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Old 23rd Oct 2021, 12:52 pm   #21
Radio Wrangler
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

Have a look at the attenuator coil driver board.

I think all the analysers except the 1.8 gig 9x variety have magnetically latching switches in the attenuators. If the drivers all died or lost a power rail, the attenuator would be frozen in the last setting. The CPU would still think the attenuators were moving, and would jack the trace up and down accordingly.

SO

If you try attenuator settings other than 20dB, do you get a trace showing signals but at the wrong level on the screen (in 10dB increments)

OR do you get no trace of signal on other atten settings (or a seriously attenuated signal)

0dB (straight through) would be hard to damage, without wrecking the mixer.

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Old 23rd Oct 2021, 1:05 pm   #22
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

I can't be certain but I think the lower frequency range 856xA/E analysers park the attenuator at full attenuation during a normal power down sequence. This practice may extend to all the models in this range but I'm guessing. I'm not sure if this info is useful or not in this case especially if the attenuator controller is faulty.
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Old 23rd Oct 2021, 1:10 pm   #23
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

While I'm on the portable analyser history thing...

HP's first portable spectrum analyser was the 180 scope frame with a spectrum analyser plugged in. The 8558A was the basis, then came audio and microwave variants. The 8558 was a rock bottom thing. It had no tuning stabilisation and drifted 1kHz/second at times.

There was a student working in the lab at what became SAD Signal Analysis Division (Started at Fountaingrove Parkway site in Santa Rosa then moved south a dozen miles or so to Rohnert Park) He'd scrounged a lot of the internals of an 8558 plug in and lashed it up to a microcomputer board he was playing with with DACs to control tuning etc, and an ADC for the logger output. Output was raster scan on a TV monitor.

Shall we say the bosses were rather taken. It turned into the 8590A, still with drigty tuning and not very narrow IF bandwidths, but it did have digital trace storage and arithmetic, markers, etc.

From this grew the 6x family and the 9x family. The 9x family project name was Hornet. The ESA series which replaced it was 'Mosquito' The 8566A big spectrum analyser, the grandaddy of the 6x series was 'Doomsday Box'

If you have a 6x, guard the CRT with your life. They are irreplaceable and fragile.

The raster display in the 9x is more sophisticated than you'd expect. Later ones got fancy processing to represent some of the patterning you sometimes get with XY displays, and wanted by users in TV systems. Being able to put it on a large screen for lectures or video recording it to trap faults or illegal transmissions is useful. It looks different to the vector displays but it's not junk.

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Last edited by Radio Wrangler; 17th Dec 2021 at 10:51 pm. Reason: for some reasonI'd written 3580A where I meant 8590A... doh!
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Old 23rd Oct 2021, 2:00 pm   #24
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

Removed the power supply from the 8563E. Took me about an hour. This equipment is VERY easy to work on (pictures attached). I will work on the recapping (including the RIFA caps, which are potentially a fire risk). In between doing this, I'll have a look at the CRT driver PCB. The CRT +110VDC LED that you can see from the back of the unit is flickering but is not on steadily(not sure if this indicates a fault). All the power supply indicators (on the edge of the A2 controller assembly) are lit and the voltages on the probe power supply are OK apart from the +15v which is down 160mV (from +15v to+14.84v). The fan is on.
The manual says to check the A2 controller, A6A1 HV module (this is a sealed unit, so cant really be tested-Just replaced), the A17 CRT driver and finally the A18V1 CRT tube. Normally I'd do a substitution test, but if I can't get the CRT working, then I will have to fit an LCD.

PS Any info about attenuators gratefully received as I will be working on the 8564E later as It's a working unit. I will also try to document the fault more thoroughly.
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Old 23rd Oct 2021, 8:30 pm   #25
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

It's interesting to see inside one of these, thanks. I've got the next generation analyser here the Agilent PSA and it is quite easy to work on as well as it uses a motherboard system and the screened RF modules plug into slots just like an old school PC from the 1990s.

Replacing the lithium battery is a lot harder than it should be though as it requires the main digital motherboard to be removed out of the back, a bit like sliding out a baking tray. These batteries typically only have a life of 2 or 3 years so this is a major pain.

Have a look at the service manual for the older HP 8560A as there may be some common parts used for the CRT and there may be more detailed circuit info and faultfinding info in that service manual.
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Old 24th Oct 2021, 12:24 pm   #26
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

I've attached the schematic showing the attenuator driver section. It uses a 74HC05 hex inverter with open drain outputs. This implies that the attenuator itself has some kind of driver for the coils, unless this hex inverter operates the coils directly (which is not something I would do). That is, unless these attenuators are very low current devices. I can't find any information on how they work.
Someone replied to my post on group.io (not sure if I can post the link here) and mentioned that I should hear a clunking sound on power up to indicate the attenuator is working. On the 8563E (that I'm recapping currently) I do hear a definite 'clunk'. On the 8564E the sound is a little more muted.
He also suggested I measure the 5 volt rail (should be around 5.1 to 5.2 volts) as that is the rail that uses the most current. This makes sense, as the CRT problem on the 8563 I'm currently working on may originate elsewhere.
I'm going to have to solder a couple of wires onto the back of the A2 controller board. There are several voltage indicator LED's on the board edge. Each LED has a smoothing capacitor, and I can mark the PCB and then solder a pair of colour coded wires across the 5V one.
Anyway I'm off to get my digikey shopping list sorted out.
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Old 24th Oct 2021, 1:17 pm   #27
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

Notice that the lines to the attenuator give both select and selectbar signals. There are drivers in the attenuator block it seems so look for a power supply to be fed to the block.

HP was in the attenuator business selling them to lots of other firms as microwave components. Varieties had simple coils, shutoff contacts, driver transistors etc etc so you have to work out which version you have.

Next step is to probe the driver card and step the attenuator through its range, and see what each control line and its complement do.

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Old 24th Oct 2021, 2:29 pm   #28
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

Might get a chance to use my HP 545A/546A probes. The 547A will have to stay in its case.
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Old 25th Oct 2021, 4:31 am   #29
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

Interesting video on the internals of an attenuator.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IQZxvtEn4T8&t=11s
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Old 30th Oct 2021, 8:39 pm   #30
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

Finished recapping the A6 power supply section. I've just got to replace a 215 ohm resistor in the input filter section, which is open circuit. Before I put the supply back, I'm giving all the connections a spray with contact cleaner and lubricant.
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Old 31st Oct 2021, 11:28 am   #31
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

Currently, investigating the construction of a dummy load as detailed in the attached document by Gerald Molenkamp VK3GJM in Australia. I have contacted him, and he has agreed to share his stripboard layout and component details etc. I can then soak test the power supply, and I'll have better access to the various test points. When the supply is installed in the chassis, it's difficult to get too. I can also use the board in between the power supply and each individual PCB if I need to test for any other power problems.
I'll be using VeeCAD strip board designer to layout the board. More later.
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Old 31st Oct 2021, 1:04 pm   #32
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

It will be great if you can get it to work again. I can remember when the company bought its first 'new' spectrum analysers back in the early 1990s. The company bought a new HP4396A spectrum/network analyser and a new HP8560A spectrum analyser that looks the same as yours (but only 2.9GHz).

The HP8560A and the later HP8560E had digital RBW filters below about 300Hz BW and these were incredibly useful in those days. I did a lot (and I mean a lot) of VHF and UHF synthesiser design in those days and the faster sweep speed on a 2kHz or 10kHz span meant the close in phase noise could be looked at almost in real time. Before that I was using the classic HP8568B and a huge and heavy Advantest TR4172 analyser for synthesiser design. These were really slow to sweep on narrow spans.

A couple of things thing to note about the portable HP856x analysers which isn't so good is that the sweep time isn't consistent. You may have spotted this already but if you watch it sweeping the analyser often slows down and you might get several almost 'hesitant' sweeps. It might not do this for up to a minute and then it will do it on and off for maybe 20 seconds.

I don't think this is a fault, they all do it and I think the analyser is doing some housekeeping internally. It might be correcting the sweep accuracy or doing other cal corrections. This erratic sweep rate can become irritating if trying to spot rapid changes in the spectrum but it is a feature of these analysers.

The other thing to be wary of is that the display only has 601 display buckets. For normal use this is perfectly fine but if you try using the sample detector (or select the noise marker function) on a large span to RBW ratio it will start to show measurement errors on cw signals. It will be fine on noise but cw signals will not be measured accurately because the sample detector will partially miss them. The cw signals will tend to show different amplitudes on each sweep and it will appear the analyser has an intermittent fault when it hasn't. You just have to be aware of this limitation. If you swap across to the Normal/Rosenfell detector this issue will go away.

The previous HP8568B and HP8566B had the equivalent of 1000 buckets so this issue is not as obvious. Later analysers offer many more buckets/points.
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Old 17th Dec 2021, 7:44 pm   #33
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

Dummy load PCB completed and sent off to Aisler for production. I have ordered 3 PCB's, and they were shipped last Wednesday. They should arrive in around 10 days. I will post a picture when they arrive.
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Old 17th Dec 2021, 7:59 pm   #34
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

Is there a safe way of testing the voltages on the CRT pins of the spectrum analyser? I have a Testec TT-HVP40 high voltage probe. The problem is all the wires are insulated, and it's impossible to place the probe tip onto the CRT pins. Any tips on doing this? I also have the HP8564E that has a working CRT. Wondering how a substitution test could be done with the CRT parts?
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Old 18th Dec 2021, 11:59 am   #35
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

Does anyone have a 14 pin plug that will fit into the CRT pins on the HP8563E? PCB mountable if possible. I will post a picture later on this weekend. Thanks.
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Old 23rd Dec 2021, 6:46 pm   #36
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-Will I regret it?

Dummy load PCB has arrived (picture attached). I'll be populating it in the morning and then I'll do a few sanity checks before connecting it to the A6 power supply. This PCB was created using v6.0 of KiCAD and produced by Aisler (https://aisler.net/) in the Netherlands.
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Old 30th Jul 2022, 4:25 pm   #37
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Default Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-And got it working.

My previous Thread was closed, so this is just a quick post to let everyone know my HP8563E is nearing completion after I got the new Simmconn Labs Newscope 6 VGA panel installed. Attached is a photo of the screen before I discovered that the keypad contacts needed cleaning, and after I had reseated the regulator board in the A6 power supply. I have cleaned the contacts, and I am now putting it all back together. It will need to be calibrated at some stage at a cost of £460 including delivery both ways. Any recommendations on where I can get the calibration done for a reasonable price (maybe £400 IS a reasonable price, I don't know). More later.
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Old 30th Jul 2022, 6:11 pm   #38
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-And got it working.

That's a very clear display good to know about that option should the CRT fail.
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Old 30th Jul 2022, 6:32 pm   #39
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-And got it working.

Very nice- well done!
Change the RIFA caps in the PSU if they haven't been changed already.
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Old 30th Jul 2022, 6:47 pm   #40
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Default Re: Bought a HP8564E & HP8563E Spectrum Analyser-And got it working.

Hi your last thread closed automatically after 6 months of no activity.

When this happens you just need ask a Mod to reopen it for you.

I will merge this thread with the original for you

Cheers

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