Visiting the VintageTEK Museum

During my vacation to Beaverton, OR, I got to visit the VintageTEK Museum with a local friend.  The museum relocated recently to the Tektronix campus, which seems to a fitting place for it to be.

The VintageTEK museum is a pretty cool place with a fair bit of space to show off their collection of old Tek scopes, test equipment, tubes, CRTs and other equipment beginning with an original Tektronix 511 CRT oscilloscope.

Tektronix 511 CRT oscilloscope
Tektronix 511 CRT oscilloscope innards

Many of the scopes and gear on display are static, but quite a few of them are operational and interactive.  In a side room you’ll also find a Tektronix electron microscope and a Digital PDP8.

Tektronix electron microscope
Tektronix electron microscope
Digital  PDP 8/e
Digital PDP 8/e

A new offering by the museum is an instrument lending  program for students. If you’re working on a project and need some test equipment, you can borrow it from the museum. Available equipment includes scopes, DMMs, function generators, counters, and power supplies.

We also got to see the back area where they have a huge collection of equipment and parts, and where they work on restoring equipment.

Definitely worth a visit if you’re in the area. The museum volunteers are friendly and know a great deal about the equipment in the collection. Their regular hours are on 10AM-6PM Thursday and 10AM-4PM Saturday, but they’ll also open upon request.