I worked for Tektronix from 78-94 in the 400 series O-scopes. 200 series scopes were built in our area. KW is Kay Waldon (I knew her). 02181 is the employee who calibrated it. Some people signed with their employee # some with their initials. Gold pins were first machine inserted then soldered. Tek made many of its own custom parts mainly because of electrical values. Square package IC's were tek made and we called them spider chips. After an Engineering revision many of us technicians would just draw it into our manuals instead of grabbing a new one. The dashed lines coming from switches would go up top to a table with dots showing rotatory cam timing when the contacts were closed. 200 series scopes were calibrated with the boards laid out flat with cables. After calibration cables removed and scope was close up.

fantastic stuff!, love the 70's electronics :D especially those gold top ceramic chips :D

The reason for the transformer location is to keep it as far away as possible from the CRT beam path to avoid magnetic interference with the scan. Probably also carefully oriented and mu-metal shielded.

For the love of Pete, have a look at those schematics! Good Lord, that is an example of a great engineer who really thought out what a troubleshooting tech would want to have available to him/her when working on this unit. Clear, concise, and the waveform standards for each circuit is a thing of beauty. I would love to have an engineering team like that at my firm. Don't misunderstand me, I have a brilliant team, and they are very clever, but this is old school magic. Thanks for sharing, and I will be having a little meeting with my boys and showing this video to them. Cheers mate!

If you ever get a chance again, I'd love to see a teardown of the classic Tek rotary range cam switches with the gold fingers pressing to the board. Thing of beauty and a joy forever as someone said...

the traces are so bendy and wide so that the data running through them at the speed of light doesn't get carried out of the curve and crashes into components. You know, like when you're in a car and you're too fast and trying to make a sharp turn.

The BNC is a popular user mod on those. The orig models had non-replaceable built in probes! direct cabled, no connectors.

A testament to the innovative design at Tektronix and the longevity of their products.

Man, I just love the screen on this. The images on it at the beginning are just so crisp and pleasant to look at. One of my favorite teardowns of yours, here!

I've waited so long for the teardown of that scope! Thanks Dave!

I have one of these, from the estate of a recently deceased TV engineer. SN is 8043101, so it's a bit earlier than yours based on SN. Can confirm the BNC connector is non standard, in mine, the test probe is hard wired into the unit from the back somewhere. Also mine is 90-136vac (48-62hz 8w) so I can't power it up without a stepdown transformer. I remember this kicking around his shop some years ago... I got the impression it was not working, I'd like to restore it to fully functional, so thanks for the tip about the service manual, I have downloaded it already.

A friend serviced these in the 80's and said they were easily Tek's least reliable product back then. I don't remember what the specific weaknesses were but I doubt there are many in good working order today. So what you have is likely quite rare. One common issue with Tek scopes of the 70's and 80's is some of the custom chips were relatively short lived and Tek's spares were quickly consumed. Tek refused to pay to have more made (and later sold their custom chip division to Maxim who promptly abandoned all the low volume parts). Once certain Tek scopes have a custom chip failure the only source for a replacement IC was to salvage one from other non-working scope. But, of course, most of those died from the same problem. The net effect was a lot of expensive Tek scopes became unrepairable junk when they were only 5 - 10 years old. Other manufactures have done a better job both with the quality of their custom chips and managing their stock of spares. In some cases they at least spin a revised board with the same form fit and function using currently available components. Tek couldn't even be bothered to do that.

The MK5007 is not a custom part. It is a 4-digit counter circuit which was quite typical of meters of the day using 7-segment displays.

Loving that, I can almost smell those antique electrons from here ! Wish I could give this more than one thumbs up !

Looks like all ICs are socketed, using individual through-board contacts

Hello; Nice review of this scope! I just had to point out more beauty. The transistors and this odd IC on the bottom PCB are socketed. There are individual gold plated metal sleeves through PCB hole with a tiny rubber or vinyl gasket on top that the individual leads of the IC or transistor pins to plug into! Also the scope input has about a 1 meter length of COAX cable coming out near the rear case screws with a nice compact probe with removable hook! It that wraps around the vinyl channel on the back for storage. Very nicely designed!

That scope is a wild lil piece of history! Great vid & teardown!

That has got to be the most impressive (and cute) bit of 70s tech I've ever seen. You can't keep it as a shelf queen, get a cheap audio amp and microphone and run it in the background during your tapings.

If you look closely, you'll find that all the transistors and IC's are socketed! The sockets are recessed into the board. Vintage Tektronix equipment truly reeks of quality.

Wonderful piece of technology; hats off to Tektronix and the engineers who had the vision to develop such a amazing scope with a Multimeter. "Incredible"

FINALLY I HAVE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS TO BE TORN DOWN

I owned one of these scopes, and you are correct. The BNC on the back is not original. The original probe was not detachable, and wrapped around the cord management cavity in the back of the case.

Custom Tektronx chips looks absolutely gorgeous!

The vertical range switch uses gray plastic cams to switch small PCB mounted contacts. They used cam switches in a lot of scopres. I believe that the metallic thing Dave pointed to at 23:46 is the detent spring.

That's a nice bit of kit apart from the bandwidth. Nice to see this vintage stuff. It seems a regular thing on your teardowns of Tektronic equipment, they really put so much thought into the layout and servicing ability. I had a 50MHz Tecktronics scope given to me about 12 years ago but had to sell it for financial reasons, boy do I regret that, now I have a Velleman 60MHz PC scope, not nearly as much fun to mess with. Thanks Dave.

I used these things when they first came out. It was well after that 1973 copyright date on the PCB. Late 70s, I guess. I hated these things. It was so enticing to be able to carry a scope around, but it was so limited it just ended up being frustrating. They were a lot more reliable than the big Tek scopes of that period, though. Does anyone else remember the joys of taking a pile of 7000 series plugins, and trying to find one where all the cheapy little switches actually worked? This little gold plated 2-through-hole pin sockets, used to connect the boards, were pretty standard in 1970s Tek products. I think those exact parts might be Tek specials, but we used to buy similar things off the shelf, to use in multi-board things we made ourselves. Remember that almost everything required multiple boards back then, so interconnects had a much higher profile than they do today.

Good job Dave! Very nice (=clear, well edited, well photographed) videography. And you are GENTLE to the device during the teardown ... nothing wrong with Mike's destructive approach (his teardowns are fun, too) ... but your kid-gloves treatment is refreshing.

At 9:04 you point to a blue object and say "capacitor" but from my experience those are inductors. You should aslo note that all of the transistors are socketed too. This design draws heavily from the 7000 series scopes. The Tek 224 scopes were sold in to the late 80s and had 60Mhz of BW. These 213 scopes were sold to automotive service locations because you could see a lot of the wave forms needed for some of the newly developed microprocessor controlled cars.

that feeling when an advertisement video is about to start before the content, then for some reason doesn't and the actual video starts :3

Amazing, old stuff but the inside looks quite new. The design and component manufacture was advanced at that time.

I have and still use a couple of models similar to these. A 221, and a 214 (storage). The BNC on the teardown was a mod to the scope as Dave pointed out. Originally the scope lead was connected internally.

so simple yet so practical gotta love the 70 stuff.

Nice video, Dave; gave me the nostalgic feeling, I grew up with this type of electronics, the astable 2-transistor circuit was the first I ever built in my life, and I think I still have a handful of 741 opamps somewhere (I reluctantly swithced to the TL071 when the 741 went out of production) :-)

Good video, many thanks Dave!

Tektronix is amazing!! My step brother's, Step dad, LMFAO, works for them (Tektronix), in design, pretty cool job!

I've used this Oscilloscope in the 80's, later it got contact problem in the Volt/Div selector, I opened the hosuing and fixed it!

its better then a lot of new hand held models , in terms of clarity of picture and easy use . this is perfect for someone to get in too field of electronics , measures everything needed . I would gladly use this even today , but cant find them

I have one of these! The original probe is hardwired, which is pretty annoying. I was surprised to see the BNC on yours until you pointed out that it was a bodge. I've had this one since 1991 or so, and the battery still holds a charge somehow. Not for long, mind you. Nice one, Dave.

I love the PCB design!

I do have a schematic of such "character generator". Picture is exactly the same as the Tektronix but it's a discrete TTL design so you can watch how the "magic" actually happens. Entire board of TTL logic is needed to replace this single Tektronix chip.

All the 200 Series Tek scopes are interesting. In addition to the 213 scope/dmm combo, of particular note is the 214 500 kHz 2 channel storage scope and the 221 5 MHz scope. All of these little gems used a NiCd type battery.

That little cute scope is older than me :D, how I wish I could have that scope,,very nice Teardown as always sir Dave, thumbs up for you.

Cute. I hope you put it together carefully and placed it on your finest shelf.

Hi Dave, you wanted to know how long these were produced, they were introduced in 1975 and ceased production in 1988. That is not bad of a run for these little scopes!

i have used a tek222 digital storage-scope, which has the same basic case design and it still works. thanks.

I love the rounded traces in this. It's a different sight than the 45 Degree traces that i have seen in everything else.

Sob... It's so beautiful! Dave, I hope you didn't damage it in the teardown?!!

Wee tektronix scope. So cute, especially compared to its older brothers

I love the tiny little 213. It's the smaller and older brother to my Tek/Sony 336 DSO.

I love vintage Tek scopes - I have a 465B at home which I still use, but the all the models from this era are lovely machines. I would love to get my hands on one with a Blue P11 phosphor CRT one day :-)

ektronix was in advance on their time. This scope was built on 1973.. It's unbelievable.

This thing is crazy. At that time, PCB designer had a university degree and all he needed for his work was big piece of cardboard, schematic, all the components, pencil and a needle... Anyone can make a PCB nowadays - with some CAD and without any knowledge of electronics at all...

Interesting as always.

OK, I'll admit it. I used one at Motorola back in the day designing early Cellular base station stuff. In the lab it was all the big TEK stuff on a scope cart, but in the field we didn't want to lug one of those beasts around so we would shout, "who has one of those 'tiny tek's' I can borrow?" Ahhh, the memories!

I try to find a 213 for my bench, it´s so cute, as i love odd gear :) Great one, Dave!!

It's interesting how after 40 years the basic packaging of the discretes have not changed at all.

Hi Mr.Tpenegineer. I´m the man who made the mods in schematics. If you need original diagrams please send me your email. I made two mods. One is because when the scope is off there is a battery consumption about 2 mA.. With the mod consum is 0, and battery life is bigger.when scope is stored for a long time. The second one is a continuity tester with buzzer. It would be great if you could study the schematics and tell me because tektronix made this design with the battery. Best regards Miguel

Why I really like this guy: "whoa look at this big ass cap"

I have a 214 which I still use for vehicle diagnostics, mainly ignition, ABS and alternators, I have a fluke portable 100mhz but this is more convenient and instant.

I can imagine that designing something like this without CAD would be mind boggling.

Were some of the ICs and transistors in recessed sockets of some kind? looks quite neat, haven't come across that style before.

When I saw the design date, I thought about Apollo too! Just think, when this was being developed, we were still flying to the Moon and crossing the Atlantic ocean at Mach 2. Damn good solid engineering in use there. Spending a bit more money on a device has made it last for 40 years. I wonder if today's Tek gear will still be usable in 2054?

Socketed transistors! Awesome.

I have a Sony/Tek 314 that I bought to help in the repair & restoration of my Tek 7403. Unfortunately, it was buggered so I had to do without. Now, maybe I can use the 7403 to help repair the 314!! Nice little analogue storage 'scope that runs from AC mains or 12 / 24 V DC. No internal battery and no DMM but hey!

Beautiful!

The curved traces make it art.

That's the cutest scope I've ever seen

The MK5007P is not really a custom chip; just a generic counter chip with both BCD and 7 segment outputs.

That's cool. Wouldn't mind owning on of those myself.

thanks for the wordup on the shirt still a few left

Nice piece of history, do you plan on reassembling it?

I've been waiting for this teardown from the day you first opened up the mail. I love and appreciate the effort that went into the design of this thing. I have to wonder if these were a successful line of gear or were they just toys.

I wonder if that one ic thats was in black socket has been replaced at some point.. After all that BNC connector was clearly changed...

I bought one! I Could not resist :D

I know a guy who still uses this thing when he has field work. He is an old school analog engineer.

I used these in the late 70's when I worked at ASEA in Lilydale!, long before it became ABB!

All the transistors are in some sort of a socket ?

Ahh i love stuff like this, with the exception of the custom chips, its fully serviceable. Im guessing too it would of had a SLA battery? Also i have a couple of CROs myself, and i will always prefer the look of a CRT based scope to a LCD one. Just a personal preference really

I still use both the 211 and the 212 for quick trouble shooting. The 212 is dual channel.

I heard that those character generators have compensation of "inertia" associated with the sweeps, otherwise the trace will overshoot and round-off characters. It's not as simple as increasing the X to go sideways, stop X and go Y to go up.

The money shot... Love it

This is so cool! I have one of these! The 203 I think, no multimeter.

Nice. From a time where they made good schmatics and docs. Like older avionics there where good dokumented.

I almost bought one of these at a local electronics junk place... however they asked $50 for it and as much as it is nice and "cute" it is worthless in today's world. Thumbs up for Tek for the nice work on that one.

22:14 that is a beautiful spider-package chip...!

I have a Thandar SC110A 10MHz scope. Runs on 4 C size batteries.

Is there no X-Y mode on the 213? I noticed the 212 and 214 have x/y mode. I want to do vector graphics on one and I think the 222 DSO model will have too low of a sample rate but the 212 and 214 are both analog I’m pretty sure and they have x/y mode but I don’t see x/y on the 213!!?? Am I right ?

Hi and thank a lot for all your helpful videos! At 2:45: "Input coupling... no, it's not an isolated scope..." I'm just curious why that would be a minus? And do you know how this would compare to a 214? I'm just getting started with electronics and my current oscilloscope is massive, and impractical for my small area. Thanks again!

It's a very nice instrument. I have one in repair process. NI-MH batteries are good for this instrument?. What modification did you introduce in order to avoid battery? Thanks.

Hey, what is that array of push button called ? In which only one button can be activated at a given time.

We had a customer today who asked what kind of fluid did you use to add electricity to his car 27 years old. Guy had no clue that a car has a battery in it. I bet he would buy blinker fluid. It was super funny.

I thought it was gorgeous anyway... but then you pressed the DMM button and I think I pissed myself! It's amazing how it just looks like a Tektronix... but tiny... I want one! (Sorry, vintage Tektronix fanboy, here)

I have a Tek 321... the thing is ancient and "portable" but damned if it isn't still fully functional, and as well calibrated as I have any ability to test...

Heh, I have a 214 and it works beautifully!

the square one is a Diff/Variable/Inv. Amplifier the MK5007p is a 4 digit counter decoder display driver TEK 155 0114 is Seven Segment Character Generator

Somewhere I have a Small Scope CRT marked 'Sony Tektronix" and I am wondering if the "tested by Tektronix sticker on teh shield means that this unit was the proper home from the CRT.

I have an original 221 similar to this one. They have a low battery protection circuit inside which seems to shut down the scope to protect the batteries from shorting out when dead. I would like to run mine without replacing the batteries (which are doa) but the scope won't allow it. I wonder if some of that mod in the schematics was to overcome this...the modder says it was only for lowering power consumption. Has this ALSO been modded to run without a battery check circuit perhaps....would like to have that mod!

What a cute little oscilloscope :3

The schematics are not there, do you have another link for that?

I know other like this from Tektronix, with storage and cursor measurement! :)