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Posts detailing recent projects done by D’Asaro Designs.

Skil (Skilsaw) 1616 Chainsaw repair

This project is a bit out of the ordinary for what I usually work on, but now that I have moved back to Seattle, my “services” are called upon sometimes to help with some upkeep around my folks’ place. Last winter a large limb came down in the back yard and I offered to help […]

Cleaning the encoders in Agilent 33220A Function Generators

Do you have an Agilent 33220A function generator? If so, you may well have experienced an annoying problem where the control knob does not operate smoothly – the number on the display doesn’t change when the knob is turned, changes erratically, or even changes in the wrong direction! Well, this is actually a very easy […]

A Quick Fix for Tektronix TLA5000 Series Logic Analysers

I was recently tasked with repairing fourteen Tektronix TLA5202 logic analysers, part of a classroom set used for a VLSI class. Although over ten years old at this point, these are still very capable machines and are worth several thousand dollars on the used market, so they are usually well worth fixing. Figure 1 shows […]

Repairing Vintage Sunbeam Electric Clock Movements

I have long been fascinated by electric clocks. Before the internet, TV, radio, or quartz crystals, electric clocks were able to keep effectively perfect time by remaining synchronised to the AC power grid, the frequency of which is centrally adjusted so that it can be used as a time standard. You can read more about […]

Fixing an HP / Agilent 54845A infinium Oscilloscope

Last spring (2014) I came across what seemed to be an amazing deal at the MIT Swapfest. It was a HP 54845A digital oscilloscope, which, although over 15 years old, was still a pretty impressive beast being four channels, 1.5GHz, 8Gs/s! The only problem was it didn’t work. In fast the seller was letting it […]

Building a Punch to Make Properly Perforated 828 Film

I have been interested in film photography and vintage cameras ever since I took Bill Kuhns B&W photography class at Nathan Hale High School in Seattle, WA. I enjoyed the class so much that took it all four years of high school and by the end I was maintaining pretty much all the photographic equipment. […]