Like the title asks, anyone know what this is? Looks like something that may be useful....
The interwebs comes up with nothing in relation to the markings....

 

Could it be a fuse of some sort?

Where does it come from?

 

It is an analog delay line. It delays a signal by nano-seconds.

 

Thanks for the quick responses!

It comes from output of a old video doo-hikey. Had something like six stages, each on its own removable board. Must have been expensive in it's day. Bought it for parts for $20.

So why would one want to delay a signal by nano-seconds?

 

On old video displays, time was equal to position on the screen. Also, a delay line of that size could delay in the microsecond range. The numbers next to the terminals probably indicate delay time. Don't throw all of them away. It's a cool part.

 

Because the signal was appearing too early for that part of the circuit in the video doo-hickey.

 

I assume 590 printed on the delay line is 590ns.

 

It could be 590us.

 

If the old video doo-hickey is an analog oscilloscope with a CRT, the input signal goes to a comparator circuit in order to trigger the horizontal sweep circuit. The input signal is simultaneously routed to the vertical amplifier to be displayed on the CRT.

By the time the comparator detects the pulse or edge on the input signal it is gone and cannot be viewed on the CRT.
Hence they delay the input signal before sending it to the CRT. Now you can see the leading edge that caused the scope to trigger.

It is exactly like viewing an event before it happens. Like seeing a what led up to a crash.

 

It could be 590us.

No way. 590us is a looong time.

I have a number of these delay lines and the longest I have seen is about 1-2us.

Propagation delay is about 5ns/m.
For 500us you would need about 100km of wiring in the delay line.

 

Yea, you are right. 590ns. These are probably RGB color correction delay lines.

 

Fair enough, that makes sense. Would I be able to make an analog sound delay with one (or two of 5) of these, I suppose not since the time increments are probably not long enough to be of any use..... although I have never timed a delay FX pedal.

 

No. The delay in an FX pedal are of the order of tens and hundreds of milli-seconds.

 

Shucks, thanks.

 

Thanks for the quick responses!

It comes from output of a old video doo-hikey. Had something like six stages, each on its own removable board. Must have been expensive in it's day. Bought it for parts for $20.

So why would one want to delay a signal by nano-seconds?

Could be from an oscilloscope...but I don't recognize it specifically

 

The stages were: Power,Gate,Horz (horizontal) , Clamp, and Video. In that order.

 

Thanks for the quick responses!

It comes from output of a old video doo-hikey. Had something like six stages, each on its own removable board. Must have been expensive in it's day. Bought it for parts for $20.

So why would one want to delay a signal by nano-seconds?

As an example; in the PAL CTV system, the luma and chroma signals encounter different amounts of delay as they pass through their respective processing circuitry - if the luma wasn't passed through a delay, the colour and brightness wouldn't line up together on the CRT face.

 

What kind of video doo-hikey? If it's a camera or camera controller, this probably is part of the image enhancer. If its a video recorder, this probably is part of the timebase corrector. The problem is that 590 us or ns doesn't work for either NTSC or PAL.

ak