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Take a look at what I picked up today! It's a DuMont Type 241 Oscillograph! No, that's not a typo, they were actually called "oscillographs" before they got the name "oscilloscope," which should tell you a bit about the age of this thing; it's super old! I haven't looked for a date stamp on it yet, but this model was being manufactured back in the early 1940s, making this thing more than double my age!
Anyway, the reason I wound up getting this scope was while I was looking for some oscilloscope projects to reteach myself about using a scope and learn more about them, I came across something called "oscilloscope music," and it freakin' blew me away! Just check out this video if you want to know what it is. That video is not a computer generation, it's an actual oscilloscope screen, and the images you see on the screen are generated by the music you hear in the video! Here's another video of the guy explaining it further, and showing some examples. LINK
Well, after seeing that, and having it totally blow my mind, I wanted to try it out for myself! Unfortunately, the oscilloscope music doesn't do so well on a digital scope, which is what my Singlet is, so I went on the hunt for an old CRT oscilloscope. After searching around for a while, I came across this thing on ebay. I absolutely love the circular display, and the vintage look of it. I thought it would look really cool playing some oscilloscope music on this thing, seeing the images on that circular screen. And what was even better, is I found the guy selling it was local, so no shipping charge!
So I drove over to the guy's house after work, and we plugged it in to see if it was still working. The scope powered on, and a nice, bright trace appeared on the screen. We then tried turning the knobs and switches, and touching the input jacks to see if the scope would respond, and it was responding rather well. In fact, I would go as far as to say it may have been close to being fully functional, just needing a good cleaning up!
Unfortunately, as we were talking and watching the trace on the screen, it started smoking. We quickly shut it down, and the guy decided to open up the case to see where the smoke was coming from, which was pretty cool of him. After looking around the innards of this thing, he spotted a burnt resistor, and we both felt that one of the capacitors was hot to the touch. He figured that the capacitor went bad, which overloaded the resistor, causing it to burn. He also suggested trying to find a replacement for the power supply, which I agreed that it was a good idea.
Fortunately, the guy put in the add that this scope was in need of repair, so I went in knowing that this scope was going to need work, and I managed to find a schematic and parts list for this exact model of scope online, so replacing those parts should be relatively easy! One really big plus is that we were able to determine that the CRT is still functional, since that would be the toughest part to find a replacement, and possibly also the most expensive. Another plus is that we were also able to see that before those parts went out, the scope seemed to be functioning fairly well, so fixing it shouldn't be all that difficult! So I could probably have this thing up and running again in no time! (after I acquire the parts anyway)
Now, as far as the oscilloscope music is concerned, I noticed that the frequency knob on this scope goes up to 30K, (which I'm assuming is 30KHz), which unfortunately means it will not be able to display the oscilloscope music signal, which needs a bandwidth of up to 100KHz. So no oscilloscope music on this guy. Although, I can probably still come up with oscilloscope drawings, to make a cool light show on the display.
Despite everything, I'm still really happy that I got this scope. Even though it might not be able to do what I was initially hoping, it's still a really cool device, and is positively gorgeous! (just wait until I open this thing up, and show you guys the inside! So beautiful!).
And I bet you're wondering how much I paid for this bad boy, well, I paid the huge, huge amount of... $15
That's right, I only paid fifteen smackers for this thing! The guy was originally asking $30, but because it smoked when we were testing it, he decided to cut fifteen bucks off the price, how sweet is that!? What a cool dude!
Anyway, I'll probably look for another CRT scope that can handle 100KHz, or maybe just go to 100MHz, so I can do the oscilloscope music, and maybe eventually try out some other ideas I have using the same concept. Unfortunately, finding one that's affordable and fully functional will be a bit of a challenge, so wish me luck ;)
Anyway, the reason I wound up getting this scope was while I was looking for some oscilloscope projects to reteach myself about using a scope and learn more about them, I came across something called "oscilloscope music," and it freakin' blew me away! Just check out this video if you want to know what it is. That video is not a computer generation, it's an actual oscilloscope screen, and the images you see on the screen are generated by the music you hear in the video! Here's another video of the guy explaining it further, and showing some examples. LINK
Well, after seeing that, and having it totally blow my mind, I wanted to try it out for myself! Unfortunately, the oscilloscope music doesn't do so well on a digital scope, which is what my Singlet is, so I went on the hunt for an old CRT oscilloscope. After searching around for a while, I came across this thing on ebay. I absolutely love the circular display, and the vintage look of it. I thought it would look really cool playing some oscilloscope music on this thing, seeing the images on that circular screen. And what was even better, is I found the guy selling it was local, so no shipping charge!
So I drove over to the guy's house after work, and we plugged it in to see if it was still working. The scope powered on, and a nice, bright trace appeared on the screen. We then tried turning the knobs and switches, and touching the input jacks to see if the scope would respond, and it was responding rather well. In fact, I would go as far as to say it may have been close to being fully functional, just needing a good cleaning up!
Unfortunately, as we were talking and watching the trace on the screen, it started smoking. We quickly shut it down, and the guy decided to open up the case to see where the smoke was coming from, which was pretty cool of him. After looking around the innards of this thing, he spotted a burnt resistor, and we both felt that one of the capacitors was hot to the touch. He figured that the capacitor went bad, which overloaded the resistor, causing it to burn. He also suggested trying to find a replacement for the power supply, which I agreed that it was a good idea.
Fortunately, the guy put in the add that this scope was in need of repair, so I went in knowing that this scope was going to need work, and I managed to find a schematic and parts list for this exact model of scope online, so replacing those parts should be relatively easy! One really big plus is that we were able to determine that the CRT is still functional, since that would be the toughest part to find a replacement, and possibly also the most expensive. Another plus is that we were also able to see that before those parts went out, the scope seemed to be functioning fairly well, so fixing it shouldn't be all that difficult! So I could probably have this thing up and running again in no time! (after I acquire the parts anyway)
Now, as far as the oscilloscope music is concerned, I noticed that the frequency knob on this scope goes up to 30K, (which I'm assuming is 30KHz), which unfortunately means it will not be able to display the oscilloscope music signal, which needs a bandwidth of up to 100KHz. So no oscilloscope music on this guy. Although, I can probably still come up with oscilloscope drawings, to make a cool light show on the display.
Despite everything, I'm still really happy that I got this scope. Even though it might not be able to do what I was initially hoping, it's still a really cool device, and is positively gorgeous! (just wait until I open this thing up, and show you guys the inside! So beautiful!).
And I bet you're wondering how much I paid for this bad boy, well, I paid the huge, huge amount of... $15
That's right, I only paid fifteen smackers for this thing! The guy was originally asking $30, but because it smoked when we were testing it, he decided to cut fifteen bucks off the price, how sweet is that!? What a cool dude!
Anyway, I'll probably look for another CRT scope that can handle 100KHz, or maybe just go to 100MHz, so I can do the oscilloscope music, and maybe eventually try out some other ideas I have using the same concept. Unfortunately, finding one that's affordable and fully functional will be a bit of a challenge, so wish me luck ;)
Category All / All
Species Unspecified / Any
Size 872 x 1280px
File Size 214.5 kB
We had an event called "Game On 2.0" in my city recently, and it was pretty much a videogame museum of sorts, with tons of old stuff playable. Including an old Asteroids machine, complete with a Vector Monitor, which works similarly to an oscilloscope. And they even had Asteroids running on an Oscilloscope. That game, despite being so simple, looks GORGEOUS on those old screens. It's so god damn bright and sharp it feels like it's gonna damage your eyes or something XD
Hope you can get something cool working on this old beast!
Hope you can get something cool working on this old beast!
That is actually one of the things I thought would be awesome to try, making a vieogame that could be displayed on an oscilloscope! Not sure if it would be possible to make it sound good as well, but that would be absolutely incredible if it could! That would probably take some serious coding to pull off.
But that would be pretty far down the road. First I gotta learn how this thing works, repair it, get some Lissajous patterns to appear on the screen, and then learn how to do drawings on the screen.
It'll probably be a long road, but I bet it'll be a fun one! ^^
Another thing I thought might be fun, is if I can get my hands on some cathode ray tubes, and since I have a schematic for this thing, I might be able to build one from scratch (with newer components), just to see if I could do it, and then, if I figure that out, I could make some custom devices that use CRT displays to do whatever, show a little video, be a game machine, or just a basic clock.
But that would be pretty far down the road. First I gotta learn how this thing works, repair it, get some Lissajous patterns to appear on the screen, and then learn how to do drawings on the screen.
It'll probably be a long road, but I bet it'll be a fun one! ^^
Another thing I thought might be fun, is if I can get my hands on some cathode ray tubes, and since I have a schematic for this thing, I might be able to build one from scratch (with newer components), just to see if I could do it, and then, if I figure that out, I could make some custom devices that use CRT displays to do whatever, show a little video, be a game machine, or just a basic clock.
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