While servicing a TDS 754A for a client, I smelled burnt electrolyte near the power supply section. Although it isn’t the cause of the problem yet, I know it’s a ticking time bomb.

By comparing the good power supply from my TDS 784A (same base design), I saw one of the leads of a higher power diode looks corroded (black stuff) yet the same diode on the good power supply has rainbow discoloration. It suggested that the assembly of the same part number is likely to fail by poor design (must be heating too close to the capacitor). Here’s the comparison of the C49 that caught my attention:

And after removing C49 on TDS 754A, it’s clearly this capacitor has leaked and corroded one of the diode’s lead nearby:

By taking a closer look, I noticed a bit of stains around most 2700uF 10V Nichicon capacitors. Only C86 and C30 haven’t leaked yet. Might as well replace them all since there are 8 of them and 6 of them leaked.

C85 has green stuff all over it and smelled horrible. Surprisingly the ESR and capacitance is still within specs. That’s why the unit still functions. It’s just a matter of time before the power supply blows up and take out the commonly known transistors with it if I had left it there:

C47 and C48 is a mess:

C43 doesn’t look too bad, but it actually leaked. The clear fluid there is not flux, and the diode leads nearby stained for a reason:

C29 and C26 leaked as well:

C30 near them is clean though, the one out of two survivors:

Despite I haven’t seen leak residue on the PCB for the 680uF 35V, they are located close to high heat areas so I desoldered them to take a look. Turns out C21 cracked,

C44 leaked a little, C42 is intact (it’s just flux):

All 680uF there are Marron capacitors.

So basically, I couldn’t trust the caps anymore and I desoldered the rest to check for leaks. Some of the Matsushita / Panasonic branded tinier capacitors far from heat sources survived. The 100uF 25V capacitor (Matsushita) at C33 near the heatsink also leaked, but it’s not too visible until I see the corroded pads after desoldering it.

I took out the last Nichicon there, a smaller 47uF 80V at C17, despite I don’t see any visible leaks before I desolder it. Glad that I did. It clearly leaked (can see it by looking at the bottom of the extracted capacitor), but not outside the capacitor’s casing’s diameter:

To avoid troubleshooting nightmare (uncommon problems) in the future, replace ALL electrolytics on the power board regardless of whether they are good or not given the majority of the capacitors leaked in this example.  If you leave one or two old capacitors there and they leaked in the future, it’d be an uncommon problem that you can’t get any advice anywhere since nobody serviced the unit the same way as you did.

To be fair, Tektronix didn’t make this 400W power supply, Zytec did:

I used to think that the TDS 700 series doesn’t need much work because the SMD aluminum electrolytic capacitors on the acquisition board. But now I can see that anything that’s electrolytic leaks (CRT driver, power supplies, front-panel keypad, RS-232/Centronics board, processor board) in this TDS 500~700 series.

Nonetheless, it’s still a positive trait that there are no electrolytics on the TDS 700 series acquisition board, as it’s the most expensive and fragile piece.  Acquisition board with leaked electrolytes is toasted (beyond economic repair) if you leave the electrolyte there too long.

Do NOT buy TDS 300~800 series off used market if you do not have to (like you have automation written for it or you’ve used it for 20 years and it’s all ingrained in your head) no matter how cheap they are (or SEEMINGLY working). The money is much better spent on HP 54520/54540 series if you are on a very tight budget. TDS 300~700 series don’t have much usable life left unless it’s verified new-old-stock. All fixes to TDS 300~700 problems are are laborious, frustrating and expensive.

It’s the same things that breaks for the same reason (unreliable design). That means if you simply swap modules with another used unit, or buy another identical unit, you are going to run into problems one way or the other in a short amount of time.  Basically, you are only squeezing the last few puffs off a disposed cigarette butt.

I have built the knowledge and parts to rebuild these congenitally sick puppies, but as I discovered the number of common problems are still growing strong, I’m staying out of the market for it and sell whatever I have left (I’ll strengthen them before selling, of course).

If you absolutely have to rebuild a TDS 300~800 series oscilloscope and are willing to spend good money on it, which is typically the case if you:

• have an automated system written for it that you need an exact replacement
• have used the unit for 20+ years that you’d willing to pay to not painfully relearn.
• do not want to change the procedures in a bureaucratic environment

I have the parts and knowledge to extend the unit’s life that you cannot find anywhere else. It’s super involved, but I’d be willing to help if I’m the last resort.

If you choose to send me a unit for rebuild to extend its life, I’ll make it mandatory to replace electrolytics capacitors in these boards:

• Processor board
• RS-232/Centronics board (Option 2C)
• Front panel keypad
• CRT driver board
• Power supply module
• Acquisition board (if your model uses SMD aluminum electrolytics).
  Acquisition board cost a lot more to recap as there’s a lot of capacitors if the model uses any.

because electrolytic capacitor failures cause symptoms that are very hard to troubleshoot (most of those are power rail capacitors, which if they fail, unstable voltages gives unpredictable erratic behavior).

The following is optional and billed separately:

• New CRT tube for color CRT screens. I have six units left so far. First come, first served.
  Tuning the tube to match the CRT board is very labor intensive.
• Rebuild attenuator hybrid (they are consumables)
• Troubleshoot/repair existing known symptoms

I give 3 years warranty for the repairs or preventative service I’ve carried out and it’s not user inflicted damage after the repair (like feeding high voltage to the inputs).

Call me at 949-682-8145 if you are truly need to rebuild a TDS 500~700 model and is willing to pay good money for it.

TDS 500~700 series uses common base design depending on when is the time range the model is produced, so the model number itself doesn’t tell you much about commonalities. For example, TDS 520 is common with 540, 620, 640 because they are all the first generation produced by SONY. Their main PCBs assemblies are significantly different from later ones like TDS 540A (Note the ‘A’). They don’t even use NVRAM chips with the same pin-out.

Yet TDS 540B is very different from 540A as it has InstaVu and no SMD aluminum electrolytic capacitors. It’s another generation. Yet even more confusing is that ‘A’ and ‘B’ does not represent different generations across the board. It only ties to the generation associated with the base model number. For example, TDS 500B, 600B and 700A has the same basis (and therefore the same service manual).

So far, service manual is the sure-fire way to tell what models shares the same design. They only removed a few components and ID resistors to make a lower-end version for market differentiation. The prices are no longer consistent in the used market, so sometimes it might be possible just to takes parts from a higher end unit and downgrade it with resistor ID for repairs. TDS boards are field-adjusted before they ship, and has more mechanisms (like bandwidth-limiting resistors), so it’s much more involved if you want to get free bandwidth. I heard from forums that if you try to turn a monochrome processor board into color processor board, you’ll have to install extra chips and components.

I recently bought a 1lb grab-bag of logic analyzer grabbers, predominantly Agilent grabbers. There are HP, Tektronix, EZ-Hook, ZeroPlus, Rigol and Hantek as well, plus a few random pieces like ground leads and micro-test (hook) clips.

The EZ-Hook grabbers looks very suspiciously identical to Agilent/HP grabbers, so I looked it up to see if there are rumors about EZ-Hook OEM-ing for them. In the process, I found this very useful website that tells you almost everything you can find about logic grabbers produced:

https://sigrok.org/wiki/Probe_comparison

Just in case if the website changes in the future, there’s always wayback-machine:

https://web.archive.org/web/20171011195425/https://sigrok.org/wiki/Probe_comparison