Woohoo! The Keithley 171 was found by UPS and delivered!

[compilerbitch]

Yaay! The missing Keithley 171 showed up this morning. Thanks are due to our regular UPS driver who has spent the last few days undoing the mess caused by a temp driver who covered for him recently while he was out having a pacemaker fitted.

Yes, this is a lot more life detail than would normally be expected from a UPS guy, but under the circumstances I am very grateful to him for his help in tracking this down.

Keithley 171 Multimeter with Nixie Tube display

I gave it a quick power up out of curiosity. It needs a little work — the power switch is broken (you can see that in the photo actually, so it wasn’t a surprise), and the case is kind-of sticky, probably old residue from labels. It looks like there is some label residue on the display filter too. None of this is very hard to deal with. I think I probably have a suitable replacement power switch in with some of the parts I amassed for my super sekrit upcoming steampunk project, so my next video blog will probably be a teardown, repair and calibration of this little beauty.

Did I mention that though it seems to just be 4.5 digit, it seems to have 100 picoamp resolution, and certainly measures down to microvolts. This is no slouch of a meter despite its age.

Oh, and that display is mesmerizing. Photos don’t do justice to the 3D-ness of Nixie tubes.

Please note: this was cross-posted from my main blog at http://www.mageofmachines.com/main/2014/10/03/woohoo-the-keithley-171-was-found-by-ups-and-delivered/ -- If you want me to definitely see your replies, please reply there rather than here.

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