Oscilloscope donation for a beginner - request

The link below seems to be truncated, and going into the top level page doesn't seem to have a navigation trail to it. Does it need subscription?

There are lots of USB scopes for cheap on eBay, but mostly low = frequency.=20 And they are essentially crap if you are measuring signals where noise = is=20 present, as you can see from this post in an EV forum:

You might see if there are any Amateur Radio Hamfests and swap meets = near=20 you. An excellent source of old used equipment.

I have a lot of boards which I'm removing from equipment for upgrades to = new=20 USB Windows hardware and software. These boards work only on MSDOS and a =

real parallel port, and the sample rate is only about 2000/sec, but it = uses=20 a 12 bit A/D and it can measure signals from a 100A/100mV shunt as low = as 5=20 mV FS to 1V FS in 8 overlapping ranges 50/100/250...10000 A. The input = is=20 full differential with 2k input resistance, so you can add 200k or 2meg = and=20 get 100x or 1000x for voltage readings.

You just have to connect the board to a 16VCT transformer for power. I = can=20 send one for whatever the cost of postage, and you can have the software = and=20 source code for Turbo-C. If you can program a microcontroller you could = make=20 an interface to emulate the parallel port and maybe boost the sampling = rate.=20 Actually the MSDOS software has a utility menu where you can set the=20 sampling rate higher, but I don't know how high it can go. Maybe 5000 to =

Good luck,

Paul=20

Don't use quote marks for URLs:

Post them like this so they don't break across multiple lines:

It will cost much more than $20. For example:

Poland wants a 22% VAT from the recipient for all durables shipped into Poland. I don't know how they value test equipment, but for computahs, they price them using eBay prices. A $200 value minimal scope will cost $44 in VAT.

In the distant past, I would ship PC's to relatives in Poland. In about 1992, a $2000 PC would be worth about $9000 in Poland. The problem was not customers or taxes. It was theft. Machines simply would not arrive and were presumed "lost" in shipment. In order to obtain reliable delivery, I had to disassemble the machine, and ship the parts and pieces separately. After the typical 3 month delay, we would take inventory to determine what needed to be resent. Hopefully, things have improved in the last 20 years.

Shipment to Poland calculator:

Using a fairly light Tek 2205 scope as an example, 20x24x8 package, 10 lbs, sea shipment, the shipping charge would be $22 from their depot in Massachusetts. From my office in California to Mass adds about $20. Polish VAT, paid by the recipient, adds $44. Total = $86 If you can figure out how to avoid the VAT, it might barely work.

nk

for

I used to use Mozilla SeaMonkey -- email/news/browser all in one. Don't know what shape it's in nowadays.

Still around.

-- Les Cargill

and here oscilloscopes are rare and expensive. I'm keen to learn electronics and I just can't continue without an oscilloscope in my lab. I obviously can't afford one.

would like to donate it I would gladly accept it. I can pay for the shipping, which is still going to be very expensive but it's still much cheaper than an oscilloscope. I think I can only accept an oscilloscope from someone from Europe, escpecially from Poland or from a nearby coutry, because it would cost over 150USD to ship it from USA to Poland. I guess I could accept one out of Europe if the postage is under 50 bucks but I doubt it would be that cheap.

I sympathize. Second hand stuff has always been more pricey in Europe. One side effect of low-waste living habits.

For some reason, equipment marked as 'settler's effects' or some other duty-free category, tend to get booted down-stairs during shipment, as well. That's just plain spite.

Do you or anyone else in your family know someone who travels abroad regularly on business, or just as part of their regular work?

Another alternative is to check with local radio amateurs. These guys tend to be getting older ..... looking for bright sparks to hand down to without fiscal motives.

Check out the Yahoo TekScopes group. It has European members with some savvy.

RL

When I wrote "bucks" I meant USD. Yes, we have PLN here in Poland, I just wanted to make it easier for others

Poland but, mainly due to the currency, they're expensive. I have been looking even for soviet scopes but the only two I could find were unteseted and still expensive.

going to lie.

Scrounging one from a local university or junk shop is your best bet.

The cheapest option by far for a beginner these days is a software based scope for a PC that uses the soundcard as a dual channel ADC.

Daquarta isn't perfect in that respect as it does cost something to use and lacks proper X-Y options but does have realtime spectrum analysis. ISTR 30 day free trial. It is fine for audio signals.

The other one whose name escapes me for the moment is freeware and can do x-y as well as x-t plots. Performance is obviously limited to audio band only and not DC coupled but it is a lot better than nothing.

And the price of either is hard to bear.

....and better than ever!

Actually superior to Firefox, which has dumbed down its interface, making "preferences" less accessible to the user. Firefox's most popular plug-ins and add-ons --though not all-- are also available for Seamonkey. At the very least, get NoScript. Specially if running M$ Windows.

nb

and here oscilloscopes are rare and expensive. I'm keen to learn electronics and I just can't continue without an oscilloscope in my lab. I obviously can't afford one.

would like to donate it I would gladly accept it. I can pay for the shipping, which is still going to be very expensive but it's still much cheaper than an oscilloscope. I think I can only accept an oscilloscope from someone from Europe, escpecially from Poland or from a nearby coutry, because it would cost over 150USD to ship it from USA to Poland. I guess I could accept one out of Europe if the postage is under 50 bucks but I doubt it would be that cheap.

You might want to find out what your government does with surplus equipment. Surely there is an appointed company that sells the stuff.

The german equivalent is the VEBEG.

A the moment they have no interesting measurement equipment but it might be worthwhile to take a look once a week. I've seen 50MHz Philips scopes, signal generatatiors etc.

Anyone can bid. In most cases there is no minimum bid.

Good luck!

Werner Dahn

The message threading in Seamonkey sucks. The older Netscape browsers did a better job in their email/news client.

Yeah, not a fan of the news/mail part of Seamonkey. slrn is a command line news client, so don't see how SM works as a newsreader. I use the email part cuz I often get inline graphics from friends. It's good enough. The browser proper is great, though. Provides more user control than FF.

nb

Or for a bit more bandwidth you can try

Dan

ers

Sorry to hear that. For a while, at least, Seamonkey's newsreader was a good successor to the one in Netscape Communicator.

You have to use different menus to sort by sender, date, status and such. Makes it worthless to me. I'd like to get the source code for Netscape 4.80 and recompile it for newer OS.

I'm posting with NS 4.79 on Win7 32bit, and it works fine.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I was thinking about the 64 bit version, which refuses to install the

I'd also like to add new features to the filtering, like dropping crossposted messages from unwanted groups.

for

browsers

Will it run on 64b outside a VM? You could install it in a VM to some convenient directoy, zip it up, and copy it outside the VM's disk image. (I have Win7 64b running under QEMU/KVM, so I could try it myself.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs