Fluke PM3380B - Service Manual

[cr0sh]

Found the user operations manual online - anyone know where I can find the service manual? I am interested in finding out how/what needs to be done to increase the memory of my scope...

Thanks in advance!

 

[Sceadwian]

That's more than a little complicated cr0sh, you more than likely can't simply slap in some extra memory and be done with it, the buffers on sampling scopes are generally designed at capacity, you basically have to completely replace the entire portion of the circuit that does the data buffering, and it's not likely a discrete board. You'd have to reverse engineer the buffering section and figure out how to update the firmware and hardware to allow for a higher address space. This wouldn't be covered in the service manual, though it would help you with the reverse engineering a little bit.

A rough real world analogy would be the owner of a 2.0 liter car thinking that a service and specifications manual would allow them to increase the displacement to 4 liters, the system just wasn't designed to allow that.

 

[cr0sh]

According to the operations manual I found (on Fluke's website for USA), the memory can supposedly be upgraded from "standard" 8K samples up to 32K samples - the manual on page 4 reads:

"8K sample acquisition memory, expandable to 32K in 2 channel versions" - page 5 reads:

"Memory extension offering 32K acquisition length and the ability to store 156 traces (of 512 samples each) in memory for 2 channel versions" - page 75 (4-30, 4.6) reads:

"If the memory expansion option is installed, the record length can be adjusted between 32K and 512 points"

There are a couple more examples, but you get the idea - according to the manual, there is some kind of "memory extension option" available for the scope. Is it likely that they replace entire thing? It doesn't seem likely to me; at worst, I would think that there is some kind of daughter board with memory on it that is swapped out, or the memory is added to the board, or a second board is added.

I am just wanting the service manual in order to determine what is needed for expanding the memory, without having to open the case (it has an intact factory calibration sticker and tag - I'd like to keep it that way). Having that knowledge would help me determine what I am looking for, and what costs I am looking at to have the memory expanded. It might be out of my budget...

 

[cr0sh]

Well - a little bit more of searching w/ Google yielded this off the Fluke site (their site is fairly horrible to navigate - especially for old equipment like this):

**broken link removed**

That seems to be the service manual for this model; unfortunately, nothing about the memory expansion other than that it is a "factory installed option", along with a warning not to open the scope. I put in a email request for more information, maybe I can find out how much the expansion option is, or if it is even available anymore...