Analogue Scopes are Better

I've got my old Tek DSO & my Hitachi analog. Both have their own uses.

That video was nonetheless interesting.

If you weren't a dried up old skippy, you'd know better.

I've had my share of stalkers. I'm sure you'd love to join them. You're in love, after all.

Fascinating! I'd like to know how he does the butterfly.

Sorry, I'd still rather have a Tek.

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DSO's (at least the cheaper ones I have access too.) stink at any 'fast'* X-Y function. They leave big time gaps as they process the input signals. My Rigol is particularly bad in this regard. The one analog 'scope I use often is set up as X-Y to look at the output of an old optical spectrometer. (The Z input is used too.)

George H.

*fast being anything faster than ~1 second...

Why not both? And a nice sampling scope for a lagniappe?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs 
Principal Consultant 
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC 
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 

160 North State Road #203 
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 

hobbs at electrooptical dot net 
http://electrooptical.net

We have had zero problems with about 15 Rigols over the last 8 years or so. They run cool.

Tek CRT scopes usually had problems by 10 years old, mostly cruddy switches and pots. 7000 series scopes tended to blow up power supplies. 7S14's used soldered-in mercury batteries to bias the sampling diodes off!

Digital scopes have encoders and no pots, and don't use much power.

Like so many other things these days, "service" means tossing them and getting a new one. Nobody would bother to service a $300 oscilloscope. The higher end Rigols, $5K to $10K, we'd try to get fixed if they ever broke.

We have one $50K LeCroy, which we'd definitely have fixed if it broke.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

My DPO2024 takes a couple of minutes to boot up Linux, and it's buggy. It doesn't deliver the claimed bandwidth.

The Rigols boot in seconds, aren't obviously buggy, and deliver more than datasheet BW.

The really great Tek scope is the TPS2000 series, with fully isolated inputs and no Linux.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

Any bugginess will be nothing to do with the Linux. The Linux kernel enjoys a fully justified reputation for its stability. If you've experienced software issues then it'll be a badly-written app to blame.

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Looks like some kid's toy that came out of a Christmas cracker! It's not a *proper* scope if you can lift it up with one finger. You couldn't lift a Tek 555 with one finger. A 555 is a *proper* scope.

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A scope's function is not to hold down the bench.

-----------------------

** Which is way short of 30 years.

They run cool.

** My 50MHz scope used 15 watt of power from the AC outlet. 102mA at 240VAC with a 0.6 PF using a C-core iron transformer.

** False to slur all with the failings of one brand.

** You have misread my post. You have no case and no clue. As usual.

..... Phil

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** Likely just a bug that crept into the hardware.....

..... Phil

Mine is a TDS2024B, very good scope, but have you taken the back off to have a look ?. Couldn't resist here, but very sparse design for all that functionality. Don't know about the latest models, but they sure knew there stuff to design that range...

Chris

Heh, heh, heh. That's a good one, Phil.

Oh, I've had Kiks arc over inside, Philips with blown vertical amp transistors, really bad HP analog scopes. They were OK when nothing else was available, but modern digital scopes are far more useful for serious measurements, and far more reliable. Much cheaper and lighter, too.

A cheap Rigol has infinite storage, variable persistance, programmable filtering, really accurate measurement cursors, post-acquisition pan and zoom, RMS and average and frequency measurement, razor-sharp color traces, simultaneous acquisition on all channels, FFTs. If you just want to look at audio signals, an analog scope may be all you need.

A digital scope is the only thing I have around to measure true RMS voltage in the MHz range; none of my DVMs can do that, and RF voltmeters are expensive.

We interface digital scopes, too, for automated testing. Pretty much every modern scope has USB and/or Ethernet.

They make nice pics, too.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics

One bug is that it misses encoder increments on the knobs. I suspect that Linux is occasionally stealing time slots or prioritizing other tasks so the encoder snooper doesn't run enough.

Yes, this may be bad coding. There is certainly a lot of other bad coding. But it's hard to know what Linux is doing in real time.

Boot time is insane.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

You can clip the ground lead and the probe tip across a resistor that is hundreds of volts off ground. That can be very handy.

I have a collection of old Tek tube scopes... 535, 545, several 547s, other exotica, dozens of plugins and manuals. They take up a lot more room than, say, collecting butterflies.

There's a guy near Sacramanto that collects old military vehicles and tanks.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com

Or warm up the shed.

--

John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  

jlarkin att highlandtechnology dott com 
http://www.highlandtechnology.com