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Refurbishing a Tektronix TDS7104 Oscilloscope

tomverbeure.github.io

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Re: Refurbishing a Tektronix TDS7104 Oscilloscope

#41

Post by drzaiusx11 »

sdcfgy wrote: post #11
tverbeure wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice, so I'll get even more entertainment out of it! The equipment that's bought and sold at the electronics flea market typically isn't used as a means to an end, it is the end. There's disappointment when you buy something there and it just works. There's no fun in that. I don't really have a use for a R&S AMIQ, but replacing all the PC motherboard caps taught me a lot about good desoldering practices. https://tomv…

Yeah agreed. I’ve fixed more Tek equipment than most people out there. In the order of hundreds of units. These are just exceptionally bad.

I'm blanking on the exact models I used; I'm fairly certain they were tds700s or tds71xx, but a lab I ran had about a dozen units and we had nothing "fry" in the 4 years I worked there. What applications would result in these catastrophic failures?

Re: Refurbishing a Tektronix TDS7104 Oscilloscope

#43

Post by tverbeure »

drzaiusx11 wrote: post #41
sdcfgy wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah agreed. I’ve fixed more Tek equipment than most people out there. In the order of hundreds of units. These are just exceptionally bad.

I'm blanking on the exact models I used; I'm fairly certain they were tds700s or tds71xx, but a lab I ran had about a dozen units and we had nothing "fry" in the 4 years I worked there. What applications would result in these catastrophic failures?

Over the years, I've had 5 TDSxxx series scopes, and I still have a few. The common issues are:

NuColor CRT displays going bad. Bad capacitors. Dallas NVRAM units battery running out of juice

Fried electronics are pretty rare.

Re: Refurbishing a Tektronix TDS7104 Oscilloscope

#44

Post by jhallenworld »

amelius wrote: post #30
jhallenworld wrote: post #13

Yeah 1 GHz is nice, but that tiny 200 MHz Siglent is going to be much more useful in practice for most things. Speaking of boat anchors, I'm trying to get my company to buy a DSA91304a (13 GHz scope with SERDES debugging). ~$44K with all the options, but still Windows-XP. The Windows-7 ones unfortunately don't have the options I want. Maybe there is a hack..

200 MHz is good enough for most things. And for modern computing electronics even 1GHz is too slow, e.g. monitoring USB3 or high speed PCIE data lanes. Did you get a price quote for that keysight oscilloscope? I see that you can also rent them for $2000 a month.

We've rented them in the past- always we're not quite sure we're done so keep them much longer than necessary. They're kind of a pain to pack and ship.

Re: Refurbishing a Tektronix TDS7104 Oscilloscope

#45

Post by jhallenworld »

stmw wrote: post #27
sdcfgy wrote: post #6

Give it a month and the acquisition ASICs will blow up and the caps will eat through the board traces. Can’t stand these scopes.

For a brief second, I thought this was about an original 7104. Are there specific TDS models that you have found to be better, btw, reliability-wise?

>an original 7104

I've got one, they are very cool. I also have a 7834 (storage tube), cool in a different way. On the other hand, they are taking up a lot of space... I also have two 485s, one with a broken trigger.

Re: Refurbishing a Tektronix TDS7104 Oscilloscope

#46

Post by drzaiusx11 »

tverbeure wrote: post #43
drzaiusx11 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm blanking on the exact models I used; I'm fairly certain they were tds700s or tds71xx, but a lab I ran had about a dozen units and we had nothing "fry" in the 4 years I worked there. What applications would result in these catastrophic failures?

Over the years, I've had 5 TDSxxx series scopes, and I still have a few. The common issues are: NuColor CRT displays going bad. Bad capacitors. Dallas NVRAM units battery running out of juice Fried electronics are pretty rare.

We had some "ghosting" on the displays on a few now that you mentioned it, but they were still 100% usable. I guess my expectations were lower since I never had to foot the bill for the lot of em (which at 20k/unit I guess I'd be upset about when one was faulty)

Re: Refurbishing a Tektronix TDS7104 Oscilloscope

#48

Post by beala »

jlawrence6809 wrote: post #21
tverbeure wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I looked for a SMIQ for quite a while to go along with the AMIQ, but eventually settled for the R&S SFQ TV test transmitter that you can see here: https://tomverbeure.github.io/2026/06/28/Rohde-Schwarz-AMIQ-... . It can be used a vector RF signal generator with I/Q inputs. The only limitation is the reduced input bandwidth.

Very cool! Yeah I lucked out finding mine. It was in the intake section at my 2nd hand electronics store. It had a broken power button so they were selling it "as-is". A button repair and battery swap later I have a 3.3Ghz VNA. Can't complain!

That's a great find, but afaict that model doesn't have VNA capabilities, does it? However, if you also stumble on a spectrum analyzer at that second hand store, you could combine them into a scalar network analyzer.

Re: Refurbishing a Tektronix TDS7104 Oscilloscope

#49

Post by sitzkrieg »

sdcfgy wrote: post #11
tverbeure wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nice, so I'll get even more entertainment out of it! The equipment that's bought and sold at the electronics flea market typically isn't used as a means to an end, it is the end. There's disappointment when you buy something there and it just works. There's no fun in that. I don't really have a use for a R&S AMIQ, but replacing all the PC motherboard caps taught me a lot about good desoldering practices. https://tomv…

Yeah agreed. I’ve fixed more Tek equipment than most people out there. In the order of hundreds of units. These are just exceptionally bad.

i thought maybe it was just something regionally here or the way people stored em, but i was in a position to refab many a few years ago and totally agree. tek had 100% repart rate and seemed like anything else (brand wise) was always in better condition internally even when way older.

Re: Refurbishing a Tektronix TDS7104 Oscilloscope

#50

Post by jlawrence6809 »

beala wrote: post #48
jlawrence6809 wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Very cool! Yeah I lucked out finding mine. It was in the intake section at my 2nd hand electronics store. It had a broken power button so they were selling it "as-is". A button repair and battery swap later I have a 3.3Ghz VNA. Can't complain!

That's a great find, but afaict that model doesn't have VNA capabilities, does it? However, if you also stumble on a spectrum analyzer at that second hand store, you could combine them into a scalar network analyzer.

Oops yeah you're right, it's a VNG. A VNA would be great to have though! I wonder if these agents are going to just increase the utility of ever piece of equipment people can hook them to.
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