E0501

The E0501 is a low-frequency generator, made by IEMI in Bucharest and designed at the ICE research institute [1].

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].

It gives sine or square-wave signals from 1 Hz to 1 MHz; a programmable version, the E0501 P, was also made [2]. IEMI’s production table lists 3,600 units made in 1972–1983 [2].

Its list price, set in 1984, was 9,000 lei [3].

The same memoirs describe it as a transistorised low-frequency generator for 1 Hz – 1 MHz, with sine and square-wave output of up to 3 V rms [4].

Annex III.2.9 gives an output of 3 V rms open-circuit for the sine wave (600 Ω) and 3.3 Vpp for the square wave (50 Ω), with a typical sine distortion of 0.15% and rise and fall times under 50 ns; the frequency was set continuously in six ranges, with an error of up to 5% of the reading [5].