Digital 'Scope Choice

I have a Rigol DS1052E and it's a very nice scope. $355 on Amazon.

Be careful though. That scope puts out a lot of RFI. I have one and if I put it near the GPS antenna of my house clock, it kills the receiver. It is a deal though.

Our wooden building is almost in the shadow of Sutro Tower. We'd never notice a little more RF. All these low-end scopes, including Tek, have plastic cases these days, and probably radiate a lot up-close.

Strange they don't even bother to put foil on the inside.

You may be closer to the truth than you realize. Back in my GenRad days the insides of the "plastic" case parts were electroplated with some conductive material (can't remember what now).

And there was a metal spring finger from chassis contacting that coating. ...Jim Thompson

Yeah, you'd think that would be cheap and help a lot. Has anybody tried it?

You know, I find that guy to be intensely annoying. Why does he use that squeaky affected tone of voice, and not talk like a normal person?

--

John Larkin, President Highland Technology Inc

Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

I realize. :)

Lot's of things I've taken apart have foil and a contact spring.

This is why.

But the mod looks good.

I was just pointing out that no visible foil doesn't necessarily mean no metalization shield... the GenRad stuff had just a dirty flat gray look. ...Jim Thompson

Haha... that's just how he was born?

He (Dave Jones) has posted on here occasionally, you know!

Those are all pretty much "low end" scopes -- most of them are

The resolution on the A brands usually isn't much better. Some B-brand scopes use a 7" 800x480 wide screen. That makes a lot of sense!

The pricing is not that competetive if you compare the record lengths and other features. AFAIK Tek 2000 and 3000 series have a record length of 2500 points. IOW: useless.

Were analog scopes useless?

I just meant "more competitive than they used to be," not necessarily "more competitive in an absolute sense." :-)

I was talking about the new (MSO/DSO) versions --

I can see a certain attraction to the TPS2000 series (John Larkin has one) -- while still 2.5Kpts, it has four fully isolated channels, so you can save some money over instead having to purchase a bunch of differential probes (although a differential probe is better if you have high common mode voltages -- subtracting two scope channels mathematically has pretty cruddy CMRR, typically, and suppresses your dynamic range).

Speaking of isolated input scopes... Tek just announced their THS3000 series

---Joel

AFAIK, speech mannerisms are nurture, rather than nature.

The Australian mannerism that I find amusing is the rising intonation at the end of a sentence, sort of turning a statement into a question.

;-)

Nickel?

More than one finger, I'd prefer.

And why shouldn't an Aussie always answer a question with a question?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs