Schaffner Interference Simulator: Posting Cringe on Mains

Interference Simulator - Cover - v01 - 1980s IS

I got this Schaffner NSG 200E Interference Simulator mainframe with an NSG 223A module a while back to test a device featured in a previous video. That was quite a while ago, but I finally got around to taking a look at it. In this video we’ll check out the device’s internals and power it on for the first time in years. Then test some USB power supplies for interference (spike) pass-through. The USB PSUs were the cheapest I could find for fast delivery from Amazon, at about 4 bucks each. I wanted them to be of questionable quality, but they seemed surprisingly well-made. Though I’m not an expert, I am a fan of ⁨@DiodeGoneWild⁩ and would love to send … Continue reading

LeCroy WaveRunner 64Xi-A-N Oscilloscope Upgrade Attempt

I got this LeCroy WaveRunner 64Xi-A-N Oscilloscope from eBay because I needed a faster scope than my best 200Mhz Siglent model.

On eBay it looked super clean and in good cosmetic shape, and was shown and claimed to be working. When I received it, it would kinda start up, but the display was blank and overall it was unresponsive. When I went to make this video showing the investigation, it powered right up! Strange.

So I figured I’d just be replacing the RTC battery and upgrading the HDD to an SSD. Turns out it already had an SSD and a new battery. The problem was that it would reboot every time the USB ports were even slightly jostled.

After getting the motherboard out (which is standard-ish mini ITX style), it turns out that the PCB is really badly warped. That’s probably leading to cracked and/or damaged traces, possibly in internal layers. I’d wager that’s the cause of the reboots.

I posted this video more for posterity and in case anyone wanted to see an albeit slow teardown. Apologies for the rambly nature, but this really didn’t go according to plan.