Digital and analog oscilloscope

I agree with Nigel about the 99% comment. Digital scope weren't truly in vogue until about 25 years after TTL and CMOS was first developed and guys, analog scopes worked just fine for us. Here's an ebay offering that's only hit about $100 with only 2 hours left to bid -- a 100MHz Tek 465B that originally sold for around $2500. Dual channel, dual timebase, portable, etc. Anything under $300 is a steal.

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Dean

Very nice, even has the front cover and manual, original probes ( almost never list that complete ). Can't beat that for asking, $100 is a steal. My Ebay Tek 2235 AN/USM488 was $150 couple years ago, and I didn't get a pouch or manuals or probes.

That Tek 465B went for $152.50. Whoever got that winning bid must be in seventh heaven right now. My gosh, the cover still has the original styrofoam insert that most throw away upon arrival! The service manual alone is worth over $100! The two probes alone are worth over $100! A person is foolish to buy a scope new.

Dean

what about tek TDS210 ??
Digital bench oscilloscope
2 channels
60Mhz bandwidth
1GS/s
2500 points per channels (storage)

It costs near $500 in ebay. It has a good sampling rate, but on the other hand, any new PC based oscilloscope will beat it in storage capacity (2500 points is very little buffer...) and even bandwidth,..

patroclus said:

It costs near $500 in ebay. It has a good sampling rate, but on the other hand, any new PC based oscilloscope will beat it in storage capacity (2500 points is very little buffer...) and even bandwidth,..

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Yes, but try them side by side! - the TEK is a proper scope, the PC scope is a toy!.

what do you mean??

You say that a 100Mhz PC based scope, with 64k samples / channel, is wrost than a 60Mhz digital bench scope with just 2ksamples / channel??

The PC scope has several advantages, like lightweight, portable and usually good software to save and manage captured data... also, it is cheaper, new, in waranty, and does not have components such as the display in bench scope, that have a life time and can die more easily than a 100% semiconductor equipment...

that's what I think but I have no experience !

patroclus said:

what do you mean??

You say that a 100Mhz PC based scope, with 64k samples / channel, is wrost than a 60Mhz digital bench scope with just 2ksamples / channel??

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I know which I'd rather have! - and I'd love one of the TEK LCD scopes

The PC 'scopes' are really just toys, no where near as useful as a proper scope (either analogue or digital).

If you've never used a real scope, then you might be perfectly happy with a PC version?, but if you've ever used a real scope you won't be impressed for long!.

Don't get carried away with reading the specs (if you check reviews on the PC scopes you will see that they are highly speculative anyway).

If you like analogies:

Analogue scope - Aston Martin DB5.
TEK LCD scope - Ferrari.
PC Scope - Sinclair C5 pedal car.

If you really want a PC scope, and you have the occasional use for what it's good at, then by all means get one - but get a cheap analogue scope first, you will soon see which is easier to use and more useful.

Memory is cheap and that's all the PC scopes have to offer: the relatively infinite memory of the PC that yoy already own. What you're paying for with the Tek TDS210 is the extremely-high sampling rate in a scope that was introduced around 1998 for only $800 new, quite the bargain. Now, I don't remember the specifications, but if you get that little Tek scope with the optional computer interface and the Tek software, it may be able to stream the data into the computer through its data converter for similar record length specs. But I don't remember what all the Tek software does.

My most constant use for the storage capabilities of the TDS220 that I bought on our school budget was with the optional Centronics printer interface. I could capture a waveform and print it to paper easily and use that image in curriculum. But notice that I really didn't need the capability of storage .... I needed the hard-copy output!

Nigel's scope-to-auto comparison is pretty accurate.

Dean

Too bad I know nothing about car brands lol. I just don't care about cars. Oh well, I still prefer actual scopes over PC...still saving...la la la. I'll leech off the labs at the U until then.

I bought my Analog oscilloscope off of eBay, its a Tektronix 2246 100MHz 4Chan, mint condition, only cost me about $400CAD plus shipping from Cali to Toronto, if you search eBay, and be patient, you can find amazing deals.

In US or nearby, yes. In Spain, where I live, main ebay's oscilloscopes come from UK and Germany. Buy from US is a BIG cost in shipping fees + customs, because it comes from outside Europe... If I lived in the US, sure I'll try to get an ebay deal.

Nigel Goodwin said:

A 20Mhz or 30MHz analog double-beam scope will do 99+% of all jobs you need a scope for, and usually do it better than a digital scope, and FAR better than a PC scope.

I would suggest getting a proper analogue scope first, then perhaps later getting a PC scope for the 0.0x% of occasions where it might be more useful?.

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Thanks for the advice, Nigel. I did a search and found this thread.

I assume that because you write PIC microcontroller programming software, that such a scope will work out fine with those as well?

Helloween said:

Thanks for the advice, Nigel. I did a search and found this thread.

I assume that because you write PIC microcontroller programming software, that such a scope will work out fine with those as well?

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Yes, it's all I ever use.

Nigel Goodwin said:

Yes, it's all I ever use.

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Excellent. You just saved me $330 dollars.

I love the fact that new != better (at least, all the time). In many things the reverse is true, although you actually have to listen to people and not television and advertisements to realize it.

Gotta love ebay. If it weren't for ebay that oscope would probably be languishing in a shed or worse, tossed in the trash.

I was looking around for a battery to try and set the voltage vernier in the right position, and ended up using the output of a transformer. Lo and behold, I see a full wave rectified signal that looked like this:

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Damn, that's cool! The voltages of circuits can hide from me no longer!