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Buying an Oscilloscope

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Marks256

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So i have the money, and buy the sounds of it, i need an oscilloscope.

I do not know much about them, so i need a bit of help. I know for a fact i at least want a dual trace oscope. At least 20mhz.

My friend has a really old oscope, and he says the only thing he doesn't like about it is he can't tell time on it... I'm not sure what he means by that... time meaning time between waves? i am not sure. but he said to make sure i get one that you can tell time/frequency on... :confused:


So i am open to suggestions. I can't break the bank on this one. I suppose i am willing to go up to $250, but it may take me a little bit longer to get up to that price.

Thanks. ;)
 
was it a sarcastic joke?

as in, "it can do every thing, except make me breakfast!" but i maybe wrong :p

they should all have a identifiable time domain :|
 
The TEK 2235 is a good analog scope, common as apples, and can be had for a good price on ebay. Problem is, not all of them work. l recently bought 2 for spare parts. Both were advertised as powered on, unable to test further. Each was about $100; neither worked. One was a very easy fix (input resistor had come loose). Fixed that and it works great. For other, don't know yet what the problem is. I bought it primarily to get the back-up military version CRT, so don't really care.

Moral of the story is there are some bargains on ebay and a lot of junk. There is a dealer on ebay in Iowa who I got my frst TEK from, and it has worked well from the start. He guarantees them, and as I recall, they are around $300. John
 
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I would go for a digital scope if you can. The newer ones use a LCD display rather the a CRT so they're a lot smaller and lighter. Also most will perform other measurements such as signal frequency and time (that is time between signals, pulses, waveform period etc.). And they store the signal which is nice for single-shot or very low frequency signals.
 
Sorry. forgot about this thread.... I think i will get a digital oscilloscope when i get some money around.
 
Some of the CRT digital scopes weren't very bright so at work we hooked 17" monitors to their VGA outputs (on the back). Very bulky and heavy, but cheap.
 
New scope

Hi Marks,

don't play with the idea to purchase an OWON scope. They were all tested at "ELEKTOR" labs and turned out to be an organized pile of junk.

You might also check out HAMEG.

I just purchased a Scope multi meter made in Hong Kong by UNI-TREND LIMITED for US$ 285.

Measures down to 4,000µV and A and has a built in scope (single trace) up to 10MHz, good enough for service purposes.

Hans
 

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I'm considering this. I make no claims to its functionality or reliability though. I'm just posting it up to expand your options.
 
I'm considering this. I make no claims to its functionality or reliability though. I'm just posting it up to expand your options.

Nice toy. :) Good enough for audio applications.
 
So i have the money, and buy the sounds of it, i need an oscilloscope.

When I needed a scope, I was most interested in bandwidth so I plotted bandwidth on the Y axis and price on the X axis.
One scope was 3% cheaper than an identical other model so I bought the cheaper one.
The manu of the cheaper scope was obviously trying to steal the market from the more expensive one and this was more obvious when I did the plot.

Risetime in nS = 350/BW, with BW in mHz, so a 20 MHz scope will show a risetime of 350/20 = 170 nS with a perfect step function inputted. Sometimes risetime is more important than bandwidth, especially if you're looking for glitches that make fast logic circuits misbehave.
 
:( I need a new laptop, so i can't get an oscope. :'(
 
Hi!

I also intend to buy scope from ebay. What do you mean about this one? is this scope very obsolete ?

Sniper

**broken link removed**
 
"Sometimes risetime is more important than bandwidth,..."

Risetime and bandwidth are locked together as the equation indicated: higher bandwidth means faster risetime. If you need a faster scope, you're automatically going to get a higher-bandwidth scope. It's not like you can have a scope with 500KHz of bandwidth and a risetime of 1.5nS.

Dean
 
don't play with the idea to purchase an OWON scope. They were all tested at "ELEKTOR" labs and turned out to be an organized pile of junk.

EPE rates them fairly highly (for what they are, I have no problems with mine and I use it a lot!).
 
EPE rates them fairly highly (for what they are, I have no problems with mine and I use it a lot!).

I'll second that.

My Owon 6042 does all I need. We have Tek TDS3000 series scope's at work, nice bits of kit, but I can't justify the cost or features for what I do as a hobby.
 
I have a Fluke Scopemeter 123...
Not exactly the cheapest bit of kit, but definitely something I am glad I bought.. :D
 

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Ok. so... i'm back in the market for an o-scope

Should i go digital or analog? I do not need anything fancy. i do need a storage function, though.

Right now i am looking at a used Tektronix 2440 Digital Storage oscilloscope on ebay, but i don't know if it would be a good oscope or not?
 
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