Re: Oscilloscope Shopping on a $2000.00 Budget

Paul Mathews wrote:

On Oct 7, 12:44 pm, D from BC <myrealaddr...@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:

On Sun, 07 Oct 2007 09:40:26 -0700, Joerg





<notthisjoerg...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 06 Oct 2007 12:59:28 -0700, Joerg
<notthisjoerg...@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

D from BC wrote:

I want a scope for Christmas :)
I have a $2000.00CAD (including expenses) budget for a new or used
oscilloscope.
I tend to do smps and uC projects.

Very different ballgames. SMPS mostly needs a good analog scope, ...

Why? I do just fine with a digital, and the infinite persistance and
measurements can be very useful, even for switchers.

Really, an analog scope is a primitive, almost qualitative instrument.

DSOs can show you fake signals when irregular stuff happens, especially
so once they go into "pseudo" mode, usually above 10nsec/div. Just had
that happen last week, fired up the trusty analog scope, all nice and clear.

Take one of your pulse generators, set it to double pulse and play with
the DSO a little. You can get rather interesting rising and falling
lattice fence sections onto the screen (that, of course, aren't really
there).

A Tek 2465 is in no way primitive. It's often the only tool to find some
bugs in a reasonable time frame.

The really spiffy one for switchmode and power amps is the Tek with
true floating inputs. Just slap that probe g-s onto the highside
switching fet!

Did ya hafta put marzipan in front of me and then pull it away again? If
the budget was infinite ...

But I won't touch any Tek with LCD/TFT screen anymore until rather
exhaustive noise tests. Been burnt, big time, and so was a client.

Oh nooo... If I buy a DSO, I might need to get an analog scope too so
that I can confirm strange waveform results on the digital scope. :(
Maybe call it "Digital Scope Training with help from an Analog Scope".
:)
D from BC- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -


I haven't used an analog scope for several years. I'd say they still
have their place for low-level work, though. I agree with most of John
Larkin's comments in this thread. It's really pretty easy to check for
aliasing. D from BC, I'd say that you should save some of your budget
for a current probe rather than an analog DSO.
Paul Mathews


It's easy to check for aliasing if you roughly know what to expect. Many times that's not the case. Also, the fact that DSO designers thought it smart to remove greatly needed features such as delay trigger and even holdoff (!) doesn't exactly make it easy to obtain a proper scan. Sometimes I wonder how many of the DSO designers have actually worked in hardcore circuit design these days.

--
Regards, Joerg

http://www.analogconsultants.com
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Oscilloscope Shopping on a $2000.00 Budget
    ... I have a $2000.00CAD budget for a new or used ... that happen last week, fired up the trusty analog scope, all nice and clear. ... for a current probe rather than an analog DSO. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: Oscilloscope Shopping on a $2000.00 Budget
    ... oscilloscope. ... SMPS mostly needs a good analog scope, ... Really, an analog scope is a primitive, almost qualitative instrument. ... If the budget was infinite ... ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: Advise wanted on equipment purchase
    ... >budget of $7000 to buy few equipments like scopes, smd soldering tools, ... >analysers, processor kits..etc. ... A digital scope with deep memory is essential. ... you will struggle to get on your budget. ...
    (sci.electronics.misc)
  • Re: Oscilloscope Shopping on a $2000.00 Budget
    ... I have a $2000.00CAD budget for a new or used ... that happen last week, fired up the trusty analog scope, all nice and clear. ... for a current probe rather than an analog DSO. ... I'm thinking of buying a new DSO to test drive for smps development.. ...
    (sci.electronics.design)
  • Re: TDS-1002b Any good? Comments? References: <12u91kp7g70et85@news.supernews.com>
    ... project I was doing I absolutely had to have a digital scope to see ... It doesn't have a duty cycle measurement, ... with an analog scope, you can buy some of the best that ever existed ... even with low duty cycle signals. ...
    (sci.electronics.equipment)
Loading