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From: bies@sctc.com (Marty Bies)
Newsgroups: sci.electronics
Subject: Re: What's in a Line Test Set?
Message-ID: <1990Apr10.142252.21706@sctc.com>
Date: 10 Apr 90 14:22:52 GMT
References: <1723@argus.UUCP>
Organization: Secure Computing Technology Corporation
Lines: 21

ken@argus.UUCP (Kenneth Ng) writes:

>Hello everyone, the equipment budget for the department I work in has
>been slashed to zero, and our line test set got stolen recently.  
>I've been wondering if anyone knows what justifies the $200-300
>cost of such a beast.  Is it because it is a speciality market,
>or are there components in there that are really worth a couple
>hundred dollars?  I've added up the cost of the obvious components
>(headset, tone pad, aligator clips, batteries, isolation transformer)
>and arrive at about $50.  The only thing I don't know about is the
>monitor option, which is what I use most to debug the modems.  What
>makes up this circuit?  

Considering that you have $50 in parts.  I would think that the time
it would take to build and debug the whole thing and make it reasonable
to use would far exceed the $200 cost of a new test set. 

But then,  my budget is like a bottom-less pit :)

--Marty B
bies@sctc.com