Tektronix analog oscilloscopes

In the 1960s Tektronix introduced the relatively compact 450 series of portable oscilloscopes, starting with the 50 MHz 453.

These oscilloscopes were still heavy for portable usage, and the chassis was complicated and expensive to build.

That was not enough to compete against the "big" competitors like Dumont, RCA, Varian, General Electric(?).

Tektronix realized these drawbacks, and introduced the model 511 (designed by Howard Vollum, Milt Bave and others).

Two vertical inputs may be connected but only one can be displayed (selector switch) versus the time sweep.

However, there is also an external horizontal input which permits two signals to be compared by displaying them as an x-y plot, instead of only one waveform as a function of time.

The 547 was made popular largely because of the innovative "ALT" mode, which allowed for dual traces to be shown on a single beam oscilloscope, providing much of the functionality of dual-beam scopes for a fraction of the added cost.

[4] It was of interest to many users to be able to see more than one electrical signal on the screen at the same time, so they could be easily compared or correlated.

They offered excellent portability along with light weight and low power consumption.

Most of this was due to the simplification of circuit design, and a lightweight switching power supply.

Completely microprocessor driven and firmware controlled, these were a new breed, similar in appearance but not otherwise related to the 2200 scopes.

This oscilloscope offers extremely high speed writing, making one-shot pulses at nanosecond duration visible in normal room light.

With a cursor-equipped scope, the user can accurately and quickly measure, as a minimum, voltage, time, and frequency of all or parts of the waveform.

Accuracy varies, but even the most basic cursors give more accurate results than taking readings from the graticule.

The 2445, 2465 and 2467 have an option called CTT, which links a highly accurate frequency counter with the cursor and readout system.

In a flash, as many as twenty parameters, or attributes, of the signal can be derived and displayed on the screen.

Scopes that can do parameter extraction may also be able to communicate to a computer over a GPIB setup, and do even more advanced math on the waveform.

They combined high bandwidth and sampling rates with automation features and waveform processing capabilities.

The 2402 communicates with the scope on the GPIB bus, and will transfer waveform data, programs and front panel setups both directions.

Waveforms can be stored on floppy disks, processed by software in the 2402, and reloaded into the scope for display.

The HC100 is a four-color plotter designed to make waveform plots directly from the Tektronix 2430-series oscilloscopes.

The 7000 series, a high end modular oscilloscope family, was introduced in the early 1970s.

The series included a readout system that would display the plug in's settings on the CRT.

More exotic digital plug ins used the mainframe oscilloscope as a mere display unit.

Combining a 7000-series storage oscilloscope mainframe with a non-storage spectrum analyzer plug in (7L12, 7L13) allowed a slow sweep with a display that did not fade away.

The 7L5, 7L14 and 7L18 had their own internal digital storage and were capable of showing a stable display even when used in non-storage mainframes.

Because of its high transfer rate at the time (nominally 1 MB/s), this interface bus quickly gained popularity.

Today, the name General Purpose Interface Bus (GPIB) is more widely used than HP-IB.

ANSI/IEEE 488.2-1987 strengthened the original standard by defining precisely how controllers and instruments communicate.

A Tektronix 465 portable analog oscilloscope is a typical instrument of the late 1970s.
Tektronix 2235A
One of the digital storage oscilloscopes of the 2400 series which featured both conventional analog and also digital models was the 2440 with a sampling rate of 500 MS/sec and bandwidth 300 MHz
One of the basic models of the 7000 series was the Tektronix 7603 with single beam and three plug-in slots
The above model 7603 in a rare version for mounting in a 19-inch rack with an amber -coloured screen
The Programmable Digitizer plug-in 7D20 from 1982 for the 7000 series models took up all three module plug-ins. It had a special ADC design allowing to capture single-shot events at 40 MSample/s and could store waveforms, thus turning an analog oscilloscope into a digital storage oscilloscope. It had a GPIB interface for programming and was controlled by a microprocessor Motorola 68B09 .