And I was thinking while watching the first part of the video: is he going to open it to find the cause of the slight asymetry...? Ah, there's going to be an entire companion video on it! Just on of the reasons why I love this channel! 😄
ngl dude no cap I would use KB output of my moog grandmother synth and plug it in the input of the VCO HP 3310A and use the HP 3310A as a synth as a 3 vco @@CuriousMarc
I absolutely love the harmonious sounds they make when they're all spooled up! Glorious humming! An especially nice touch to see the wave forms while hearing them. Much thanks!
I own the 3310A, and it’s my primary instrument in my musical outings. It’s one hell of an oscillator…put it through some effects…and it can sound like pretty much anything you like. I bought it on a goof, about 20 years ago, and will never get rid of it.
I bet! Even today getting a clean sine wave is pretty rare in synths. The whole video I was wondering how some of these would sound patched into a VCF and VCA and with enveloping…
Wonderful! I love analog synths and this was amazing. I was in high school in the mid 70's when synthesizers started to appear in popular music and I HAD to have one! The only way for me to afford one was to build one. Enter a company called PAiA. They sold synthesizer kits and not only did I get my first synth, but I learned how to solder and build electronic kits. Something I continue enjoy to this day. I still have my original Arp2600 that I bought used for $1200 in 1980.
Definitely sounds of old Dr Who in there. The funny thing was though that the sounds around 18:30 sound fairly like a hydraulic pump to me. Would be interesting to find an audio sample of a real one and compare it.
I wonder how many of these function generators were a part of a Hollywood sound studio; generating various futuristic science fiction sounds for both TV shows and movies.
The ground braking soundtrack to Forbidden Planet by Louis and Bebe Barron deserves a special mention ( th-cam.com/video/aryHMPH7Kcc/w-d-xo.html ) . And also the BBC. They were an early creator of electronic music for their TV series.
@@CuriousMarc Somehow related are this documentaries about Delia Derbyshire ("She carried out pioneering work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including her electronic arrangement of the theme music to the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who" - Wikipedia): th-cam.com/video/nXnmSgaeGAI/w-d-xo.html th-cam.com/video/W0OGeEgwKNs/w-d-xo.html
Making music with test equipment has been the core of electronic music for a lot of the early electronic music era. The original Doctor Who Theme is another example of test equipment making music. The ingenuity of some people and thinking outside the square can really make for amazing breakthroughs. Thanks for another trip down memory lane while giving this equipment a new lease on life.
When I was a freshman Electrical Engineering student in 1988-89, I can remember messing around with one of those Model 3312 units in one of the labs. Obviously it was a hand-me-down from days past -- I'm sure they'd bought it new in 1975, and as time went on, they passed it down to lower level labs that weren't doing important research.
A fun tour of these fantastic generators. I love your demonstration of the musical qualities of these lab instruments. Considering that dedicated keyboard and modular instruments were not available many years ago to create electronic music, early experimenters used lab gear to make their music :-) Fun stuff, thank you for so many hours of enjoyment watching your videos.
Did I hear the words, "wild goose chase"? Oh, that brings back memories of the big HP9825 repair saga. I'm just starting to play this back, and will watch all the way to the end.
I would love to see your lab live :D There are so many instruments I have absolutely no idea what they are used for or how they work, but I love listening to you talking about them :)
Great video, again. It is nice to see the evolution from what we call in Dutch a “toonfiets” (litterally signal/tone bicycle) to an arbitrary waveformgenerator. It’s important to remember where we came from.
Cool retro gear! 👍 These modulated sounds reminds me old days when I listening low frequency FM radio sounds and experimentation with multiple logic gate frequency oscillators.. 😊 Nice to hear it again - nostalgic.. 😂
This was a great fun episode! I love these old generators. And just about as I wanted to say it is much more fun having the dials and buttons with this old equipment than with the new stuff, the new stuff shows up! Can't wait to see your next video!
when you buy a pricey $$ and cool vintage function generator and it does not work... it really "hertz" 🤣 i love these interesting videos 🥳 reminds me of 60s vo-tec TV repair 👌☕🥧
That Hainbach clip was pretty good, but honestly I bet you could do some music if you get a sequencer with control voltage output for your VCO input, some filters to mess around with on the output stage, and just a little bit of introductory music theory to let you pick chords to arpeggiate on the sequencer. You can just let them loop while you play with the sound, but you’ll at least get different tones rather than just one. Though I know a lot of people don’t want to take the time to trial and error like that. But I do say this because while talent is a factor, most of it can be learned. And you clearly have a good ear and you understand harmonics and stuff already - that’s a big head start honestly. It wouldn’t take much to focus that into musicality. A lot of historical musicians didn’t even start until they retired, after all! I loved the FM part especially - another layer or two of those complex overtones and that would be a wonderful FM pad to make chords and run through a chorus and reverb! So much depth and movement. I love FM.
About the phase lock with adjustable phase -- Before the availability of modern Bode analyzers, I participated one whole week end doing Lissajous patterns. We (my boss and I) analyzed a tube and thyratron based speed control system performance, or actually lack of it. We had two rented instruments, a scope with slow decay yellow trace and a two-output phase shift oscillator. The process involved sending one channel signal through the control loop. The process output was on the scope Y-axis. The phase shifted second channel went to the scope X-axis. The Y axis indicated the loop gain and by adjusting the phase shift to match, i.e. to minimize the Lissajous loop, we could read the controller phase shift from the dial. The measurements at various frequencies produced our Bode diagram. I plotted the data on a log-log chart. That was tedious, but still workable way. And it was the first time I had even heard about the workings of the Bode diagram. But we got the necessary information for considerably improving our (purchased) controller stability. It also served us to a few months later replace the original system with our own design, a new SCR control.
In the late 70s, I programmed an HP automated test rack controlling the instruments with HPIB. That HP3312 looks very familiar. In my off times I programed the two signal generators to play music (sort of).
In the US, the emergency vehicle siren sounds are called "wail" for the low speed modulated tones, "yelp" for the medium speed and "hyper-yelp" for the high speed modulated tones. We also hear the two-tone sirens occasionally, similar to those heard outside the US.
Wow! My uncle had the same device as I was about 9-10 years old in 80 years, I remember that squeaking, for me it was a sweet sound, very joyful for deaf people - yes, without a hearing aid it was audible xD
I picked up a 3312A a few months ago from a university that was clearing house. Had a bad tantalum cap on one of the rail and the mode switches were not too happy but works fine now.
I have the HP 3310A at my bench and I definitely love it. It looks beautiful, has a wide frequency range and has most functions needed for daily use. I also have the 3312A but the output amplifier is blown and I still haven't repaired it yet. Your video shall give me some motivation for repairing this little machine. BTW calibrating the 3310A was quite easy in most cases. Just loose the screws of the large frequency dial, re-align the scale with a frequency counter, and it's done. The nonlinearity and frequency gain error of my unit is neglectable.
OMG I remember the 3310, it was standard in the lab I worked in. So easy to use, everything was obvious what it did. Im thinking you have created a Moog synthesizer :)
Congrats for the really nice video. You make me love HP instruments even more! now I need to buy a 3310A at least 🙂I would love a video with the calibration steps...
Modern function generators are not as much fun as the old kit. I can remember hours of fun playing with them. Now you just punch in what you want and put pops out what you need.
Hi Marc, You seem to have found some crucial electronic tones. Good sounds. Have you heard the electonic music created by Bebe and Louis Barron music for 'The Forbidden Planet''' film. Interesting read and electric sounds. I think you found the Dr Who Dalek sound at 22:17-19 made in the famous BBC sound workshop. There was a couple of other sounds there that are famous from 60's 70's films.
I got a 3312A from a place I worked. It didn't function, turned out the freq pot had a broken solder joint. I changed it to a 10T pot and a vernier dial, a good machine.
Greatest admiration for the work of you and your team. I've enjoyed pretending I'm you while restoring and rebuilding the analog oscillator modules of the classic Laserium 6b image synthesizer from the original schematics and an original control panel. If you are interested in having a peek at analog image generating oscillators from the 1970s, you are welcome on the CYGN-B thread at photonlexicon. I sometimes use the 3312A as a source of blanking signal to the laser output. Not sure if you mentioned the V.C.O. feature on the rear of the unit. I use this with a 3V source and a 1K resistor and a Beckman Precision Helipot Laboratory Model T-10-A to gain very fine control of the internal oscillator frequency.
I think every electronics lab, whether hobbyist, or professional, should have at least one or two analog function generators, power supplies, and oscilloscopes, very handy pieces of test-equipment, my old Dick Smith 20Mhz Dual-Trace Oscilloscope has an X/Y function that's handy for phase-measurements and testing of circuits.
16:09 Open channel D. ;) It's always interesting to me who all my favourite channels are interlinked: I discovered Hainbach via Simon The Magpie. I absolutely love the sounds these things are capable of. Thanks for sharing them with us :)
I found this looking for stuff on the 3312A. I was working on trying to test a stepper motor driver, asked a friend at the college i work at for some help. Loaned me a 3312A, tried didn't work he helped me said i was right, grabed another worked but was had touchy knobs. He grabbed some newer one tried got my thing going. Finished he said take those two HPs maybe you can make one work fro mthe two, then came back with a 3rd i guess he figured was also junk but worked, fixed the scratchy one, junked the DOA one for some donor parts for the one i repaired. I had to mess with positioning the potentometer for the frequency though once repaired. I got it fairly acurate, but low (1-100HZ) frequencies are off.
What killed my 3312 was just the pushbutton switches. Put some Deoxit over them and it rejuvenated it. These pushbuttons are notorious for oxidizing, so I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them had the problem by now. Each range has its own calibration I think, you have to look at the service manual and find the right one to tweak.
Perfect! I was lucky enough to buy a 3310B about 10 months ago, as I am in Czech Republic and such vintage HP instruments are very rare here. It needs to be serviced/calibrated or both, the frequencies are off. If you could do a calibration video of the 3310, that would be great.
about halfway thru this video he starts messing about randomly playing with the connections and mentions VCO and i think to myself... where have i heard that before??? well in my DAW its still used as a construction element for modern synths even today. Then i realize he has now become one of those crazy synth people (but OG version). And sure enough! Very shortly after we are hearing some genuine and authentically generated 1960s scifi soundtrack. Well done! Actually i recently watched a relevant documentary about a famous early scifi film. Apparently they used a similar set of techniques? And it was one of the first ever instances of that? The Movie was called 'Forbidden Planet'. And we can find that documentary listed as 'Forbidden Planet Documentary' here on youtube. With those specific movie SFX part under discussion... that is located at +15 minutes timestamp onwards. If you want to skip directly to see that little piece of connected history.
Useful indeed! I've been quite happy with the Wavetek 193 I have; got it quite some years ago, when I was still in high school, I think for $120 used on eBay. Even faster than (and, about as functional as, by the look of it?) the HP 3312, it boasts a whopping 20MHz range! Though it doesn't have variable symmetry on the full range, that's only available on a ÷10 setting. The design is quite complex, taking advantage of a handful of fast ECL (MC10k family) to handle the state, and the usual CCS-into-capacitor design for timing. Indeed the Wavetek in Hainbach's clip is, if not a 190 family (it's not the 193 exactly, maybe a 191?), then certainly a contemporary of them. :) The one drawback is, the fast (TO-39) power transistors in the output stage are hard to find, and prone to failure; IIRC, I blew them just from driving a bipolar transistor, the poor thing can't handle a 50% shorted load apparently, how embarrassing? I replaced the quad of those, with a pair of much beefier, but not nearly as fast, 2SA/2SC family complements; the frequency response rolls off significantly past a few MHz and the peppy 10ns risetime is gone, but the functions are still as handy as ever. Well, that and programmability; as I'm very slowly, just beginning to automate aspects of my system (e.g. scope and spec accessible via GPIB-serial adapter), the 100% manual interface makes repetitive testing somewhat less attractive. Perhaps I'll get an arb gen one of these days; or some wired DMMs, or... :)
this is how Delia Debyshire composed the original Doctor Who theme music from the very first original season. test equipment and reel-to-reel, no viable synths existed yet.
And I was thinking while watching the first part of the video: is he going to open it to find the cause of the slight asymetry...? Ah, there's going to be an entire companion video on it! Just on of the reasons why I love this channel! 😄
At the editing stage as we speak. We can't let a good repair of wayward vintage electronics go unpunished...
And the HP 3300A repair video is out: th-cam.com/video/qpqONAFvxPI/w-d-xo.html
ngl dude no cap I would use KB output of my moog grandmother synth and plug it in the input of the VCO HP 3310A and use the HP 3310A as a synth as a 3 vco @@CuriousMarc
Lovely video. Also frightening to see how my setup looks now compared to then!
😀)))
P.S. Thanx for your videos, relly inspiring stuff!
Hainbach would love this. *edit* he’s in the video I knew I should have waited until the end!
It's so easy to imagine a young Robert Moog in a lab one day getting ideas.
well this is where synth where start it
I have a 3310A on my bench and would love to see a calibration video!
Me too...
@@X-OR_ ditto
and another...
Me too 👍
Please!
I absolutely love the harmonious sounds they make when they're all spooled up! Glorious humming!
An especially nice touch to see the wave forms while hearing them. Much thanks!
I own the 3310A, and it’s my primary instrument in my musical outings. It’s one hell of an oscillator…put it through some effects…and it can sound like pretty much anything you like. I bought it on a goof, about 20 years ago, and will never get rid of it.
I bet! Even today getting a clean sine wave is pretty rare in synths. The whole video I was wondering how some of these would sound patched into a VCF and VCA and with enveloping…
"Hello, I'm CuriousMarc, it's good to have you back"
Wonderful! I love analog synths and this was amazing. I was in high school in the mid 70's when synthesizers started to appear in popular music and I HAD to have one! The only way for me to afford one was to build one. Enter a company called PAiA. They sold synthesizer kits and not only did I get my first synth, but I learned how to solder and build electronic kits. Something I continue enjoy to this day. I still have my original Arp2600 that I bought used for $1200 in 1980.
I didn't expect Hainbach to pop up in this episode, but I had to think of him since the very first second of this video :D
Today's video just reminded me of old sci-fi especially Dr who and the BBC radiophonic workshop with Delia Derbyshire.
Definitely sounds of old Dr Who in there. The funny thing was though that the sounds around 18:30 sound fairly like a hydraulic pump to me. Would be interesting to find an audio sample of a real one and compare it.
Just imagine how much of this stuff that went in the bin in the 90s!
I've got that large HP function generator as well. When you open it up, the inside is a masterpiece of quality.
I wonder how many of these function generators were a part of a Hollywood sound studio; generating various futuristic science fiction sounds for both TV shows and movies.
The ground braking soundtrack to Forbidden Planet by Louis and Bebe Barron deserves a special mention ( th-cam.com/video/aryHMPH7Kcc/w-d-xo.html ) . And also the BBC. They were an early creator of electronic music for their TV series.
My recollection is that Disney's original order was 50 units.
@@CuriousMarc Somehow related are this documentaries about Delia Derbyshire ("She carried out pioneering work with the BBC Radiophonic Workshop during the 1960s, including her electronic arrangement of the theme music to the British science-fiction television series Doctor Who" - Wikipedia):
th-cam.com/video/nXnmSgaeGAI/w-d-xo.html
th-cam.com/video/W0OGeEgwKNs/w-d-xo.html
Yes, but can his interociter handle 1.21GW?
I love HP's old schematic style, the service manual for my 1727A CRO looks the same as the clips you showed, nice!
Making music with test equipment has been the core of electronic music for a lot of the early electronic music era. The original Doctor Who Theme is another example of test equipment making music. The ingenuity of some people and thinking outside the square can really make for amazing breakthroughs.
Thanks for another trip down memory lane while giving this equipment a new lease on life.
Hainbach and Curious Marc with function generators.... it's my dream come true!
This is reminds me so much of the 1960s rock band, Silver Apples. They used a bunch of really similar oscillators for their trippy music.
Yes. Please do show the adjustment procedure for the 3310A! Love your videos Mark.
You just created an analog synth... Bob Moog would have been proud... :-)
I've decided that you are my spirit animal. Congratulations I suppose!
When I was a freshman Electrical Engineering student in 1988-89, I can remember messing around with one of those Model 3312 units in one of the labs. Obviously it was a hand-me-down from days past -- I'm sure they'd bought it new in 1975, and as time went on, they passed it down to lower level labs that weren't doing important research.
I have a couple of 202A function gens and I adore them dearly...
A fun tour of these fantastic generators. I love your demonstration of the musical qualities of these lab instruments. Considering that dedicated keyboard and modular instruments were not available many years ago to create electronic music, early experimenters used lab gear to make their music :-) Fun stuff, thank you for so many hours of enjoyment watching your videos.
I picked a bad night to fall asleep while watching TH-cam with auto play on lol
Love this HP equipment. Just gorgeous.
Also leaving a comment to see the 3310 adjustment procedure. Would very much like that LOL
Several times during the course of this video, every dog in my neighborhood erupted in barking. Strange, that...
Starting Saturday morning off right with the three C's: Coffee, cereal and CuriousMarc :)
Curious Marc sharing Hainbach is really so cool (also peak geakery on both sides)
DJ Marc is in da house!
Did I hear the words, "wild goose chase"? Oh, that brings back memories of the big HP9825 repair saga. I'm just starting to play this back, and will watch all the way to the end.
I would love to see your lab live :D There are so many instruments I have absolutely no idea what they are used for or how they work, but I love listening to you talking about them :)
I was about to write Hainbach! and then you showed him:D
I have a 3310. An adjustment procedure video would be nice! Thanks!
Yes, I like to see the adjustment procedure, as I happen to have two of these 3310.
I have a 3311A that I used to use in a science class for 4th and 5th graders. They loved spinning the dial and making sci-fi sounds.
Still have my HP 205AG on the test bench. Its very useful even today.
What a beauty that is! Old school HP always lights my dials :)
Reminds me of early 1960s / 1970s Science-Fiction :D Love this Video :D
Yeah background sounds galore.
Great video, again. It is nice to see the evolution from what we call in Dutch a “toonfiets” (litterally signal/tone bicycle) to an arbitrary waveformgenerator. It’s important to remember where we came from.
I'd say you & every one on your team is indeed very gifted.
Cool retro gear! 👍
These modulated sounds reminds me old days when I listening low frequency FM radio sounds and experimentation with multiple logic gate frequency oscillators.. 😊
Nice to hear it again - nostalgic.. 😂
yes yes yes bonus video!
This was a great fun episode! I love these old generators. And just about as I wanted to say it is much more fun having the dials and buttons with this old equipment than with the new stuff, the new stuff shows up! Can't wait to see your next video!
when you buy a pricey $$ and cool vintage function generator and it does not work... it really "hertz" 🤣 i love these interesting videos 🥳 reminds me of 60s vo-tec TV repair 👌☕🥧
That Hainbach clip was pretty good, but honestly I bet you could do some music if you get a sequencer with control voltage output for your VCO input, some filters to mess around with on the output stage, and just a little bit of introductory music theory to let you pick chords to arpeggiate on the sequencer. You can just let them loop while you play with the sound, but you’ll at least get different tones rather than just one.
Though I know a lot of people don’t want to take the time to trial and error like that. But I do say this because while talent is a factor, most of it can be learned. And you clearly have a good ear and you understand harmonics and stuff already - that’s a big head start honestly. It wouldn’t take much to focus that into musicality. A lot of historical musicians didn’t even start until they retired, after all!
I loved the FM part especially - another layer or two of those complex overtones and that would be a wonderful FM pad to make chords and run through a chorus and reverb! So much depth and movement. I love FM.
Today my HP 3312A arrived, I now have the 3 oscillators of this video.
About the phase lock with adjustable phase -- Before the availability of modern Bode analyzers, I participated one whole week end doing Lissajous patterns. We (my boss and I) analyzed a tube and thyratron based speed control system performance, or actually lack of it. We had two rented instruments, a scope with slow decay yellow trace and a two-output phase shift oscillator. The process involved sending one channel signal through the control loop. The process output was on the scope Y-axis. The phase shifted second channel went to the scope X-axis. The Y axis indicated the loop gain and by adjusting the phase shift to match, i.e. to minimize the Lissajous loop, we could read the controller phase shift from the dial. The measurements at various frequencies produced our Bode diagram. I plotted the data on a log-log chart. That was tedious, but still workable way. And it was the first time I had even heard about the workings of the Bode diagram. But we got the necessary information for considerably improving our (purchased) controller stability. It also served us to a few months later replace the original system with our own design, a new SCR control.
Of course we want to see the repair videos!
This is like watching people play with their eurorack synths, except we can actually see what's happening to the waveforms on the oscilloscope
Some (the best) Eurorack setups have tiny oscillators on the board :D
That was mesmerising!
Nice demo of emergency sirens
In the late 70s, I programmed an HP automated test rack controlling the instruments with HPIB. That HP3312 looks very familiar. In my off times I programed the two signal generators to play music (sort of).
Shades of Forbidden Planet. I would love to see a 3312A tuneup video as I have to troubleshoot one.
In the US, the emergency vehicle siren sounds are called "wail" for the low speed modulated tones, "yelp" for the medium speed and "hyper-yelp" for the high speed modulated tones. We also hear the two-tone sirens occasionally, similar to those heard outside the US.
Wow! My uncle had the same device as I was about 9-10 years old in 80 years, I remember that squeaking, for me it was a sweet sound, very joyful for deaf people - yes, without a hearing aid it was audible xD
I picked up a 3312A a few months ago from a university that was clearing house. Had a bad tantalum cap on one of the rail and the mode switches were not too happy but works fine now.
Beautiful!
I have the HP 3310A at my bench and I definitely love it. It looks beautiful, has a wide frequency range and has most functions needed for daily use. I also have the 3312A but the output amplifier is blown and I still haven't repaired it yet. Your video shall give me some motivation for repairing this little machine.
BTW calibrating the 3310A was quite easy in most cases. Just loose the screws of the large frequency dial, re-align the scale with a frequency counter, and it's done. The nonlinearity and frequency gain error of my unit is neglectable.
Thanks Marc. I would certainly like to see the alignment of the 3310.
OMG I remember the 3310, it was standard in the lab I worked in. So easy to use, everything was obvious what it did. Im thinking you have created a Moog synthesizer :)
Best channel on youtube
Yes I would like to see the adjustment
Great sci-fi background audio.
If you thought unboxing videos would be top notch nerdy, think twice: Marc's calibration video nerdness around the corner!
Nice info, thanks for sharing :)
Congrats for the really nice video. You make me love HP instruments even more! now I need to buy a 3310A at least 🙂I would love a video with the calibration steps...
I was wondering what sort of noise specifications these guy's had, just a ballpark figure, great video...cheers.
Modern function generators are not as much fun as the old kit. I can remember hours of fun playing with them. Now you just punch in what you want and put pops out what you need.
Hi Marc, You seem to have found some crucial electronic tones. Good sounds. Have you heard the electonic music created by Bebe and Louis Barron music for 'The Forbidden Planet''' film. Interesting read and electric sounds. I think you found the Dr Who Dalek sound at 22:17-19 made in the famous BBC sound workshop. There was a couple of other sounds there that are famous from 60's 70's films.
I got a 3312A from a place I worked. It didn't function, turned out the freq pot had a broken solder joint. I changed it to a 10T pot and a vernier dial, a good machine.
So when can we expect the wall of modular synths Marc? ;)
Someone should let Hainbach know that your playing with old test equipment to make music.
Heinbach would approve.
I posted that a minute before the man himself appeared. LOL
Greatest admiration for the work of you and your team. I've enjoyed pretending I'm you while restoring and rebuilding the analog oscillator modules of the classic Laserium 6b image synthesizer from the original schematics and an original control panel. If you are interested in having a peek at analog image generating oscillators from the 1970s, you are welcome on the CYGN-B thread at photonlexicon. I sometimes use the 3312A as a source of blanking signal to the laser output. Not sure if you mentioned the V.C.O. feature on the rear of the unit. I use this with a 3V source and a 1K resistor and a Beckman Precision Helipot Laboratory Model T-10-A to gain very fine control of the internal oscillator frequency.
Thank you for the video. It was very interesting to see such magnificent equipment.🤩
I think every electronics lab, whether hobbyist, or professional, should have at least one or two analog function generators, power supplies, and oscilloscopes, very handy pieces of test-equipment, my old Dick Smith 20Mhz Dual-Trace Oscilloscope has an X/Y function that's handy for phase-measurements and testing of circuits.
yes we want the bonus video xD
Its always a wierd day when marc uploads
Im not saying im mad, its just...
Relevant...
Some very 'Forbidden Planet' sounds in there 😊
16:09 Open channel D. ;)
It's always interesting to me who all my favourite channels are interlinked: I discovered Hainbach via Simon The Magpie.
I absolutely love the sounds these things are capable of. Thanks for sharing them with us :)
I found this looking for stuff on the 3312A. I was working on trying to test a stepper motor driver, asked a friend at the college i work at for some help. Loaned me a 3312A, tried didn't work he helped me said i was right, grabed another worked but was had touchy knobs. He grabbed some newer one tried got my thing going. Finished he said take those two HPs maybe you can make one work fro mthe two, then came back with a 3rd i guess he figured was also junk but worked, fixed the scratchy one, junked the DOA one for some donor parts for the one i repaired. I had to mess with positioning the potentometer for the frequency though once repaired. I got it fairly acurate, but low (1-100HZ) frequencies are off.
What killed my 3312 was just the pushbutton switches. Put some Deoxit over them and it rejuvenated it. These pushbuttons are notorious for oxidizing, so I wouldn’t be surprised if most of them had the problem by now. Each range has its own calibration I think, you have to look at the service manual and find the right one to tweak.
Show the phase lock on the scope using x-y. That would be interesting, I guess: if you lock on an harmonic, you get a Lissajous picture.
Please show the adjustment procedure for the most recent oscillator!
Perfect! I was lucky enough to buy a 3310B about 10 months ago, as I am in Czech Republic and such vintage HP instruments are very rare here. It needs to be serviced/calibrated or both, the frequencies are off. If you could do a calibration video of the 3310, that would be great.
CuriousMarc: "... and I repaired it..."
Me: yeaa!
CuriousMarc: "... OFF CAMERA ..."
Me: NOOOOOO!
💙very cool
Of course I want to see stuff get calibrated and aligned.
Calibration video: yes please
very cool stuff. You missed the famous 3314A which was digital and Arb capable. I think it came out after 3312A in early 1980s
Now we know how NASA was going to communicate with the clangers on the moon!
regarding the phase error output. Channel B seems to have a -A output? If A is phaselocked, wouldn't B-A be the error?
Ah yes, fun generators. Memories.
about halfway thru this video he starts messing about randomly playing with the connections and mentions VCO and i think to myself... where have i heard that before??? well in my DAW its still used as a construction element for modern synths even today. Then i realize he has now become one of those crazy synth people (but OG version). And sure enough! Very shortly after we are hearing some genuine and authentically generated 1960s scifi soundtrack. Well done! Actually i recently watched a relevant documentary about a famous early scifi film. Apparently they used a similar set of techniques? And it was one of the first ever instances of that? The Movie was called 'Forbidden Planet'. And we can find that documentary listed as 'Forbidden Planet Documentary' here on youtube. With those specific movie SFX part under discussion... that is located at +15 minutes timestamp onwards. If you want to skip directly to see that little piece of connected history.
Useful indeed! I've been quite happy with the Wavetek 193 I have; got it quite some years ago, when I was still in high school, I think for $120 used on eBay. Even faster than (and, about as functional as, by the look of it?) the HP 3312, it boasts a whopping 20MHz range! Though it doesn't have variable symmetry on the full range, that's only available on a ÷10 setting. The design is quite complex, taking advantage of a handful of fast ECL (MC10k family) to handle the state, and the usual CCS-into-capacitor design for timing. Indeed the Wavetek in Hainbach's clip is, if not a 190 family (it's not the 193 exactly, maybe a 191?), then certainly a contemporary of them. :)
The one drawback is, the fast (TO-39) power transistors in the output stage are hard to find, and prone to failure; IIRC, I blew them just from driving a bipolar transistor, the poor thing can't handle a 50% shorted load apparently, how embarrassing? I replaced the quad of those, with a pair of much beefier, but not nearly as fast, 2SA/2SC family complements; the frequency response rolls off significantly past a few MHz and the peppy 10ns risetime is gone, but the functions are still as handy as ever.
Well, that and programmability; as I'm very slowly, just beginning to automate aspects of my system (e.g. scope and spec accessible via GPIB-serial adapter), the 100% manual interface makes repetitive testing somewhat less attractive. Perhaps I'll get an arb gen one of these days; or some wired DMMs, or... :)
We had these in school in the navy
I hear the original Dr. Who theme in that sine wave…
Marc! - You used the wrong scopes in this video! - We need old green CRT goodness :)
this is how Delia Debyshire composed the original Doctor Who theme music from the very first original season. test equipment and reel-to-reel, no viable synths existed yet.