TSP #150 - Teardown, Repair & Experiments with an Agilent N4901B 13.5Gb/s Bit Error Rate Tester BERT

In this episode Shahriar repairs a non-functional N4901B 13.5Gb/s BERT mainframe. This instrument is equipped with both the generator and analyzer modules which makes it fairly valuable. The instrument does not power on and does not react to the soft power button.

Teardown of the unit reveals a TD-Lambda Vega power supplies series which is a fully configurable switching power supply design. Even though the power supply in the instrument is completely custom, it is made from generic sub-blocks readily available on eBay. A replacement front-end is purchased to repair the power supply after detecting the problem.

The instrument also shows a minor problem with falsely detecting an overload condition on the delay control port which is by passed by installing an overwrite switch. The instrument performance is verified by generating and measuring various eye diagrams through a back-plane PCB board.

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