7704

The Tektronix 7704 is a four-bay mainframe introduced in 1969 that takes two 7000-series vertical plug-ins and two 7000-series horizontal plug-ins. The rated bandwidth is 150MHz for the 7704 and 200MHz for the 7704A. There was also an option (option 9) to have the bandwidth extended to 250MHz.

The 7704 has a special modular construction. At the bottom is the "acquisition unit", which contains the power supply, plug-in slots, and main interface board. On top is the "display unit", which contains the CRT, HV power supply, and output amplifiers for driving the deflection plates of the CRT. These units detach. A large multipin connector passes signals and power from the acquisition unit to the display unit. It is important not to damage this connector when assembling or disassembling the units.

An optional component, the P7001 Processing Unit, can be added to the system between the acquisition unit and the display unit. The P7001 contains a digitizer, memory, and display electronics. Early versions of the P7001 use core memory. Later versions use semiconductor RAM. The P7001 assumes a repeating input signal and periodically samples the horizontal and vertical signals simultaneously. This allows it to fill the memory with data points represented as coordinate pairs, (x1,y1), (x2,y2), (x3,y3), etc. It is not necessary that x2 be greater than x1.

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  Left side of 7704 contains power supply.

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  Right side of 7704 contains readout circuitry.