building a hobby-lab

I'm a boat anchor fan myself. Check out eBay for scopes. I've bought eleven of them there, and have had zero duds. Something in a nice Tek TDS 544A (500 MHz, 1Gs/s) can be had for under 5 bills.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

PH:

Appreciate your comments. Having used HP/Tektronics/Fluke for 50-years I'd love a classic-form OScope. However ... I profoundly distrust eBAY merchants ( very sharpsters ) and eBAY payment methods. You are prolly a much quicker business-man than I am. I prefer to deal direct with manufactures ( my coffee mugs come right from the Vermont potters-wheel and my light-scattering-cuvettes direct from a small Chinese silicon foundry).

The $200 difference between shyster-Bosco on eBAY and warranted grant- polished paid-delivery + support Siglent is small beans. Too bad Siglent does not sell a well-priced sine/squ/ramp 25 MHtz function generator and indeed eBAY products never include the cables. Kinda like selling a kitchen table with no legs, but that's eBAY style.

If you pick the sellers that have 50 or more transactions and near 100% feedback you are probably ok. I understand ebay stands behind them also so you canget a refund.

I have bought sevreal used things off ebay for close to $ 1000 and a service monitor for $ 1700. All wree as advertised or better.

China has some new function generators on ebay for less than $ 100 that do well up to about 5 MHz with square waves and 25 with sine waves. I bought one and there is a modification that costs about $ 20 or less in parts from Mouser or Digikey that makes it work even better.

That's not my experience at all, but it's your money.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Most of my now antique lab equipment was purchased on eBay: There's plenty more stored in various corners. I tend to buy low cost "for parts" equipment, and fix them myself. If I really want to buy something to repair, I buy three of them: That's one of the benefits of buying HP, TEK, and other name brand equipment. If you need schematics, manuals, and parts 40 years later, you can find them. For example, the HP 8640B signal generator is known for having the output RF power amp get blown up. 40 years later, you can get replacement pullout: I could probably build a complete generator from scrap parts found on eBay. I doubt if you could find repair parts for a Siglent scope even today. I just downloaded the "service manual" on the Siglent SDS2000X scope. No schematics, no parts list, some adjustments, and an assembly drawing showing only the test points.

JL:

You make solid points about the importance of quality test equipment. I've prolly argued the same way to my EE lab students. Yet now, retired, totally unsupported with time and opportunity to attack a single amusing experimental task I find efficiency-of-tools the prime virtue.

A ( plug-N-play ) $700 Siglent Oscope that helps me build photon detectors, and then serves as part of the detecting system provides enormous value. I can focus on component design & experimental issues knowing I'll drop dead before my Oscope needs repair.

I would not have thought that way 20 years ago, but I think that way now.