The Barney Oliver from Hewlett Packard

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Sorry, only employees were allowed to purchase:

BOSA230_FCorner.jpg


Internal Memo:
http://www.hparchive.com/Manuals/Barney_Oliver_Amplifier_Memo.pdf

Manual:
http://www.hparchive.com/Manuals/Barney_Oliver_Amplifier_Manual.pdf

Thanks to the folks at HP Archive for this.
 
Thanks fun stuff, though I would think you could do better than MJ4502's today. I had a scope in almost that exact same case in the early 70's. A small publisher went belly up and at the auction one of the guys had left a scope under his desk, got it for $5.
 
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The cabinet is identical to the HP Power Supplies of the era (Digital Voltage Sources) -- like the HP6131, or the Digital Current Source.

It's interesting to note that you could inject an audio signal into these power supplies and have it amplified out the rear end -- probably for amplifier stability testing. Fluke had the same feature.
 
Thanks fun stuff, though I would think you could do better than MJ4502's today. I had a scope in almost that exact same case in the early 70's. A small publisher went belly up and at the auction one of the guys had left a scope under his desk, got it for $5.

Nice case, it would cost a fortune to manufacture today.

Speaking of the amp, I like that "half-diamond" buffers. They remind me when I was young... ;)
 
Sweet!

Quick look at the schematic says that Dan Meyer of SWTPC probably saw some of this, as there are some similarities to be seen...

The other thing is that i thought that Deane Jensen was the first to use small chokes in the legs of a diff pair - at least in audio, but this seems to predate the 990...

_-_-bear
 
A few bits of info:

"G-job" was short for "Government Job". It was a long-standing policy in HP that engineers had free access to HP parts and labs/shops to pursue their own personal hobby projects (g-jobs) -- within reason and for their own use. The idea was that any time spent honing their engineering skills ultimately benefited the company. I doubt the current HP or Agilent still have such a policy.

The Barney Oliver amp was a somewhat unique case. Since Barney was head of HP Labs, he had a slightly (...) exalted position. In addition, this project happened during a serious recession in the electronics industry and the manufacturing run of these amps gave production people something to do in a day when the whole company took 10% pay cuts but did not lay off people. So, what started out as a g-job became a small production run.

This is the only picture I've seen of an Oliver amp in a full "system 1" chassis; other pictures I've seen looked a little more like an audio product of that vintage -- i.e., no front handles or hinged side handles
 
Amazing, bot the G-job policy and the result, at least in comparison to the made-in-spain stuff from that era that I have seen.

Regulated supplies? Current sources? Double sided PCBs? :D:D
Metal film resistors? No compromise on the amount of transistors and supply rails used?
Daughter cards in a spatial plane perpendicular to the power stuff (shielded by the chassis too) :D:D:D
 
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While I have the greatest respect for Barney Oliver, I don't find this project terribly advanced, even for the late 1960's. We made similar power amps at Ampex in 1968, and
there was nothing exceptional about them, either. We also used the same parts.

John is right, the circuit itself is not special. I wonder who was the first person to build "an op-amp on steroids"? I remember AR still was using interstage transformers in their SS amps.
 
Well Allen, that is what it was. G job. I was doing comp diff. bipolar at Ampex in 1968-1969 with essentially the same parts. My documentation was more sparse, unless it went into production, and my amps never did that, at the time, too complex for the time period. However, you should look at AMPEX video schematics from that time period. Same quality as HP. We were neighbors, and even friends.
 
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