Oscilloscope recommendations?

[DavidEtherton]

I haven't really used a scope much since my college days nearly twenty years ago (sigh), but it's something I've always wanted to have.

But I've never been able to justify the expense, since I'm not sure what I'd use it for.

I probably wouldn't be doing anything beyond 20 or maybe 50 mhz. Maybe look at an NTSC signal?

Also, I have several PC's and laptops lying around the house, so it always seemed that a USB breakout box of some kind with some decent software would work just as well but save me a lot of cash. (Hell, when they ever finish Pandora maybe I could make a portable scope out of it).

(I guess that's blurring the line between a scope and a signal analyzer isn't it?)

-Dave

[uze6666]

I just bough a Tektronix TDS2014B, the one Ladyada recommended me. It's damn expensive, but with 100Mhz, 4 channels and a color screen I'll most probably won't be buying another one soon!

Tek has some 2 channel monochrome 50Mhz for almost a quarter of the 2014b, could be interesting.

Uze

[havok1919]

I probably wouldn't be doing anything beyond 20 or maybe 50 mhz. Maybe look at an NTSC signal?

(So for the record, the last scope I bought was a Tek TDS2024 but then I do this stuff for a living so that goes into the 'business expense' column.

You might look into something like a used TDS 210 or TDS220. (The older Tek portable LCD based scopes.)

Looks like they're about $600 used on eBay. Like most Tek stuff, if they work now, they'll probably work forever. The new TDS1001's are more like $850-900, albeit with a much lower bandwidth than a used TDS220.

Some of the PC based instruments are pretty good, but none seem to have the nice realtime/easy tweakability of a dedicated scope. I find I'm far more likely to use the TDS220 than PC based stuff just because I can grab it by the handle and go and not worry about breaking anything or getting all the pieces together.

Nice things on the new series include stuff like USB thumb-drive support (my 2024 has Compact Flash instead) and you get FFT's, video line triggers, and pulse width triggers which are pretty nifty (at least on the higher end models, might need to check on the 1001's). On the downside the new scopes take forever to boot and the screen resolution of the teks isn't as good as some competitors.

I haven't personally tried them, but these are so cheap it's almost worth an experiment-- can always eBay it for a small loss if you don't like it:

http://www.saelig.com/miva/merchant.mvc ... gory_Code=

Bandwidth is low, but price is good, *and* it's a USB scope too.

For a little more:

http://www.saelig.com/miva/merchant.mvc ... _Code=PSSA

At that point though I'd have a kinda hard time deciding between the new, high res color cheap scope and the proven name-brand used Tek...

-Clay

[steve.chamberlin]

Try eBay or Craigslist for used scopes. I have an HP 1631D, which is a combination 2-channel 50 MHz scope and 43 channel logic analyzer, that I bought from eBay for about $50. Mine was sold in "unknown condition" and was missing some of the logic analyzer wires... better ones are a few hundred dollars used. It's as big as a mini-tower PC on its side, weighs a million pounds, and deafens everyone in the room with the roar of its fans, but it does its job. I'm sure there are all kinds of things a newer scope would do that this doesn't, but ignorance is bliss.

Really, for low speed hobby use, it's difficult to justify the expense of a new scope, when there are so many very capable 10 or 20 year old scopes available cheaply on the used market.