[volt-nuts] What made a HP3458A so expensive

[Poul-Henning Kamp]

In message <BLU170-W99A6289D3FD1B2B5AEA2BACEBB0 at phx.gbl>, Mark Sims writes:

>One problem with leaving the 3458A on all the time is the vacuum
>fluorescent display.  These have a rather limited lifetime and
>leaving them on 24/7 puts a lot of hours on the tube.  Someday those
>displays will become unobtainium...

That's a smaller catastrophe than it sounds:  The display has a
pretty trivial parallel interface, and it will be pretty trivial
to connect something else instead.

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Poul-Henning Kamp       | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
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