Category Archives: Accessories

HP 54003-61617 Probe = HP 10017A

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I have a 54003-61617 probe lying around and I never got a chance to find out what bandwidth so I rarely used it. After some digging, thanks to searchable PDFs, I found on 1986-04 edition of HP Journal (Archived copy here) that 54003-61617 probe is equivalent to 10017A:

By the way I noticed HP Labs still had the old HP Journal PDF files hosted on the website except without indexing: https://www.hpl.hp.com/hpjournal/pdfs/IssuePDFs/YYYY-MM.pdf, replace YYYY with year and MM with month.

HP Journal (hparchive.com has an excellent collection) is an excellent source of hard-core electronic engineering education materials, better than anything you can get in colleges because electronic circuit design (not IC designs) is not an academic research area anymore. As of 2000, the only way to get into this area is to work at companies (apprenticeships) instead of formal training like classes. There’s a little problem though because this specialty (analog electronics) is so disorganized, very often even veterans in analog electronics has blind spots like not taking advantage of math tools/thinking enough (they tend to be very good at back-of-envelope calculations).

Finding the specs for 10400A series (10017A) is not easy either because the datasheet is not on Keysight (the new name for HP’s instrument division). It’s listed in an 1998 catalog “How to Select A Probe” kindly hosted by Marc Mislanghe (who passed away in 2014) as HPMemoryProject.org that listed the specs of 10017A in attempt to find an approximate ‘modern’ substitute:

HP 10017A (54003-61617) mini-probe has the following specs:

  • Attenuation: 10:1
  • Input Capacitance: 8pF
  • Input Resistance: 1MOhm
  • Bandwidth: 300Mhz
  • Compensation range: 9~14pF
  • Takes up to 300V
  • 1 meter long cable

Even older record, Operating Note Part No. 5955-6270 courtesy of HParchive.com shows:

I bought a bunch of snap-on ground lead alligator clips (MP2+MP3) and grabbers (MP7) for the probe

Figure 2. 100XXA probe with hook tip or grabber

The snap-on alligator ground clip actually has two parts: the alligator clip (MP2, 5061-1258) and the snap-on ground lead (MP3, 10006-61301) and they are screw-mated :

I happened to have bought a pack of multiple new ground leads and grabbers (MP7, 10017-69501) for this model series, more than what I’d need. They’ll fit miniature probes models 10017A, 10018A, 10040A, 10041A, 10042A.

These accessories will also fit 10021A, 10022A, 10026A, (10027A?), 10032A, 10033A as well.

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