[time-nuts] HP Stories: Battery Chargers, and a fading idolization of HP

[Richard (Rick) Karlquist]

Before I worked for HP, I used to read HP manuals like they were
textbooks.  I was like Hugh in that I thought everything HP
did must be great.  So I decided to reverse engineer a 200 to
300 MHz VCO used in a 0 to 100 MHz spectrum analyzer plug in.
The manual only gave an XXXX-XXXX number for the transistor,
but I examined the circuit board and noticed that the transistor
was labelled:  2N5179, a very ubiquitous RF transistor in those
days.  I thought I was being very clever to copy this VCO.
Fast forward:  it turned out that this VCO was one of the WORST
VCO's ever designed.  Terrible phase noise.  Crime does not
pay.  I designed my own VCO that blew the doors off that one.

Rick

On 2/9/2019 1:55 PM, paul swed wrote:

> Have to say I always enjoyed reading the HP and Tek manuals because as an
> outsider you did learn. Granted I normally dug in deep because I end up