sad, sad

J

John Larkin

Guest
From this week's EE Times:

"Scopes were HP's, and now Agilent's, legacy. Industry lore tells how
Bill and Dave emerged from a Palo Alto garage in 1938 with an audio
scope and sold an early version to Walt Disney for the film Fantasia.
Their work laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, for
entrepreneurialism, for the rise of technology. But first and
foremost, they were scope guys."


So these guys, totally ignorant of what Bill and Dave actually did,
are still eager to claim their legacy.

John
 
John Larkin wrote:

From this week's EE Times:

"Scopes were HP's, and now Agilent's, legacy. Industry lore tells how
Bill and Dave emerged from a Palo Alto garage in 1938 with an audio
scope and sold an early version to Walt Disney for the film Fantasia.
Their work laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, for
entrepreneurialism, for the rise of technology. But first and
foremost, they were scope guys."


So these guys, totally ignorant of what Bill and Dave actually did,
are still eager to claim their legacy.
Click to expand...
Was it the oscillator with a light bulb ?

Gibbo
 
John Larkin wrote:

From this week's EE Times:

"Scopes were HP's, and now Agilent's, legacy. Industry lore tells how
Bill and Dave emerged from a Palo Alto garage in 1938 with an audio
scope and sold an early version to Walt Disney for the film Fantasia.
Their work laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, for
entrepreneurialism, for the rise of technology. But first and
foremost, they were scope guys."


So these guys, totally ignorant of what Bill and Dave actually did,
are still eager to claim their legacy.

John

Oscilloscope, oscillator -- eh, what's the difference? If I were
Click to expand...
Hewlett or Packard I'd probably be rolling over in my grave at the
thought of my name being attached to the cheesy computers instead of the
good instruments.

IIRC it was Tektronix that made the first "modern" o-scope with a real
trigger circuit, courtesy of Howard Vollum's radar experience in WWII --
but I'm going from memory and I'm probably biased seeing as I'm from the
Portland area.

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com
 
On 06 Oct 2004 17:33:31 GMT, the renowned chrisgibbogibson@aol.com
(ChrisGibboGibson) wrote:

John Larkin wrote:



From this week's EE Times:

"Scopes were HP's, and now Agilent's, legacy. Industry lore tells how
Bill and Dave emerged from a Palo Alto garage in 1938 with an audio
scope and sold an early version to Walt Disney for the film Fantasia.
Their work laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, for
entrepreneurialism, for the rise of technology. But first and
foremost, they were scope guys."


So these guys, totally ignorant of what Bill and Dave actually did,
are still eager to claim their legacy.


Was it the oscillator with a light bulb ?

Gibbo
Click to expand...
Yup.
http://www.hp.com/hpinfo/abouthp/histnfacts/museum/earlyinstruments/0002/0002history.html

A misogynist would blame it on publishing being a pink-collar ghetto,
but I'd just call it incompetence.



Best regards,
Spehro Pefhany
--
"it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward"
speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com
Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
 
On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 10:25:30 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highSNIPlandTHIStechPLEASEnology.com> wrote:

From this week's EE Times:

"Scopes were HP's, and now Agilent's, legacy. Industry lore tells how
Bill and Dave emerged from a Palo Alto garage in 1938 with an audio
scope and sold an early version to Walt Disney for the film Fantasia.
Their work laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, for
entrepreneurialism, for the rise of technology. But first and
foremost, they were scope guys."


So these guys, totally ignorant of what Bill and Dave actually did,
are still eager to claim their legacy.
Click to expand...
---
I stopped reading that POS rag about ten years ago.

--
John Fields
 
John Larkin <jjlarkin@highSNIPlandTHIStechPLEASEnology.com> says...
From this week's EE Times:

"Scopes were HP's, and now Agilent's, legacy. Industry lore tells how
Bill and Dave emerged from a Palo Alto garage in 1938 with an audio
scope and sold an early version to Walt Disney for the film Fantasia.
Their work laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, for
entrepreneurialism, for the rise of technology. But first and
foremost, they were scope guys."

So these guys, totally ignorant of what Bill and Dave actually did,
are still eager to claim their legacy.
Click to expand...
I looks like they are abandoning the calculator market to TI... :(
 
ChrisGibboGibson <chrisgibbogibson@aol.com> says...

Was it the oscillator with a light bulb ?
Click to expand...
Yup. And newbie EEs have been trying to use the same circuit
with various solid-state devices replacing the bulb ever since.
 
Guy Macon wrote:

ChrisGibboGibson <chrisgibbogibson@aol.com> says...

Was it the oscillator with a light bulb ?

Yup. And newbie EEs have been trying to use the same circuit
with various solid-state devices replacing the bulb ever since.
Click to expand...
I still have one that I built at school about 25 years ago. Even now I think
it's ingenious.

Gibbo
 
"Guy Macon" <http://www.guymacon.com> wrote
Was it the oscillator with a light bulb ?
Yup. And newbie EEs have been trying to use the same circuit
with various solid-state devices replacing the bulb ever since.
Click to expand...
And leaving the rest of the circuit vacuum tubes?

--
Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio
Consulting Engineer: Electronics; Informatics; Photonics.
Remove spaces etc. to reply: n o lindan at net com dot com
psst.. want to buy an f-stop timer? nolindan.com/da/fstop/
 
Guy Macon wrote:

ChrisGibboGibson <chrisgibbogibson@aol.com> says...


Was it the oscillator with a light bulb ?


Yup. And newbie EEs have been trying to use the same circuit
with various solid-state devices replacing the bulb ever since.


If you find the right bulb it works very well -- I can imagine this as
Click to expand...
being hell on purchasing department/engineering department relations,
however.

The bulb doesn't get warm enough to actually light; I suspect that to
_really_ do it right you'd use nichrome in an inert atmosphere rather
than Tungsten (but I'd have to do some serious testing and consultation
before I signed off on that).

--

Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com
 
Nicholas O. Lindan <see@sig.com> says...
"Guy Macon" <http://www.guymacon.com> wrote

Yup. And newbie EEs have been trying to use the same circuit
with various solid-state devices replacing the bulb ever since.

And leaving the rest of the circuit vacuum tubes?
Click to expand...
Making new transistorized products that have the same basic circuit
topology (with sertain stanbdard changes) is something that any EE
used to be able to do. When they got to the classic HP Osc., they
found that getting rid of the monode (light bulb) was a *lot* harder
than getting rid of the other vacuum tubes.
 
You might be interested in this link. Ratch
http://www.eetimes.com/anniversary/designclassics/scopes.html

"John Larkin" <jjlarkin@highSNIPlandTHIStechPLEASEnology.com> wrote in
message news:eek:qg8m0d2ndor024to05ep166948ql448fo@4ax.com...
On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 10:48:38 -0700, Tim Wescott
tim@wescottnospamdesign.com> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

From this week's EE Times:

"Scopes were HP's, and now Agilent's, legacy. Industry lore tells how
Bill and Dave emerged from a Palo Alto garage in 1938 with an audio
scope and sold an early version to Walt Disney for the film Fantasia.
Their work laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, for
entrepreneurialism, for the rise of technology. But first and
foremost, they were scope guys."


So these guys, totally ignorant of what Bill and Dave actually did,
are still eager to claim their legacy.

John

Oscilloscope, oscillator -- eh, what's the difference? If I were
Hewlett or Packard I'd probably be rolling over in my grave at the
thought of my name being attached to the cheesy computers instead of the
good instruments.

IIRC it was Tektronix that made the first "modern" o-scope with a real
trigger circuit, courtesy of Howard Vollum's radar experience in WWII --
but I'm going from memory and I'm probably biased seeing as I'm from the
Portland area.

Tek was founded in 1946, but I'm not sure when they made their first
scope; my Tek history book is at home. I do have a 1955 HP catalog
here, and there are no scopes in it.

John
Click to expand...
 
On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 10:25:30 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

From this week's EE Times:

"Scopes were HP's, and now Agilent's, legacy. Industry lore tells how
Bill and Dave emerged from a Palo Alto garage in 1938 with an audio
scope and sold an early version to Walt Disney for the film Fantasia.
Their work laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, for
entrepreneurialism, for the rise of technology. But first and
foremost, they were scope guys."


So these guys, totally ignorant of what Bill and Dave actually did,
are still eager to claim their legacy.
Click to expand...
Years ago, I worked at a company with a buyer who would only buy HP
equipment. He insisted on buying HP scopes, even though they couldn't
trigger. On anything. Even line voltage was too much for them. They were
pathetic.

Over the years, I had to use various HP scopes, and they all shared that
common trait. The trigger circuit seemed to be nonexistent. The controls
were little more than placebo knobs: if you believed hard enough, you'd
think they worked. Otherwise, not.

I bought my first HP scope in 1995 - the first HP scope I ever tried that
could actually trigger on anything less than lightning. It was a pretty
good scope, and I'm pretty sure it was the first competent scope HP ever
made. Anything prior to that was just a catalog filler, and I'm sure nobody
who ever had a job to do actually bought them.

At least, I sure hope not.

-- Mike --
 
On Wednesday 06 October 2004 10:34 pm, Mike did deign to grace us with the
following:

On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 10:25:30 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

From this week's EE Times:

"Scopes were HP's, and now Agilent's, legacy. Industry lore tells how
Bill and Dave emerged from a Palo Alto garage in 1938 with an audio
scope and sold an early version to Walt Disney for the film Fantasia.
Their work laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, for
entrepreneurialism, for the rise of technology. But first and
foremost, they were scope guys."


So these guys, totally ignorant of what Bill and Dave actually did,
are still eager to claim their legacy.

Years ago, I worked at a company with a buyer who would only buy HP
equipment. He insisted on buying HP scopes, even though they couldn't
trigger. On anything. Even line voltage was too much for them. They were
pathetic.

Over the years, I had to use various HP scopes, and they all shared that
common trait. The trigger circuit seemed to be nonexistent. The controls
were little more than placebo knobs: if you believed hard enough, you'd
think they worked. Otherwise, not.

I bought my first HP scope in 1995 - the first HP scope I ever tried that
could actually trigger on anything less than lightning. It was a pretty
good scope, and I'm pretty sure it was the first competent scope HP ever
made. Anything prior to that was just a catalog filler, and I'm sure
nobody who ever had a job to do actually bought them.

At least, I sure hope not.
Click to expand...
I can beat that one. When I was in the USAF, at one base some genius had
decided to buy a waterproof military HP scope. It not only didn't trigger,
but the knobs were not only not placebos - they had these resilient rubber
seals around the shafts, to keep water out. Of course, there's some friction
between the rubber and metal, so you'd have to turn the knob past the point
you wanted, and hope that you got the right distance that it's going to
spring back.

I quipped to somebody, "It wouldn't even make a boat anchor - the SOB would
float!"

Cheers!
Rich
 
On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 14:01:30 GMT, Rich Grise wrote:

Over the years, I had to use various HP scopes, and they all shared that
common trait. The trigger circuit seemed to be nonexistent. The controls
were little more than placebo knobs: if you believed hard enough, you'd
think they worked. Otherwise, not.

I bought my first HP scope in 1995 - the first HP scope I ever tried that
could actually trigger on anything less than lightning. It was a pretty
good scope, and I'm pretty sure it was the first competent scope HP ever
made. Anything prior to that was just a catalog filler, and I'm sure
nobody who ever had a job to do actually bought them.

At least, I sure hope not.
Click to expand...
Hmm.. I used to use a customer's HP scope - 100 MHZ dual trace a 1740A?
It seemed to trigger pretty well - course you had to know where to kick it
;)


Bob
 
"Mike" <mike@nospam.com> wrote in message
news:1kjkn2cf6qf0o$.11tnogw950mv3.dlg@40tude.net...
Years ago, I worked at a company with a buyer who would only buy HP
equipment. He insisted on buying HP scopes, even though they couldn't
trigger. On anything. Even line voltage was too much for them. They were
pathetic.

Over the years, I had to use various HP scopes, and they all shared that
common trait. The trigger circuit seemed to be nonexistent. The controls
were little more than placebo knobs: if you believed hard enough, you'd
think they worked. Otherwise, not.
Click to expand...
I've used HP's analog scopes (1740, 1741 and 1725) and never had any complaints
about their triggering.

--
James T. White
SPAMjtwhiteGUARD@SPAMhal-pcGUARD.org

Note: Remove SPAM-GUARD to reply.
 
On Wed, 6 Oct 2004 22:34:01 -0700, Mike <mike@nospam.com> wrote:

On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 10:25:30 -0700, John Larkin wrote:

From this week's EE Times:

"Scopes were HP's, and now Agilent's, legacy. Industry lore tells how
Bill and Dave emerged from a Palo Alto garage in 1938 with an audio
scope and sold an early version to Walt Disney for the film Fantasia.
Their work laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, for
entrepreneurialism, for the rise of technology. But first and
foremost, they were scope guys."


So these guys, totally ignorant of what Bill and Dave actually did,
are still eager to claim their legacy.

Years ago, I worked at a company with a buyer who would only buy HP
equipment. He insisted on buying HP scopes, even though they couldn't
trigger. On anything. Even line voltage was too much for them. They were
pathetic.

Over the years, I had to use various HP scopes, and they all shared that
common trait. The trigger circuit seemed to be nonexistent. The controls
were little more than placebo knobs: if you believed hard enough, you'd
think they worked. Otherwise, not.

I bought my first HP scope in 1995 - the first HP scope I ever tried that
could actually trigger on anything less than lightning. It was a pretty
good scope, and I'm pretty sure it was the first competent scope HP ever
made. Anything prior to that was just a catalog filler, and I'm sure nobody
who ever had a job to do actually bought them.

At least, I sure hope not.

-- Mike --
Click to expand...

Their 180-series scopes triggered OK, but the teeny little knobs were
a huge pita to try to use. Somehow HP scopes always seemed clumsy and
inelegant compared to Tek. They did do a very nice job on
variable-persistance mesh storage, back when Tek was still doing the
ghastly bistable secondary-emission thing.

Everybody I've known who likes LeCroy scopes has been, er, strange.

John
 
John Larkin wrote:

On Wed, 6 Oct 2004 22:34:01 -0700, Mike <mike@nospam.com> wrote:



On Wed, 06 Oct 2004 10:25:30 -0700, John Larkin wrote:



From this week's EE Times:

"Scopes were HP's, and now Agilent's, legacy. Industry lore tells how
Bill and Dave emerged from a Palo Alto garage in 1938 with an audio
scope and sold an early version to Walt Disney for the film Fantasia.
Their work laid the foundation for Silicon Valley, for
entrepreneurialism, for the rise of technology. But first and
foremost, they were scope guys."


So these guys, totally ignorant of what Bill and Dave actually did,
are still eager to claim their legacy.


Years ago, I worked at a company with a buyer who would only buy HP
equipment. He insisted on buying HP scopes, even though they couldn't
trigger. On anything. Even line voltage was too much for them. They were
pathetic.

Over the years, I had to use various HP scopes, and they all shared that
common trait. The trigger circuit seemed to be nonexistent. The controls
were little more than placebo knobs: if you believed hard enough, you'd
think they worked. Otherwise, not.

I bought my first HP scope in 1995 - the first HP scope I ever tried that
could actually trigger on anything less than lightning. It was a pretty
good scope, and I'm pretty sure it was the first competent scope HP ever
made. Anything prior to that was just a catalog filler, and I'm sure nobody
who ever had a job to do actually bought them.

At least, I sure hope not.

-- Mike --




Their 180-series scopes triggered OK, but the teeny little knobs were
a huge pita to try to use. Somehow HP scopes always seemed clumsy and
inelegant compared to Tek. They did do a very nice job on
variable-persistance mesh storage, back when Tek was still doing the
ghastly bistable secondary-emission thing.

Everybody I've known who likes LeCroy scopes has been, er, strange.

John


I agree with the comment about LeCroy fans being weird--although being a
Click to expand...
physicist makes me weird enough myself that I probably shouldn't talk.
I'll defend LeCroy in one area--they were the first to make a digital
scope that could work like a chart recorder. The 9400 updated its
display after every sample (at low speeds), whereas contemporary Tek and
HP scopes made you wait for a complete trace to be gathered.

LeCroy has never been able to build front-end amplifiers--at one point
they were selling a 2-Gs/s scope with a 350 MHz vertical bandwidth.
Pathetic.

The biggest boat anchor I've ever encountered disguised as a scope was a
10 Ms/s HP digitizer with a display hung off it as an
afterthought--54xxx something. You had to go down TWO MENU LEVELS to
set the vertical gain. I got it for free, and after wasting an
afternoon, I parked it in the hallway where some other sucker took it away.

Cheers,

Phil Hobbs
 
On Thu, 07 Oct 2004 21:43:45 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<hobbs@SpamMeSenseless.us.ibm.com> wrote:

LeCroy has never been able to build front-end amplifiers--at one point
they were selling a 2-Gs/s scope with a 350 MHz vertical bandwidth.
Pathetic.
Click to expand...
LeCroy is the Philco of oscilloscopes. Walter himself designed the
very strange fast-in/slow-out CCD thing that did, I recall, something
like 1000 samples at 1.4 GHz, followed by slow readout; but that's
*all* it could do, at only that rate. They also have a newish
single-diode equivalent-time sampler, 70 GHz or so, with a heterodyne
timebase.

I hate LeCroy, for personal reasons.

John
 
Guy Macon <http://www.guymacon.com> writes:



Was it the oscillator with a light bulb ?

Yup. And newbie EEs have been trying to use the same circuit
with various solid-state devices replacing the bulb ever since.
Click to expand...

The Original has other pluses as well. That octal tube output
stage could deliver real output, as in volts across 600 ohm.

Your average solid state box likely makes less output power
than the pilot lamp on a 200CD.


--
A host is a host from coast to coast.................wb8foz@nrk.com
& no one will talk to a host that's close........[v].(301) 56-LINUX
Unless the host (that isn't close).........................pob 1433
is busy, hung or dead....................................20915-1433
 
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