r/electronics • u/Spezi-Community • 15d ago

Good old Soviet 100mHz Oscilliscope Workbench Wednesday

Post image
1.1k Upvotes

98% Upvoted

234

u/LukasReinkens 15d ago

100mHz for anyone who wants to have the least possible Bandwidth ever

38

u/P__A 15d ago

My DMM is faster :D

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u/PurepointDog 14d ago

Yeah, but does it automatically plot? Checkmate

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u/[deleted] 15d ago edited 15d ago

Actually for the 80s eastern block, 100MHz was decent, most scopes were limited around 10MHz due to the slow deflection in cheap CRTs. To overcome this limitation, CRTs had multiple electrodes for post-acceleration, which was changing the geometry, thus needed to be corrected with electrostatic lenses, and also the vertical deflection plates are not one but multiple, so that the electrons move in phase with the signal, as they travel from the gun towards the screen. Generally, not even in the west, you couldn’t find analog scopes above a few hundred MHz.

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u/LukasReinkens 15d ago

Someone didn't get the comment..

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u/[deleted] 15d ago edited 15d ago

I thought it’s obvious that OP made a typo, it happens especially for russian tech where МГц and мГц are written almost the same, despite different meaning. So you figure out from the context.

You’re too young to get it. (LE i’m not saying this in an offensive way, it’s just that nowadays the universal language in electronics is english but like 30 years ago it wasn’t the only one. I repaired lots of oscilloscopes and eastern europe equipment and it was really an adventure to follow signals accross schematics written in cyrillics…)

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u/Valeen 13d ago

Young? A) my friend it was a joke B) are you European? Cause I was using lab equipment from the 60s on up in undergrad and never came across Cyrillic. Japanese was not uncommon, but in the US Russian lab equipment was virtually unheard of.

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u/[deleted] 13d ago edited 13d ago

Hey American bro, thanks for the comment. Sure I get it was a joke, but the image and comment/joke reminded me this interesting topic which nowadays is unheard of. The sampling technology is mature and having GHz frontends for a few dollars is so common that we rarely wonder how it was in the analog age.

Yes I live in Eastern europe. CRTs were not our strong point, actually tubes were made only in a few countries such as Czechoslovakia, East Germany and most of them, USSR. The equipment in universities, army, research laboratories, schools were from all over the east block, and very few institutions had western equipment. For example you would be very lucky to work with a Tektornix, which felt like a Ferrari compared to your usual junk. Japanese equipment was really unheard of. My country barely had the know-how to build decent consumer electronics such as radios and TV sets and they were using the same technology to build measurement equipment. Of course it was shit, impossible to calibrate, knobs were breaking and falling off, transformers were shorting, connectors were interrupting, even the vias in the PCBs were breaking, leading to time wasting repairs. The soviet ones were considerably better, and the one posted in this thread is actually one of the best, probably a Tektronix 465 wannabe: high frequency, dual time base, large CRT.

Once the soviet block fell at the end of the 90s, the industry fell together with it, due to the very uncompetitive products wrt to the west. Therefore lot of stuff was being scrapped and as a hobbyist in the 90s, if you knew someone working in the industry, you could get some fancy equipment for personal use. The broken ones were cheaper, but having the schematics, a repair was feasible. Early internet with .djvu archives with schematics and datasheets was really helping a lot.

Interesting times.

TLDR: A) I know, lol B) Yes, eastern.

1

u/Valeen 13d ago

Were these mostly acid etched pcbs? How are thy vias done in that case? Just drill through and manually coat with something conductive?

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u/[deleted] 13d ago edited 13d ago

Mostly acid etched that’s right, I have no clue how the vias were done. They were either breaking inside the hole or very close to the pad, a break so thin that you could barely see. Different thermal expansion if you ask me, but not sure. Just filled them with solder so they were fixed for good.

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u/Valeen 13d ago

Yeah that's what I was wondering. I guess at some point your first troubleshooting step was to just go solder the vias.

Man we have came a long way from the first pcb I designed, which was single layer, acid etched. To pcbway/jlcbpcb. It's wild how fast they turn them around, the cost (unless I buy a lot of them it's almost always more expensive to ship them), and the quality. They are just fantastic. I don't know that it will ever make sense to have an "ender 3" level of hobbyist pcb maker. If for no other reason the chemicals involved.

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u/xanaxinvacuum 15d ago

In Soviet Russia, the oscilloscope measures you.

4

u/TossPowerTrap 15d ago

Really? I use an old 15 meg scope for audio circuits. Works fine.

43

u/Triq1 15d ago

100mHz is 100 milliHertz.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Typesalot 15d ago

Hi, Flash!

3

u/jeweliegb 15d ago

I'm Aunty Flash (anti-flash) I can go slower than you can see!

0

u/Di_Mauro 15d ago

Not in RusiA

13

u/LukasReinkens 15d ago

It's a lame joke because mHz means millihertz as in one Wave every 1000 seconds. mHz and MHz are very very different ;)

1

u/-BruXy- 15d ago

Uh fancy! I use old hiohm radio operator headphones and my ear :)

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u/Ok-Fox1262 11d ago

Soviet Union hertz you.

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u/Geoff_PR 7d ago

100mHz for anyone who wants to have the least possible Bandwidth ever

Sadly looking over at my tiny Non-Linear Systems 15 MHz scope...

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u/krokotak47 15d ago

We use stuff like that in my university to this day. They do a great job for learning.

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u/EatShitAndDieAlready 15d ago

Where did u find this, and does it still work after all these years?

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u/Spezi-Community 15d ago

My Father bought it ~25-30 Years ago (And the guy he bought it from probably stole it after the collapse of the USSR)

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u/ClydeTheGayFish 15d ago

Does it have a VEB sticker or something on it?

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u/[deleted] 15d ago edited 14d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/electronics-ModTeam 14d ago

Sorry, commerce, valuations, offers to buy etc. are not permitted in this Subreddit.

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u/electronics-ModTeam 14d ago

Sorry, commerce, valuations, offers to buy etc. are not permitted in this Subreddit.

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u/SkitzMon 14d ago

I like how some words are just transliterated like CALIBRATOR became КАЛИБРАТОР while others are in Ukranian like ЯРКОСТьІ

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u/Real-Edge-9288 12d ago

kaliblyaatrot

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u/milkolik 15d ago

Very Tektronix inspired

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u/nixiebunny 14d ago

Do you suppose some reverse engineering occurred?

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u/milkolik 14d ago

Indeed I remember they had their very obvious clone of the 7000 series

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u/kartoshechka8088 14d ago

Hehe, obviously. Almost every piece of tech in ussr was at least partly copied from western things

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u/Such-Assignment-1529 14d ago

You can to compare a schematics :)

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u/Same_Raccoon8740 14d ago

They even copied the Sputnik and Gagarin‘s Vostok 1…

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u/Such-Assignment-1529 15d ago

Very cool! I saw this model, it's very fast (up to 100MHz!) and with "time window" mode.

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u/ChatGPT4 15d ago

It's a great collecitble! Real beauty. I wouldn't trade it for a modern one, I have a modern one I can carry in a big pocket. If I had this bad boy, I would use it to display some oscilloscope music.

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u/[deleted] 15d ago

Blyatiful!

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u/HessianRaccoon 15d ago

That's a beauty! I have a similar one, and those switches are just incredibly satisfying to operate. 😊

Edit: S1-55 here.

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u/LateralThinkerer 14d ago edited 14d ago

Hewlettski-Packardov!

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u/Septer_Ben 15d ago

Most latest tech in East German schools(not kidding our schools are severely underfunded)

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u/AdolfPushpinder 15d ago

Was working with this in my college 🙂

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u/smaug59 15d ago

Reminds me of DiodeGoneWild channel restoring these devices

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u/OverjoyedBanana 13d ago

Are the BNC connectors compatible with those from the perverted West ?

1

u/Demonter269 12d ago

Unfortunately no. The are _slightly_ different. The Western probe will dangle a little on the Soviet connector. And if you need to use a Soviet cable on Western equipment, you need to use a file. Otherwise, the connector will not snap into place.

3

u/istarian 14d ago

Did you mean 1 MHz (MegaHertz) or is it really only good for 1 mHz (milliHertz).

1

u/[deleted] 15d ago

Most of the original parameters are gone, unless extensive service was provided

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u/Such-Assignment-1529 14d ago

You can easy calibrate it, using a DC PSU, a multimeter and signal generator.

1

u/istarian 14d ago

OP might need to replace some components to get it to work properly at this point.

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u/Such-Assignment-1529 14d ago

If it's inputs are not damaged by overvoltages, an only components that need to be checked and, maybe, replaced, are an electrolytic capacitors in a PSU. Just check an internal power voltages for values and ripple.

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u/[deleted] 14d ago

Meant aged and failing components after all these years, unless serviced

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u/Such-Assignment-1529 14d ago

An USSR measuring equipment mostly was made from military-class components, with good quality. An only service, that they need, is cleaning and lubricating a switches and variable resistors and replacing a burnt light bulbs.

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u/[deleted] 13d ago

Ooh, sure the USSR military was very famous for their component quality 😉

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u/fried_green_baloney 15d ago

I like that the connectors at the bottom 1MΩ 25 pf are in the Latin alphabet.

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u/Such-Assignment-1529 14d ago

It's a typical values and a standard BNC connectors - you can use any modern probes with is.

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u/fried_green_baloney 14d ago edited 13d ago

It's just the use of the Latin alphabet that's amusing.

On a scope with e.g. English wording everywhere, the notation would be of course not remarkable at all.

EDIT: In the Russian alphabet, pf would transliterate to пф -- I think.

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u/oxpoleon 14d ago

SI units are SI units. Everyone uses them (except nonscientific Americans).

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u/arsv 14d ago edited 13d ago

Soviet stuff typically had SI units written in Cyrillic, like мкФ instead of μF or МГц instead of MHz.

https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Soviet_%28Armenian%29_K50-6_electrolytic_capacitors.jpg
(note 1984 date codes, it's not even the 60s or something)

However, in some areas like test equipment, Latin script for units was quite common.

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u/silencefog 13d ago

I'm Russian and studied in a university in 2015-2019. We only used Cyrillic for units, even though they are SI. I can easily understand Latin versions though.

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u/UniWheel 13d ago

I like that the connectors at the bottom 1MΩ 25 pf are in the Latin alphabet.

I looked at a PCB once that had reference designators in a mix of alphabets

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u/SkitzMon 14d ago

The layout is strange but even without knowing russian or cyrillic I could use it, for audio or LF analog work.

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u/original_neyt 14d ago

awesome :)

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u/Ready_Onion_1938 13d ago

used to have one at school

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u/Weary-External-9323 12d ago

Soviet technology at its finest.

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u/gameplayer55055 12d ago

I think such scopes are easier to control than fancy digital ones. Instead of walking around hundreds of menus you just turn the knob. And no aliasing because this thing is analog.

And you measure the frequency by counting squares.

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u/Spezi-Community 12d ago

I've tried it out a bit and don't think it's bad, but I much prefer the Voltcraft 2040 because it's easier to use (and because I can't read Cyrillic and because I have a manual for the Voltcraft 2040)

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u/prochac 10d ago

OUR Oscilloscope

0

u/Rodzynkowyzbrodniarz 11d ago

What is it used for? Even for audio 0,1Hz is nothing