Hi Tony, I don't mean to throw shade on your HP 1630 or your K100 ... just in my own personal opinion, when I see a HP 1630 on eBay for $100 or a HP 1660 on eBay for $100 ... and you see this all the time ... I think going with the 1660 is the better deal ... you do make a good point about schematics and repairability ... and hack-ability ... there are plenty of very exotic looking components ... especially on the acquisition cards ... on the newer machines that I'm sure are basically impossible to repair.
I just try to manage that risk by keeping as many spare cards on hand as I can get for the 16500 series, and I've always got the 1662 standing by in case something happened to it ... honestly, when you can get a HP 166x for $100, unless you enjoy the sport of troubleshooting and repair in and of itself (and I do so sometimes myself) is it really worth sinking much time and effort into repairing a 1630 series, or a K100? I just want folks to be aware ... people might not necessarily realize, what their money will get them; I'd hate for someone to shell out for a 1630 when they could have gotten a 166x or 167x for the same price... That almost happened to me when I was shopping around and I would have regretted it. I'm glad I did the a little bit more background research beforehand... No intrinsic dislike for the classic instruments; if you got em, use em! :O Best, Sean On Fri, Jun 12, 2015 at 4:52 PM, tony duell <a...@p850ug1.demon.co.uk> wrote: > > > * The HP 16500B and 16500C use a different '030 based logic board and > also > [...] > > * Generally anything the "C" can do, the "B" can do and vice versa. The > big > > difference between the two is that they switched from HP-HIL peripherals > on > > the "B" to standard PS/2 peripherals on the "C", if you want to connect > an > > external keyboard and mouse to use in lieu of or in conjunction with the > > touch screen; depending on what you have in your stash ... I happened to > > have a bunch of HIL mice and a HIL keyboard so HP-HIL on the "B" doesn't > > bug me. > > I don't know if it works on these instruments, but there was an interface > to > use a quadrature mouse on an HP-HIL system. > > > * IMO, the HP 1630 series and the Biomation K100 are pretty obsolescent > and > > ... unless you already have one, or someone local to you is giving you > > one... I don't think they're really worth the cost of shipping unless you > > have some nostalgic attachment to a particular instrument. > > As somebody who has both and uses them (and has no later analysers), I have > to disagree with you there. After all the OP was asking for the 'Tek 465 > of logic > analysers' which suggests not the latest instruments. The HP1630 and Gould > K100D > are easily fast enough for classic computer work (I've never had > problems). They > also seem to be a lot better documented than later analysers (can you get > schematics of later HPs? I seem to remember they are not in the manuals). > The > probe interface is also documented and quite simple. While I recomend only > getting a LA with the original pods, the ability to make custom pods has > helped > me on several occasions. The inputs to both those LAs are simple > differential > ECL signals, easy to hack about with. > > -tony >
