This picture is all wrong

osc

So, this picture was doing the round a few months back. But it’s now made me feel cheated, confused and ashamed. It turns out it’s wrong, all very very wrong.

Firstly as my friend Akiba pointed out, the Tektronix 2245A wasn’t a storage scope. Tektronix’s analogue storage scopes I believe started with the 2400 series, I’ve recently been reading about the analogue CCD memory used in these instruments as a friend has been repairing one. It’s an interesting architecture, a historical quirk which has largely fallen into disuse.

Giving them the benefit of the doubt, it’s possible 2245A is a typo for 2445A. But the 2445A started at 150MHz, no 100MHz version was available.

Finally, what exactly is the scope he’s carrying? Here’s a close up:

osc1This makes little sense to me. I really don’t know of any scopes with a CRT on the right hand side. Maybe someone can point one out? But I’m pretty confused here (based on the fact that the Nike swipe is also fipped, I’d guess the image is mirrored but I’m going to run with this..).

Flipping the image, the scope does indeed look like a 2245a:

osc2Tektronix 2245A

 

 

 

 

 

And not much like a 2445a:

 

osc2tek2445a

 

 

 

 

 

 

Also, Tektronix is spelled incorrectly? Perhaps this image comes from a bizarre parallel earth where Tektronix is called Tectronix and everyone is left handed? Perhaps taking your oscilloscope to a club is an entirely normal activity, and people hang out discussing the finer points of trigger mode selection. In the immoral words of Liz Lemon “I want to go to there”.

I’ll let you draw your own conclusions, however in the meantime:

osc3