I was one of the thousands who worked there. I worked in the Microprocessor Development Group from 1977 to 1982 first in the test group for 6 months then the development group as a software engineer. We moved to Walker Road in 1978 or 1979 when the facility was opened. We were in the same business unit as the o'scope development team so we were on the north side of the building and they were on the south side. Manufacturing was right below us. Our cubicles had a complete set of tools in the toolbox, a logic analyzer, computer terminal, and a scope. What brought me to Tektronix was due to my experience with the 545 while in the Navy as a sonar technician working on the sonar systems and the digital fire control systems. When HP came out with their much smaller scope I wanted one too so I had my guys try to destroy the 545 including dunking it in the salt water. They sent it to the repair shop which was aboard the repair ship and lo and behold it came back running like new. So I was pretty much stuck with the behemoth 545 until the ship was decommissioned and the end of my enlistment. After finishing college I went to work at Boeing in Seattle as a software engineer and when the project was finished I decided to go south ... in this case Beaverton. It was the best experience that a young engineer could ask for. Tektronix provided a lot of educational opportunities including allowing us to take classes remotely at OSU at different hours of the day. The experience I gained from Tektronix carried me throughout my career and I have Tektronix to thank for that. I also kept some of the stocks I bought that is still increasing in value.
Thanks for the tour. Brings back a lot of memories. I worked for Tek beginning in 1979 in CRT testing. I moved to the Wilsonville plant and worked first on the Tek 31 calculators, then later on a variety of digital storage products. All that work was a a manufacturing technician. Then I got laid off, and came back as a tech writer (the BA degree finally paid off). Later I worked on the X terminals that Tek built in Wilsonville before working on the Profile video stroage product. In 1999 I moved with that product to GVG when Tek was going through one of its periodic reorganizations and downsizings. That lasted till 9/11 when GVG had to lay off folks to survive the revenue disruption. So where did I wind up? In Wilsonville at Xerox working in the same buildings with many of the same people I'd previously worked with. This time was writing service documentation for the printers. Later I moved to the training group developing multimedia training programs for the various Xerox products made in W'ville. Your tour and the items you highlighted brought back so many memories.
I visited this place end of April 2024. This visit was on my bucket list and I am so thankful that I could make it. We were shown around by the former Board Chairman, who sadly has since passed away. Good to see that the museum is still going strong. For an electronics engineer, this museum is definitely worth a trip!
Grew up near Tektronix in Wilsonville, OR and got a little tour in late-highschool in ~1980 from a neighbor who worked there. Oh they were doing amazing stuff! They were the primary test instruments I used for the next 20 years... I need tovisit this museum!
Been a long time since I ran across another GVG employee. I was a latecomer, from 1990-1991 and designed a few ICs for their Model 3000 digital switch. They had a nice new facility in Nevada City and I always enjoyed taking walks thru the heavily forested campus. I remember using the 545B in high school, and the 465 was the weapon-of-choice when I was a computer tech in the early 80's. One thing you will never see again is the amazing workmanship that went into building these amazing scopes, and that's why so many of them are still running today.
Boy!! Did this bring back memories. Back in the 60s/70s I built computers. Used these scopes to troubled the components. Could not have done my job if we did not have a Techtronic’s scope with 2 channels and a trigger. Thanks for the tour!!
Another GVG alum here. I still have a 465 scope I got a discount on being a GVG/Tek employee. I worked as a design engineer in the modular products group first as an employee and later as an outside contractor. I designed a long list of modular stuff from the mid 80's to early 2000's.
I too sat at a work bench for many years in the 70's/80's with a tektronix scope. We used them to trouble-shoot prom-burner and cpu boards for dedicated industry automation. On a side note; the construction type with rows and components soldered to standoffs was the bridge between point to point and printed boards. You likely knew that but I have to add, others used cheap phenolic? and plated pins - ie; turret boards. These were ceramic! Expensive and built like tanks. Cheers. 👍
I went to Tektronix in the 70's and was given a tour. Truly great technology. My first job after high school in 1966 was using a Tektronix 545 oscilloscope to troubleshoot integrated circuits. I used a scope probe connected to an XY table and a microscope to probe directly onto chips. I went on to use their equipment throughout my aerospace and NASA career.
I worked in a Cardiology Research Institute from 1973 until 2018 at the University of Utah. Designing and building many types of research instruments, we used a long list of Tektronix equipment. We also used a lot of Tek 4010 computer terminals. During my electrical engineering school years I found and refurbished a Tektronix RM 45A Oscilloscope as a lab project. I paid $25.00 for the scope and it still works very well. I also have a complete TM 500 system on my bench as well. Thank you very nice trip down memory lane.
Thanks for the tour. Nice to see. I worked for Tektronix in Heerenveen (The Netherlands) from 1968 to 1971. Our CEO that time was Earl Wantland. He had a lovely daughter "Marlene" I think she is from same age as me. We did not produce al the shown models. I was 16 when I started to work there. I' me now 73 and have worked almost 30 years as a computer technician. I like to see this memories.
Thank you for the tour sir. What a marvellous collection of beautiful pieces of art, although they were never designed as such of course, but in this time they certainly are.
Ahh.. Those were the days. I still have a 50 MHz dual trace with sweep delay up in a box in my garage. I had a fully equipped electronics workbench set up with sweeps, frequency counters, spectrum analyzers. All analog. I built that just before retiring. Never did actually use it though. The gear was limited to under 1GHz, so the world went well beyond it's capabilities. The only thing I still use from it is the digital multmeter, and occasionally the soldering iron. But I used a lot of those scopes in my time.
I first started using Tektronix scopes in the Navy at the transmitter site at Midway Island (technically, the Midway Islands, Sand and Eastern Islands) in 1966. Used 565's there but we also had a little 310 rackmount version. Later on, a ship we had some militarized portable version, I forget the model number. While studying at Cal Poly University I worked part time repairing equipment for the EL and EE labs and fixed many Tektronix scopes (often from a student connecting a probe's ground clip to line voltage). In industry, I was seldom without a 465B at my side. I learned the hard way to use special solder for the scopes with the ceramic terminal blocks - regular soldering just would not work. And the little loop of solder that was originally provided inside the scope as a courtesy was always gone.
I used them from the mid 60's till the 90's when HP began taking over. Now I suppose Keysight is the scope leader. I like my DSO1202-G but I think I would have been as happy with the Rigol equivalent for half the price!
Nice to see. Retired now, but during my career in Process Development for silicon chip manufacture I used many Tektronix scopes. When we purchased test equipment the scopes were always Tektronix, excellent equipment.
This was very interesting. Brought back many memories for me too. I also used and repaired a lot of this Tektronix and GVG gear as a Broadcast Television technician in the 1980's. Thanks for the tour. 73's
Thanks for a great tour Randy, it brought back so many wonderful memories. I worked as a bench technician in a Tektronix field office in Pittsburgh, Pa starting in 1976 and retired in 2018 as a Region Support Specialist supporting the solid ink printers. I developed my interest in Tektronix oscilloscopes while in the ASAF as a PMEL technician from 1972 to 1976 and worked in a PMEL lab at Griffiss AFB in Rome NY troubleshooting, repairing and calibrating only oscilloscopes. I saw scopes from Tektronix, HP, Hickock, LaVoy and Dumont. Tek scopes were by far the best I worked on. I think the oldest scope I worked on was the 535/545/555 in the Air Force. While at Tek I worked on just about all of the models you show in your video up to the 7704. If there are any other technicians who worked on the 465 ask them if they know what C220 is? Around 1980 I moved into Field Service in Pittsburgh and worked on the 4006 up to the 4115 and 4116 then moved into color printing. I was 1 of 9 field technicians selected to support the color printing division. We were called Region Support Specialists and did numerous trips to Wilsonville for 2 or 3 weeks at a time to help the solid ink engineers with what we called RUS We focused on reliability, usability and serviceability of the solid ink printers. Thanks for the memories and for the opportunity to write down my history. I think this is the first time I have done this.
You should be very proud of Tektronix! ❤ I can't get enough of that. If I could visit your nice museum you would me get in, but never get out anymore... 😅
🤔It was a great experience to see these wonders and read the comments. When the "Mochikans" of the profession revive old moments from the fruitful moments of a beautiful era. I really liked TEK's products and instruments from this era, and their interiors were also works of art. To this day, I hold the model 2236 in high esteem as my favorite instrument...have a nice day Everyone!
thanks for the vid, I have a working 310A scope.. vintage 1959, and the original service/user manual. I love looking at it and was pleased to see one briefly covered in your tour. The museum piece looks cleaner than mine, so now I'm going to have to detail mine a bit. Tom S. Ocala Fla.
Thank for this tour ,it bring me happy memory using Tek brand scope. TDS3014 is one I use during my time in Halliburton which is an improvement from Philips CombiScope (mixed ANA and DIG). TDS3014 stand out due to better memory and easy to control as well as FFT feature.
The summers of 1978 and 1979, along with a lot of really smart kids, I was selected for a Computer Camp at Northwest Missouri State University. It was a joint project between Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas departments of education, and we geeks had a great learning experience. My favorite part was getting to use and experiment with a Techtronics vector graphics terminal, powered by a DEC PDP-11/70 with all the bells and whistles. It inspired me to write an early portable graphics library, and after college I went on to work in HP high-performance graphics workstations. Of course today your smartphone has more capability, but it was all exciting.
the original Battlestar Galactica TV show used to have all Tektronix instruments and "computer displays" (4051 graphic terminals) for their ship consoles.
Boy, that takes me back. Those were wonderful scopes. I still have a 2236 that works perfectly (I think) and I'd like to find it a loving home before I die.
I remember the old Waveform Monitors and Vectorscopes with the cermic standoffs came wih a small roll of silver solder inside on a small spool :) Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
back in the early 1980's I worked on a computer manually digitizing cable maps for the phone company. We had large digitizing boards and big green phosper techtronix screens to display the map. They were great and had really good resolution.. great displays.. Now I'm starting to get into electronics and was able to purchase two portable techtronix oscilloscopes.. from a goverment surplus site. Starting to learn how to use it... big beefy machine with a nice display..
Great tour - thanks! Some gorgeous pieces there! Any more info on that CRT with the AD PWA on it? Was that on the display end or the gun end and what would that have been used for?
I haven’t seen a GVG 100 in a while! We used to have them in our telecine bays for some reason. They remained well into the HD days of spirit 1k film scanners/telecine and were used in the down conversion monitoring chain. Thanks for the tour!
I have some 561 and 564 scopes from the era when Tek was transitioning from tubes to transistors, they work fine, and i have plenty of spares to maintain them. I like them better than digital scopes for a number of reasons.
That was very interesting. I use an all transistor Tek 453 made in 1969 to look at audio waveforms of the guitar pedals I make. Still works great and it still displays beautiful waveforms on the CRT.
Summer co-op employee from back in the day! Worked for the T&M group in buildings 39 and 47, writing mainframe (the big iron in building 55!) apps and reports for the purchasing and marketing departments. Was around when the Howard Vollum Memorial was dedicated, and still remember the tears that Jean shed at that occasion. Was around for the launch of the 11000 and DSA series. Heady days! Still have a TDS2012 on the bench. Good memories!
Yes, I have used the Tektronix cable impedance tester in the past. The tube oscilloscopes and logic analyzers I used were Philips. I still have the tube oscilloscope as a sort of private museum part. So good that there is a Tektronix museum!
I still use Tektronix today; have a 7834 on the bench and one for backup. Also have a 7603 and lots of plugins. The design and layout are shear beauty.
Grew up in West Linn/Wilsonville, and of course Tek was huge in the area and a status symbol for employees. I ended up using later Tek equipment at Microsoft. Great video!
Randy thankyou. We used Tektronix oscilloscopes quite a bit in the Redfern Mail Exchange back in the 1970's . The place handled all the mail (letters, magazines/newspapers/periodical and small package sorting bothe local NSW, interstate and international; for New South Wales Australia. At Sydney NSW.
Thank you for the memories. I worked at Tek Wilsonville in the late 70's. They had a huge presence at that time and were a technology leader but gradually frittered it all away. There's not much left of them these days. They actually invented the first PC (Tek 4051) but didn't realize the potential.
I grew up in Los Alamos and can say that those Polaroid cameras on the front of scopes were very common until CCDs became available. Thanks for the tour.
Very cool! When I started working as a tech at an electronics manufacturer, the scope I used most often was a 465. Also, when my tech school moved to its present campus, the electronics department had an incredible amount of stuff that was squirreled away (and barely half made it to the new campus across town - there was like a 10' pile behind the old building when all was said and done). I remember grabbing an old tube-type oscilloscope... It was most likely Tektronix, but I cannot remember what model it was! It opened like a book for servicing and there was even a spot to spool some silver solder for the terminal strips. NO idea what happened to it though. :(
thank you i dont remember the last time i said wow so many times one word tektronix says it all i even had a high current scope probe tip that i used for a roach clip and of course used the face cover of a 465 to clean the weed (back when there were seeds)
I remember the day, as a young green tech, when I sat before my first 465B. I stared at the knobs for a little too long, and finally the boss reached past and pulled the On switch, which I had been searching for... A few years later I borrowed $2K from Granny, and bought my own 465 from ElectroRent. I still have it, forty years later...
6:50 The 2467 scope has a microchannel electron multiplier faceplate CRT. You can see single shot traces at 1ns/div. I had one when I worked at HP Labs and bought one on eBay for $400 after I retired. Truly a wonderful analog oscilloscope. But beware - the configuration is stored in a battery backed SRAM module, so when the battery dies after a few years, goodbye configuration (calibration?).
I always wondered why the front of those scopes was extended like that - thanks! I would have loved a chance to use that feature. Interesting/sad to see Tek's love of the integrated battery/SRAM module apparently started in that era. I have a TDS3014 that will never again know the date or remember its last setup. Thankfully, the *factory* CAL constants are stored elsewhere. I'm still trying to determine if a signal path compensation lasts longer than the current session.
the calibration constants were stored in that NVRAM IC. after TEK sold their IC division,the TEK-made ICs and hybrids in the 2400 lines were no longer available,and when a 2400 broke,it was not repairable.
Back in the mid 1980's, I looked up Grass Valley because I needed a switcher for my video work. Unfortunately, I could NOT afford a Grass Valley switcher... Nice video,,,
Thanks for the video. I didn't know about this museum and will have to visit from BC at some time. I have owned a few of those scopes including 500 series, a 7704 and a 7904. I have a couple others now.
When I was in the Navy (1966-1970) I learned that there were depot level refurbishments of things like 565 scopes (and I assume other equipment) at Long Beach. What they did was remove all the tubes and throw them away. Then the entire scope, without cabinet, was put in an industrial dishwasher of some sort. Then left to dry. Then it was repopulated with all new tested tubes. Then they attempted to recalibrate and usually there was no further repair necessary.
USAF PMEL lab (and later at TEK service centers),I used to wash TEK scopes in a spray booth,then into a drying oven for 3 days. I could take a filthy grungy scope and make it look factory-fresh. you had to avoid washing the HV and power transformers,or you'd end up replacing them. I even did touchup spray paint on the cabinets. some customers used to write thank-you letters to my boss after they got back a 400 series portable that I cleaned,repaired,calibrated,replaced worn rubber feet,repainted the cabinets,and their scope looked like new.
@@JayWye52 When I was working part time at Cal Poly's EL/EE equipment repair ship, it was my job to refurbish donated equipment. I didn't go to the extremes you did. But did a lot of cleaning which especially involved removing blued on inventory plates, old calibration stickers, and such. And, of course, repairs and calibration before putting it into a lab. I have always wondered if there were parts in a Tek scope that maybe shouldn't get wet. Maybe when they used that dishwasher they first covered, or even removed, some items first. One thing they gave me was a small ammo box filled to the brim with used machine screws (6-32, 8-32, and smaller and larger ones). I still have what must be 20 lbs. of screws and dip into to occasionally. Certainly, a lifetime supply.
My last Tek scope was a beast of a rack mount 400mhz machine. Only 5.25" tall but 19" wide and 23 inches deep! an R7903 that came out of a nuke testing lab as surplus. Worked very well but I downsized after retiring and it had to go, took up way to much precious desk real estate! I now have a little Rigol LCD scope that weighs all of 5 pounds(instead of 30!) and is 200mhz. Plenty for what I need these days.
I was one of the thousands who worked there. I worked in the Microprocessor Development Group from 1977 to 1982 first in the test group for 6 months then the development group as a software engineer. We moved to Walker Road in 1978 or 1979 when the facility was opened. We were in the same business unit as the o'scope development team so we were on the north side of the building and they were on the south side. Manufacturing was right below us. Our cubicles had a complete set of tools in the toolbox, a logic analyzer, computer terminal, and a scope.
What brought me to Tektronix was due to my experience with the 545 while in the Navy as a sonar technician working on the sonar systems and the digital fire control systems. When HP came out with their much smaller scope I wanted one too so I had my guys try to destroy the 545 including dunking it in the salt water. They sent it to the repair shop which was aboard the repair ship and lo and behold it came back running like new. So I was pretty much stuck with the behemoth 545 until the ship was decommissioned and the end of my enlistment. After finishing college I went to work at Boeing in Seattle as a software engineer and when the project was finished I decided to go south ... in this case Beaverton. It was the best experience that a young engineer could ask for. Tektronix provided a lot of educational opportunities including allowing us to take classes remotely at OSU at different hours of the day. The experience I gained from Tektronix carried me throughout my career and I have Tektronix to thank for that. I also kept some of the stocks I bought that is still increasing in value.
That’s a great story about your time at Tektronix!
What types of processors did you design?
Thanks for the tour. Brings back a lot of memories. I worked for Tek beginning in 1979 in CRT testing. I moved to the Wilsonville plant and worked first on the Tek 31 calculators, then later on a variety of digital storage products. All that work was a a manufacturing technician. Then I got laid off, and came back as a tech writer (the BA degree finally paid off). Later I worked on the X terminals that Tek built in Wilsonville before working on the Profile video stroage product. In 1999 I moved with that product to GVG when Tek was going through one of its periodic reorganizations and downsizings. That lasted till 9/11 when GVG had to lay off folks to survive the revenue disruption. So where did I wind up? In Wilsonville at Xerox working in the same buildings with many of the same people I'd previously worked with. This time was writing service documentation for the printers. Later I moved to the training group developing multimedia training programs for the various Xerox products made in W'ville. Your tour and the items you highlighted brought back so many memories.
I worked at GVG from 1976 to 2015. I survived many layoffs.
I visited this place end of April 2024. This visit was on my bucket list and I am so thankful that I could make it. We were shown around by the former Board Chairman, who sadly has since passed away. Good to see that the museum is still going strong. For an electronics engineer, this museum is definitely worth a trip!
Electronic architecture! Beautiful works of art. Fantastic engineering. Form… Fit… Function…
Truly marvelous.
Thank you for showing the museum. Love Tek products. Had a 465a for years. They were made to last.
The 465 oscilloscope had excellent triggering capabilities, best I have ever touched.
Grew up near Tektronix in Wilsonville, OR and got a little tour in late-highschool in ~1980 from a neighbor who worked there. Oh they were doing amazing stuff! They were the primary test instruments I used for the next 20 years... I need tovisit this museum!
Been a long time since I ran across another GVG employee. I was a latecomer, from 1990-1991 and designed a few ICs for their Model 3000 digital switch. They had a nice new facility in Nevada City and I always enjoyed taking walks thru the heavily forested campus.
I remember using the 545B in high school, and the 465 was the weapon-of-choice when I was a computer tech in the early 80's. One thing you will never see again is the amazing workmanship that went into building these amazing scopes, and that's why so many of them are still running today.
GVG made the best stuff. Built like a tank.
Great tour, excellent editing and descriptions! This old Ham, EE, Video Editor very much enjoyed every minute!!!
Boy!! Did this bring back memories. Back in the 60s/70s I built computers. Used these scopes to troubled the components. Could not have done my job if we did not have a Techtronic’s scope with 2 channels and a trigger. Thanks for the tour!!
Thanks for the tour! 73, Dave, KEØOG
Thank you for the tour! That was very informative.
It's so wonderful to see and remember what people once put in place to get to where we are today. Thank you so much for sharing.
Another GVG alum here. I still have a 465 scope I got a discount on being a GVG/Tek employee. I worked as a design engineer in the modular products group first as an employee and later as an outside contractor. I designed a long list of modular stuff from the mid 80's to early 2000's.
GVG equipment worked well. I miss the old days of broadcast TV.
I remember you!
Also also, those wax printers are soooooo cool. The prints are so vibrant and smell like crayons!
Super cool. My grandfather was at Tek for 50 years and worked on the dev for a lot of that equipment.
Thanks for the tour! I'm a proud owner of aTek 453, Tek TDS320, and Tek 2230.
Thank you so much for sharing with us! I have a tek scope on my bench now.
I too sat at a work bench for many years in the 70's/80's with a tektronix scope. We used them to trouble-shoot prom-burner and cpu boards for dedicated industry automation. On a side note; the construction type with rows and components soldered to standoffs was the bridge between point to point and printed boards. You likely knew that but I have to add, others used cheap phenolic? and plated pins - ie; turret boards. These were ceramic! Expensive and built like tanks. Cheers. 👍
I have installed lots of Grass Valley Group equipment in TV stations and post production houses. Thanks for sharing your videos.
What a fantastic tour and an excellent tour guide. Great stories. Thank You!!! Eric N6LG
I went to Tektronix in the 70's and was given a tour. Truly great technology. My first job after high school in 1966 was using a Tektronix 545 oscilloscope to troubleshoot integrated circuits. I used a scope probe connected to an XY table and a microscope to probe directly onto chips. I went on to use their equipment throughout my aerospace and NASA career.
Tektronix products are masterpieces. I still have an old 465 that works perfectly till today.
Brings back a lot of memories ! Thanks for the tour .. ( VE3RMR )
Thank you for a great tour Randy. Like many below, used Tektronix my entire working life - 73 N7IO
I worked for Tek back in the day. At the time, it was the largest private employer in Oregon.
for sure I remember when they came to my college back in the 1980s !
I worked in a Cardiology Research Institute from 1973 until 2018 at the University of Utah. Designing and building many types of research instruments, we used a long list of Tektronix equipment. We also used a lot of Tek 4010 computer terminals. During my electrical engineering school years I found and refurbished a Tektronix RM 45A Oscilloscope as a lab project. I paid $25.00 for the scope and it still works very well. I also have a complete TM 500 system on my bench as well.
Thank you very nice trip down memory lane.
Thanks for the tour. Nice to see. I worked for Tektronix in Heerenveen (The Netherlands) from 1968 to 1971. Our CEO that time was Earl Wantland. He had a lovely daughter "Marlene" I think she is from same age as me. We did not produce al the shown models. I was 16 when I started to work there. I' me now 73 and have worked almost 30 years as a computer technician. I like to see this memories.
Thank you for the tour sir. What a marvellous collection of beautiful pieces of art, although they were never designed as such of course, but in this time they certainly are.
Ahh.. Those were the days. I still have a 50 MHz dual trace with sweep delay up in a box in my garage. I had a fully equipped electronics workbench set up with sweeps, frequency counters, spectrum analyzers. All analog. I built that just before retiring. Never did actually use it though. The gear was limited to under 1GHz, so the world went well beyond it's capabilities. The only thing I still use from it is the digital multmeter, and occasionally the soldering iron. But I used a lot of those scopes in my time.
I first started using Tektronix scopes in the Navy at the transmitter site at Midway Island (technically, the Midway Islands, Sand and Eastern Islands) in 1966. Used 565's there but we also had a little 310 rackmount version. Later on, a ship we had some militarized portable version, I forget the model number. While studying at Cal Poly University I worked part time repairing equipment for the EL and EE labs and fixed many Tektronix scopes (often from a student connecting a probe's ground clip to line voltage). In industry, I was seldom without a 465B at my side. I learned the hard way to use special solder for the scopes with the ceramic terminal blocks - regular soldering just would not work. And the little loop of solder that was originally provided inside the scope as a courtesy was always gone.
Great video. The 465B was the best scope ever! Have a few of them here.
Thanks for the tour which brought back some memories of Tek equipment that I used. 73's de WD6FIE
I used them from the mid 60's till the 90's when HP began taking over. Now I suppose Keysight is the scope leader. I like my DSO1202-G but I think I would have been as happy with the Rigol equivalent for half the price!
Nice to see. Retired now, but during my career in Process Development for silicon chip manufacture I used many Tektronix scopes. When we purchased test equipment the scopes were always Tektronix, excellent equipment.
This was very interesting. Brought back many memories for me too. I also used and repaired a lot of this Tektronix and GVG gear as a Broadcast Television technician in the 1980's. Thanks for the tour. 73's
GVG and Tek was the IBM of broadcast TV.
Great tour, if I ever get to America this place is on the bucket list.
Thank you for this videos love it❤❤
Thanks for a great tour Randy, it brought back so many wonderful memories. I worked as a bench technician in a Tektronix field office in Pittsburgh, Pa starting in 1976 and retired in 2018 as a Region Support Specialist supporting the solid ink printers. I developed my interest in Tektronix oscilloscopes while in the ASAF as a PMEL technician from 1972 to 1976 and worked in a PMEL lab at Griffiss AFB in Rome NY troubleshooting, repairing and calibrating only oscilloscopes. I saw scopes from Tektronix, HP, Hickock, LaVoy and Dumont. Tek scopes were by far the best I worked on. I think the oldest scope I worked on was the 535/545/555 in the Air Force. While at Tek I worked on just about all of the models you show in your video up to the 7704. If there are any other technicians who worked on the 465 ask them if they know what C220 is? Around 1980 I moved into Field Service in Pittsburgh and worked on the 4006 up to the 4115 and 4116 then moved into color printing. I was 1 of 9 field technicians selected to support the color printing division. We were called Region Support Specialists and did numerous trips to Wilsonville for 2 or 3 weeks at a time to help the solid ink engineers with what we called RUS We focused on reliability, usability and serviceability of the solid ink printers. Thanks for the memories and for the opportunity to write down my history. I think this is the first time I have done this.
Thanks for sharing your story, it’s a great memory from Tektronix history.
Excellent tour, thank you.
Awesome tour, thank you for sharing.
Paul, USA!!!
Thanks for the tour, Randy!
73 de KJ7LLX
You should be very proud of Tektronix! ❤
I can't get enough of that. If I could visit your nice museum you would me get in, but never get out anymore... 😅
🤔It was a great experience to see these wonders and read the comments. When the "Mochikans" of the profession revive old moments from the fruitful moments of a beautiful era. I really liked TEK's products and instruments from this era, and their interiors were also works of art. To this day, I hold the model 2236 in high esteem as my favorite instrument...have a nice day Everyone!
thanks for the vid, I have a working 310A scope.. vintage 1959, and the original service/user manual. I love looking at it and was pleased to see one briefly covered in your tour. The museum piece looks cleaner than mine, so now I'm going to have to detail mine a bit. Tom S. Ocala Fla.
Thank you for the "tour"! I've been 40+ years at university engineering , so I've seen so much of this come and go...
Jim
KE8LMQ
Thank for this tour ,it bring me happy memory using Tek brand scope. TDS3014 is one I use during my time in Halliburton which is an improvement from Philips CombiScope (mixed ANA and DIG). TDS3014 stand out due to better memory and easy to control as well as FFT feature.
The summers of 1978 and 1979, along with a lot of really smart kids, I was selected for a Computer Camp at Northwest Missouri State University. It was a joint project between Iowa, Nebraska, Missouri, and Kansas departments of education, and we geeks had a great learning experience. My favorite part was getting to use and experiment with a Techtronics vector graphics terminal, powered by a DEC PDP-11/70 with all the bells and whistles. It inspired me to write an early portable graphics library, and after college I went on to work in HP high-performance graphics workstations. Of course today your smartphone has more capability, but it was all exciting.
Thanks for sharing. You made an excellent tour guide. Very interesting!
the original Battlestar Galactica TV show used to have all Tektronix instruments and "computer displays" (4051 graphic terminals) for their ship consoles.
Nice! I live about an hour south in Salem. I have several pieces of Tek gear and proud to do so.
Boy, that takes me back. Those were wonderful scopes. I still have a 2236 that works perfectly (I think) and I'd like to find it a loving home before I die.
I remember the old Waveform Monitors and Vectorscopes with the cermic standoffs came wih a small roll of silver solder inside on a small spool :) Thanks for the trip down memory lane!
Thanks for the Tour.
back in the early 1980's I worked on a computer manually digitizing cable maps for the phone company. We had large digitizing boards and big green phosper techtronix screens to display the map. They were great and had really good resolution.. great displays.. Now I'm starting to get into electronics and was able to purchase two portable techtronix oscilloscopes.. from a goverment surplus site. Starting to learn how to use it... big beefy machine with a nice display..
I worked on that campus and didn't know they had a museum. Pretty cool, thanks!
Awesome, thanks for making this! I worked in broadcast,used a bunch of this stuff, including your Grass switchers!
Great tour - thanks! Some gorgeous pieces there! Any more info on that CRT with the AD PWA on it? Was that on the display end or the gun end and what would that have been used for?
I haven’t seen a GVG 100 in a while! We used to have them in our telecine bays for some reason. They remained well into the HD days of spirit 1k film scanners/telecine and were used in the down conversion monitoring chain. Thanks for the tour!
I have some 561 and 564 scopes from the era when Tek was transitioning from tubes to transistors, they work fine, and i have plenty of spares to maintain them.
I like them better than digital scopes for a number of reasons.
Fascinating! Thanks.
Really neat stuff. Thank you for the tour! 73, OH1CIR
That was very interesting. I use an all transistor Tek 453 made in 1969 to look at audio waveforms of the guitar pedals I make. Still works great and it still displays beautiful waveforms on the CRT.
Summer co-op employee from back in the day! Worked for the T&M group in buildings 39 and 47, writing mainframe (the big iron in building 55!) apps and reports for the purchasing and marketing departments. Was around when the Howard Vollum Memorial was dedicated, and still remember the tears that Jean shed at that occasion. Was around for the launch of the 11000 and DSA series. Heady days! Still have a TDS2012 on the bench. Good memories!
Hi Randy! Thanks for the video tour. I remember many of those devices. Tektronix products were always of the highest quality. Hope you're doing well,
Nice to read the comments from many of the prior employees. I loved Tek equipment when I used it.
Yes, I have used the Tektronix cable impedance tester in the past. The tube oscilloscopes and logic analyzers I used were Philips. I still have the tube oscilloscope as a sort of private museum part. So good that there is a Tektronix museum!
I still use Tektronix today; have a 7834 on the bench and one for backup. Also have a 7603 and lots of plugins. The design and layout are shear beauty.
Grew up in West Linn/Wilsonville, and of course Tek was huge in the area and a status symbol for employees. I ended up using later Tek equipment at Microsoft. Great video!
I really enjoyed this tour. Thank you.
Randy thankyou. We used Tektronix oscilloscopes quite a bit in the Redfern Mail Exchange back in the 1970's . The place handled all the mail (letters, magazines/newspapers/periodical and small package sorting bothe local NSW, interstate and international; for New South Wales Australia. At Sydney NSW.
A pilgrimage to the Vintage Tek Museum is definitely on my bucket list!
Thank you for the memories. I worked at Tek Wilsonville in the late 70's. They had a huge presence at that time and were a technology leader but gradually frittered it all away. There's not much left of them these days. They actually invented the first PC (Tek 4051) but didn't realize the potential.
the video games the programmers wrote for the 4051 were a HOOT to play at the time,I used to spend lunch hour on the one in the demo room.
Tek used to have a place where you could purchase scrap parts, assemblies and full scopes.
I grew up in Los Alamos and can say that those Polaroid cameras on the front of scopes were very common until CCDs became available. Thanks for the tour.
Very cool! When I started working as a tech at an electronics manufacturer, the scope I used most often was a 465. Also, when my tech school moved to its present campus, the electronics department had an incredible amount of stuff that was squirreled away (and barely half made it to the new campus across town - there was like a 10' pile behind the old building when all was said and done). I remember grabbing an old tube-type oscilloscope... It was most likely Tektronix, but I cannot remember what model it was! It opened like a book for servicing and there was even a spot to spool some silver solder for the terminal strips. NO idea what happened to it though. :(
Great to see museum, used Tek equipment throughout my career. Have a 7000 series and TDS scope together with curve tracer at home...73s James G8YFK
Very cool video! 😎
I'm a big Tek fan myself. My main scope is still a 7603 with a 7d20 digitiser. I have a second 7603 with analog plugins too.
Thanks Randy. Vert Cool. Reminds me of all sorts of Tek products I sold in the UK that I used to pretend I understood!
Hey Pete
thank you
i dont remember the last time i said wow so many times one word tektronix says it all
i even had a high current scope probe tip that i used for a roach clip
and of course used the face cover of a 465 to clean the weed (back when there were seeds)
You missed the two logic analysis systems DAS9100 and DAS9200. Amazing machines in their day. Also, the Personal Fourier Analyzers.
bummer, sorry
Wonderful tour!
Have a 565 dual beam with 3A6 (nuvistor input) and 3A72 , 2 time base .
It's 2 in 1
Greetings from Brazil
Thanks. Years ago, I worked for Control Data Corporation. We had tons of various Tektronix products
I remember the day, as a young green tech, when I sat before my first 465B. I stared at the knobs for a little too long, and finally the boss reached past and pulled the On switch, which I had been searching for... A few years later I borrowed $2K from Granny, and bought my own 465 from ElectroRent. I still have it, forty years later...
I spent a lot of time in front of a Grass Valley video switcher when I worked at WTVQ-TV, the ABC affiliate in Lexington, Kentucky. 73, DE KU4UV
I was envious of the Grass Valley Group. I sold the 2nd class Shintron video switchers on the right coast.
In the late 90's I bought a Textronix printer that had way ink carts.
6:50 The 2467 scope has a microchannel electron multiplier faceplate CRT. You can see single shot traces at 1ns/div. I had one when I worked at HP Labs and bought one on eBay for $400 after I retired. Truly a wonderful analog oscilloscope. But beware - the configuration is stored in a battery backed SRAM module, so when the battery dies after a few years, goodbye configuration (calibration?).
I always wondered why the front of those scopes was extended like that - thanks! I would have loved a chance to use that feature. Interesting/sad to see Tek's love of the integrated battery/SRAM module apparently started in that era. I have a TDS3014 that will never again know the date or remember its last setup. Thankfully, the *factory* CAL constants are stored elsewhere. I'm still trying to determine if a signal path compensation lasts longer than the current session.
the calibration constants were stored in that NVRAM IC. after TEK sold their IC division,the TEK-made ICs and hybrids in the 2400 lines were no longer available,and when a 2400 broke,it was not repairable.
Back in the mid 1980's, I looked up Grass Valley because I needed a switcher for my video work. Unfortunately, I could NOT afford a Grass Valley switcher...
Nice video,,,
Loved their stuff! Well, the SC502 not so much, but the rest were great!
Thanks for the video. I didn't know about this museum and will have to visit from BC at some time. I have owned a few of those scopes including 500 series, a 7704 and a 7904. I have a couple others now.
I am impressed , thank you.
Hey Randy, good to see you. How you keeping? Hope you having a nice Sunday there...73 de Uncle Günter, the Rhine River Maniac 💯👍🙋♂
When I was in the Navy (1966-1970) I learned that there were depot level refurbishments of things like 565 scopes (and I assume other equipment) at Long Beach. What they did was remove all the tubes and throw them away. Then the entire scope, without cabinet, was put in an industrial dishwasher of some sort. Then left to dry. Then it was repopulated with all new tested tubes. Then they attempted to recalibrate and usually there was no further repair necessary.
USAF PMEL lab (and later at TEK service centers),I used to wash TEK scopes in a spray booth,then into a drying oven for 3 days. I could take a filthy grungy scope and make it look factory-fresh. you had to avoid washing the HV and power transformers,or you'd end up replacing them. I even did touchup spray paint on the cabinets. some customers used to write thank-you letters to my boss after they got back a 400 series portable that I cleaned,repaired,calibrated,replaced worn rubber feet,repainted the cabinets,and their scope looked like new.
@@JayWye52 When I was working part time at Cal Poly's EL/EE equipment repair ship, it was my job to refurbish donated equipment. I didn't go to the extremes you did. But did a lot of cleaning which especially involved removing blued on inventory plates, old calibration stickers, and such. And, of course, repairs and calibration before putting it into a lab. I have always wondered if there were parts in a Tek scope that maybe shouldn't get wet. Maybe when they used that dishwasher they first covered, or even removed, some items first. One thing they gave me was a small ammo box filled to the brim with used machine screws (6-32, 8-32, and smaller and larger ones). I still have what must be 20 lbs. of screws and dip into to occasionally. Certainly, a lifetime supply.
My last Tek scope was a beast of a rack mount 400mhz machine. Only 5.25" tall but 19" wide and 23 inches deep! an R7903 that came out of a nuke testing lab as surplus. Worked very well but I downsized after retiring and it had to go, took up way to much precious desk real estate! I now have a little Rigol LCD scope that weighs all of 5 pounds(instead of 30!) and is 200mhz. Plenty for what I need these days.
The 465B was my workhorse scope! Spent a lot of time with that one.
Nice Video! Greetings from Germany! 😎
I'm afraid my test-bench already looks far too much like the Tek Museum, and I used to work at HP.
I looked for but didn't see the Tektronix DAS, a terrific monitor and debug tool for embedded software development.
very interesting. regards from germany