[Amps] help diagnosing a bad 8450a probe ?

[Carcia, Francis A HS]

1N5711 is a good choice they sell for about a buck each. 1N7512 will be a
bit more sensitive. Matched quads will be quire rare and who knows if it
really matters. 

-----Original Message-----
From: amps-bounces at contesting.com [mailto:amps-bounces at contesting.com] On
Behalf Of Steve Thompson
Sent: Friday, December 09, 2005 2:37 AM
To: Dan Sawyer
Cc: amps
Subject: Re: [Amps] help diagnosing a bad 8450a probe ?



Dan Sawyer wrote:
> All,
> 
> I have an 8405a with a bad probe. The unit makes it through most of the 
> calibration until the noise cancellation step. One board works and comes 
> in at less then 5 mv. However one shows a 1V peak to peak distorted sine 
> like wave. This probe actually works, however due to the fault it has a 
> phase frequency error. This error is of course disaster for a phase meter.
> 
> Does anyone have experience in diagnosing these probes?
> 
> Does anyone have a lead as to what part to suspect?
Usually it's blown from overload - the four diodes in the sampling gate 
and/or the p-channel fet go. There's a guy on ebay sells replacement 
kits. I haven't got round to repairing the one I have, but I reckon four 
shottky diodes from the same batch should work (HP2800 or 2835, for 
example), and probably any general purpose p-channel fet. No promises on 
that, but it won't bankrupt you to try. As an alternative to four 
discrete diodes, I was thinking of trying one of the quad arrays you can 
get in a surface mount package.

Steve
_______________________________________________
Amps mailing list
Amps at contesting.com
http://lists.contesting.com/mailman/listinfo/amps