Tektronix scope secret splash screens

I built a more serious scope from an old TV that had an independent HV supply fro the CRT. I never did come up with an acceptable way to do it with the flyback-transformer sets. It had 3 choices for horizontal deflection, AC line frequency, a NE2 relaxation oscillator that gave a sort of linear deflection, and of course the external input for X-Y mode operation. The secret to prevent burning a spot on the screen was to control the CRT grid with a diode and filter from the vertical amplifier. The first vertical signal would turn on the beam, and after 5 seconds of silence it would fade out.

This reminded me of a friend who was working on a chemical laser at TRW, which had a ferocious triggered-spark-gap power supply. He brought me a scope camera photo that looked like some kind of screwball X-Y mode event. But he said no, there were no inputs connected to the scope at all. It was just in a room adjacent to the laser, with a stationary spot on the screen, until the laser fired. Even with the customary magnetic shielding the pulsed B fields moved the spot around to create the pattern.

I remember putting sense resistors in series with TV deflection yokes to get signals to apply to the horizontal and vertical inputs to the scopes. And one cool thing CRT scopes had was the Z axis, which you connected to the CRT cathode. The picture was usually inverted from left to right, and because of cathode drive the black and white was inverted. And the sweep had linearity problems. But it was always fun to have people come into the lab and see TV on the scope.

Anyone remember the slow motion film of the 4014 DVST implosion test, with a swinging pendulum and Pink Floyd soundtrack? That was a big "hit" in Wilsonville. Dave Heinen and Chuck Foresberg used to hook up audio to the DTL circuit and make their own music in the wee hours.

'Way' back in college the early 70's, we would run our stereo speaker leads to the yoke of an old TV and watch music like Emerson, Lake and Palmer (Lucky Man was the best). We dubbed this 'psychadelivsion'. Due to the H and V inductances being quite different, we were always assured of good phase differences and with it being an inductor, the beam responded mostly to the lower notes with large, beautiful circular patterns. We didn't know enough back then to avoid burning a hole in the center of the screen when the music stopped! When tried with a 4" scope, the pattern was way too clinical and fuzzy. I went on to design CRT display systems, stroke/vector and raster for a couple of decades partially from these thrills-thanks for the memories.
To the whiner (sounds like a manager) who complained about not trusting equipment engineers would build this into-get a life. Probably most equipment still has secret codes for testing. Consider it a built-in test feature.
I love the story about the shaker table and Pink Floyd!

Back in college in the early 70's I discovered you could do this X/Y music thing with old TV's driving the yoke with your speaker outputs! Due to the inductance of the yoke, low notes dominated and the difference between the H and V resulted in beautiful patterns we dubbed 'psychadelivision'. Doing this on a 4" electrostatic scope screen never was thrilling. Didn't know enough back then to blank the beam between songs so we always had a small burn spot in the center of the tube but it was neat. I went on to design CRT displays, stroke and raster for a couple of decades prodded on by this thrill-oh the memories.
To the guy who complained that he wouldn't trust equipment that had these features built in-get a life! Consider it a built-in test feature! Long live stroke/vector writing, long live the CRT!

Years ago, after designing the first character readout system (for the 7000 series), I would, over a quiet weekend in Building 50, build a power-up feature into a colleague's scope that would display a personal message, invariably a bit blah and pretty short, such as "Good Morning, Les". Each character required a pair of resistors to select it from the matrix, so this could hardly be called software; but it was certainly "firm"!
Barrie

I think I would seriously worry about the integrity of machines that could so obviously interfere with the signal path.
I wouldn't feel confident about some background piece of software applying unnecessary tweaks to my signal. Could I trust what I was seeing?

Boston was also good music for x-y inputs.

Knew a person in reliability who would pretest equipment on the x-y shaker table by playing pink floyd into it. If it passed that test it would usually pass anything else. If not, they saved a lot of testing time and could do some fixing sooner.

This is like the TETRIS game you had on the HP scopes.
I'm just wondering if it is really vector information displayed in the Tek scopes or if there is some "artificial" raster: we used to watch TV in the shool lab that way, by making a "video monitor" on a proto board and using the scope X, Y and Z axis to see the (monochrome) picture.
Great learning times it was.

For those of us old enough to remember, premium hi-fi gear in the 1960's and 70's sometimes included a small oscilloscope screen, which (among other functions) would show the vectors of the left vs right channels. I particularly remember a number of Marantz tuners and receivers with this display, but other manufacturers did the same. Besides being captivating to watch, such displays were supposedly useful in vatious ways, such as observing channel balance and phasing, particularly when playing test recordings. The utility was probably greater in broadcast and recording studios, where CRT-based Audio Vectorscopes (as they were called) were commonly found equipment in years gone by.

Pink Floyd is the best music for the x-y scope. In some parts of the songs shapes will appear to move around instead of just random scribbles.

Cool - please invite Eric to write a piece in the print rag on clock design using old oscilloscopes - I think all of us would enjoy the diversion and insight.
Yeah, I'd like to see the Shanghai design team (the team in Oregon was decimated by Danaher's (Tek's owner) outsourcing) do stuff like this on their own initiative....it's not in the culture.
Darned shame the MBAs have no idea of these kinds of design team differences, nor do they care...it's all about the buck, and people sneaking fun, creative, stuff into a product like this would get fired instead of lauded.