Go buy yourself something like this:
http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5794552330&category=12960&rd=1
Bandwith 100 MHz, some Models go up to 400.
You can get lots of different plug ins for every need, even a spectrum analyzer.
It is cheap and has been very expensive long ago.
I have 7623.
http://cgi.ebay.de/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=5794552330&category=12960&rd=1
Bandwith 100 MHz, some Models go up to 400.
You can get lots of different plug ins for every need, even a spectrum analyzer.
It is cheap and has been very expensive long ago.
I have 7623.
@ Bernhard:
The Tektronix 7xxx series are quite nice, and for O'scopes made in 70's of the last century they are real good.
The sad news: Contacts and switches are prone to waer out, and these scoeps are real heavy. The 7603 you mentioned is with plugins approx. 21 kg
The others units you quote(up to 400 MHz) are about 24 kg wth plugins.
And of course plugins are needed, the mainframe itself can't be used without them.
Well, I think Gasho is looking for something more modern. If he is really looking, which I doubt.
hth,
Andreas
The Tektronix 7xxx series are quite nice, and for O'scopes made in 70's of the last century they are real good.
The sad news: Contacts and switches are prone to waer out, and these scoeps are real heavy. The 7603 you mentioned is with plugins approx. 21 kg
The others units you quote(up to 400 MHz) are about 24 kg wth plugins.
And of course plugins are needed, the mainframe itself can't be used without them.
Well, I think Gasho is looking for something more modern. If he is really looking, which I doubt.
hth,
Andreas
I am an absolute beginner and I am also looking for a scope. I was just wondering what people thought about PC based scopes. I am looking at BitScope. It says the scope is 100MHz at 40MS/s sampling. Is this enough for evaluating DIY amplifier design? I am also interested in speaker design and was looking at CLIO. Is this package usable for measuring performance of electronics as well as speakers (it seems so, but the website focuses only on speaker evaluation only).
Thanks in advance,
Chad
Thanks in advance,
Chad
...just 3 months ago I bought a cheap (EUR 200,-) scope for USB connection.
I works, but has poor precision in terms of DC drift and
further on in the measurment ranges 50mV, 500mV, 5V it drives
it's input amplifier to high and this results in approx 5% deviation between upper and lower half wave displaying.
Sampling rate is 20MHz. Storage is specified as 32k, but in fact it is
10k for each chanel + settings. But the output file can be nicely used in Excel for further math operations.
Since short time you can get the same with 50Ms/s for EUR 300,-.
For precision measurements this stuff is not usefull.
But who really needs a precision oscilloscope?
Usually you need to see the shape of the wave form and don't care
if it is 10.3Vrms or 10.9Vrms.
Often it is much more important to be free of any earth connection,
here a USB scope with a battery driven lab top is excellent.
But be careful with high voltages then. The entire notebook is floating on the potential given by your circuit.
OK... OK... I also love my Waverunner with excessive high end probes in the lab...
But usually I don't need such equipment at home.
And even during my current SMPS design, my crapy home equipment
is more or less OK.
It is less efficient, needs more time, more interpretation of the displayed signals, less reliable, not calibrated by any official institute, not acceptable when the measurement results will decide about a lot of money.... but for playing around it's OK.
@ Ch83575:
Your BitScope with 40Ms/s should be OK for normal audio amplifiers.
But the properties of it's input amplifiers are hard foresee...
And I would prefer a USB connection. USB usually makes less trouble. Also supplying the scope through USB is nicer from my perception.
I works, but has poor precision in terms of DC drift and
further on in the measurment ranges 50mV, 500mV, 5V it drives
it's input amplifier to high and this results in approx 5% deviation between upper and lower half wave displaying.
Sampling rate is 20MHz. Storage is specified as 32k, but in fact it is
10k for each chanel + settings. But the output file can be nicely used in Excel for further math operations.
Since short time you can get the same with 50Ms/s for EUR 300,-.
For precision measurements this stuff is not usefull.
But who really needs a precision oscilloscope?
Usually you need to see the shape of the wave form and don't care
if it is 10.3Vrms or 10.9Vrms.
Often it is much more important to be free of any earth connection,
here a USB scope with a battery driven lab top is excellent.
But be careful with high voltages then. The entire notebook is floating on the potential given by your circuit.
OK... OK... I also love my Waverunner with excessive high end probes in the lab...
But usually I don't need such equipment at home.
And even during my current SMPS design, my crapy home equipment
is more or less OK.
It is less efficient, needs more time, more interpretation of the displayed signals, less reliable, not calibrated by any official institute, not acceptable when the measurement results will decide about a lot of money.... but for playing around it's OK.
@ Ch83575:
Your BitScope with 40Ms/s should be OK for normal audio amplifiers.
But the properties of it's input amplifiers are hard foresee...
And I would prefer a USB connection. USB usually makes less trouble. Also supplying the scope through USB is nicer from my perception.
Best all around scope is still the TEK 465B. You would have to spend alot more than the original 4K selling price of this scope to get an equivelent "new" TEK scope. You could by at least three clean/used 465B scopes for your 1K dollars. Original selling price was close to 4K in the states during the last production run. Get ALOT more for your money this way and why anyone would buy anything except a Tektronix scope is bayond me... yes there are other nice scopes out there but these just can't be beat.... especially at the inexpensive- used prices they can be gotten for today. This 100 mhz scope exceeds its specs by a considerable amount..... the usable vert. channel bandwidth is almost 150 mhz!
BTW: This 465B cost me U.S. $78.60 off of E-Bay with the shipping from Idaho. It was in a rack mount and never carried in the field except by me!!
Mark
BTW: This 465B cost me U.S. $78.60 off of E-Bay with the shipping from Idaho. It was in a rack mount and never carried in the field except by me!!
Mark
Attachments
Dear,
Look for a Philips/Fluke PM3070! A masterpiece to work with!.
The auto setup works great. Just put you're probe on whatever you want to meassure, and this scope automaticly adjust the timebase and sensitivity etc. and that to 100Mhz. It takes 2 seconds and you have a good vieuw.
This scope have cursors's but are a little bit hard to adjust. Once adjusted the cursor's you can messure time, voltage P-P etc. al indicated on the screen.
Kind regards,
Bas
Look for a Philips/Fluke PM3070! A masterpiece to work with!.
The auto setup works great. Just put you're probe on whatever you want to meassure, and this scope automaticly adjust the timebase and sensitivity etc. and that to 100Mhz. It takes 2 seconds and you have a good vieuw.
This scope have cursors's but are a little bit hard to adjust. Once adjusted the cursor's you can messure time, voltage P-P etc. al indicated on the screen.
Kind regards,
Bas
Great buys on used LeCroy DSOs right now...
Hmm. I like this topic.
Here are some of my recommendations...
Digital:
LeCroy makes some real work whorse (sic)
DSOs. Wonderful big crisp displays with unsurpassed measurement capabilities. Delightful (and expensive) machines. 
Only problem is, unless you chain them down to your workstation, they tend to make the rounds without your permission / knowledge! (hence the little joke above, hehe). It's easy to lose track of who's using and abusing your favorite office plaything.
More to the point, LeCroy recently discontinued factory support for their 9000 series DSOs (mid-90s vintage). As a result, there are tons of them flooding onto the used market at bargain prices as companies liquidate them and replace with new. Many are still in current calibration. You can get a very nice 4ch. 500MS/s for $1500, or go to the cheaper 9400 series which are larger and heavier, but have a vector scanned trace instead of a raster trace (nice!). You could get a clean 94xx for $400-$750ish. In the world of used DSOs, I rank these are IMO the best buys under $2k.
I managed to get a 9361 for only $600. Admittedly, I got an extra-good deal and it has a minor problem, but for 2 channels at 300MHz with 2.5GS/s and 25kS buffer per channel and fully loaded with all the software options, this was a bargain scope! It even has a very nice video trigger ability which will do all the HDTV formats as well as custom video formats with line select etc.. not a VM700 I'll admit, but still very nice. Most of the 93xx LeCroys have much larger buffers, often 250kS-1MS and handy little thermal printers. They're sluggish with the FFT due to the old processor inside (motorola 68K), but otherwise are very nice machines. IMHO, their big monochrome CRTs are still nicer to use than a brand new Tek with colour LCD, let alone the crappy little low-rez BW LCD you would get on something like an $800 used TDS220.
Analog:
The LeCroy sits on my home bench along side my trusty Tek 2445 - 4 channel 150MHz. The 24xx have one of the sharpest analog traces Tek ever made, a feature I certainly appreciate. And, it has a measurement cursor overlay which is nice. The 2445 cost me about $450 from eBay several years ago. You can probably get one for less now, or maybe the faster 2465. Buy two and use one for spare parts.
For audio band measurements such as THD, IMD, SNR, etc., I simply use a good soundcard. No need to indulge in an Audio Precision test set. My inexpensive 24/96 M-Audio makes very accurate measurements.
So for just over $1k, I've got a rather complete and powerful suite of waveform measurement tools. You needn't break the bank.
In general:
The Tek / HP / LeCroy stuff is mostly quite robust, but be wary of tier-2 and tier-3 brands
. I rank Philips-Fluke at about tier 1.5ish, although I've never used or seen inside their scopes. The top brands usually represent a tour-de-force of engineering talent, while the lesser brands often build copy-cat designs with varying degrees of engineering talent, but almost invariably the lower quality is evident. So stick with the good brands, and if you've got the service manuals and the willingness to tackle maintenance yourself, these machines will gift you with a wonderfully instructional experience. I'm very definitely a better engineer today for all the debug and repair work I've done on various pieces of test equipment and instrumentation. Just reading the service manuals can be highly educational.
Hmm. I like this topic.
Here are some of my recommendations...Digital:
LeCroy makes some real work whorse (sic)
DSOs. Wonderful big crisp displays with unsurpassed measurement capabilities. Delightful (and expensive) machines. Only problem is, unless you chain them down to your workstation, they tend to make the rounds without your permission / knowledge! (hence the little joke above, hehe). It's easy to lose track of who's using and abusing your favorite office plaything. More to the point, LeCroy recently discontinued factory support for their 9000 series DSOs (mid-90s vintage). As a result, there are tons of them flooding onto the used market at bargain prices as companies liquidate them and replace with new. Many are still in current calibration. You can get a very nice 4ch. 500MS/s for $1500, or go to the cheaper 9400 series which are larger and heavier, but have a vector scanned trace instead of a raster trace (nice!). You could get a clean 94xx for $400-$750ish. In the world of used DSOs, I rank these are IMO the best buys under $2k.
I managed to get a 9361 for only $600. Admittedly, I got an extra-good deal and it has a minor problem, but for 2 channels at 300MHz with 2.5GS/s and 25kS buffer per channel and fully loaded with all the software options, this was a bargain scope! It even has a very nice video trigger ability which will do all the HDTV formats as well as custom video formats with line select etc.. not a VM700 I'll admit, but still very nice. Most of the 93xx LeCroys have much larger buffers, often 250kS-1MS and handy little thermal printers. They're sluggish with the FFT due to the old processor inside (motorola 68K), but otherwise are very nice machines. IMHO, their big monochrome CRTs are still nicer to use than a brand new Tek with colour LCD, let alone the crappy little low-rez BW LCD you would get on something like an $800 used TDS220.
Analog:
The LeCroy sits on my home bench along side my trusty Tek 2445 - 4 channel 150MHz. The 24xx have one of the sharpest analog traces Tek ever made, a feature I certainly appreciate. And, it has a measurement cursor overlay which is nice. The 2445 cost me about $450 from eBay several years ago. You can probably get one for less now, or maybe the faster 2465. Buy two and use one for spare parts.
For audio band measurements such as THD, IMD, SNR, etc., I simply use a good soundcard. No need to indulge in an Audio Precision test set. My inexpensive 24/96 M-Audio makes very accurate measurements.
So for just over $1k, I've got a rather complete and powerful suite of waveform measurement tools. You needn't break the bank.
In general:
The Tek / HP / LeCroy stuff is mostly quite robust, but be wary of tier-2 and tier-3 brands
. I rank Philips-Fluke at about tier 1.5ish, although I've never used or seen inside their scopes. The top brands usually represent a tour-de-force of engineering talent, while the lesser brands often build copy-cat designs with varying degrees of engineering talent, but almost invariably the lower quality is evident. So stick with the good brands, and if you've got the service manuals and the willingness to tackle maintenance yourself, these machines will gift you with a wonderfully instructional experience. I'm very definitely a better engineer today for all the debug and repair work I've done on various pieces of test equipment and instrumentation. Just reading the service manuals can be highly educational.
Gasho said:Only problem is that I live in country where that kind of equipment is not on the market every day.
You ARE aware that I bought Tek 475B for 100€. I mean, for that amount of money you can try it and sell it again. You can have mine for a couple of weeks and try it out. There are few Tek's here and then in Oglasnik (our local adds paper), price always up to 300€.
But as I know you, you wouldn't be satisfied with any compromises.
Nobody said anything about probes. Are they included in the $1000 price for a new scope, or you need a couple of hunderts more for the probes.
I am still using my scope for basic measurements (not an advanced user), but the first thing I have learned is the importance of probes.
I really agree with Chad(HifiZen),
the LeCroys are really nice to use in every aspect, high performance with good functions and intuitive.
Tek's are also very nice.
Philips was in the past really crapy and couldnt even trigger on signals vast majority of other scopes could do, so watch out for older Philips.
If your are looking for budjet models I can recommend GW Instek (Good Will) from Taiwan, they give fair value for the money, even older scopes are good.
I have myself today still an older(16-17 years) 40 MHz analog GW that works very well. Their 40-60 MHz range scopes from that time were the same as Hitachi.
If you want to make just some audio measurements I think you should look at ESI's Juli@ 24/196 [=Juliet], it cost around 100€ and it's performance can be compared to pro cards for several hundreds!!
Cheers Michael
the LeCroys are really nice to use in every aspect, high performance with good functions and intuitive.
Tek's are also very nice.
Philips was in the past really crapy and couldnt even trigger on signals vast majority of other scopes could do, so watch out for older Philips.
If your are looking for budjet models I can recommend GW Instek (Good Will) from Taiwan, they give fair value for the money, even older scopes are good.
I have myself today still an older(16-17 years) 40 MHz analog GW that works very well. Their 40-60 MHz range scopes from that time were the same as Hitachi.
If you want to make just some audio measurements I think you should look at ESI's Juli@ 24/196 [=Juliet], it cost around 100€ and it's performance can be compared to pro cards for several hundreds!!
Cheers Michael
SY said:
Can someone give me a quick explaination of these different probe types?
I've only used a scope for repairing TVs and that was long long ago. I've seen some TV workshops where the probe was just a diy cap and wire. I'm planning to get a 465B and would like to know just how important quality probes are and why.
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