trancor northern, oscilloscopes

From: CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com <(CLASSICCMP_at_trailing-edge.com)>
Date: Mon Nov 29 15:40:14 1999

>I just saw some rack mounted oscilloscopes out on the loading dock. They are
>manufactured by trancor northern, and have a quad height slot available from
>the rear of the unit (no cover for the slot). It has a dual height LSI11
>cpu board (DEC), and another dual height board installed(DEC). The second
>unit is the same, except the second card has generic white handles.
>
>Does anyone know about these things? one rack has two of these, and
>under them is a dual 8" floppy drive unit, that has a small ribbon
>connector that connects to something via a 25 pin rs-232 connector.

It's *probably* a multichannel analyzer (MCA), not an oscilliscope. MCA's
look at pulse heights and generate real-time cumulative histograms of
pulse height on the screen.

Tracor Northern is one of the more prolific manufacturers of MCA's.

I once got to look at a MCA from the late 1940's, and it was fascinating:
the input pulse was amplified, then fed to a solenoid that kicked a ball
bearing up in a ballistic trajectory. There were bins that accumulated
ball bearings according to how hard they'd been kicked. Fascinating
machine!

Of course, modern MCA's use computers to do the counting :-).

-- 
 Tim Shoppa                        Email: shoppa_at_trailing-edge.com
 Trailing Edge Technology          WWW:   http://www.trailing-edge.com/
 7328 Bradley Blvd		   Voice: 301-767-5917
 Bethesda, MD, USA 20817           Fax:   301-767-5927
Received on Mon Nov 29 1999 - 15:40:14 GMT

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