Wavetek 3ST Operation Manual
Sofia Gilcrease
I picked up a Wavetek 395 arbitrary waveform generator on eBay a few weeks ago. Wavetek 395 is a single channel, 12-bit resolution DDS AWG with a maximum clock frequency of 100 MHz. While the operation manual is readily available, I could not find the service manual anywhere. So I was curious to see the construction inside. In this post, I will show you some of the teardown pictures. If you want to see a video of the teardown along with some analysis, you scroll towards the end of this post.
The PM1038-D14 has a display unit with digital storage. From manual photos and diagrams, the D14 would appear not to be a Tek OEM unit (see also Introduction to the 5000-Series Oscilloscopes regarding 5114/D14).
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When you read the manuals for the meters, they talk about 4 wire measurements, but have little info on how to do it practically. I have only seen a few vendors who make 4 wire alligator clips and they are usually priced in the less than $100 range. Fluke has a trick 4 in 2 connection for their latest DMMs, but I didn't get one for my 8845A yet. I used to take standard probes and solder extra "sense" wires to the tips. Then I plug those into the sense inputs on the meter. This works well, but I always wanted some gold-plated, two halves connected by a rubber band type 4 wire alligator clips.
I decided to open up my scope. I had an idea that maybe something was wrong with the front panel. I laid the front panel down in front of the scope, with cables still connected. I had a service manual so I looked at the rows and columns of the keyboard scan. One of the signals was goofy. I narrowed it down only to find a green LED that signified AC coupling on Channel 1 was shorted. This is the only LED I have ever seen with this fault -- except the ones I purposely ran at 200 mA just to see how bright they got.
I appreciate products that possess exquisite quality. One of my first was a synthesized RF generator. I have never seen a manual for this piece, but I managed to get it working anyway. How? By utilizing the writing on the backplane of the unit.
I got a manual for the DM44 and traced the problem to the DMM 2 chip set. I used the 475 scope function to look at the digital lines and finally found one that was trying to go high but couldn't. It looked similar to a runt pulse. I checked leakage between the pin and VCC and GND. The VCC path was open. I did a visual inspection looking for anything unusual.
The HP9000 designers were masters at their craft. Its ease of use and turnkey operation were there way before the Macs touted it. Only its high price prevented the HP9000 series from being more popular.
I brought the R/332 home and turned it on. It booted HP-UX (HP's version of UNIX) and then Basic 5.1. I had no documentation and manuals weren't available at the time so I decided to play around. I remembered the CAT (CATalog) command, which is similar to the DIR command in DOS. I found a huge program stored by the previous owner. Its 20,000 lines of code were overwhelming, but it gave the computer some unexpected value.
The power supply had a thermistor mounted to a switching FET's heat sink. Nearby was a potentiometer. Having no idea about the circuit topology, I marked the pot's position and then tweaked it just a bit. The over-temp LED went out and stayed out. The unit has worked fine ever since. I wrote a GPIB interrogator program to find the commands of instruments whose manuals I had yet to obtain.
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