Tektronix has lost their minds

The Agilent DSO6014A is a nice 'scope. I imagine the perspective of a used equipment dealer would be a bit different from that of engineers- nobody wants to part with the nice stuff unless it's _really_ old.

Does sound like it. When I looked at a Tek scope in the $2k-3k range, There were plenty of alternatives, Rigol Instek, which I would not personally purchase. I have used the Instek, It's ok but not as refined as the Tek. But Price conscious buyers would go for it. I found the Agilent to be a better bang for the buck for the same class of scope.

Cheers

My experience is different. I bought an Instek about five years ago. Ok, the user menues and other things are not very refined ... but:

a. It cost >30% less.

b. It had 25k sample memory which allows pulse-echo, whereas the more expensive Tek had 4k which is pathetic and insufficient for such work.

c. The remote control SW and such was free and they had the whole command set laid open in a big freely downloadable programmers manual.

d. The Instek showed a much more quiet EMI footprint which is very important in analog. A client got majorly dinged by a Tek scope there, until I arrived and found out that the oscillation they thought they had in their prototype was really EMI spewing out the probe grounds, from the Tek scope's backlight inverter.

For me "b" and "d" were the clinchers.

They used to have simple lists on there where you could look up the price category for a country, then look up the postage in a table. Took

IMO such "calculator" are often stupid ideas. They should stick to what really works and most of all does not require some scripting to run. Because there are companies that will not allow that.

I have one "disposable" email for that. But mostly if sites want to know details they don't need I just move on.

the best product with no or poor support is worthless.

I have enjoyed the same experiences from my GDS-2204 (I am not associated with them in any way. I just like the scope).

However, be warned that the battery option is crap. The batteries die frequently no matter what you do.

JohnS

That's the scope I have. Did you ever do the firmware upgrade? Is it worth it?

I never bought the battery option. But this scope has a huge space for batteries so I guess one could hack in their own solution. Although I never saw a need for me to have batteries and if I ever did I'd use my "li'l suitcase" battery pack plus inverter. That could then also power some other stuff.

Yes, the typical cryptic governmental stuff. I consider that still to be a web site design failure. If you have something to say, say it in clear, concise language. Better, deal with anything reasonable that you are given, like a decimal ounce.

Rick

make a lot more sense. I guess this is true with most things in life. I was forced in an earlier life to review their regs for a reply postage permit.

won't even open) in IE, but work just fine in Chrome, Firefox or Mozilla. I know IE is crap, or so I've heard - but it can't be that bad to code for IE.

A friend is an web developer and tells me some of the stories of how hard it can be to write code that works for all the browsers and all the versions they have to support. This is not for the public, but for internal use in a medical testing lab. Even then they have to support everything across the board for a number of versions back. They all have bugs and they change across the versions. Not easy stuff to do. So I have a lot more sympathy for web developers than most people.

that insist on knowing data they really don't need to have, in exchange for stuff I'm surfing for. I strive to fill in the blanks for them when appropriate.

I do the same. I have a number of yahoo.com accounts for the ones I really don't want to hear from more than once and a single email account with a huge number of address aliases that are specific to who I am giving them to... xilinx.com@arius..., altera.com@arius..., You might be surprised at how many vendors share your email address.

Rick

I was just in Japan for 11 days, and used some Iwatsu storage/scan-converter scopes there. The controls took a little while to figure out, but they were actually pretty nice scopes. They are true analog scopes, so they have all the limitations of a Tek 465 or similar, such as it can only capture one trace per sweep (without chop), no looking back in time further than the delay lines permit, etc. but, they gave astoundingly good display of fast, single events. Tek also made a scan-converter scope a long time ago, I think it was a 7000-series with standard plug-ins.

Anyway, I wasn't aware that anybody was still making scan-converter scopes. At that lab, these seemed to be the scope of choice, they had many of them.

Jon

At work we have the 2204 (I think). They were prompt in fixing a measurement bug. Just put the image on a the sdcard and boot the scope up. ( we had the one with the SD card, the newer ones have a USB port).

Cheers

Mine only has USB ports, but lots. They didn't mention the boot-up method of updating the firmware, just via PC. Maybe I should update it.

Where did you find the firmware? Mine at home has V 1.04 on it but the one at the office is 1.(something later; .09 maybe?)

On the newer, the trigger menu rolls auto/normal/single while this one on the home bench has the annoying (but occasionally useful) auto-level between stuck between single and auto. I'd love to be able to update it (and even to back-up the baseline firmware). No links to updates at the GWInstek website and searches for "GDS-2204 firmware" lead nowhere.

Belay my last! Found what purports to be a firmware image at Does APP111-Official.UPG look possible? I'd hate to brick it.

The Tek scan converter scope was a French InSnec scope rebranded. My friend Bernard Riondet still makes them. I assume he has a stock of NOS tubes.

(His company name and logo and product line are remarkably similar to mine. He did add the seagulls.)

I've been using my newish TDS694C to wring out an ultrasensitive preamp board, and it really is a thing of great beauty. Nice snappy control response, 2 MB of sample memory, 10 Gs/s simultaneously on 4 channels,

I have a sentimental attachment to the Tektronix name, from long acquaintance and from reading Jim Williams since I was knee-high to a lab bench. (Figuratively speaking.) I don't buy a whole lot of new equipment, as y'all know, but decently-aged Teks are pretty nice.

BTW if you buy the demo model from the disty, it'll have most of the firmware options turned on, more or less for free. (I had Newark in a couple of months ago to demo the MDO4000 series scope/spectrum analyzers, which is where I found that out.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Me. I don't use a cellphone, except for parts. I have one real landline & one 'Magic Jack Plus'.

I have one of the old magic jack units but never use it. Quality is way too poor. How well does the new one work?

We now have Fios and cell phones. The Fios has TV, Internet, and phone in a package.

We had received the firmware from instekamerica. We went thru the local dealer. But contact the sales guys at

BTW, we have a GDS-1102A FW rev 1.13

Cheers

it's excellent, unless I'm talking to somome on a cheap cell phone. It has an ethernet interface and is plugged into my broadband router. Much higher quality that the USB only version.

You can use the Magic Jack with that to give you a local number in another part of the country. Like where retired relatives live, so it's a local call for them.