{"id":469,"date":"2023-06-19T11:10:00","date_gmt":"2023-06-19T01:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2023\/06\/19\/curiousmarc-repairs-an-old-discrete-component-hp-frequency-counter\/"},"modified":"2025-07-22T18:02:23","modified_gmt":"2025-07-22T08:02:23","slug":"curiousmarc-repairs-an-old-discrete-component-hp-frequency-counter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2023\/06\/19\/curiousmarc-repairs-an-old-discrete-component-hp-frequency-counter\/","title":{"rendered":"CuriousMarc Repairs an old DISCRETE COMPONENT HP Frequency Counter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" allowfullscreen=\"\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"247\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/B-4cUGSsGPQ?rel=0\" title=\"YouTube video player\" width=\"440\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><b>I really liked this repair video from CuriousMarc (aka AJ6JV). This counter pre-dates the use of integrated circuits &#8212; it is all discrete transistors. Near the end, Marc mentions how this made this repair &#8220;like debugging a big integrated circuit, but with access to each transistor &#8212; this made it quite satisfying.&#8221; I hear ya Marc &#8212; with big ICs maybe all you would get to do would be to swap out a single IC. There would not be much of a challenge there. <\/b><\/div>\n<div><b><br \/><\/b><\/div>\n<div><b>With the older, discrete circuitry you get a good view of how Marc troubleshoots &#8212; how he finds the precise points where the device is failing. Note his use of the old HP paper manuals. I know this is an old guy thing, but I think the paper manuals (as opposed to the online versions) just make the process easier. Note too that Marc at one point had to go back to microfiche. <\/b><\/div>\n<div><b><br \/><\/b><\/div>\n<div><b>The transistor tester Mark used was very cool. <\/b><\/div>\n<div><b><br \/><\/b><\/div>\n<div><b>The whole physical structure of the HP device is very similar to my NYC HP8640B. Thanks again Steve Silverman and Dave Bamford. <\/b><\/div>\n<div><b><br \/><\/b><\/div>\n<div><b>I will look at Parts II and III of this series soon. <\/b><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I really liked this repair video from CuriousMarc (aka AJ6JV). This counter pre-dates the use of integrated circuits &#8212; it is all discrete transistors. Near the end, Marc mentions how this made this repair &#8220;like debugging a big integrated circuit, but with access to each transistor &#8212; this made it quite satisfying.&#8221; I hear ya &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/2023\/06\/19\/curiousmarc-repairs-an-old-discrete-component-hp-frequency-counter\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\"> &#8220;CuriousMarc Repairs an old DISCRETE COMPONENT HP Frequency Counter&#8221;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[173,174,171,172,170,71,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bamford-dave","category-frequency-counter","category-hp8640b","category-integrated-circuits","category-silverman-steve","category-test-gear","category-troubleshooting"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=469"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11291,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/469\/revisions\/11291"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.homebrewradio.us\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}