HP Agilent 1652B Logic Analyzer/Scope

Hello,

I'm in the market for an oscilloscope and I might have the option to get a used Agilent 1652B for under $100 USD as part of a set of items a local university is getting rid of. I'm a lot more comfortable with analog scopes, but any reasonably good 100Mhz dual channel scope for under 100 dollars seems like a deal that is hard to pass up.

I have a few questions though:

Considering the age of the technology, will this scope work as well as a good analog scope (Agilent tells me that it was discontinued in

1994, support ended in 1999)?

Can I use standard probes or do I need something special for this scope?

How hard is it to find/make the probe modules for the logic analyzer?

In case I don't get the boot disk with the scope, is there any source anyone can think of for it? I've googled and asked Agilent with no good results, I'm still awaiting word from the university about whether it has the boot disk but the people in charge of selling the scope are having a difficult time of figuring out whether there is a disk with it and the professor who used it is gone from the university so I can't ask him.

Here's the datasheet for the product:

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Thanks for any info, Seth

Probably not - update speed likely to be sluggish and no intensity information. Howeve a digital scope is always good to have - you may just need to get an analogue one as well.

Yes.

Not too hard to make if you don't need full performance - the leads have a

90K (ISTR) resistor at the probe end. Keep an eye on ebay for original leads, as they are much nicer to use - very flexible.

There are some helpful agilent people on the Agilent scope forum,

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and there are enough of these out there that someone should be able to find one. I think there exists some PC software to create/format these discs. Note they are 720K so you need to find the right sort of blanks. These can be found from people who supply to retro computer and music equipment people.