Hello everyone,
This is my first post to the forum. Great site!!!
Can anyone point me in the right direction as to the common failure component(s) for the TDS oscopes. We find quite a few with acquisition/acquisition interface failing selftest. Tektronix of course wants us to send in for repair when I know it's something simple and not worth the 2-3 grand std repair price they charge. And they will not give any useful info. Service manual does not provide schematics or parts break-down. Can anyone help with this issue or had this problem?
mjtab
Hello,
I used to work with Verizon and we had the Tektronix end of life contract. My experience with the Acquisition Failures was to replace front panel interface board or the A10 Acquisition Board. Even back from 99-2002 when I was there Tektronix did not provide support for the TDS 400/500/600 series o'scopes and wanted 3k for the interface board and almost 10K for the A10 acquisition board so if they are actually supporting that series again 2-3K(I know you dont want to hear this) is actually not that bad of a deal. You won't be able to get component level schematics due to proprietary reasons and even the ones we had at Verizion which were more detailed services schematics than the commercial ones sold they were horrible and also by design of the board being SMT components and multiple layered boards you have to be specially equipped to work on them. Your best bet if you do not want to pay 2-3k to repair these scopes is to buy used ones online for anywhere from 1k-5k that I have seen and then use those as a parts bin for cannibalization. We had bought many used TDS's to repair customers equipment with by selling them the board at 50% of new price of the board and you almost always make your money back within 1 or 2 repairs from the cost of acquiring the used o'scope to canibalize and you still have 3 more boards or so to use in future repair. Th A10 board of course is the most valuable board, so I know TeK was charging 10k at one point for the A10 board, you buy a used tds for 4k, sell the board for 5k or even 4k, you have made your money back plus extra boards.
So that being said I hope this helps or gives you some ideas but unfortunately Tek has gone to more of a disposable Test Equipment site meaning they rarely support their equipment for longer than 5 yrs or 1-2 yrs after the release of a newer model, they simply want you to buy a new one which is just not practical for the majority of us. If anyone else has a better plan, please let us know. Sorry I couldn't help more.
Thanks for the info, fellas...Very helpful.... :wink:
Swap Acquisition Board-have some 700s 2-3 year life.
Thanks alot smokey.