Docs For Old Oscilloscopes?

Dan Olson asks: "I recently became the owner of a RCA WO-91B Oscilloscope, and it did not come with a manual. Does anybody have any idea where I could come by one?" Oscilloscopes are one of those geeky things that usually pop up in auctions, old electronic shops and other random surplus outlets. Surely many of us have seen one, simply couldn't resist, and bought it, only to find that it was too difficult to operate without a manual? For those of you in this situation, what did you do? Throw it in the storage unit and forget it even existed, or were you able to at least find some information to make it usable? If you were able to do the latter, what sources did you use?

Comments

Holy crap!

[Tackhead]

Bad form to post twice in a row to the same thread... but Google rocks ;-)

The Vintage Audio, Video, and Television Site

No, it didn't cover my 'scope, but it turns out that TelequipmenT was a British company bought out by Tek in the 70s. Other pics on their site seem to put the date of my tube-based 'scope in the mid-1950s, judging from its general appearance.

Sweeeeeeeeeet!

w7fg Vintage Manuals

[Matt_Bennett]

I was able to get a (photocopy of a) manual for one of my old (dead) scopes- an old Dumont 1100P- I believe they have been out of business for over 30 years. I got mine from W7FG Looking through his catalog (of photocopies), I don't see your RCA in his list, but there are a number of people like this guy who sell old manuals. Check some amateur radio sites- they're going to be the guys that have them if they are available. I don't know how they deal with the whole copyright issue...

try a university

[grammar nazi]

Go to the EE dept. at a large university and ask a faculty member (not an administrator) if there are any of these in a lab somewhere.

At my MSU, the EE dept. had hunderds of Oscilliscopes from modern digital marvels to a tried and tested analog RCA WO-91A.

Good luck with your endeaveors.

Old Hewlet Packard Scope Story

[dhovis]

This is a little offtopic, but relevant here.

I had a professor who told a story that happened to him when he was a graduate student at MIT. He had this old HP occiliscope that he was trying to use for something, but he didn't have a manual. He called HP to see if they could find something and HP called him back to see if they could BUY the scope.

It seems they wanted it for their own company museum.
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