systems
http://makingsense.facilitatedsystems.com/

[Hoang Nhu]

- Changed the email Subject  to match the content of this email about the Kickstarter KoolThings campaign. The project has now been successfully funded, and we have 5 more days to go in this campaign . Thanks to all the ex-LSID backers !

Also, I'm curious about the "new" company name that Fred mentioned in email below.

Best

Hoang

[Fred Cruger]

The new name is "Keysight" - a not-so-subtle reference to "key insight".  Makes pretty good sense for what we're trying to deliver to customers through technology.  The logo is also more user-friendly.

 

Best regards,

Fred

 

 

 

-----Original Message-----
From: Hoang Nhu <hoan...@yahoo.com>
To: Fred Cruger <abbot...@aol.com>