E0309

The E0309 is a system digital multimeter controlled by two 8080 microprocessors, made by IEMI in Bucharest and designed at the ICE research institute [1]. Its prototype was approved in 1987 [1]. Its designer considered it the best digital multimeter made at ICE [2]. A master processor handled the results and the IEC 625 and RS232C interfaces, a slave the analogue measuring block; to avoid imported special components it calibrated itself from a block of voltage and resistance standards kept at +60 °C, and its box-in-box construction gave a floating, guarded measurement for noisy environments [2]. It had 21 programs selectable from the panel, could store 20 readings and show their mean and limits, compare with limits (PASS/FAIL) and load programs through RS232C, and came in a Metroset 6 case for racks [2]. In October 1988 a prototype was sent to a measuring-instrument factory in Erfurt (East Germany), which was interested in making it; it failed there after being used with 1000 V DC on autoranging, which was forbidden above 300 V; IEMI also presented it in Moscow in February 1989 [2].

ICE’s laboratory for electronic instruments for measuring electrical quantities designed all the institute’s generations of oscilloscopes, voltmeters, multimeters, signal generators, frequency meters, logic analysers, RLC bridges and stabilised AC power supplies; they went into production at IEMI or in ICE’s own microproduction workshop, and equipped industrial laboratories and production lines as well as teaching and research laboratories [1]. In the 1970s and 1980s about half of the components of measuring instruments were imported; after 1980 about three quarters were Romanian [1].