Over on his YouTube channel our hacker [CircuitValley] repairs an old TDS8000 scope.

The TDS8000 was manufactured by Tektronix circa 2001 and was also marketed as the CSA8000 Communications Signal Analyzer as well as the TDS8000 Digital Sampling Oscilloscope. Tektronix is no longer manufacturing and selling these scopes but the documentation is still available from their website, including the User Manual (268 page PDF), the Service Manual (198 page PDF), and some basic specs (in HTML).

You can do a lot of things with a TDS8000 scope but particularly its use case was Time-Domain Reflectometry (TDR). A TDR scope is the time-domain equivalent of a Vector Network Analyzer (VNA) which operates in the frequency-domain.

The TDS8000 needs sampling heads attached and it has two large slots on the front for optical sampling heads and four smaller slots for electrical sampling heads. In this video we don’t see any sampling heads actually used, the only thing we see in this video is troubleshooting and repair of the TDS8000 itself. The effective bandwidth of the scope is limited by the capabilities of the sampling heads but according to its datasheet can extend up to 50 GHz, which is seriously large, especially by the standards of 2001!

[CircuitValley] cleans, replaces, upgrades, and fixes a bunch of things during the service of this TDS8000 and documents the process in this YouTube video. In the end he seems to have fixed the problem the scope had in the beginning, where it would hang while loading its main application. We’d love to hear from [CircuitValley] again some time to see a complete system operating with sampling heads attached.

If you’re interested in old scope repair too, then how far back in time did you want to go? Maybe you could start at Recovering An Agilent 2000a/3000a Oscilloscope With Corrupt Firmware NAND Flash and then work your way back to Repairing An Old Heathkit ‘Scope.

Starting June 20th, any cordless phone, smartphone, or feature phone, as well as tablets (7 – 17.4″ screens) have to meet Ecodesign requirements. In addition there is now mandatory registration with the European Product Registry for Energy Labelling (EPREL). The only exception are phones and tablets with a flexible (rollable) main display, and tablets that do not use a mobile OS, i.e. not Android, iPadOS, etc. These requirements include resistance to drops, scratches and water, as well as batteries that last at least 800 cycles.

What is perhaps most exciting are the requirements that operating system updates must be made available for at least five years from when the product is last on the market, along with spare parts being made available within 5-10 working days for seven years after the product stops being sold. The only big niggle here is that this access only applies to ‘professional repairers’, but at least this should provide independent repair shops with full access to parts and any software tools required.

On the ENERGY label that is generated with the registration, customers can see the rating for each category, including energy efficiency, battery endurance, repairability and IP (water/dust ingress) rating, making comparing devices much easier than before. All of this comes before smartphones and many other devices sold in the EU will have to feature easily removable batteries by 2027, something which may make manufacturers unhappy, but should be a boon to us consumers and tinkerers.

In what could be a big step forward for consumer rights, the Texas Senate recently unanimously voted to pass HB 2963, which references the “Diagnosis, maintenance, and repair of certain digital electronic equipment”. If signed by the governor, this would make Texas the ninth US state to enact such a law, and the seventh pertaining to consumer electronics. Interestingly, this bill saw anti-parts pairing language added, which is something that got stripped from the Oregon bill.

Much like other Right to Repair bills, HB 2963 would require manufacturers to make spare parts, documentation and repair tools available to both consumers and independent repair shops. If signed, the act would take effect in September of 2026. Included in the bill are provisions to prevent overcharging for the provided parts and documentation.

As for how useful this is going to be for consumers, [Louis Rossmann] had a read of the bill and gave his  typically eloquent thoughts. The tl;dw is that while there is a lot of stuff to like, this bill leaves open potentially massive loopholes (e.g. assemblies vs parts), while also carving out massive exemptions, which leaves owners of game consoles, boats, cars, tractors, home appliances, etc. stranded with no new options.

Starting January 1st, 2026, Washington state’s new Right to Repair law will come into effect. It requires manufacturers to make tools, parts and documentation available for diagnostics and repair of ‘digital electronics’, including cellphones, computers and similar appliances. The relevant House Bill 1483 was signed into law last week after years of fighting to make it a reality.

A similar bill in Oregon faced strong resistance from companies like Apple, despite backing another Right to Repair bill in California. In the case of the Washington bill, there were positive noises from the side of Google and Microsoft, proclaiming themselves and their products to be in full compliance with such consumer laws.

Of course, the devil is always in the details, with Apple in particular being a good example how to technically comply with the letter of the law, while throwing up many (financial) roadblocks for anyone interested in obtaining said tools and components. Apple’s penchant part pairing is also a significant problem when it comes to repairing devices, even if these days it’s somewhat less annoying than it used to be — assuming you’re running iOS 18 or better.

That said, we always applaud these shifts in the right direction, where devices can actually be maintained and repaired without too much fuss, rather than e.g. cellphones being just disposable items that get tossed out after two years or less.

Thanks to [Robert Piston] for the tip.