The E&L Instruments Elite 2 was far more than a solderless breadboard: it was a 1960s electronics prototyping station with built-in power supplies, switches, indicators, and waveform and pulse generators. Reverse engineering by Ken Shirriff reveals how its discrete-transistor circuitry produced signals across a wide range—and how a nonworking survivor was brought back through painstaking fault-finding.
What made the Elite 2 a complete prototyping station?
The Elite 2 combined a solderless breadboard with the support equipment an experimenter would otherwise need to assemble separately. Its controls, indicators and external connections sat alongside power supplies and built-in signal generators, making it a compact electronics workbench rather than a passive socket board.
In his 2022 teardown, Ken Shirriff describes five supplies: three user-adjustable supplies, unregulated internal rails at ±32 V, and regulated internal rails at ±12 V. The power section used two large transformers, power transistors and large capacitors—a markedly different approach from the compact switching supplies common in modern equipment.
What signals could its built-in generators produce?
| Generator | Output or range | How it worked |
|---|---|---|
| Waveform generator | Triangle, square and sine waves from 1 Hz to 1 MHz, as reported by Ken Shirriff in 2022 | An integrator generated a triangle wave; a comparator converted it to a square wave; a resistor-diode network shaped the triangle into a sine wave. |
| Pulse generator | Pulse widths from 100 ns to 100 ms, as reported by Ken Shirriff in 2022 | A switch-selected resistor-capacitor network set pulse width. Output amplitude was adjusted by changing the supply voltage to the output amplifier. |
Shirriff reports less than 1% distortion for the sine output. The generator circuitry was not built from modern integrated function-generator chips: the waveform and pulse board contained more than 40 transistors, and its op-amp circuits were assembled from discrete transistors.
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How did the analog circuitry shape a sine wave?
The generator’s signal path illustrates how much work the Elite 2’s designers packed into discrete components. The integrator repeatedly charged and discharged to create a triangle waveform. A comparator switched between output states as that waveform crossed its thresholds, yielding a square wave. For the sine output, a resistor-diode network progressively altered the triangle’s slopes, rounding its corners into a closer approximation of a sine wave.
Shirriff says the sine-shaping approach appears similar to one used in HP’s 3300A function generator. That is a circuit comparison, not evidence that the Elite 2 licensed or copied HP’s design. He also notes that a prototyping breadboard that seems simple becomes more complicated when built with 1969 technology.
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What did the repair reveal—and what remains uncertain?
CuriousMarc found the surviving Elite 2 on eBay in nonworking condition. The repair account identified a broken wire, multiple failed transistors and a failed bridge rectifier. Shirriff suggested that a past power-supply overvoltage might explain the unusually high number of failures, but presented that only as a possibility, not a confirmed cause.
The teardown’s schematic was created to help diagnose and repair this unit; it is not a complete service manual. Shirriff says he did not record resistor and capacitor values fully, some NPN/PNP identifications are guesses, and errors may remain. Anyone using it as a repair reference should verify component identity and values against the actual board rather than treating every annotation as authoritative.
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What did the Elite 2 cost in 1969?
Shirriff reports a 1969 retail price of $1,300 and described that amount in his 2022 article as equivalent to $10,000 in current dollars. The latter is the article’s historical inflation comparison, not a new estimate of the device’s value today or a current price for a surviving unit.
Independent reader supportYour contribution helps us test, update, and keep practical guides available for everyone.How does it compare with a modern prototyping setup?
The Elite 2’s distinctive advantage was integration: breadboard, supplies and signal-generation functions were in one system. A basic modern solderless breadboard offers the prototyping interface, but does not by itself reproduce the Elite 2’s power rails, switches, lights or generators. The available account does not specify a modern competitor, modern purchase price, or size-and-weight comparison, so a like-for-like cost or performance verdict cannot be drawn from it.
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The repair story also shows the trade-off of vintage equipment. Its discrete circuitry makes the design visible and potentially diagnosable at component level, but this particular repair involved several faults and depended on an incomplete schematic. No specific replacement parts or modern generator model are established as compatible substitutes.
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