Hi welcome to a Teardown! Tuesday We've got a random bit of old test instrument kit here. Look at this. Sister on Donna Counter Timer hands up if you remember sister on Donna they're actually still around but that I may test instruments. They're like a defense company who make like radar II type things or something like that these days I think Anyways, it's a 60 51 for those playing along at home counter timer and look at this.

all these manual range buttons. Beautiful! And yes, it's not just a frequency counter, it is. As the name says, it's a counter timer. So you'll see y'all start.

Stop here I don't know what these start/stop thumbwheel switches I love thermal switches so I could play with those all day and they're probably like some start delay or stop delay or something like that perhaps. I don't know I don't have the manual for this two hand and it's got AC DC coupling on all the channels, attenuator of course, your thresholds and your various functions you've got. You can do a count would be not frequency counter, but physically counting your input. so you know this is very handy for counting events and stuff like that if you don't have a proper time a counter in your lab I Highly recommend you get one if you want to count how many events happen, transitions happen in a certain time period or something like that.

Counter timer is absolutely invaluable for doing something like that. And of course it's frequency counter. You can get period and frequency display as well and this is actually a Nixie tube display as we'll see hanging around for the end will power this baby up and sure we can get some Nixie tube goodness out of this thing. Hopefully that's the plan.

Anyway, this one has seen better days. Look at the top on that I'm sure it didn't come factory fitted with that moldy type camouflage. I'm sure it's a, you know, has an aged well. this probably dates from, you know, sometime in the 70s.

It's definitely not 80s because it's a Nixie tube based thing. None of that LED display rubbish. So let's have a look on the back here. Got external reset the IEC mains power input BCD out a remote control interface and it looks like we've got an organized oscillator here.

If we take that cover off I'm sure we can get into and adjust our oscillator. They're fantastic Scot all your our external time base and stuff like that. But the most interesting thing assembled and tested in Australia No workers. Well you know what we say.

You're on the Eevblog. don't turn it on, take it apart. Okay, this one's gonna be way too easy. Two screws in the top.

let's pull it off and up. Sorry. I'm gonna have to move the camera back. Well, we're in ice and that beautiful.

ah look at the daughterboard vertical. uh you know, motherboard construction with all the individual cards popping out. our? that is gorgeous. Oh wow.

Oh there's some system design engineering gone into this puppy. I Just love it and look at the gold-plated PCBs down there. oh yes siree. Bob None that tin plate rubbish.

Japanese fan all this stuff's made in Japan and Australia oh there's no organized oscillator down there. Check out the the back of that they've got like you know, an old-fashioned tube socket, tube socket and just discreet wiring just bundled out coming of course to the rear because you wanna. That was like the external frequency input and stuff like that so you want to be able to switch between those. So got one big folded metal like cage at the back that holds all the power supply fan.

organized oscillator. some of the big ass fuel D caps here and it looks like some more biggest fuel to caps in there and these are probably oh you passed look. little test sockets. Little test sockets on your power supply are beautiful and then the rest of it is just one huge board and that looks like really thick as gold plating on that like you know they go was well I don't know.

was cheap in 73 Anyway, go through cycles really? yeah. like the old school stuff, they just applied it thick as back in the day and even like the gold plate that you got on the card edge connectors, you know they don't make them like they used to. Anyway, this is fantastic. Oh that's actually an extender card.

Wow. you're that. Get a free extender card. Wow.

I wonder how much Gold's on there? That's sweet. And of course, these extender cards absolutely vital when you're testing. And Wow Let's get one out testing and repairing these because it means that you can just walk it in like that. stick your board on top there and you can access the front and the back side to probe and troubleshoot this whole thing.

So repairability on this? brilliant. Now just go through each board briefly. one by one. this one's a bit how you're doing.

We've got a is that a trainee? They're just bolted onto its own little heatsink only single sided this one so this one doesn't look the least bit impressive. And we've got tin plate on the bottom here so they would have masked off during the the wave. soldering these masks at all often just which is rolled. Unfortunately, this is that hand done but looks of it anyway.

That one's a little bit how you're doing. but let's go on to the next one. This looks more like it. Look at this a little custom-made transformer in there.

Look at that. I Love it! And by the way, yes we do have our date codes here 1973, but some of them have got 72. but at least it's at least 73. So there you go.

look at this. We've got a big-ass 10 turned trimmer there and another right that would be an adjustable capacitor frequency trimmer. So I'm not sure what that is. It's obviously you know it's not the main oscillator.

So anyway. I Love the test points on that. really old school. and once again, it's all tin plate on the back with real thick as gold plating.

Gorgeous. So it would have been really nice if these were all labeled. Anyway, this one's the next one in the series. There you can see we've got some inductors.

they're just, you know, air cord and not much else doing there. A couple of trimmer caps, little old school package. beautiful and look at that. that one's actually got selective tin on it.

So yeah. I'm not sure what happen there. that one didn't need much layout of time did it? Little resistor packages? Well, you know, why not. Hey, when you got a bus system like this, the A7 board, itt.

Hmm. Anyway, no idea what they are. Yeah, what are We got? A eight board? Every boards a winner. They are labeled.

It would be. really, you know. I'm sure the manual for this thing is absolutely first-rate and it would list all the different you know boards. And it have block diagrams and probably almost certainly schematics in it and stuff like that.

But what do we got? It's good. And once again, ITT Stuff Tot 936 Yes, that's old RTL stuff. Isn't it? Some of the really early stuff Anyway, Some Motorola stuff. So we're talking, you know, 73.

probably late 73 this was manufactured there. Abouts this one's just got logic or they're upside down so all the electrons gonna fall out and you'll notice that there's a you know now for bypassing on each individual chip. None of that rubbish, just some bulk decoupling for the card and you know that's fine. Gets the job done and the A10 board is blue cuz well, Blue makes it go faster I'm once again we've just got all logic.

We've got a few more bypass cap. so I'm not the little Se they would be no, are they I was gonna say no, they're not power cuz you know you can see the see the pair up the top. they're just sneaking one into the other so that looks like probably a ripple counter or something. not even looking at those part.

numbers can't see them from here. And here's the I 11 board. We've got some more analog II stuff so maybe we could be talking some of the input type stuff. Maybe we've got some.

I've got some AC coupling and stuff like that I don't know. so looks like we've got got a a relay their little read relay job across a 12. Once again, we've got Motorola parts we're probably going to see a classic Motorola Motorola Just owned the market back then. What is it? The 1309 is it? That was.

the was basically the input prescaler in every dot. Probably got that number wrong anyway in every frequency counter do-it-yourself design back in the seventies and right through the 80s and probably even into the 90s. Okay, so we just went through in sequence on all of those. So let's pull out a couple of other random cards here.

Power Supply first. Hey, check out the the penetrators going through there. they're going through from the That's very nice. They're called our penetrators because they penetrate a chassis from when you solder on one side to the other and they're just going through from the folded metal work up here down to the main board.

That's just your power coming over. It's the A13 power supply board. So yeah, what are we got? Just, you know, some classic what? 73 regulators I don't know. not reading the part numbers and we've got of course five volts through all your TTL stuff.

plus 12, minus 12 and minus 5.2 Fear, what's that ECL stuff. Oh, look at this. We have our first bunch. check it out and you can see the still see the flux residue on those joints.

So someone's had a crack at that. Someone's had a repair of the old power supply I'm not sure what that ball is doing but it's got pre and balance there so I don't know Beulah None of this wasting, you know, gold if you don't have to. just love the attention to detail on the links here. Look at this of a you know person laying out the board when Ty bugger this.

I Can't get this trace over to here? Why not? I Don't know. They could have snuck it around there and went to there anyway. Well, maybe they didn't want to break the ground in there, but is that that big a deal? It's going around there anyway. I'm Is that a layout fail? They could have bought that around there.

I Decide to use a link and then of course you don't want to short out. You know someone's handling the cars, Squishes it down and it makes contact with the gold down there. There's none of this sort of newfangled solder mask rubbish, so they they put the plastic sleeve on there. It's beautiful.

Oh, that one's getting a bit interesting. The reed relays down there fantastic. And I don't know what the rest is doing, but when you see sort of like a symmetrical layout like that, put a line through the middle there, you can see it's completely symmetrical. These are trainees little transistors either side.

When you've got a symmetrical layout like that, you can tell that that's a yard. some sort of differential. you know, line, differential, amp, things like that. Anyway, it's when you see symmetry, you know its differential, and then of course the resistors at the end.

They're going to be across the differential line and then, so it's probably you know, like single ended the differential converter. Maybe There's a lot of trainings in there for that though, and another identical board. So given that there's two of them and also given their placement near the front part of physical placement near the input connectors here for like so that. this is basically so.

This board that we looked at here is a 16 one. the input amp for the like, the frequency counter input, the channel a input and then these two boards here which are absolutely identical are no doubt the input amps with the selectable AC coupling and the trigger threshold and the attenuation and stuff like that. So here you go: Little Trimmer Pot Oh I Just noticed that on the backside there certain don't know if it's an afterthought, but there's our they wanted to ground the input to the chassis here so when you plug that in that just makes contact with the chassis. So there you go, that just makes sense.

And of course these three are long boards over here with all the digital stuff, that's just all the different modes and stuff like that so that it contained the gating logic and all that sort of jazz. And last but not least, well, second-last let's have a look at this board. handles these thumb rule switches here and this is this is pretty how you're doing. I mean look, you know like everything else is quite neat and tidy.

This just looks a bit messy with the ribbon cables and just the Dickey little turret connectors up there. Yeah, they just sort of let it down a bit there. but anyway, unfortunately this board doesn't come with the ejectors and they these boards do require by the way, a lot of force to get these in and out so don't tear my fingers apart if I I'm trying to like. sort of rock it out but geez, it's really it's really stuck in there.

good, so forgive me for not taking that one apart Anyway, that just handles the that's just decoding for the thumb wheel switches. Now is the time for all you Nixie Tube fanboys to get excited. What we've got here is these are just start latches that let your the data asked. 7475 are four bit latches there, But what we're really interested in is down here.

Let me flip this around. Oh there we go. Nixie Tube Goodness Seven, Four One Four One drivers. The absolute classic Nixie Tube Driver And they've put those in sockets because presumably you know they could blow and look at these.

National Instruments Nixie Tubes 73 28 datecode. So yep, late 70s, late 70s would have been manufactured. Oh look at that. that's the money shot in 4k.

And then that little board. There is just the indicator board for the various you know, segments like you know, microseconds and milliseconds and stuff like that, so you know gating and all that sort of stuff. just lights them up. So it's interesting that all this comes in via these are dipped cable-tied socket.

It's not the best choice. not quite are you doing, but it's getting there and the sprog capacitor fanboys go wild. Look at that and it's none of that silkscreen rubbish or which is a feel of vision they're etched in. they are.

They're actually, um, like itched punched in. They're brilliant. You didn't think I wasn't going to show you the bottom side did you? Let's Oh no, no, it just lifts off. Beautiful.

Oh man. wow, what a Bobby Dazzler Lots of point-to-point stuff there. they didn't You know they went to the effort to do the to do the main motherboard in here. but yeah, they sort of went well.

We can't do everything so let's just let's just wire everything over. You know, Labor's cheap. No worries, everything still wired. Cost really wasn't a huge issue here.

So there you go. There's the big big capacitors down there. the huge lugs on them. Look at that.

Fantastic. What are we got up the front here? Oh is that a new switch that looks like a new sweet arrogance? Someone's budged in and you switch to there. what do you think that looks like a new sink? a job'? I Reckon someone's let he go with that. Hmm.

Anyway, you noticed like a attention to detail, they put the heat shrink over the big strap going over to the being see on the front. Geez, they're serious there aren't they? Jeez, I could carry some amps and this is a double-sided load. We've got two Reed relays on the bottom. This is a fantastic day.

Well it's the rest of it. Oh, there's our there's our power trainees on the heatsinks down in there. there you go straight into those. Okay, so they're using.

the penetrators were actually yeah, sockets. Yeah, they are actually not so much penetrators. They're actually like transistor sockets that are designed to mount into. You know, shows ease with bottom point-to-point wiring like this.

I'm sure that heat sink compound as dry as a dead dingos donger? Yeah, I think I'm right, that's drier than a dead dingos. Donna Well, they certainly don't make them like this anymore do they? And also this is the first time I've probably ever seen supplying a an extender card because obviously like it. they actually went to the effort to put like a little metal thing to retain it so it doesn't flap around in the breeze and fall out cuz it's got no soccer to go into. So I think you know it deliberately comes with that.

although you don't get one for these are bigger ones. which is a bit of a bummer. but jeez. Anyway, that's fantastic.

Yeah, not exactly our cost-conscious on the design of this thing, but yeah it did the business as I need one thing left to do its parent up see if it still works 1973 Confidence is high I Repeat Confidence is high. Alright see if this thing works? Whoa. Hey Oh look at the beautiful Nick Sees what a Bobby does. Like what the power switches see seen better days.

It rotates fantastic. Oh look at that thing of beauty is a joy forever. and I Just love how you can see the six poking out further than the zero because the zero is physically towards the back on the Nixie tube. so you can really see the difference there.

Fantastic! Check out the update rate on this baby. Leave that hey going so fast you can't see him. Whew. That's counter mode.

Wow, that's fantastic. This thing looks like it works a treat. Well she works. Check this out.

I've said it to our rate ie. here and I set the one Kilohertz range. so one Hertz resolution here generating just a one kilohertz square wave here and it's bang on. But look, you've got to press the manual reset button.

It doesn't work like if I just suddenly you know, take that up to 10 kilohertz or something. It doesn't work. We have to actually hit reset the counter each time. Fantastic old school, but it's bang on.

Oh look at this. look at how fast that counts. That's beautiful. Oh, it's just so satisfying to use.

Oh, you just want to press that reset button all day. Really, that's just beautiful. but it's out. but which one is out? The sister on Donna All these siglent this newfangled Sieglin that's trying to bring out the big guns.

So we've got the CSIRO a frequency reference standard. Let's take a look at this Rubidium locked. Ah, there you go. She's eaten out by her.

82 Hertz Oh Bummer. And we can actually extract an extra digit from this if you want to go over scale. I Love the fact the manual reset just lets you show it's A. It's a really good visual way of showing the gating period.

In this case, it's got to be ten-second gating period and how it actually counts those 10 megahertz pulses in that counting period. There we go accounts: the input pulses. sorry. if we're in reciprocal counting mode then it would count the input.

It would count the reference clock pulses. But there you go. 86 All that's slightly different isn't it to? what do we have? Oh no. A - there you go.

So it was actually 8 to 6. But yeah, it's beautiful. This want to use this all day. So why go through and test all the functions on here? You know you'd have to Chester stop stop and the start stop of whatever delay or whatever it is here and you'd have to test.

You know all the various threshold levels and the coupling and all sorts of stuff. but it seems to do the business this is. You know it's not a big like 12 digit display like You get these days. it's only 8 digits.

but me? You know this would have been pretty schmick back in the day. So I hope you like that tear down. Tuesday If you did get a random number there, please give it a big thumbs up. and as always you can discuss down below.

catch you next time. What will the random number be? Use this as your lotto pick. All right. I Know people aren't going to be happy unless I tweak this thing to match my Rubidium.

So here we go. Alright I think I got it hung at the right angle. very important so no light. None of this live updating rubbish.

Wow Jeez, what is this? a 10 turn trimmer? Think I'm turning it. Hang on. Okay, smaller screwdriver this time. Cheese.

Um, let's go that's going all the way with LBJ let's turn it all the way the other way. Yeah, it's like a ten turn, five or ten turn. Oh yeah, diddly squat. What? o-69 not I've gone all the way I like getting Jack what? So after watching the teardown I realized that it did have an internal ten megahertz oscillator and adjustment pot on that board if you remember that that we actually took out.

So I figured that the oven eyes oscillator that we saw in the back of this thing is probably like a separate thing and you had to connect it. So what I've done is actually hooked up the external 10 megahertz out to the end. Switch to the external frequency in and that's what we get and it makes no difference when I tweak that pot on the back for the oven eyes oscillator. So I'm going to have to damn well cheat and plug my external reference into my 10 Megahertz Rubidium standard.

And of course it's going to be bang on because I'm feeding the same 10 megahertz into the reference clock as I'm feeding into here. So will it make a fool out of me Or will there be one please? Significant digit? Not there we go. And can we go all the way with LBJ up to with our 10-second gating time? and we should get all zeroes. maybe a least significant digit.

Oh yes, at least significant digit. There you go. Alright, so I'll switch back to the internal oscillator and here it is over here. So let's let's tweak the internal oscillator.

We've got 60 on there at the moment. Oh no. 71. Why was it changed? I'm gonna tweak that a little bit.

Yeah, 64 Okay, we're going down. No bang on. Look at that. Alright, so hey wait wait.

I Can't believe it's got like the oven eyes dosed later in the back and it's it's set to the internal. Oh oh there we go. I could tweak it, maybe a little bit more. Ah, half Abby's dick.

Yeah, they're enough. And if we actually go back and have a look at our oven eyes dosa later here, you can see that it is actually all entirely separate look. I mean at the middle being see down in there is the 10 megahertz out? So yeah, I was doing the right thing by connecting the external frequency input up to there like that and then switch in our reference to external. But if I do that and then do it again.

So yeah, I plug that in and like we're over. which is fine. You know it might need a trim, but the trim does nothing. so maybe there's a fault with the trimmer inside that oven eyes dosa later.

So, but it gets stranger. I'm not sure if I'm using this thing right? I've disconnected the external 10 megahertz reference I've got it switched over to the external frequency standard and it still counts what and that's pretty close to being on what I did with there. and if I switch it to the internal back to the internal oscillator, that's what we'll get in with the the internal that I just trimmed and it's drifted a bit. B&O temperature near the internal oscillator design? Great! So yeah.

I don't understand this thing at all. It's very strange I might have to RTFM if I can find the FM Catch you next time.