During the mid to late 1970’s Tektronix was enjoying great success with the 465 and 475 line of portable oscilloscopes. In 1977/1978, the design of a replacement oscilloscope was in development in Building 50. This oscilloscope’s design goals were impressive and required some significant technology development which became stalled in 1978 due to technology challenges coupled with the complexity of the project. The project fell behind schedule. At the same time in 1977, HP brought an oscilloscope to market that had some improved specifications and features over the 465. Tektronix started to lose market share to the new HP oscilloscope. Pressure was put on engineering to expedite the development of the new oscilloscope but technical challenges bogged the development down.
During this time, Marketing and Engineering management approached a small group of staff engineers housed in Building 47 and asked them if they could redesign the 465 to make it competitive with the HP product. They asked for:
- Modified push-push vertical switching that includes displaying trigger view at the same time as Ch1 and Ch2
- An alternate horizontal display allowing the user to view A sweep and B sweep at the same time.
- A faster horizontal sweep speed (goal was 2ns/div from current 5 ns/div)
- A vertical bandwidth of 125 MHz
- A $100 reduction in manufacturing cost.
The answer was yes if we could borrow one design engineer and a mechanical engineer from the Building 50 design group. The challenge was the development had to be completed in 6 months and be ready for manufacturing. The team of Ron Roberts, Jim Kuhns, Doug Stroberger, Wayne Kelso, and Merle Nielsen took on this project. The oscilloscope development taking place in building 50 was canceled and the definition of the next generation portable was revisited. The team of staff engineers and design engineers worked out of a small room in Building 47. We achieved the goal of the vertical display upgrade, the 2ns/div sweep speed, and the alternate horizontal display mode. The vertical amplifier was redesigned and the bandwidth improved, but we were unable to achieve the 125 MHz vertical bandwidth with enough margin to specify that performance on a production basis, so, we continued to specify the vertical bandwidth at 100 MHz. I don’t remember what happened on the cost reduction goal.
The newly modified 465B went into production and was a great success and allowed Tektronix to regain its lead in the 100 MHz scope market and gave the engineering team in Building 50 more time to plan and develop the next generation portable.