Paul, First, the meter is worth something if nothing other than parts. It is quite a meter and you should at least open it up and see what it might take to get it operational again. I am sure there are folks on this list (including me) that would love to have the meter if you want to part with it.
It is still in production, still supported and you can get the manuals from the Agilent website. The assembly level repair manual should be able to give you an idea of where the problem is. The CLIP is available and you might be able to find the specific part (or parts) that need replacing. I don't know of a way to get the serial number if there is no sticker on the back. You can open it and look at the date codes on the chips, etc., and get an idea of when it was manufactured. You can enter some queries from the front panel to get some other information. I can't remember what they all are but if they end in a '?', it will return the data. Things like 'OPT?' will tell what options are installed, '1' being extended memory and '2' being the high stability reference. You can tell how many times it was CAL'd, what version of firmware it has, etc. I think version 9 is the latest and version 8 is 'out there' somewhere, IIRC. If you just start with shift A and scroll down the list, you can see what questions you can ask. Agilent offers a 'repair service' for about $1900 (IIRC) that will put it back in operational condition, up to specs, and with a fresh calibration. However, I don't know if that service requires a serial number or not. There is a guy at the Agilent calibration center in Colorado, Gary Bierman, and he is 'the man' when it comes to that meter. I have spoken with him in the past about other 3458A questions and he was most helpful. I suspect he would be more than willing to talk to you about the meter and what it might take to get it up and running. I think his contact information is in the archives if you would like to pursue that. Good luck. Joe -----Original Message----- From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Paul Fox Sent: Monday, October 15, 2012 9:50 AM To: Discussion of precise voltage measurement Subject: [volt-nuts] hp 3458a advice hi -- i'm not a volt-nuts regular, and not even a precision measurement nut at all, but given past discussion in the list archives, i think you folks might be able to help. i was recently given an HP 3458a multimeter. the donor thought it worked when he last used it, but that was quite a long time ago, and i think it was stored in an attic for some time, so i'm not too surprised that it now doesn't pass self tests. :-/ he mainly wanted it out of his house, along with a bunch of other vintage (sadly mostly non-working) equipment he'd accumulated over the years. the self-test error is: ERRSTR 204, "Hardware Failure -- Flatness DAC Convergence: 198" judging from past list traffic, repairs on these units are expensive, and it would still need recalibration to be useful, and there are may be other parts (eeproms?) that may not be good any more. i'm not really interested in pursuing any of this myself. what's worse is that the unit doesn't have a serial number. (i assume the s/n would normally be obvious on the rear of the unit.) it bears a sticker on the back that says "MTG PROTO 27". i think the unit came from a place that themselves produced reference standards, and they may have gotten a very early model from HP to work with. that's conjecture. i haven't opened the unit, so i don't know if there are other clues to its age inside. so: is this machine useful to anyone? given the error message above, are there any measurements at all that it might still get correct, in it's current state? paul =--------------------- paul fox, [email protected] (arlington, ma, where it's 63.1 degrees) _______________________________________________ volt-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volt-nuts and follow the instructions there. _______________________________________________ volt-nuts mailing list -- [email protected] To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/volt-nuts and follow the instructions there.
