#tektronix

[ukgk]

Ukagaka installed to a oscilloscope running windows 2000 (23/04/2025@dydt_Nao)

[commodorez]

This Tektronix 4051 vector terminal is absolutely gorgeous. But upon closer inspection, it's also been moused. As in mouse-infested. One of the unfortunate commonalities if vintage computing is that sometimes a long-abandoned machine in a basement or attic becomes a rodent nest, and mouse piss is corrosive, not to mention a ☠health hazard☠. Far too often, this has resulted in a machine with nasty internals, and in this case, it happened to a terminal far too valuable and cool to give up on.

Solution? BLAST IT WITH THE HOSE

A little bit of suds and some rinsing off later, and this machine will be ready for a complete tear-down, and hopefully, repair.

These images come courtesy of my friend CJ. He braved this nasty situation with the intent to repair an uncommon machine, and I wish him luck!

[scanzen]

Tektronix 4014 computer terminal, 1976.

via Chilton Computing photographic archive

[fullslack]

Tektronix TDS 350 digital oscilloscope (1994)

[themightymadman]

1989 Tektronix 222 Miniature CRT Portable Oscilloscope - Battery Pack Replacement

[taperwolf]

The 1978 sci-fi television series Battlestar Galactica used Tektronix 4050-series computers both as props and to create screen-used graphics displays. Here, YouTuber TEK Vectors shares his recreations of some of these early CGI ahead of presenting them at VCF SW 2025.

[garyconkling]

T. Boone Pickens never got the chance to bring his corporate raiders to Tektronix. I may have had something to do with that.

[screensandtangledwires]

my beloved , 4-channel tektronix TDS2014C digital storage oscilloscope

[fuckableobjects]

can you do an oscilloscope.. the trektronix 453 one in particular?

Fuckable Object #16 Tektronix 453(A)

[src]

[vizreef]

Tektronix // Oscilloscope 561A (US, 1969)

[darkmaga-returns]

This week, Oregonians heard the announcement that Tektronix, an iconic Oregon-based company, is moving its headquarters from Oregon to North Carolina. Tektronix has decided that it has had enough of the Oregon Democrat high taxes, poor schools, and constant degradation of the quality of life for its employees. Textronix was once one of the largest employers in the state of Oregon. Anybody working in the electronics branch of technology relied on Tektronix test equipment to troubleshoot electronic problems. Driving by the Tektronix campus was very sad for me when we moved to Oregon. The parking lots around the Tektronix buildings were mainly empty, and slowly got even emptier. As an Electronic Technician who relied on the Tektronix test equipment my entire career, this was like watching an old friend slowly die from neglect.

Elections have consequences, and so does how people vote. Voting for more taxes, higher fees, and the crazy bills the Democrat supermajority pushes through is costing Oregon thousands of highly-paid citizens who have had enough, and they then leave Oregon for different states. Yet Oregon continues down the same old path to economic disaster. Oregonians cannot figure out that Democrats are all the same; their solution to problems is to raise taxes and fees on everything. For decades, Oregonians have been voting for Democrats to lead Oregon, and nobody noticed that conservatives and Republicans were leaving over economic or freedom issues. The Democrats, Liberals, and progressives just kept on making Oregon less affordable and less desirable to raise a family or retire here.

In 2024, most of the nation moved right to elect Donald Trump President of the United States. Oregon voted to move farther Left, giving the Democrats a supermajority in the state legislature. Once the Democrats had the supermajority, they decided that higher taxes, fees, and other things that impacted people's incomes and families were needed to fulfill their mandates. They raised taxes, and the rental of U-Hauls headed out of Oregon rose along with them.

[commodorez]

New piece of test equipment for the workbench:

Tektronix 1730 Waveform Monitor

Now I can monitor all the waveforms. Just need to find a 1720 Vectorscope to go with it...

[frakyeahbattlestargalactica]

Monty Jaggers McGraw:

I am writing new BASIC programs to demo at my VCF Southwest 2025 exhibit of my 1979 Tektronix 4054A color vector graphics computer.

One of the programs I am writing is a 1978-1979 Battlestar Galactica TV demo. That TV show had $500,000 of Tektronix vector graphics computers and test equipment and many screenshots of their green vector storage CRT displays - some stills - some animated. These computer graphics were generated on both 1975 4051 and 1976 4081 vector graphics computers - predecessors to my 4052 and 4054A computers (see first photo attached).

Miami Herald TV 1978 magazine interview with the Battlestar Galactica set designer indicated extras on the set stationed in front of the 4051 computers were playing games during filming to increase realism and were so absorbed they kept playing after the cut! (article page attached).

The 4051 and second generation 4052 were the same physical size and used the same CRT and same Display board, but the 4052 and 4054 computers replaced the 800KHz Motorola 6800 CPU with a custom four AMD2901 bit-slice CPU to create a 16-bit address and data bus ALU which emulated the 6800 opcodes and added hardware floating point opcodes to speed up these computers 10x over the Motorola 6800, doubled the BASIC ROM space to 64KB and doubled the RAM space to 64KB!

I created these vector bitmap graphics using a "3D CAD" picture I found on the web of the Battlestar Galactica (last attachment).

As far as I know - there was never any 4050 BASIC program to view bitmap pictures on any of the 4050 computers. The 1979 4014 vector graphics terminal had a grayscale bitmap mode in the Extended Graphics option board, but I have only found a couple of bitmap 4014 images on a single Tektronix demo tape cartridge.

My 4050 BASIC program to display bitmaps works on all 4050 series computers - with an optional Tektronix 4050R12 Fast Graphics/Graphics Enhancement ROM Pack. This ROM Pack speeds up displaying vector images (including vector dot images) 10x over using BASIC MOVE and DRAW commands.

The Battlestar Galactica bitmap image in R12 binary format is 332234 bytes - slightly larger than would fit on a DC300 quarter-inch tape cartridge in the internal tape drive of all three 4050 computers, but would have fit on a 3M DC600 tape cartridge with a capacity of 600KB - it would have been very slow to load.

I designed an Arduino board to emulate the Tektronix 4924 GPIB tape drive - with the help of my software developer. My GPIB Flash Drive board contains a MicroSD card with gigabytes of storage and the Flash Drive emulates a GPIB tape changer, storing all the files of a "tape" in a single directory. I have also attached to this post a photo of my GPIB Flash Drive.

I have recovered almost 100 Tektronix 4050 Tapes and posted the ones I think are the most interesting at this time on my github repository for Tektronix 4051/4052/4054 computers: https://github.com/mmcgraw74/Tektronix-4051-4052-4054-Program-Files I included Tektronix published MATH volumes 1, 2, and 3 and Electrical Engineering, but I don't think they have a lot of use today. I have in my collection but not recovered tapes on Project Management, Statistics, and over 100 more tapes from the very active user group, which Tektronix made collections and published abstracts in their newsletter and the newletter customer got the tape for free. Commercial software like CAD programs were likely encrypted to eliminate copying - since Tektronix 4050 BASIC included a SECRET command which would then encrypt the program file as it was recorded to tape and add a SECRET flag in the tape header that would signal to BASIC ROM when that file was accessed to decrypt the program when it was loaded into memory. One big limiter to the size of the program was RAM in the 4051 was limited to 32KB and the 4052 and 4054 were limited to 64KB of RAM, although Tek BASIC did include commands to allow program "chunks" to be overlayed as necessary. Tektronix used those commands in their 4050 System Tape which was shipped with every system and included a tutorial on many of their BASIC commands. The tutorial ran on the original 4051 with 8KB of memory, and if the program detected 16KB of memory it would APPEND larger program files to speed up the tutorial.

[computermagazines]

Ad for Tektronix Oscilloscopes - Byte Magazine, February 1984

[burlveneer-music]

Palomatic - Trill - vinyl-only reissue of 1995 techno album by Koji Takahashi (I wish I'd discovered it back then instead of just now because I love it, but better late than never)

Feedback Waves — the new imprint from independent label Rings of Neptune — is proud to present Trill, the first and only album by Palomatic. Almost thirty years after its original release on CD in 1995, this beautiful nine-track work is now available on vinyl for the first time. Palomatic is an alias of Koji Takahashi, an active member of the bubbling Japanese electronic music scene of the early-to-mid 90s. Besides his solo work, he was a core member of Takahashi Tektronix (with Nic Yoshizawa) and Mutron (with Kiyoshi Hazemoto, aka Interferon), as well as working as a synth programmer for supergroup Denki Groove. Following the release of his debut track ‘Halo’ on Syzygy Records in 1993, Takahashi made a series of contributions to compilations on the scene-defining Transonic label. His first and only full-length album, Trill, combined these tracks with original material to form an absorbing and versatile standalone statement of the Palomatic sound. From the oscillating lilt of ‘Flutter’, which opens proceedings at a measured 104bpm, through to the symphonic epilogue of ‘Soar’, Trill is rooted in the fertile territory between organic and synthetic sounds — ground that was nourishing the work of many likeminded producers worldwide at the time. West Coast psychedelia and East Coast funk, the moody bass weight of Bristol trip-hop and Sheffield bleep, and the chemical rush of German techno and Belgian trance: with a distinctly Japanese sensibility, Trill drew these strands together into an elegant musical tapestry. The result is timeless — indeed, album centrepiece ‘Foaming Waves’ would sound right at home on the faster-paced dancefloors of today.