Ok, Yea another extender for the Tektronix TM500/5000 test mainframes. The vast majority of 3rd party extenders out there are pure shit (IMHO). Most of these are admittedly designed for low cost hobbyist type applications. I’ve purchased a bunch of these over the years, and to be honest I’ve caused more damage than I’ve solved. Here’s a partial image of the hall of shame for these things:
So, I got tired of fighting these silly extenders & designed one that is a bit more stable and user friendly. For anyone interested, I can provide a n Altium package or a set of gerbers, but they are not particularly cheap to manufacture (mainly due to the hard gold edge plating). I suppose one could ENIG the fingers, but I use the things often enough it was warranted.
Schematic wise simple enough, mainly interconnects , test points & indicators.
As shown, we have 3 indicators for power status, test points, and a few support components. The left side of the drawing is the gold plated edge connector. The right side of the drawing is the interconnect cable assy that runs from this module to the individual module termination. The edge connector consists of 56 pins with .156″ pitch, but the interconnect cable assy is a 60 pin IDC .100 pitch connector.
Rev. 0 PWB
We have since modified the design for dual cable in parallel to handle higher current TM500x modules.
