Where do you buy instruments, and who makes 'em?

I usually start with Tequipment.NET (yes, that's their real DBA name, legacy of the dot-com era I guess) over at

Never had a problem with them and they've got a pretty wide and deep selection of equipment as well as repair parts. Need a replacement pump crank for a Hakko 808 solder sucker? They've got it.

Good prices, good selection.

--
Rich Webb     Norfolk, VA

Took a while to wait for a usable one at a decent price (sleazebay), but I'm happy with my HP3325A (you'll need a GPIB interface to have a computer talk to it, though - but I'm not doing that at present.) Covers the audio band and above and below for quite a nice distance, in that old-fashioned red LED style. Internal crystal reference, ovenized internal is possible (depends on options), and external reference is also an option if you have a better reference. No knob, though. I tend to figure used working old HP is probably more reliable than new Chinese junque, often for similar money.

YMMV.

--
Cats, coffee, chocolate...vices to live by
Please don't feed the trolls. Killfile and ignore them so they will go away.

That's a good point. I tend to either buy used "name" stuff (like Tek or HP), or Chinese stuff with a US label -- because if you care, you _can_ harass the Chinese into making decent stuff.

Of course, my Agilent 54622D came straight from Agilent, and it's probably the best buy that I've ever made. My only beef with it is that the logic analyzer section is really just 16 1-bit scope channels. But I started using that when I started this business, and it comes in handy every time I have a mixed signal board on my bench.

--
My liberal friends think I'm a conservative kook.
My conservative friends think I'm a liberal kook.
Why am I not happy that they have found common ground?

Tim Wescott, Communications, Control, Circuits & Software
http://www.wescottdesign.com

Uncased, but is less than $40 US.

--
You can't have a sense of humor, if you have no sense.

On the bay I see plenty of cheap (less than $25) AD9851 based DDS generator cards intended to be hooked to a microcontroller (which could talk to a USB host). Here are schematics and code examples.

This is a partially diy solution, but can be easily put into a box. Similar ready made products cost a lot more.

I have no idea of the quality of the generated signal though.

Just look on Ebay. Chinese make tons of inexpensive instruments these days.

-- Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply indicates you are not using the right tools... nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)

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HP 3325A. I just paid $223 plus $31 shipping for one on eBay. Plus it goes up to 30 MHz.

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
845-480-2058

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

k

ng

t g

ttdesign.com

We've got a GWinstek SFG2104 and a Protek 8003FD. The GWinstek seems a bit more stable. But the protek has more functionality.

Some stuff we buy direct, and other from Newark.

George H.

I bought this one:

The first unit had a defect but the 2nd one they replaced it with works. I do not know if the control software for its USB link would be compatible with Linux though, you'd have to ask. There is a set of commands in the back of the booklet in case you want to hack it together yourself. But the whole booklet has the usual "Chinese brevity" :-)

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com/

Yup, nice generator, but at a spec'd -65dBc THD in the audio band it fails the "nice high accuracy DAC" requirement though. IN the same league you have the 3325B and 3324A (which unfortunately lacks a service manual).

There's also the 8903A/B audio analyzer with -90dBC THD, but it's a tad more expensive.

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Thanks,
Fred.

This doesn't exactly meet your price range, but it's an interesting new development:

There's a lot of neat stuff at Saelig. I'm getting tempted to buy one of their $400 range function generators soon.

--
_____________________
Mr.CRC
crobcBOGUS@REMOVETHISsbcglobal.net
SuSE 10.3 Linux 2.6.22.17

I've worked with Picoscope but I'm not impressed. Stability is also an issue.

I like this one:

This scope has an 8" 800x600 screen. Most entry level scopes (including Tektronix) don't go beyond 320x240.

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

Do you mean software stability? How bad are we talking? What else was wrong with your experience?

I've never used them, but have been tempted. The only thing that would draw me though, is something that can't be done with traditional scopes, like very good 16-bit digitization for audio range signal analysis.

Definitely a lot for the money. But how many waveforms/second?

--
_____________________
Mr.CRC
crobcBOGUS@REMOVETHISsbcglobal.net
SuSE 10.3 Linux 2.6.22.17

IIRC the software freezes sometimes. The input's range is limited to

5V and the menus aren't very intuitive. And if you want to see a lot of weird readings turn on the 'enhanced vertical resolution' (which is bogus BTW because you can't get more bits out of an ADC).

If you want to analyze audio you are probably better off with a high end USB sound interface (it isn't a soundcard anymore :-) and a piece of software.

Is that a meaningful number? I have an older Tek TDS500 series and what I like about it is that it shows several acquisitions and freezes for a short moment after a trigger when in 'auto trigger mode'

--
Failure does not prove something is impossible, failure simply
indicates you are not using the right tools...
nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
--------------------------------------------------------------

Well, there's always the mass-produced ones. Ipod nano can play two output channels of any kind of audio you can imagine and program. Tones, sine burst, noise burst, FM sweeps... just buy a CD test disk to get started with audio signals.

No knob, though, you gotta use the color touchscreen.

This is my third attempt to post this, I've had newsgroup access problems, they seem to have self corrected this morning. I emailed it to Tim, but others may be interested.

Here's a board built in Australia. Seems expensive compared to bare boards others have posted, $145 but maybe it has bells and whistles you'll like. DC to 940Mhz

Homepage;

Mikek

They have some good stuff. It is a bit pricey but not bad if the quality = is=20 good. I'm designing a three-phase USB signal generator. It will = basically be=20 an arbitrary waveform generator with three channels, using EEPROM or = SRAM=20 and a quad DAC. It will be limited to power line frequencies if I use = the=20 PIC crystal oscillator to drive the counter directly, but much higher=20 frequencies can be obtained if I use a VCO and/or a PLL. It's a "back=20 burner" project but I think it may be useful. Maybe these guys would be=20 interested in adding it to their products?

Paul=20

That's the attenuator specs. The synthesizer only goes to 85MHz.

Yup, sorry about that, still higher than he needs though. The attenuator steps seem large! Mikek